Your Web, Your Choice

05/23/2007

Opera faces some tough competition when it comes to browser market share. Opera is a web standards compliant browser that is attempting to bring some innovation to the table. Their latest version has some new features that may bring more people to their browser.

Getting Started With Opera

After a two year hiatus from using Opera, I made the switch to Opera on my laptop as my primary browser. I was very impressed with how fast I was able to get Opera up and running. The whole process start to finish took less than about minute between the actual download of the program and the installation. After Opera was installed, I was amazed at how easy it was to make the switch. Opera automatically picked up all my bookmarks from Firefox and my proxy settings from IE making the switch to Opera one of the easiest tasks ever.

Surfing the Web

Opening the browser brought me to the slightly less than helpful startup page for Opera. It basically highlighted the features of Opera that they felt people would be most interested in. Opera like most modern web browsers includes the Quick Search field so that one can use their favorite search engine without actually having to browse to it, that is provided your favorite search engine is Yahoo or Google. While they do give you the option of adding your own search engines to the Quick Search, the process is not as easy as it should be, and through trial and error, it is difficult to make it work correctly without looking up the info on the internet.

Surfing the Web: Innovation

The latest version of Opera includes some things that are not included in any of the other browsers. The first thing of note is that Opera has done away with the home page and replaced it with a new feature called Speed Dial. Speed Dial is a plain white page with a Yahoo search bar and 9 frames for your favorite web sites. With this page, you can quickly add your favorite bookmarks so that you do not have to waste your time going through the bookmark drop down to find the site you are looking for. It even includes a thumbnail image of the website. While I believe the idea is good, this feature does not do much for me. I find the very simplistic Speed Dial interface does not do all the things I want in a home page. For those who want to lead a lot less complicated home page lives, this may serve them well. However, I feel that things like this are better left to personalized home pages such as iGoogle, My Yahoo, and Windows Live.

Another thing that Opera offers that none of the others do is a web page preview. This is very similar to the preview feature on Windows Vista except unlike Vista, it does not give a live motion preview. However, for a web browser, a live motion preview is not needed on a thumbnail image and the lack of it keeps the resource management at a reasonable level. I found this tool to be very hand for when I opened a lot of tabs and found myself having a hard time keeping track of what was what. The preview however, does tend to get bogged down when you have a lot of tabs open and it begins to lag. With just 8 tabs open, you can start to see the lag time for the previews. With just a few more tabs after that, it begins to be faster to just switch tabs than to wait for the preview.

The next feature that I really like about Opera is the Fast Foreward feature. This is a button that detects the page that you are most likely to visit next based on the web pages you are on. While it is limited in its usefulness as the option is not available in many of web pages out there, it is very useful when it comes to browsing images. I saved a lot of time when viewing large image galleries because I did not have to constantly hit the back button and find the next picture or do a right click open in new tab. This is not really a new innovation for Opera as it has been a part of Opera for at least 3 years, but it is still a useful and unique enough feature that I feel that it needs to be recognized.

Opera also includes a webpage restoration feature. This feature allows you to bring up the last web pages you had open before you closed Opera previously. This is very useful for when you accidentally close out of your browser or if your computer accidentally crashes.

Surfing the Web: Download Management

If there is one part of Opera that really sets it apart from the rest of the browsers, it is the download management. Opera includes the best Download Manager of any of the browsers I have used. Unlike Firefox and IE, Opera opens the Download Manager in a new tab called the Transfers Tab. In the tabs list you can tell how many downloads you have active at any given time as well as the total time it is estimated to take to download all the files. Once you have the files downloading, it is easy to tell how far along each download is as well as how long each download will take. It will even tell you where the file is downloading from, where it is downloading to, and the exact amount that has been downloaded.

The download manager displays each download with the name, size, download speed, time remaining on the download, and the progress the download has made with both a percentage of completion as well as a bar that shows how much of the download has been completed. Plus Opera also includes the ability to pause the download and resume at a later time. This is a feature lacking in most web browsers.

Surfing the Web: Web Standards

When it comes to meeting web standards, Opera once again sets itself apart from the rest. Opera 9 passes the Acid2 Browser test, a feat that neither Firefox or IE can claim. The text resizing for the visually impaired works well on every website I tested it on and I have had no issues with any CSS pages that were properly coded. However, I did find that on many sites, especially message boards, certain elements did not display properly.

Customization

Opera has lots of options available for skinning your browser. With over 500 options you are sure to find one that suits you. You can also change the color scheme, which toolbars are available, and where they are located in your browser window.


They also have an option called Widgets. These are mini programs that are supposed to enhance your browsing experience. I found Widgets to be a complete waste of time as I was hoping for something more along the lines of Firefox Extensions. Most of the Widgets available did not serve any real purpose to customize your browser and all of the ones I installed just took up desktop real estate. Overall I consider the Widgets to be completely useless.

The Cons of Opera

Opera is not completely without its flaws. Because of the web page restore feature, Opera has a noticeably slower start time than the other browsers. When surfing the web, Opera often seems sluggish in comparison to the other browsers. The biggest con of Opera however is the lack of support for it. Most web pages when they are created are not tested in Opera, so if they are poorly coded, as I mentioned above, then they do not always display properly. The popup blocker does not work very well, which seems to be common throughout most web browsers.

Final Thoughts

Opera holds a special place on my hard drive because it is the browser that opened the world of IE alternatives up to me. Opera is a very well designed browser, despite its sluggishness at times. Opera is constantly introducing and removing features from their browser, so they always have new things to bring to the table. With a little tweaking to make the browsing faster and the introduction of a few features such as a better popup blocker and a automatic spell check, Opera could have the potential to soar to the top and really gain some market share. I would definitely suggest downloading this browser today, even if all you use it for is downloading.

Rating: 4/5


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