Here is my as-neutral-as-possible comparison between the two:
Speed
Opera would have a significant advantage here, however there are several configurations that can be made to Firefox to bump its speed up to quite close to Opera's standard. Regardless, Opera is still faster.
Appearance
This is very individual. I think that Opera has the best feel of the two browsers. You can get dozens of skins, all of which look much better than the majority of Firefox's (very few) skins--and thank God Firefox has them. If there were no Firefox skins, I wouldn't be using it, that's how ugly the default Firefox skin is. I have managed to find one that I think is quite nice and sleek, so I am alright with using Firefox.
Convenience
Opera will let you store a link a n y w h e r e. You can drag and drop a little favicon anywhere; bottom, near the status-bar; top, on the bookmarks toolbar as well as among the other buttons; left, at the sidebar (which I'll get to); bottom, at the status bar; at the little bar that pops up when you write a URL. In comparison, Firefox lets you store links at the toolbar. That's it.
Opera has the only sidebar one that really works fine without interfering. Firefox has loads of add-ons for this; some are great, but none really live up to Opera's. I don't use the sidebar, so I really don't mind.
Opera scores major marks on convenience, in terms of pre-packaging items that Firefox needs add-ons for. Which brings us to ...
Add-ons/Widgets
Firefox is hands-down the winner here, no contest. Add-ons are easily Firefox's biggest advantage. Almost everything Opera has can be made up for by downloading add-ons, the majority of which work just as well.
On top of just making up for Firefox's lacking features, Add-ons go much, much further, and give Firefox many advantages that an Opera user won't have. Countless of useful add-ons; I won't list them; and saying that this is an invalid argument because they are useless makes no sense. Add-ons alone could cancel out all the advantages of Opera, depending wholly on the person.
Reliability
My Opera won't work, or at least is slow as hell. Firefox works fine. Otherwise, I really don't know much about the reliability of the browsers.
_________________ Member since Jan 12, 2007
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