Memoirs of a browser user, part 2

The dragon is soon to be de-fanged.

I learned about Firebird and Opera from computer magazines. I tried out Opera first, because it has tabbed browsing.

Once you've tried tabbed browsed, you'll never go back. In fact, I dare you to go. You'll only make yourself cry.

That aside, it's honestly one of the best things ever invented.

Opera exceeded my expectations. It was fast and made very little fuss. It did crashed, but rarely. Opera is a browser that keeps getting better and better. I would consider it as one of the best engineered software at the moment. Many of its feature such as page zooming are ahead of other browsers.

Opera wasn't free at first. It was ad-supported. Users had to contend themselves with seeing banner ads in Opera's toolbar. The ad-free version is downloaded for a fee. Opera is made by Opera Software, a Norwegian company based in Oslo.

The ads in Opera concerned me a bit. So turned to Firebird, a hatchling in the browser market. Firebird also had tabbed browsing, but by then I was a veteran. Like Opera, it didn't gave me any major annoyances. Firebird was young but raring to go.

The name Firebird didn't stick for long. There was another software project named Firebird, a database management system. Earlier before that they named it Phoenix and that got them into a trademark dispute with software company Phoenix Technologies. So the people behind the browser finally settled for Firefox.

When Firefox first came out, I jumped for joy. I changed me, along with millions of other people. Never before I had the chance to customise my browser to my liking. Add-ons, like tabbed browsing, is something of utter ingenuity. The Internet browsing experience has been transformed.

Today, I'm happy with both Firefox and Opera. Firefox 3 is coming soon. Opera has gone gratis and ad-free since version 8.5. The two browsers have grown leaps and bounds.

The dragon laid silent. It stared into sky, wondering about the future. The sky looked dark.


To be continued...