I have gone through many
browsers in my lifetime of IT. From Lynx to Mosaic to Mozilla to
Netscape to Firefox to Internet Explorer to Safari to Flock. But
there’s another browser that peeks its head in and out of that
cycle — Opera. Opera is a browser that gets little press in the
battle for Internet supremacy. But it’s a browser that is making
huge waves in other arenas (Can you say “mobile”?) and is always
a steady player in the browser market.
But why would you want to
use a browser that gets little love in the market? I will give
you 10 good reasons.
Note: This information is
also available as a
PDF download.
#1: Speed
It seems no matter
how many leaps and bounds Firefox and Internet Explorer make,
Opera is always able to render pages faster. In both cold and
warm starts, Opera beats both Firefox and Internet explorer.
We’re not talking about a difference the naked eye is incapable
of seeing. The speed difference is actually noticeable. So if
you are a speed junky, and most of you are, you should be using
Opera for this reason alone.
#2: Speed Dial
Speed Dial is one of those
features that generally steals the show with browsers. It’s
basically a set of visual bookmarks on one page. To add a page
to Speed Dial, you simply click on an empty slot in the Speed
Dial page and enter the information. When you have a full page
of Speed Dial bookmarks, you can quickly go to the page you want
by clicking the related image. For even faster browsing, you can
click the Ctrl + * key combination (Where * is the number 1-9
associated with your page as assigned in Speed Dial).
#3: Widgets
Opera Widgets are like
Firefox extensions on steroids. Widgets are what the evolution
of the Web is all about — little Web-based applications you can
run from inside (or, in some cases, outside) your browser. Some
of the widgets are useful (such as the Touch The Sky
international weather applet) and some are just fun (such as the
Sim Aquarium.) They are just as easy to install as Firefox
extensions.
#4: Wand
Save form information
and/or passwords with this handy tool. Every time you fill out a
form or a password, the Wand will ask you if you want to save
the information. When you save information (say a form), a
yellow border will appear around the form. The next time you
need to fill out that form, click on the Wand button or click
Ctrl + Enter, and the information will automatically be filled
out for you.
#5: Notes
Have you ever been
browsing and wanted to take notes on a page or site (or about
something totally unrelated to your Web browsing)? Opera comes
complete with a small Notes application that allows you to jot
down whatever you need to jot down. To access Note, click on the
Tools menu and then click on Notes. The tool itself is
incredibly simple to use and equally as handy.
#6: BitTorrent
Yes it is true, Opera has
a built-in BitTorrent protocol. And the built-in BitTorrent
client is simple to use: Click on a Torrent link, and a dialog
will open asking you where you want to download the file. The
Torrent client is enabled by default, so if your company doesn’t
allow Torrenting, you should probably disable this feature.
Note: When downloading Torrents, you will continue to share
content until you either stop the download or close the browser.
#7: Display modes
Another unique-to-Opera
feature is its display modes, which allows you to quickly switch
between Fit To Width and Full Screen mode. Fit To Width mode
adjusts the page size to the available screen space while using
flexible reformatting. Full Screen mode gives over the entire
screen space to browsing. In this mode, you drop all menus and
toolbars, leaving only context menus, mouse gestures, and
keyboard shortcuts. The latter mode is especially good for
smaller screens.
#8: Quick Preferences
The Quick Preferences menu
is one of those features the power user will really appreciate.
I am quite often using it to enable/disable various features,
and not having to open up the Preferences window makes for a
much quicker experience. From this menu, you can alter
preferences for pop-ups, images, Java/JavaScript, plug-ins,
cookies, and proxies. This is perfect when you are one of those
users who block cookies all the time, until a site comes along
where you want to enable cookies.
#9: Mouse Gestures
This feature tends to
bother most keyboard junkies (those who can’t stand to move
their fingers from the keyboard.) But Mouse Gestures is a
built-in feature that applies certain actions to specific mouse
movements (or actions). For example, you can go back a page by
holding down the right mouse button and clicking the left mouse
button. This is pretty handy on a laptop, where using the track
pad can take more time than you probably want to spend on
navigation. But even for those who prefer to keep their hands on
the keys and not the mouse, the feature can still save time.
Instead of having to get to the mouse, move the mouse to the
toolbar, and click a button, you simply have to get your hands
to the mouse and make the gesture for the action to take place.
Of course, this does require the memorization of the gestures.
#10: Session saving
I love this feature. All
too many times, I have needed to close a browser window but
didn’t want to lose a page. To keep from losing the page, I
would keep a temporary bookmark file where I could house these
bookmarks. But with Opera, that’s history. If you have a page
(or number of pages) you want to save, you just go to the File
menu and then the Sessions submenu and click Save This Session.
The next time you open Opera, the same tabs will open. You can
also manage your saved sessions so that you can save multiple
sessions and delete selected sessions.
The upshot
With just the above list,
you can see how easily Opera separates itself from the rest of
the crowd. It’s a different beast in the Web browsing space.
It’s fast, stable, and cross platform, and it contains many
features other browsers can’t touch.
- Source:
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Jack Wallen
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