Computer - Goodbye Chrome, hello Opera

[steve_earwig]

Well I finally snapped and got rid of Chrome because I just couldn't find any use for it, other than Sedre and I discovered that I can access Google's translation abilities through Google.com so off it jolly well went. I had hoped it would take this wretched Google update with it but no, there it was like a turd on the carpet. I tried some uninstall programs but they just wouldn't see it so I had to go through my machine deleting all its infestations, and then I started on the registry - Jesus H. Christ! It was everywhere! It took me an hour to manually delete all instances of google update, gupdate, google chrome, google earth, google one click (whatever that was) and anything else google that I didn't like the look of (apart from all the host file stuff - me not daft).

I've also got rid of Quicktime, I was trying to update it but it just kept falling over, so I uninstalled it with the view to doing a clean re-install. And the Apple update program. And the Apple whatever-the-hell it was. This time I was able to use the Revo uninstaller and it gave me a clear image of how much crap the specific uninstallers left behind - Quick time had left something like 4,500 references in the registry! What the f...? I have a feeling I'll soon start to miss it but for now it's staying uninstalled.

Just so no-one can accuse me of being a "firefox-a-phile" I've now installed Opera, after reading that it has a plugin to change the proxy automatically like Firefox foxy proxy - which was one of my main issues with Chrome because it just used the Windows network interface and I had to fiddle about every time I wanted to change it. Initial impressions are... interesting, although I see they've gone for the current style of putting the tabs bar at the top of the screen - doesn't it make more sense to put the tabs adjacent to the web page window that you're looking at? It's like putting the ignition key barrel in the glove box! I just hope I can change it, like you can in FF...

[steve_earwig]

Hello via Opera It's quiet in here today, perhaps I should check the news again in case London's ceased to exist or something

Follow keyboard... follow... argh! It doesn't work too well with magnifier - if I set it to follow the text it immediatly drops off the bottom of magnifier and I can't read what I'm typing, not very useful.

I sussed out the proxy thing, it was all or nothing again but it also have me the option to enter a PAC (proxy auto-config) file - what's that? A quick Google later I've written one and it works. Oddly enough it's not asking me for a user name or password It had robbed the URL & port for my proxy off of Firefox so I thought perhaps it 'd had my passwords too but I still had to enter it all to log into this forum

I can move the tabs, unfortunately it's either the top of the screen, on the left, on the right or at the bottom, so that's where they are now. It's a bit daft but at least I don't have to trawl around to find them.

Bookmarks - it scummed some of them off of Firefox, the useless ones, the rest it ignored. It also has a bookmarks toolbar but I can't find any way of sticking my FF one in there instead, or even editting them into folders - all I can do is drop them in there and delete them. I hope there's a way round this 'cos it's crap.

Opening a new tab looks promising, it brings up something called "speed dial" which shows 6 panels of pages I might want to open. Presently they're stuff I don't want to open like amazon.COM and
fricking Facebook It deletes easy though

Speaking of the evil Facebook, I came across this https://addons.opera.com/en/addons/exte ... ker-2/0.9/ which might be the single best reason for keeping Opera

I just wish I could see what I'm typing, it has a spell checker but it has so many options it drops off the top of the screen colour color - it's US English too

Any "other" Opera users care to give me some tips?