Really enjoying Opera...

[Luxeon]

Opera really flies on my older computer!
However, I have a single problem which might make me return to Firefox: I can't see my events on the Windows Live Calendar.

Anyone know how to fix this issue? I've been searching for the answer and have come up empty.

Thanks,
Bob

[Eice]

Try masking the user agent to Firefox and IE. If that doesn't work, try doing the same in a clean browser profile.

If that STILL doesn't work, chances are you're out of luck.

[Luxeon]

Thanks Eice.

Well, I tried it but...no luck. Darn! I really like the feel of Opera.

I forgot to mention that the events do appear on the calendar (I can hover the pointer and a balloon pops up showing the event), but they are all crammed into the left-side column, and are therefore unreadable.

I tried messing around with the "fit to page" options, etc.
I also installed Silverlight (and it appears in the about:plugins dialogue.

No dice. Darn... :'(

Slightly off-topic: I tried the Peacekeeper benchmark site, and it gave my Firefox a 733 rating. Opera got 1960.

[vasa1]

Does Opera not have something equivalent to Windows Live Calendar?

[Eice]

-{ Quote: "Slightly off-topic: I tried the Peacekeeper benchmark site, and it gave my Firefox a 733 rating. Opera got 1960." }-
I wouldn't really worry about it if I were you. When complex Javascript-based apps and HTML5 canvas elements really take off, then the extra speed might matter. As it is, Firefox is fast enough today, at least for me.

[blacknight]

-{ Quote: "Does Opera not have something equivalent to Windows Live Calendar?" }-

Search here: http://widgets.opera.com/

[tlu]

-{ Quote: "
Slightly off-topic: I tried the Peacekeeper benchmark site, and it gave my Firefox a 733 rating. Opera got 1960." }-
Look at http://arewefastyet.com/?machine=5 which shows the speed of FF4 scripting engine compared with Chome and Nitro. Yes, it doesn't include Opera and it uses sunspider and v8bench instead of peacekeeper. But it's obvious that FF4 is much faster than 3.6 and practically as fast as Chrome. So speed is no reason any more to move to another browser.

[Eice]

-{ Quote: "Look at http://arewefastyet.com/?machine=5 which shows the speed of FF4 scripting engine compared with Chome and Nitro. Yes, it doesn't include Opera and it uses sunspider and v8bench instead of peacekeeper. But it's obvious that FF4 is much faster than 3.6 and practically as fast as Chrome. So speed is no reason any more to move to another browser." }-
There are two problems with basing your claims on the AWFY site.

First of all, Mozilla runs shell tests, which means the results are pretty unrealistic as, in the real world, the browser needs to allocate resources to various other frontends and backends as well, not just the JS engine. In real life, Opera and Chromium still enjoy a healthy lead over the Tracemonkey builds. Chrome 7 stable is actually still slightly faster than the Tracemonkey builds on my machine.

Second, JS benchmarks don't tell half the story. The more comprehensive Peacekeeper benchmark will show you how Fx 4 is being downright SLAUGHTERED by Chrome and Opera. It looks like the Mozilla developers have focused their efforts on boosting their SunSpider and V8bench scores at the expense of almost everything else; in fact, rendering and DOM speeds, CPU usage, and UI responsiveness are all noticeably worse than Fx 3.6 for me. So yes, JS speed is no longer a (perceived) problem, except that now everything else is.

As far as I can tell the Fx4 development process is more or less falling into chaos. They're months behind schedule, with a whole bunch of problems with the GPU code, UX issues, and regressions all over the place that nobody seems to know or can agree on how to fix. I really hope they'll get all these issues sorted out, but it just looks like I'll end up sticking with Fx 3.6 for as long as I can.

[vasa1]

-{ Quote: "Search here: http://widgets.opera.com/" }-

OP may be interested in this instead of the other thing.

[tlu]

-{ Quote: " The more comprehensive Peacekeeper benchmark will show you how Fx 4 is being downright SLAUGHTERED by Chrome and Opera. " }-

If you look at the Peacemaker site (http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/browserStatistics.action) more closely you would have moticed that they are still comparing FF 4.0 b1 (!) that was released in early july with the other browsers . Now look again to http://arewefastyet.com/?machine=4 and see how the speed has improved since then.

[Eice]

-{ Quote: "If you look at the Peacemaker site (http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/browserStatistics.action) more closely you would have moticed that they are still comparing FF 4.0 b1 (!) that was released in early july with the other browsers . Now look again to http://arewefastyet.com/?machine=4 and see how the speed has improved since then." }-
Um, given how Peacekeeper is available for anyone to run, I wonder why you assume I relied on other people's statistics instead of running the test myself.

Like I said, I ran the latest Tracemonkey builds against Chrome and Opera, both of which were slightly over twice as fast. And even without running a benchmark, it's really noticeable how Fx 4 is worse than Fx 3.6 at rendering, UI responsiveness, and CPU usage.

[Luxeon]

LOL! You guys crack me up! My specialty is pain management, and we very often have similar enthusiastic discussions within our circle.
That is exactly why I come here--you folks are passionate and knowledgeable.

I didn't mean to start anything--heck, I don't even know how valid the Peacekeeper test is (I am quite the newb).

Thanks for the info, I will definitely look into everything (like the widget, etc).
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with Firefox. It has been impressively reliable, but I'm really amazed by the speed of Opera. I like the clean-looking UI as well.

