Opera gets a bad rap, but most people honestly haven't tried it for a month.

With my current Opera setup (migrated from something ridiculous like Opera 3.5 - nothing fancy or third-party), all flash and java apps appear as a big white play button. Until I click that, zero code of the appropriate plugin executes. And when I click it, ONLY that particular app runs, and no others on the same page.

Why you'd want to sit and rely on a white-list to do such things, I have no idea. Most flash/PDF/Java compromise is via injection into known-good servers, or people wouldn't be viewing them in the first place. Better that you "play" only the apps you want on only the sites you want, when you want. Also - this means you remove the crap that runs on the same servers and run ONLY the game/advert/application that you want on a page (and NOT automatically - which is a BONUS).

I'm not at all sure the point of seeing every script, either, to be honest, but there is work that way via Opera Dragonfly in the last few releases (but never seen the need for it, so never use it, but they're always talking about exactly that).

The problem is not that you couldn't use Opera. It's that you're used to working a certain way, and defiant that it's the only way. Every time Opera upgrades I think "oh, damn it" because they'll have changed something about the way I work. 99.9% of the time I end up liking it better (their user-testing team must be GOOD, and that's coming from someone who's sticking with XP and Office 2003!), the rest I revert the changes using the built in config dialog.

For years, I was a Netscape nut purely because it was the only half-decent user-browser of the age. Then it died and IE / Firefox cropped up again. Back then, Opera was scary and threatening but when their first ad-supported version came out, it was surprising comfortable using it compared to the other "ad-free" browsers. Now that all browsers are ad-free, Opera still hasn't left me and is also my primary email client too - mainly because, as a network manager, their forethought for security and standards is unsurpassed. They always get there before everyone else - the problem is that nobody thinks they will need it until it's too late, and by then the other browsers bolt-on the same code with lots more bugs.

You just have the words "NoScript" plugged into your brain and unless you get exactly that on every browser, you're not interested. But, seriously, have you tried Opera for a month, migrating your email, using it exclusively, etc. for a half-recent version? Most Opera users have zero extra "plugins" or "scriptlets" or "widgets" running at all. Because you just don't need them with the default config.

I honesty don't understand any more how people struggle through with IE or even Firefox. I have to support both, so use them all the time, but it feels the same to me as running Windows 95 in this day and age. They feel old, clunky, thoughtless, and their best features are outside-code that you have to install yourself.

All I need is for Opera to do a deal with the Pidgin guys and incorporate their code into Opera's sadly under-used IM / IRC code and I'll never carry another program around with me when it comes to online communication.