Yeah, I also remember what sold it in the Phoenix/Firebird days, and what got me to insist on installing it for everyone I knew, being 1) popup/under blocking,

Yeah, I also remember what sold it in the Phoenix/Firebird days, and what got me to insist on installing it for everyone I knew, being 1) popup/under blocking, 2) it was really light and nimble compared to the competition (IE, Netscape/Mozilla), both in terms of the program itself and the browsing experience, and 3) the interface was very clean, clear, and pleasant to use. Tabbed browsing was just a nice bonus and I don't remember extensions really mattering much until well after it'd started to get traction from early adopters like me installing it on everything we came in contact with. Really, it was basically Opera with a less-slightly-weird-feeling UI and no adbar in the free version. Given those early reasons for favoring it, from my perspective it's mostly gotten worse since 2.0 came out.