Review of the Opera Browser

Opera Homepage: http://www.opera.com/

Opera really is an interesting browser. I couldn't begin to tell you about it's inner workings, and there's a lot I've not seen yet, but I thought I'd list some of the things I thought were worth noting about it.

Browser Load time

There's not too much difference between Internet Explorer and Opera, but it certainly loads faster than Netscape. It's nice to see that the people behind opera aren't cramming in a stack of features which slow the software down. I remember trying the new Netscape and being pretty shocked by how long that beast took to load on my machine.

Page Load time

In my tests it did seem a fraction faster than IE or Netscape but it's very hard to tell really - especially on this connection. But there wasn't all that much difference between them when all's said and done.

How pages look in Opera

I can't see any difference between how webpages look in Opera and how they appear in Internet Explorer. They look identical to me so far. I carefully compared HTML pages and pages that used CSS and could not see any noticeable difference. It's early days on that front however. My guess is that if your site works well in IE, then you're safe for Opera. We're not talking about the age-old differences that you'll see between Netscape and IE. Still - well worth downloading it and testing your sites just in case.

Flash

I'd expected to have to go and install the Flash player separately, but it comes pre-installed with Opera. I just checked and the Flash 6 player was installed. Good news for Flash designers.

Viewable screen

Opera starts to pull out in front of Netscape and IE on this front and it's all due to an ingenious feature. In Opera, the status bar is not always visible on screen. It's hidden until there's some information to display. When you click a link, for example, it will pop up and show some helpful information (like the percentage of the page loaded) and then it will disappear again. The versions of NS and IE I have don't do this. That extra little bit of viewing space is very welcome!

Visuals

From a visual point of view Opera looks better than IE and NS. Perhaps not the most important factor - but I couldn't help being impressed by the look of the tool buttons, and effect when you move the mouse over them.

interesting features

I'm pretty new to Opera so I can't comment much on this area. But there are a few things that stood out as being helpful:

Printer friendly button: Clicking this makes whichever page you're looking at black and white, and ready to print out. There's a button next to that which will also strip out the images. This is especially handy when you have an article you want to print out but don't want the color or the images to be included.

Tabbed windows: Opera works very much like a lot of windows programs. Each page you're looking at is a window within the software. You can use 'cascade' and other window commands to arrange them and move between them. The windows are also shown in the software with tabs on them - so you can switch between 'em.

The status bar: The status bar not only auto-hides, but it also has more information in it than NS or IE. You can see: download speed, number of images on the page, number loaded, percentage loaded so far and more.

Another thing that came to mind was that with Opera, you do not see the URL in the status bar when you move the mouse over a link. This would remove the whole debate about whether to use mouseovers or not, and take it out of the equation of whether to use it in link list sites or not. That's presuming of course if everyone in the world used Opera.

So it's a good browser with some interesting features. The ad-supported version isn't all that annoying when you get used to it, and the viewable screen is still a lot larger than you'd normally get in IE or netscape. Opera is definitely a recommended download in my opinion. It's slightly better than Netscape and IE for the reasons I've outlined here. Whether that's enough to get surfers to part with $39 rather than use the free browsers out there, I'm not sure.

There's a very good review of Opera here: http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/software/opera7/ - which goes into some of it's strengths and weaknesses here more than I could. I think this line pretty much sums up the problem Opera will face gaining a greater penetration than the 1 - 2% it already has.

"I would make Opera my preferred browser, were it not for the cost. I sympathize with the company. It picked a field where the consumer is conditioned to expect free stuff. Opera is a software company and there's no reason it can't charge a good price for its product, but I'm not prepared to spend $39 on a Web browser when I can download 5 of them free of charge."

TOM ^"^

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Email tom@tomsnewbiebooster.com

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