Once upon a time I were actually an Opera user. It’s been a couple of years since then of course, but I still remember it was better to interpret valid XHTML and HTML. And the evil opponent IE which were defining the market standard. Now things have changed. IE 6 are being hunted down by pretty much any internet media society and the European Union have placed it’s large boot of a bill right i the ass of Microsoft and forced it to provide a browser choice in it’s operating system. Meanwhile IE 7 and 8s marketshare are being targeted by Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Before the choice was between Opera and IE, later when Firefox came around, it unfortunately was a greater threat to Opera rather than IE and instead of providing a broad palette of browsers competing towards an open and free market. They pretty much ate each other.

The last year and a half have defined some specific competing measurement – in specific: speed! Firefox was always faster than IE, no doubt. But then came along Chrome, and WOW it just ate both of then. Then IE said they were faster again – but they really weren’t. Firefox had a rebound and were really fast. Then Chrome knocked back and forth.

A couple of days ago  Opera 10.50 came around. And OMFG it’s really nasty fast. It’s the first time sine I switched to Chrome I consider switching to something else! But it’s just amazing! But the coolest thing isn’t actually just the speed. They’ve went to a different design, much like Chrome. But the coolest thing is actually Opera Unite. A build in application server bringing Software As a Service to a personal level where you host your own services right in your browser. They’ve been using the little one on the top of the body with this one I promise you.

Say hi to me on my fridge here (a little social application where you can leave notes to each other).

The address is: http://notebook.rubberd.operaunite.com/fridge/

Plugins til browsere er lidt on/off for mig. Der er nogle browsere hvor det er rigtig fedt og andre hvor det er knap så fedt. Det kommer lidt an på hvad browseren kan i forvejen og hvad det er jeg bruger den til. Ganske irrationelt, jeg ved det godt… Men i starten med IE 7 var deres web udvikler plugin rigtig rigtig fedt, det var lige indtil at IE begyndte at crashe pga. det plugin. Bag efter brugte jeg et FTP klient plugin i Firefox. Mest af mangel på bedre egentlig. Jeg har altid været stor bruger af FlashFXP og som regel kunne det gå med at få fat i en gammel version, en knap så gammel og en ny version så jeg kunne nøjes med de 3×30 dage trial.

Idag bruger jeg primært Chrome. Den kan ikke engang læse RSS feeds. Og selvom det er en åbnelys mangel føler jeg ikke et behov for et plugin. Det er en underlig bruger tilfresstillelse. Der er dog to plugins som jeg godt kunne tænke mig blev porteret til Chrome på et tidspunkt.

Det ene er Trustguard fra http://www.trustpilot.dk Den fortæller om brugeranmeldelser på de sider man kommer ind på. Så hvis man i et svagt øjeblik er ved at falde for en mobiltelfon hos Telia igen, skal man nok blive skræmt af deres 5.4 ud af 10 anmeldelse.

Det andet plugin er fra http://www.engodsag.dk. Det plugin handler om flere NGO er gået sammen og har fået lavet nogle aftaler med webbutikker om at donere penge ved e-handel. Engodsag.dk laver så reklame ved at pege i retningen af sider med aftaler. Desværre er de ikke perfekte, så når man bruger engodsag og søger efter computer hardware, kan man passende bruge Trustguard plugin’et til at sortere Pixmania.com fra med deres 5,4 ud af 10 rating.