djdiesel,

What Web development has to do with knowing the intricacies of a browser that impact the average consumer is beyond me, maybe if you were a Web designer instead. Regardless, some of your points are off consideration.

1. Opera is more bloated than Firefox or Safari, yes, but they have not allowed that to impact the browser’s functionality itself (see point 2). Consumers like these extra features, especially in a product they pay for, so the Opera team adds them. If you want bloated to a poor extent look at Mozilla or Netscape (I personally use Firefox). This is the same reason why places like Quark add odd features of this nature to their program. Though designing Web graphics might be easier in Photoshop and ImageReady, some people are much more familiar with Quark, or want to work with something they created in Quark, so their solution is pretty obvious.

2. I use a dual 533 with 1.5 GBs RAM. A damn good machine, but certainly not the best out there. Opera starts with reasonable speed, and is very fast in rendering. It isn’t quite as fast as Shiira or Camino for me, but it does beat Firefox and Safari. Maybe you should look to your own machine for answers to these problems.

3. I doubt the problem in question with those chat Web apps is HTML.

4. Sometimes there is a difference between professionally developed applications and freeware applications. You have applications that are developed by a professional team, such as Safari, open source programs such as those based off the Mozilla project, and other professional programs that people must buy. Safari is a wonderful option for people to have, and could eventually eclipse everything out there on both Windows and Mac… but for a lot of people that time has not yet come. Firefox and company have their own issues, and the open source community is frequently very slow in fixing them (if at all). Opera includes many unique innovative features which have drawn in their own paying customers; people who have come to enjoy the browser above all others. There is nothing wrong with trying it, and, if it is better than all the others while being worth the price, purchasing it.