Opera. Love it. Its very different from the others.

My suggestion is to not make a default browser at all. Have it so you always choose.

The computer will not "know" which one you want. You have to choose the one you want. You choose your browser first. Then you go to the websites you want.

Have your FF, IE and Opera icons on your desktop. Click on the one you wish to work in. You can have more than one borwser open at the same time. You can also have more than one window in a browser open at the same time.

You can Google for help websites. This one may help explain things.

Here is a link that might be useful: Change Default Browser

Hi Dilly_Dally,
You're right, Opera is far different than the others. Going to take some getting used to. What is very noticeable is my email (yahoo). I can't say as I like it.

Thanks for your advice.

if you're using Vista as your operating system, don't use Opera. I use Opera on my computer downstairs and it works like a charm with Windows XP. When I bought my laptop in earlier this year, first thing I did was download Opera. It crashes all the time with Vista. Unless they took the kinks out recently........... anyone know? If they took out the kinks, I'll reload it. I prefer it over FF.

Hi Debby,
I use XP so it's not a problem. What do you like best about Opera over FF?

It is convenient to put (pin) a copy of the shortcuts of your browsers to the start menu. To do this, right-click on an icon and choose "pin to start menu". This places a link of your application to the top part of the start menu. Links here stay all the time on the "start menu" until you unpin it. Also pin a link to your email application.

Links in the bottom part of the start menu are temporary and are the latest used links. A link here can get shoved off when the allocated space is filled and another different application is opened.

I'm glad you like Opera so far jasdip. After you start using it you will find some cool features it has.

I like the 'rewind' button at the top left. The blue double arrows. When you are on a site like this and you want to back to where you started it take you back to the start page you used (not the home page) with one click. Fire fox does not have this feature. It is very useful when you have gone to a number of different websites by clicking links and wish to get back to the one where you started. It "rewinds each website you visited. This way you don't have to do it page by page by page.

I like how you can set up the nine most often visited websites for when you start a session, using giant thumbnails with pics of the site page you wish to visit.

I have mine set with most used sites like Weather, HTML help, Wikipedia, GardenWeb, News, ect. The sites I visit every day first thing.

^^ I like it for all the same reasons, AND because you can "lock" your tabs. Firefox keeps dropping mine when I close the browser. Drives me nuts!

First of all let's clear this up. Opera works fine with Vista. I've had Opera on my Vista machine since I got it and use Opera on every one of my computers. I know a lot of people using Opera on Vista. Any claim that it won't work on Vista is pure malarkey. If you're having trouble, you have other issues, but don't make the best browser in the world the scapegoat. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, (maybe millions?) of people are using Opera with Vista, and very happily.

One of my favorite features is the X & Z keys for forward and back, rather than the combination of keys or using the mouse. I have the menu button and customized toolbar so I get maximum screen space. It's such a fast browser.

In fairness, there's some pages out there written poorly so they don't always appear quite right in Opera, but Opera has adjusted. Then of course there's the sites, like the big one whose name shall not be said, who "borks" the sites.

While yes, Opera is "different" from the Internet Elephant, Firefox, K-meleon, Netscape, Safari and other browsers are also "different" from the Internet Elephant. And what's more, they're different from each other. Ford is different from Chev, and they're both different than BMW, but that doesn't mean they're not all very similar in operation. Don't be afraid to try something "different".

How does my computer know which one I want to open my sites with?
The computer (and you have input) sets a key on a "default" program to use to open certain file types. For instance it may set Adobe Reader to Open .PDF files. And you might set a different media player to open .WAV files. These are easily changed if you like.

If I download Opera and like it, how do I go back and forth between it and FF?
If you have them open at the same time, simply use ALT+TAB or click on the taskbar to switch programs. Otherwise, you might have it automatically open in the browser of your choice or open up the program like you open any other. I would suggest using shortcuts in Quicklaunch for fast access rather than tie up your desktop or start menu.

How would I go back to FF and uncheck to not make it the default browser? There's a setting in each of the browsers in Options for them to check each time to see if they're the default browser. You can just disable that option.

ALSO, if I uncheck that box, does it list the other browsers so I can pick the one I want to make default?
Not in the browser itself, but if you do a shift+right click and bring up "Open With", you can choose any program to open the selected file.

I heartily recommend you give Opera a try. But give it a month or two so you get used to it. Do a search for "Opera Tips" and get a feel for some of the special features. You can customize it a lot or a little. It's far superior to Firefox in that Firefox requires the addition of so many add-ons to make it reasonably functional and all of the features are already in Opera. Not saying Firefox is bad, but it's really essentially an Opera Wannabe. However there are a lot of cool add-ons that can make Firefox unique too. I often run 3 browsers at the same time. One for surfing, one for monitoring a webmail account and sometimes the third if there's an issue with the others.

Oh, and yes, there is one issue I have with Opera. I can't pay my phone bill using it. I have problems with Firefox too. But K-meleon works fine. I don't remember the last time I had to open the Internet Elephant.

Another advantage of Opera: The elephant requires patches all the time. All browsers do. But the whole new Opera install is less than 6mb where IE's patches are often 3 times that. Makes a big difference if you're on dialup.

I love Opera...I use it on Vista too..
I use it on XP on my old lap too..

We have Opera, IE and Mozilla on this computer...