Which homepage is best ? Opera, Firefox , Safari or IE ?

Which homepage is best ? Opera, Firefox , Safari or IE ?

Well, its not a fight among opera , FF , Safari and IE but a competition of home pages. You know a good homepage with just important/useful information and again not being cluttered too much is perhaps what is needed. It probably has multiple benefits both to user and the company (may be marketing/advertising wise). Also the aesthetics is there.

Now, lets see, how would you rate the homepages of Opera, FF , Safari and IE? Put your vote on your overall judgment and discuss your detail throughts. Most importantly, if you think opera's homepage is not the best, suggest ways to improve it (may be aesthetically, may be user friendliness or some other angles). You might think some other info is burried deep which should come up front etc and suggest modifications.

here are the home pages:
http://www.opera.com/
http://www.firefox.com or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html (I guess the page might have different thing instead of location "en-US" but something comes up when you type www.firefox.com)
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

I think I like the firefox page as the best as it has clear visibility of important things like features and its add-ons. My hirarchy of best to worst is as follows: Firefox>Safari>IE>Opera.
I think If opera puts its this browser page upfront (may be with small modifications), I would have voted it as No 1.

Originally posted by operafan2006:

Firefox>Safari>IE>Opera.

Same thought here. Firefox's page is the best and Opera's is not the best IMO.

Shouldn't it be opera.com/browser? One reason FF's is better because it shows the browser compared to others.

thats exactly I mentioned in my post. If the browser page were upfront with some modifications, i would have voted it as the best.

Originally posted by DanielHendrycks:

Shouldn't it be opera.com/browser? One reason FF's is better because it shows the browser compared to others.

Originally posted by operafan2006:

here are the home pages:
http://www.opera.com/
http://www.firefox.com or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html (I guess the page might have different thing instead of location "en-US" but something comes up when you type www.firefox.com)
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

Wait, so you are using Opera's front page and comparing it to the product pages for everyone else? How is that even remotely useful?

Originally posted by operafan2006:

thats exactly I mentioned in my post. If the browser page were upfront with some modifications, i would have voted it as the best.

But no one else has it "upfront", so why are you judging Opera more harshly? Doesn't make sense.

First of all, as Daniel Said, I think Opera Browser homepage (http://www.opera.com/browser/) instead of Opera Software homepage (http://www.opera.com/) is the one we should look at when making comparison with other products'.

Originally posted by operafan2006:

I think I like the firefox page as the best as it has clear visibility of important things like features

There are a lot more info on the Opera Browser homepage (http://www.opera.com/browser/)

At first look, I like Safari homepage, closely followed by Opera browser homepage. I don't fancy FF one. IE homepage took so long to load, I lost interest.

Originally posted by operafan2006:

Well, its not a fight among opera , FF , Safari and IE but a competition of home pages. You know a good homepage with just important/useful information and again not being cluttered too much is perhaps what is needed. It probably has multiple benefits both to user and the company (may be marketing/advertising wise). Also the aesthetics is there.

Now, lets see, how would you rate the homepages of Opera, FF , Safari and IE? Put your vote on your overall judgment and discuss your detail throughts. Most importantly, if you think opera's homepage is not the best, suggest ways to improve it (may be aesthetically, may be user friendliness or some other angles). You might think some other info is burried deep which should come up front etc and suggest modifications.

here are the home pages:
http://www.opera.com/
http://www.firefox.com or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html (I guess the page might have different thing instead of location "en-US" but something comes up when you type www.firefox.com)
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

I need to vote for 'none of the above' because I always start my sessions choosing to restore the previous setting or starting with a speed dial.

Currently the best home page is the Firefox speed dial with it's tabs.

Originally posted by operafan2006:

Well, its not a fight among opera , FF , Safari and IE but a competition of home pages. You know a good homepage with just important/useful information and again not being cluttered too much is perhaps what is needed. It probably has multiple benefits both to user and the company (may be marketing/advertising wise). Also the aesthetics is there.

Now, lets see, how would you rate the homepages of Opera, FF , Safari and IE? Put your vote on your overall judgment and discuss your detail throughts. Most importantly, if you think opera's homepage is not the best, suggest ways to improve it (may be aesthetically, may be user friendliness or some other angles). You might think some other info is burried deep which should come up front etc and suggest modifications.

here are the home pages:
http://www.opera.com/
http://www.firefox.com or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html (I guess the page might have different thing instead of location "en-US" but something comes up when you type www.firefox.com)
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

Genrally people don't choose a browser's company page as default page.
Opera's is not bad btw.

