Best browser for Windows 7 64-bit

stve,

I'm glad that you found that stat. I was looking for it, but only found a piecemeal map giving percentages by only select countries:

Mobile browser market share map - iCrossing

India, Brazil and Nigeria apparently like it more than some. In the USA Iphone is the leader. Not having a cell phone, I didn't know that some phones have their own browsers, but that accounts for the usage here, because when most people buy one, they just use what is there.

[QUOTE=Snowdog;677321]

stve said:

Wow you are awful serious about this. Are you an Opera developer or something?

No I'm nobody special just an old guy with a lot of spare time who is sceptical about most things so I go digging with the help of Google.

When you tried Opera did you discover the Panels that appear when you click the left of the screen or just Ctrl B & you're in the bookmarks panel, now just drag a tab to any folder you want or you could drag it to the personnel bar ( Firefox call it the bookmark bar) instead. You can also drag a bookmark to any toolbar before dropping the bookmark on the toolbar press shift & the black circle with a slash changes to an insertion point.
Perhaps the easiest way to save a bookmark is Ctrl D which brings up the Add bookmark box & you can add a nickname like 7p whenever I want to open that bookmark I type 7p in the address bar or F2 7p
@seekermeister if you are an Opera fan & want to depress yourself check out Opera the desktop browser at statcounter in the USA 0.51% or England 0.9% it does badly in any English speaking country but they love it in Russia & Belarus where it has 44% of the browser market.

stve,

@seekermeister if you are an Opera fan & want to depress yourself check out Opera the desktop browser at statcounter in the USA 0.51% or England 0.9% it does badly in any English speaking country but they love it in Russia & Belarus where it has 44% of the browser market.

This is the way that it has always been, it seems that Opera has never attempted to promote it's browser much in the USA, even back when it was a paid program. I have a friend who is an agent for Opera, or was, cause I haven't spoken with him for some time. In fact the last time was right after the war in Iraq. I remember him talking about his trips there. Yet, I don't think that they have any agents in the USA...I don't know about Europe. Opera has never done things the way that one would expect them to. It's as though they have their own world and rules to go by.

Is Opera any easier now to tweak the interface? I tried it out a couple of years ago and the lack of information on setting up was terrible, although I did manage eventually to get it looking like Firefox LOL.

It has always been easy to configure Opera. Either you didn't ask, or you asked the wrong person. Of course, there may not be exactly what you want, but chances are that there is, because Opera is highly configurable...more than any other browser.

@sbrads
You won't go far wrong if you right click with the mouse on the page ,tab ,toolbar etc. to check out the options
learn a few keyboard shortcuts Alt, Alt + P , F2, Ctrl B, F4 , Ctrl D, F12 & of course F1 for help.
Right click on a page and drag down a little & Opera will ask you if you want to turn on mouse gestures you only need to learn 3 or 4 to really speed up browsing.

The first thing you should do on installing Opera is Shift F12 to bring up the appearance panel click on Panels & make sure the Show panel toggle at edge of window is ticked exit the appearance panel & click on the left of the screen to show the panels click again to close.
The main panel for most people is bookmarks then notes select some text on a page right click & copy to note (double clicking a note in the notes panel opens the page it came from in the current tab, it acts like a bookmark) the windows panel is very handy if you have lots of tabs open.
Open the Appearance Panel again & select skin, check find more skins & they appear in the panel it is very easy to download a skin & install it.
Check out the toolbar options placement & style, obviously the address bar is not suited to the sides of the screen. Same with the buttons you can drag & drop a copy from any toolbar onto any toolbar apart from the personal bar which is reserved for bookmarks.
With the status tool bar & address bar open try dragging the address field button from the address bar to the status bar. If the Appearance panel is closed you need to hold down the shift key first.
I recommend getting rid of the menu button the Alt key is better as all the options are underlined i.e. pressing Alt e is the quickest way to show the Appearance panel.

The usual way of removing a button is to right click it /Customize/remove from toolbar.
This works with the menu button as well but because it is a toolbar it reappears when you restart Opera . To remove the menu bar button Alt e to show the Appearance panel/ toolbars then click on the menu button & set its placement to off .
To get the menu button back it's Alt w to turn on the menu bar then File/show menu button.
If you have a bitorrent client that you use like utorrent you should type opera:config into the address bar goto Bittorent & make sure the enable button is unticked.
Most of the customization options in opera:config come under user prefs there is a long list but i advise caution especially as the help files are missing.
You might want to google opera custom buttons for more options as well.
Then it's Alt P for the preferences panel choose the startup type that suits your browsing habits & fill in the basic info in the forms for auto complete to work.
Once you've licked Opera into shape you should enable Opera Synchronization it's the button far left on the status bar called Opera Link or Alt S you'll have to set up an Opera page so you can log in from different computers.
It's worth doing even if you only ever use Opera at home. Your PC crashes & you are forced to reinstall Windows if you've synchronized with Opera reinstall Opera login & your bookmarks, notes, speed dial settings are restored it only takes a couple of minutes to arrange the toolbars to your liking.
One warning only use turbo mode if your connection is slow or you are trying to save bandwidth ( it might help in some countries to access sites that are normally restricted ? just a guess) and I find the Auto mode for Turbo to be patchy so I either have it on or disabled , if you have a fast connection it will slow you down. I love Turbo mode but you have to know when to use it.
Apologies if I've sent you into Information overload

Product FRED said:

Madidus said:

InternetLord said:

firefox is the way to go.

I used to think so too. I've been on Mozilla's side since Fx 2.0. Changed my mind immediately when I used Chrome the first time! Firefox feels so cluttered and bulky compared to Chrome. But that's just personal taste.

Same story here. Even on a technological level, Chrome is neater, splitting up tabs, extensions, and plugins into multiple processes rather than a single process. So if something crashes, it's isolated, and the whole browser doesn't need to close.

Well, as a counterbalance argument to all that, the only browser I've had multiple crashes on in the last year is Chrome (it seems OK now though), and Firefox has a nice simple layout if you press F11.