I use Opera for all my browsing, because I use it as a full internet suite and it performs admirably, not to mention its vastly superior user interface (I’m talking customisability, keyboard and mouse short cuts to name but a few) to the competition. As a suite, it integrates mail into the web, which means in a keyboard short cut/mouse click or two I can be composing an email related to the current page/after clicking on a mail:to link/after having highlighted some text or just because I want to write a new email.

To get to the point however, I recently began to use Picasa Web, so I knew I had two options for web app mode: Chrome or Firefox with the Prism plug in. I started out by using Prism simply because I had firefox 3 installed and not Chrome, and it worked pretty well I thought, except I couldn’t remove the status bar easily, nor go back and forward without re-doing the web app, so I thought, let’s give Chrome a shot just for kicks. I expected it to be faster at a Google web app than Firefox 3, especially given all the hype surrounding its javascript performance, but to my surprise Fx was actually less laggy!

Yes, that’s right, Fx handles Picasa Web better than the latest stable Chrome! I could compare minefield to the latest Chrome build but I can’t be bothered, I’m already using the Opera alpha and don’t need any more installed.

Not only was Fx less laggy, but I prefer the way it refreshes pages (in the same way Opera has long given you the option to do), it doesn’t redraw until it’s all done, so you don’t get the irritating flash of a blank page when you were looking at photos or whatever, it just flickers noticeably enough for you to see that it’s finished refreshing.

You mentioned the possibility of Fx rewriting its codebase, and I have heard similar comments elsewhere which note that the Gecko engine is really old (Netscape) and not all that great with Standards as a result (it’s been kind of hacked along the way to get mediocre Standards support).

Chrome is great as a simple browser, but I’d probably have to wait five years for them to build up the basic features I’ve become used to in Opera (15 years experience in browser development goes a long way).