We started with Google Calendar, but have problems with it almost weekly.
Changed to Windows Live Calendar and it has been very reliable. I hate to change again...but...we will see.

[tlu]

-{ Quote: "Um, given how Peacekeeper is available for anyone to run, I wonder why you assume I relied on other people's statistics instead of running the test myself.

Like I said, I ran the latest Tracemonkey builds against Chrome and Opera, both of which were slightly over twice as fast. And even without running a benchmark, it's really noticeable how Fx 4 is worse than Fx 3.6 at rendering, UI responsiveness, and CPU usage." }- Okay, I ran a test, too. FF 4.0 beta8 from the mozilla-daily ppa with the existing and a new clean profile vs. Opera 10.63 (freshly installed).

Result:
FF with both profiles 4275
Opera 5459

So I admit that Opera is faster - but "over twice as fast"? The difference is about 28% on my machine, and I guess it will be smaller once FF final will be out.

[Eice]

-{ Quote: "Okay, I ran a test, too. FF 4.0 beta8 from the mozilla-daily ppa with the existing and a new clean profile vs. Opera 10.63 (freshly installed).

Result:
FF with both profiles 4275
Opera 5459

So I admit that Opera is faster - but "over twice as fast"? The difference is about 28% on my machine, and I guess it will be smaller once FF final will be out." }-
Hmm, you're right. For some reason Opera suffers from a large reduction in performance when running under Linux. Scores for Ubuntu Maverick:

222889

Scores for Windows 7:

222890

And a comparison of Opera's results under Windows and Ubuntu:

222891

[Ocky]

For fun I also did a test on my machine running Ubuntu 10.10 (64 bit). In 'real life' I don't really notice a difference between the 3 browsers, but the test shows Chromium to be a staggering 23,82% faster than Opera 11. One thing about Chromium, it launches instantly even on first use of the day.

222892

..and Opera 10.63 only marginally slower than Opera 11

222894

[tlu]

-{ Quote: "Hmm, you're right. For some reason Opera suffers from a large reduction in performance when running under Linux. " }-

Interesting! The funny thing is that FF is faster under Linux.

And btw: Your charts show - contrary to what you said earlier - that FF4 is faster than FF 3.6. Anyway, there is a lot going on under the hood - see this (http://andreasgal.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/compartments/) and this (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes).

[Eice]

-{ Quote: "And btw: Your charts show - contrary to what you said earlier - that FF4 is faster than FF 3.6." }-
Rendering speed is indeed slower: under Linux, Fx 4 scores 1618 to Fx 3.6's 1741; on Windows, the difference is even more pronounced from Fx 4's 1201 to Fx 3.6's 1700. Peacekeeper doesn't measure UI responsiveness and CPU usage, so the scores don't show those.

Given Fx 4's dramatic improvements at SunSpider, V8 and Kraken - all pure JS benchmarks - it's really telling how Fx 4 shows only a relatively mediocre ~30% increase over Fx 3.6 at Peacekeeper; the other APIs and components obviously aren't keeping up with the *monkey engines. What seems to have happened is that Mozilla devs decided that they needed to look good on SunSpider, so they focused their efforts on fixing a perceived problem at the expense of other aspects, which ended up creating other, real problems.

[funkydude]

Guys don't put much faith in PeaceKeeper. For a test that scores browsers "Complex Graphics" higher in non-GPU powered browsers is worrying. There are many other tests out there of use.

[Eice]

-{ Quote: "Guys don't put much faith in PeaceKeeper. For a test that scores browsers "Complex Graphics" higher in non-GPU powered browsers is worrying. There are many other tests out there of use." }-
I don't see why not. Peacekeeper doesn't claim to directly measure FPS, which is very different from the speed of canvas API calls.

[Scoobs72]

-{ Quote: "Look at http://arewefastyet.com/?machine=5 which shows the speed of FF4 scripting engine compared with Chome and Nitro. Yes, it doesn't include Opera and it uses sunspider and v8bench instead of peacekeeper. But it's obvious that FF4 is much faster than 3.6 and practically as fast as Chrome. So speed is no reason any more to move to another browser." }-


Tlu, that test is utterly useless as a measure of browser performance. If you want something that stands up to proper analysis take a look at this:

http://net1news.com/101011-01-firefox-in-the-dust.aspx

and this:

http://net1news.com/101018-fighting-back-with-fire---firefox-4.aspx

While Firefox may be improving compared to previous versions it is a browser that is in decline relative to its competitors.

[tlu]

-{ Quote: "Tlu, that test is utterly useless as a measure of browser performance. If you want something that stands up to proper analysis take a look at this:

http://net1news.com/101011-01-firefox-in-the-dust.aspx

and this:

http://net1news.com/101018-fighting-back-with-fire---firefox-4.aspx

While Firefox may be improving compared to previous versions it is a browser that is in decline relative to its competitors." }-

;D And the Peacemaker people will probably say that their test is, of course, the best and most reliable and representative one. "The truth is out there" (The X-Files) - but where exactly?

[DOSawaits]

I ran this peacemaker test and I honnestly didn't know this was a browser test, it really looked and felt like the usual tests how well your machine is able to render games rather than a browser test. It could very well be that your browser scores the highest of them all, but if your whole system comes to a halt in the sense that it takes your system 2 minutes to open a "Save as..." window, there's little real value in that highscore.