Did you know that Opera already has a Tab Candy-like feature? No? Neither did the anybody else apparently.

Who would have guessed, the Opera browser has yet again jumped on the, “but we did that first!” claims against Firefox.  For those who might have not followed the history between the two browsers – Firefox gained a lot of free press, for having tabs in its browser.  Of course, Opera had done this before – and they made a big stink about the fact that they did it first. Now Opera is at it again, this time saying that they had Tab Candy before Tab Candy was cool. Here is what Haavard Moen from Opera had to say…

There has been a lot of focus on grouping of tabs in browsers lately as a new and wonderful way to manage tabs, but did you know that you have actually been able to group tabs in Opera for many years already?

You can check out more about the debate over at The Register and Haavard’s Opera blog.  My thoughts on the issue are simple.  Opera needs to pay less attention to saying, “hey, we did it first!” and maybe a little more attention to saying, “hey, we did it best”. Right now first doesn’t mean a whole lot, because people will always head towards the better execution of any idea.

Over at Download Squad, they have been doing some really interesting browser testing.  In a 4-way HTML5 speed test, Firefox 3.7 beat Internet Explorer 9, Opera and Chrome.  The Video really speaks for itself, but if you want to learn more – be sure to check out this post over at DownloadSquad.com.

Both the Operetta and Operetta Advance themes for Firefox will give you that Opera look and feel you have been looking for.  The main difference between the two themes is that Operetta has the tab bar in the usual location (under the bookmarks) and Operetta Advance will move the tab bar to the top of the browser (on top of the menu).  So you have two choices to work with, depending on where you want the tabs bar.

Here is what Operetta looks like in action.

For comparison’s sake, here is the Operetta Advance theme.

Both themes give a great looking interface, without having to switch to the Opera browser to use it.  You can pick up both the Operetta and Operetta Advance themes (Windows only, for both themes) on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Open Links in Chrome – As the new kid on the block, it took some hunting to find a good way to switch to Chrome in a hurry.  The Chrome View add-on for Firefox is what you need.  This extension lets you open the page your currently viewing in Firefox, via Google’s new Chrome browser.

Open Links in Internet Explorer – Switching from Firefox to Internet Explorer is something we have been doing for some time now.  There are two great add-ons that allow you to do this.  The first is IE View.  This extension gives you the ability to open any page you have open in Firefox, in Internet Explorer.  An even better alternative though is IE Tab.  IE Tab will embed Internet Explorer inside of your Firefox tab, so you don’t really even have to switch browsers.

Open Links in Opera – Ah, yes Opera.  The girl at the dance with all the features that nobody uses.  Just in case you might want to hop over to Opera usage for a while, there is OperaView.  This too will give you a new context menu item that will let you open the target link in Opera.  Great for web developers or people who just like to be “different”.  (don’t worry, we won’t tell anybody)

Open Links in Safari – Lastly, the new pretty boy on the block (at least for Windows users) before Chrome took the spot, Safari switching can be done with an add-on too.  Safari View (mac) and Safari View (win) get you from Firefox to Apple’s browsing delight very quickly.

The section on how it compares to the others was the most enlightening of all:

Firefox remains the best browser on the whole, with great features, impressive improvements all-round, a revised bookmarking system and thousands of add-ons to make it easy to perfectly customise.

The improvements in performance are stellar, it’s got some well-integrated features than everyone will use (resumable download manager, tag-ready bookmarking) and it offers, overall, a better, richer Web experience. We’re behind Firefox and we hope that when the final release is out it’ll be just that little bit better to boot.

More great news for the Mozilla crew!  Is there something the other browsers are getting or doing that you wish Firefox 3 would try to do too?

Over at Ars Technica this is what they are saying:

During intensive browsing with approximately 50 tabs, I have found that Firefox 3 generally consumes less than half of the memory used by Firefox 2.0.0.12. Firefox 3 is also snappier and more responsive when switching between tabs and performing other operations that typically lag in Firefox 2.0.0.12 when the browser is experiencing heavy load.

This is great news for any Firefox fans out there. Over the recent years the memory problems seem to be the big sticking point for a lot of people. Has this mountain of an issue finally been solved?

+ Firefox 3 Goes on a Diet, Eats Less Memory than IE and Opera

Well both Mozilla and the Opera people are getting behind a movement to do just that.

Looks like the solution will be to use some open source technology mixed with a new tag to make embedding video in web pages easier.

Opera and Mozilla officials say the changes to their browsers will offer a new level of ease for Web developers using open-source tools to embed and stream their video. If video encoded in Ogg Theora plays directly in the browser, everyday Internet surfers would not have the burden of downloading extra plug-ins for their browser to play the video.

A lot of other good points are made in this PC World article on the topic. We don’t need a plugin to view images – why should we need one to watch video?

Baker says developers are working on a mobile browser, but says it’s a long term goal and nothing users should expect to see anytime soon. While the Minimo project is based on Mozilla, it isn’t an official product and it’s still a few (dozen) steps behind Opera Mobile when it comes to speed and performance.

It might be a lot of promise and “maybe” right now, but if it does happen I have a feeling that the people using Opera’s mobile browser will feel like the ones using the desktop Opera. Lonely.

Related Reading: Download Squad | Interview with Mitchell Baker

One of my favorite features in Opera is having the ability to cascade or tile your tabs, which is something that many browsers don’t support. That’s because Opera is built using a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) that allows for these operations to take place. Having this feature always allowed me to view to different websites side-by-side which I find to be extremely useful.

+ Read More About Splitting Up Your Window in Firefox!

All you need to do is pick up the 2 Pane Bookmark extension for Firefox. This extension does it’s best job to bring this functionality from Opera to your browser of choice, Firefox.

+ Download and Install the 2 Pane Bookmark Extension for Firefox!