Rijk - Opera also has a million...

Opera also has a million...

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 1:03:02 AM

The Firefox 1.0 preview is getting a good press in parts of the blogosphere, and they celebrate a millionth download in a few days. But I wonder why they want to advertise this preview release so broadly; when the final comes they have to step it up. Because that is the build that everyone is supposed to use to replace MSIE. Firefox will indeed need big download numbers to increase marketshare outside the geeky circle of webconnaisseurs.

Opera has a slightly different focus. We want to make it as simple as possible to use a plethora of net-related functionality in an easy to use package. People who are not into heavy webbrowsing might not be that interested, though Opera is continously trying to broaden its appeal by making the interface simpler again. But they have a chance to encounter Opera anyway on their mobile phone:

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/09/20/

Tweakers upgrade guide from 7.5x to 7.6 previewsUsing Opera to read text/plain

Comments

TreeGo # Tuesday, September 21, 2004 1:03:02 AM

It's funny to me how an inferior non-profit browser can get all this publicity while a superior product like Opera straggles in the background. I just don't get it. Still mystified by all this Firefox hype .... I have kept up with Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.4 and try to get it working as well as Opera each version and give it proper time to familiarize myself with it and still never even come close to Opera's overall brilliance with Firefox.

Firefox is okay and is arguably better than IE, if only for security reasons, possibly, but its reliance on 3rd-party extensions for what I consider to be essential functionality after using Opera is often problematic and frustrating due to conflicts with other extensions or Firefox or the delay in getting updated extensions for Firefox updates so very often.

It seems to me that when a product is truly superior and still lags behind the competition to such a degree as Opera does, one must seriously question the marketing of Opera. I'm not a marketing guru, but something needs to change, it seems, to get Opera on the radar screen.

Naelphin # Tuesday, September 21, 2004 1:03:02 AM

The reason Firefox is popular is because it is a drop in replacement with IE, with about the same amount of features. Most new users want simple, and want it to look identical to IE, and Firefox was built for this very purpose.