Ok, I see there are few confusions perhaps (ben2talk and Doliprane) about "homepage". its not what page you have as your home page or what is your startup up option. It is about the browser's home pages.

For those who pointed out why I am comparing http://www.opera.com/ instead of http://www.opera.com/browser, I understand your point and I must admit, you are perhaps technically correct. But I looked at it from more practical point of view and here are the thoughts that came to mind while I compared www.opera.com.
1. Usually people know the names like opera, firefox, safari, internet explorer. if you search those names in google (like some prospective user is likely to do), then those are the pages that shows up first.
2. Even if someone search with "opera browser", still opera.com is the prominent pages that comes up.
3. If someone just types www.firefox.com, it will land him/her to the page I mentioned in my post. Also, even typing less familiar www.mozilla.com, contains prominent firefox info. Similarly someone it likely to just type www.opera.com.
4. The case with IE is different. Internet explorer has advantage of existing MS band name. and some one gets it bundled or may tend to look for it in microsoft webpage. That page has IE8 logo and if you click on that, it takes to the IE page with lots of detail. On the other hand, if you click on green download logo on opera.com page, it starts downloading immediately. There is no visible link for more product info or attractive product features.

I think from practical point of view, opera.com should be the page that will most likely to make the first impression. You can disagree on my views but this thread, I wanted to make the comparison this way. Lets stick to that. You are free to express further details in your post. I also mentioned that I would vote for the opera.com/browser page as best if it would appear upfront.

Maybe the big box at Opera.com could look like this to give more information.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Users would select a tab on the right and info would become shown along with it.

W3C Markup Validation Test

http://www.opera.com/ - PASSED
http://www.firefox.com or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html - PASSED
http://www.apple.com/safari/ - FAILED (4 Errors, 1 warning(s))
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx - FAILED (85 Errors, 61 warning(s))

Wow, Daniel layout idea definitely rocks!

I voted Firefox' site... just because their homepage will present in the reader's language, instead of forcing you with English.

I think an inportant factor is the language support for the site. At least with the downloads page, with the whole site being the ideal. One of the things that Mozilla uses the most to attract people into their browser is the sensation generated by their community of "this browser is ready for use in your language by your own people", or something. Right now, if I open Fx site it'll offer me the lastest build in Chilean spanish... and the site is in Spanish, of course. There are several countries where people speak more than just English, Chinese, Russian or Japanese, and people at Mozilla seems to understand the important of this.

Although the Chilean spanish language version for the browser is a minor detail (as it's needed to modify the User Agent string, a problem Opera fortunately doesn't have) the fact that the homepage shows you where to click and what to offer in your language is really important. I even made some experiments among some clients when I worked at Tech Support (phone support), and even when clients knew about Opera's good reputation they just couldn't managed to get to the downloads page and they just gave up.

Anyway, I just checked the Opera/browser page and I have to admit it, it looks better than ever.

The language is the most important thing (it comes before than layout), and it's the worse thing of Opera page: many of my friends think Opera browser is English-only software and leave the page intantly...

Well, at least I can use a external page, the brazilian's most popular downloads website article: www.baixaki.com.br/download/opera.htm to spread Opera!

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

The language is the most important thing (it comes before than layout), and it's the worse thing of Opera page: many of my friends think Opera browser is English-only software and leave the page intantly...

Well, at least I can use a external page, the brazilian's most popular downloads website article: www.baixaki.com.br/download/opera.htm to spread Opera!

That's exactly what I mean, rafaelluik.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

plz update your quote with my updated text
i read your post is great

JONJON *-*

Well, I edited my post.
And thank you, I'm glad you liked my post.

Oh my God, stop quoting me! (joke)

Originally posted by DanielHendrycks:

Shouldn't it be opera.com/browser? One reason FF's is better because it shows the browser compared to others.

This is something Opera did at version 7. The start page when you launched the browser provided links to toolbar, menu and skin setups where you could make your browser look like IE or Firefox in a few clicks. That was unbeatable then, but the setups page is now in serious decay.