Yes, I agree with gibran. A secure browser should always be used which is why I prefer Firefox or Opera to IE7, as both are generally considered to be more secure. Firefox and Opera also have other advantages over IE7 in that they both render web pages faster and are more customisable.
Sandboxing is certainly an added layer of protection,however I had a few problems running Safespace and Bufferzone with CFP3.SandboxIE does work but I found a noticeable slowdown of the system.I now use Returnil,which works flawlessly,if I need an extra level of security.
Opera can use either use a firefox or IE rendering engine, to allow sites that require IE and activeX objects to function.
There’s an addon for Firefox that let’s ju browse IE inside Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Cheers,
Ragwing
I guess that one could be regarded as a malware 
Hehe. Then you see my trepidation. That is one main reason why I dont recommend Opera, of course I find Firefox superb in its security and operation.
Actually it doesn’t - it just ID’s itself at FF or IE so that it isn’t sent broken code (some sites do this deliberately).
It does have some abilities to change rendering of non-standard sites.
I’ve been on sites that don’t load, tell me to use IE; I’ve ID’d as IE and the site loads.
I’ve tried to ID and Masked as IE and some sites still don’t load properly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work.
Go get yourself the “prefbar” extension for FF and pretend you’re on Lynx Browser or anything…
http://prefbar.mozdev.org/installation.html/prefbar4.0.xpi
Best thing for everday control of your FF.
Cheers
The REBOL
If they really need to know there are other way to know what browser is used without being fooled by user agent spoofs.
There are subtle implementation differences among all browsers so there is definitively a way to test specific features and identify the real browser.
Actually it’s not a common habit. Spoofing the user agent will still yeld no results if a site rely on a browser speific feature.
Deep testing is usually more suited to malware sites though. I guess they would like to know what exploit to serve :-\
I remember having read somewhere some time ago, that IE and FF (Mozilla) are based on an initially identical concept developed by some secret agency…(Don’t remember if it was the CIA or something else) long long time ago… So, of course, there will always be an open door to your sys, and if you trust Opera, well do it, it’s closed source though. (It’s secure of course they tell you, and it’s norwegian, and all that stuff). If there was spyware integrated into Opera, no one would know it.
Sad. But true.
It is masking only and as for Active X
You can only do this by using the Netscape compatable Neptune plug-in Browser Problems? We can help you! | Help & FAQ | Opera
ActiveX and VBScript support in OperaOpera does not have in-built support for Microsoft’s Windows-specific ActiveX technology or the VBScript scripting language.
You can also use this plug-in in Firefox so how does that make Opera less secure ?
Let’s be honest if you are using Opera or FF why would you want to run it in IE mode anyway.
Because some sites specifically state that don’t support x browsers.
Truth to be told with the mess we usually are inwolved the W3C should group many standard under specific a denomination. With all the possible combination and permutations of existing standards, and different level of compliance this mess will never end.
For the user’s sake we ned something more dumbed down. When a browser is compliant it should behave the same way than another browser. SO web platform 1.0, 1.1,1.2 or whatever will be much more an improvement.
It should be something like directx or opengl.
Now each web standard the situation is more like a mess. For example in order to use style sheets a web designer has to use something like this compliance table :-\ . And a website require more than one standard :o
I can undertand the use of unsupported feature in an intranet but this marketshare competition is damaging the web.
True enough.
These are the ones I send an email to pointing out the error of their ways and promise myself to never visit ever again.
If they had listened to user requests to support other browsers then they wouldn’t really be ignorant 
Some good points have been made there regarding the relative merits of FF and Opera with regards to security.It should be pointed out though that to fully secure Firefox requires various add ons to be installed,whereas Opera is secured with it’s default configuration to a similar level.The more add ons that are installed with FF,will impact upon speed and resource usage,that’s the main reason I use Opera for general surfing,it’s secure and very light.
There where some cases where I experienced Opera to not be so secure as it’s always being told.
I will therefore go on recommending FF with extensions.
Those extensions won’t really make your Sys slow down that much, in case you have a rather modern PC.
Being an Opera user myself I would like to know more about these cases. As you know if we take out IE of the statistics FF is is the first choice of nearly all users.
I would like to note, people consider Opera the safest, because it has the least known vulnerabilities of all the browsers. (supposedly)
As for its resistance to malware, well im sure that is where Opera MAY lack compared to FF.
Gib, care to elaborate?