Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Opera isn't free. It shows ads that you can remove by purchasing a full copy. All the other major web browsers are free nowadays. So, what is it that makes me like, and even prefer, Opera to the extent that I'm condsidering paying for it?
They call it "The fastest web browser on earth", but I don't know how true or not it might be for the actual browsing and page loading. It certainly isn't a slouch in those areas, but a lot of other things that can affect the speed of your browsing shine even more.
Actually, the feel of speed and efficiency starts right away when you download it. The whole package is less than 5 megabytes if you've already got Java installed or can live without it. Compare this to the 20+ megabytes you easily reach with IE or Netscape ...
But it gets even better once you've installed and started it. I just love Opera's interface! There are two major features that hooked me almost as soon as I tried them.
First there's the tabbed interface. New windows open within the same Opera window, and each gets a tab along the top of the window. That means you can always see every single window you've got opened, and always have something to click on to bring it to the top. In the latest version of Opera you can choose the more common style of opening a new Opera window for each browsing window, but that's not even an option for me. Everything just gets so much cleaner with tabs, and you'll find yourself getting annoyed whenever you use another browser that starts a new window somewhere in a corner of the screen and with an odd size.
The other great feature is mouse gestures, and those had me hooked even faster than the tabs. The gestures can be thought of as mouse shortcuts, do the right combination of button presses and/or moves to accomplish something that would normally take a keypress or button click to accomplish. I really only use two gestures, but that's enough since they're for going back and forward through the page history. Hold down the left mouse button and click once on the right to step forward one step, hold right and click left to go back. Simple and wonderful, as soon as you've tried it you'll start wishing every other browser had it too.
Finally one more great thing: Opera's available for every OS I've tried, and looks and behaves just the same in all of them. So I can have my wonderful tabs and gestures, speedy response times and great interface in both Windows and Linux (BeOS version's available too, but that version's old and not updated anymore).
Oh, and Opera's made in Scandinavia too :-P ...
The only thing really keeping me from buying Opera is the fact that you have to pay once for each OS you use it in, not once per computer. And both my computers boot into both Windows and Linux, so that would make four licenses which feels a bit much even with discounts. Plus the ad window is a lot less disturbing that you might think ...
Yes, I sound pretty bought here, but it's all from the heart :-) ... Give Opera a try, I'm sure you'll like it (you didn't see that one coming I bet).
Update on 7/6 2002
Oh, the zoom, now I love the zoom too! With a sharp 17 inch screen in high resolution and refresh rate I never thought about the easily accessible zoom button, the only times I zoomed was when I hit the wrong button by accident. Now that I spend more and more time surfing on Pigbox, in Linux on an old 14 inch screen in 800*600 I've come to realize the enormous convenience of the zoom. There are a heap of sites that don't seem to have considered my screen/browser/OS combination when they set their font sizes. The characters go all nitty-gritty small, and you find yourself squinting a lot more than what is strictly recommended. That's where the zoom comes in as a saving grace, a quick change to 120% (and only for the current window of course, not all of them) and the world is an even better place than before.