1/ Installation of the Opera browser:
It’s very easy to download and install Opera – as long as you know how to install any software on your favourite platform.
2/ Opera browsers main features :
- Visual tabs (tab thumbnail preview): admittedly, tabbed browsing has been a feature of Opera for a long time now. This allows users to surf the Web more easily and faster by opening multiple Web pages within the same application window and it is now standard on any modern browser. Opera 10 introduces a great new feature with Opera 10 though: it is now possible to reveal dynamically-sized thumbnails of your open Web pages by just dragging the handle below the tabs. And if your prefer to have your row of tabs on the right-hand side of the screen – on a widescreen laptop for example – the thumbnails will appear automatically. As you add more tabs, the thumbnails get squeezed either horizontally or vertically.
- Speed Dial: with Speed Dial, you can easily access your most used websites. Click the Configure Speed Dial button and choose from 4 to 25 favorite Web sites for quick access every time you open a new tab. This feature is also available on Firefox as an add-on.
- Opera Turbo for fast browsing on slow connections: Opera Turbo uses compression technology to speed up browsing, which could be useful when using a crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe or browsing through a mobile phone while commuting.
- Trash Can Icon: Another useful feature is the new trash can icon. If you accidentally close a web page that you want to keep open, with Opera’s trash can, you can reload that page quickly without having to dig through the history file.
- Mouse Gestures: Opera was the first browser to allow mouse gestures (user JS) to perform certain movements with the mouse to access commonly used features: it works well but there are so many movements to memorize that many of us may not bother to learn them…
- Built in Bit Torrent download client: a simple but strong bitTorrent support is built-in. By simply clicking a torrent link, your download starts. We don’t think that most people will use it, but still, it’s a nice addition for the others.
- Widgets engine: A relatively recent addition is the widget engine. Widgets are small web applications (multimedia, newsfeeds, games and more) that make the user desktop experience more fun. While some widgets can be very useful, we have to say that others are just eye-candy gadgets, with the now unavoidable “chunky” appearance. (Although frankly, widgets can be found virtually everywhere these days.) Many people have been using the excellent Rainmeter, Yahoo Widgets or GDesklets for quite a long time now so it’s not really obvious to us why they would want to switch to Opera’s widgets now. One last point: widgets can be nice but cannot compete with one of Firefox’s biggest strengths: the incredible number of useful (and occasionally less useful) extensions, which make Firefox the most extensible browser by far.
3/ A complete web suite
Opera mail has a built-in e-mail program : it is simple and efficient for casual users. Along with Mozilla’s SeaMonkey it is the last of the suite browsers with a built in POP3 email client module. It also incorporates a RSS/Atom newsfeed reader.
4/ Security and privacy
Opera web browser incorporates a strong pop-up filter, a content-blocker (to remove annoying ads), and a fraud protection system, which can warn users against web sites that try to steal personal information. The “delete private data” function is very similar to the one incorporated in Firefox and cookies can be easily controlled from the preference dialog. Opera remains one of the more secure browsers on the market.
5/ Customization
Like Firefox, it’s possible to change the browser appearance by choosing new skins. The actual process is slicker than in Firefox – where you have to restart the application to change the appearance. Customizing Opera can be done directly from the appearance window which shows a selection of skins by categories (popular skins, new skins, editor’s choice …). And a simple drag and drop will add, remove or rearrange buttons or toolbars.
6/ Web standards adherence
While Firefox is a good challenger with regard to web standards, Opera’s respect of web standards is optimal: Opera 10 Final displays a score of 100/100 on Acid3 test. One minor thing, however: a few websites have compatibility issues, due to not using web standards- not really Opera’s fault, though. This doesn’t happen often, but still.
7/ Web development features
While we would still prefer Firefox’s numerous extensions to help us in the process of web development, Opera includes some nice features as well: for example, it’s possible to validate the HTML code of any Web page by pressing Ctrl+Alt+V; also, when showing a page in small-screen mode, one can see how it will look on a mobile phone or other small-screen device running Opera. The info panel will show details about the currently open page such as MIME type, page size, character encoding and more and graphics and style sheets can be toggled on/off via our toolbars and shortcuts.
8/ Speed, speed, speed!
Beyond the very recent speed-dial feature which allows users to access to their favourite website faster, Opera has always been one of the sleekest web browsers ever and this still comes true. Opera claims that the new Opera Presto 2.2 engine is up to 40% faster on resource-intensive pages, such as Gmail and Facebook.
9/ Conclusion:
Opera is still a remarkable web browser. It’s light-years ahead of Internet Explorer and still beats Mozilla Firefox in several areas. Some reasons to explain why Opera has still a very limited market share on the Desktop (but Opera is a major player in the mobile handset space) are that:
- despite many years of successful development, many people don’t know that it even exists and stick to Internet Explorer 6, despite the obvious limitations and the possible security risks (not that any web browser could pretend to be 100% safe…);
- in the last three years, many web users have switched to the popular Firefox and more recently to the excellent Google Chrome web browser – so the competition is getting harder and harder for Opera.
- it may still be seen by many people as “the browser with ads” or as a paid for software.
- more importantly, Opera doesn’t benefit from Firefox’s unique community spirit (even though it has a very devoted and active fan base), Google support (like Chrome does) nor Internet Explorer’s advantage of being pre-installed on every Windows system sold, so its current position on the Desktop is quite limited, even though it’s doing extremely well on mobile devices.
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