Opera and Gmail don’t mix

Interesting… taking my Gmail account for a spin, and I thought I’d try signing in using Opera for Linux, just to see if there was any difference between using Mozilla 1.7.2, Firefox 0.9 and Opera 7.5 with Gmail. The answer is… yes, there is a difference.

Moz and Firefox work with Gmail just peachy-keen fine, but Opera and Gmail don’t seem to get on well. At least the folks at Google don’t adopt that annoying tone that many sites have about their preferred browser(s). Google’s message to Opera users, “We’re sorry, but we don’t seem to be compatible.” Note the difference — not, “You must use the latest version of browser X because it’s superior in all ways to browser Y & Z,” but “we don’t seem to be compatible.” Puts the blame, such as it is, squarely where it belongs. Nice.

No biggie, since Opera isn’t my main browser, but for the sake of Opera users I hope they can get it worked out.

Gmail seems faster than Yahoo! Mail by a factor of ten, at least. I also use Spamcop webmail fairly often, and Gmail beats the pants off of Spamcop. Of course, I only have two messages in my Gmail Inbox, and they’ve got a limited number of users banging on Gmail right now as well — Gmail may well become slower than than a paralytic snail after they throw open the floodgates to anyone and everyone that wants a Gmail account.

The interface is fairly clean. I like it so far. More later…