Well, I gave it a try. After being frustrated with the performance of FireFox on Mac OS X, I decided to give Opera 9.2 a try. I used it for about 2 weeks as my primary browser.

The reason I was driven to trying a new browser is that FireFox crashes on me regularly and is starting to feel bloated — at least, on Mac OS X.

When I installed Opera, I immediately noticed how fast and snappy everything is. I loved the built-in sync feature, too (I use Google Browser Sync on FireFox, but it doesn’t sync with Opera on my Blackberry). But in the end, compatibility issues forced me back to using FireFox.

Specifically, here’s what I had problems with in Opera:

1. No keyboard shortcut to get to the search box. I had to use “g subject” on the address line instead of hitting a command key and typing in my search.
2. Incompatibility with TextExpander, which I rely on heavily.
3. General incompatibility with frequented web pages. Rich text editors in forum software didn’t work. Embedded YouTube videos worked inconsistently. Google Docs doesn’t work.
4. Flaky cookie support. Sometimes, I would be logged out of things mysteriously.
5. Inconsistent username / password field memory. I had to do a lot of typing when username and password fields weren’t remembered.
6. Fewer add-ons.

It’s too bad, because I tried to like Opera. I guess I’ll try Safari 3 once I hear that the beta doesn’t screw up VLC. I’m too afraid to try it now.