Opera browser....

I started using Opera on a regular basis about a month ago or so. Overall, I like it it, but I think I'm going to scrap it in favor of Firefox. Here's why: Unless I'm totally lame (which is totally possible) I can't seem to find a "Go" button like IE has, or like the little green triangle in Firefox. So when I type in an address, I HAVE to hit Enter; sometimes I like to use the 'Go' button for various reasons. The main reason I don't think I'll be using Opera is the ENORMOUS quantity of junk and temp files it stores on my PC. I surfed with Opera for maybe 15 or 20 minutes the other day, then ran CCleaner. I had over 65mb in temp files and looking at the log, it was almost all Opera storing web files, graphics, etc. I can surf for hours and hours with Firefox, and get just negligible numbers of files, maybe 10mb or 12mb. But over 65mb in 15 minutes of surfing is ridiculous. Imagine if you used Opera everyday for 2 or 3 hours, and rarely ran a cleaner.... conservatively, we'll say 60mb for 1 hour of surfing, that's 180mb for 3 hours, times 7 days a week, that's 1260mb a week!! Even if it was only 30mb a day, that's still over 200mb weekly, almost 1gb in a month.

 

You can easily add the Go button, or customize any of the toolbars however you like. Right click anywhere in the Main Bar and select Customize. Then click on the Buttons tab. Under Cagegory, select Browser View. Left click on Go and drag it to wherever you want.

 

Does the speed of the browser not justify a few hundred megs, anyway?

Firefox can be made faster using the 'Fasterfox' extension, which will silently download and cache links in the background so the page is ready to display by the time you click the link. This would cause an increase in Firefox's temp file sizes.

Not sure if this is what Opera is doing, but it seems that disk space is cheap compared to the users time, no?

 

As has been mentioned above, you could easily change the size of Opera's cache by going to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > History... The cache size shouldn't really make your computer run any slower, in fact the cache helps speed up browsing.

Daniel
Opera Software

 

Welcome to Major Geeks, danigoldman. :major

It is always great to have a representative of a Software supplier as a member. Hope we don't bombard you with too many questions. Bazza

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WOW!!! Great info (as always )!!! And straight from the folks at Opera no less. Thanks for tips, I'll be sure to implement them into Opera in the very near future. It really was never a question of speed, both browsers work nice and fast, it was just surprising to see such a quantity of files stored by Opera, but they are easily controlled it would seem. And as Plodr mentioned above, I like to run different browsers in case one doesn't seem to be working right, I can jump into another....
Anyway, thanks again for the great input.

 

:celebrate :highfive THANKS! Having no GO button was driving me crazy! The tips about caching worked great too. I had no idea that Opera was so customizable. It really has more configuration options than many other browsers I've seen. You can set just about anything to your personal preference, and it's all really easy to use and understand and written in plain ol' English. It's nice to see in this tech-savvy age; a highly effective piece of software that's not only free, but really easy to personalize. Too cool. :cool
Thanks again everyone.
And thank you, Opera, for being such a great tool. I'll be using Opera on a regular basis now.

 

I love helping people.