Tags: Microsoft

Calling Opera a browser would be insulting the smart people working in the small company located in Norway. They started in mid 90s and have come a long way. They have seen the domination of Netscape disappear into oblivion, and they have seen the monster Internet Explorer take over the internet. But they have survived all the up and downs. And they still are doing pretty good.

They are now in version 7.50 which was just launched few days back. And they have turned a browser into a complete web suite. They are not wrong when they call Opera the best internet experience. Opera now packs so much in the measly 3.5 megabyte of download size, that you feel that they are defying the laws of physics or something! Microsoft would be ashamed to see what the developers in Opera Software firm have managed to put in its installer. It now includes a mighty fast browser along with a revolutionary e-mail client (Google’s GMail apparently took most of its features from here!) with the usual newsreader and now a pretty decent IRC client and a functional RSS aggregator. So, Opera now let you do more than just browse the net in its full glory…

The Browser

Opera primarily remains a browser and a very good browser at that. If you are on dial-up, you will be amazed by the speed of rendering by this little beast. Broadband users can optimize the browsing speed by manipulating several factors like maximum connections to a server and maximum total connections. You can also manage the memory utilization from the preferences by specifying how you want Opera to maintain its cache. Plus there are other nifty features like tabbed browsing, download manager (with resume), mouse gestures and spatial navigation. Opera also provide you with additional tools (rewind and fast forward) to jump back or forward to the web sites already visited, making surfing a breeze. The cache is awesome and pages already visited can be revisited like they are stored locally. The form field values are remembered even if you jump back 20 pages after filling them! Browser tabs closed can be reopened with few clicks like you undo editing in text editors. It makes browsing so much fun that people actually complain that they lose productivity if they use Opera in place of Internet Explorer at work!

Of course, there are some shortcomings. It is not the most popular browser out there so there are some sites out their poorly designed that might not work properly in Opera. Though its support for standards is legendary, it still has some bugs that I notice a lot while blogging as the backend of my favorite Blog tool is not rendered properly in Opera (fieldset placement using CSS is the problem). Plus, it does not have support for ActiveX (I think it’s an advantage!).

But the fact remains, ever since I have used Opera, I have not suffered any worm/viral attack that are supposed to be caused using Internet Explorer. So, I am happy.

The Newsreader/Mail Client

I am not a big time news client user. But I have used NNTP servers at times and preferred Opera over others. Opera worked fine with them with excellent find-as-you-type search function. Though, I do use the mail client integrated with Opera (tentatively called m2) on a daily basis. I love the fact that it uses a database based system to store mails. You can access the same mail from various views that the mail relate to and no duplication is necessary! These views are called access points and they make keeping track of mails darn simple. Then there is a quick reply box where you can reply to an email message as simply as you reply to instant messages. These features have been picked by all Thunderbird, Outlook 2003 and GMail!

IRC Client

I was never a great IRC fan. The problem being the complexities of applications like MIRC and weird interfaces of other applications like Trillian. Opera came as a breadth of fresh air. It’s simple basic IRC client which does its job well and does not try to compete with MIRC on features. Works well for me to stay in touch with the developers at WordPress channels and Opera fan channels! DCC is of course supported as well as some basic smilies. Works well for me and loads of other people I know.

RSS Aggregator

RSS made some sense to me when I started using WordPress. Then there was the issue of getting a RSS reader. Tried many. Bloglines was web based so was not convenient. Then I tried Macromedia Central which turned out to be too blah. Almost gave up using RSS as a tool for news reading, when Opera announced support for RSS aggregation. Now RSS is pretty convenient. Opera already is something that is always loaded on this PC so all the feeds are regularly updated without any need for any other application. Plus it makes feed addition as simple as clicking on a feed link and opera automatically catches the feed and auto configures it for updates. Makes RSS syndication fun!

Overall Experience

Opera has been very good to me since more than a year. I have seen times when I had no other alternative to switch to other browsers for some time (Using GMail comes to mind) but still I was more than happy to return to it. And this particular preview does not exactly cover all the aspects of this little beast. But still, Opera makes my online life a lot more fun and I continue to use it even though it’s not free (it is ad supported) and some sites do have problems with it…

Download Opera Browser