Opera 9, Another Choice.
June 20th, 2006 at 14:07 under Articles, Review, Software.A little while back I wrote an article about Opera and how it could potentially be a Firefox replacement. Even though Opera had so many extra features compared to Firefox I still wasn’t impressed enough to make the switch from my beloved Firefox. Recent the Beta version of Flock was released to much acclaim and a great review was published by my friend Paul. With this new wave of browsers the average internet user has some great browsers to choose from with each offering different features that really benefit certain niches. No matter what though I can guarantee that you are better off using any browser besides Internet Explorer with its track record in regards to hackers.
The Opera 9 browser has a lot of new features that I readily look forward to reviewing. Two of these new features that really caught my eye were BitTorrent support and Widget support. Other features that I enjoyed in my previous review were the IRC client, Opera Mail, and the tabbed browsing interface. One feature that some people may find useful is Opera’s new mobile phone browser, Opera Mini 2.0.
Memory and Resource Usage
With all applications that I run, this is one of the most important factors in deciding how I feel about the application. To test this I used Firefox and Opera simultaneously on separate screens and then began opening up tabs and loading pages. With CNN.com and Gomeler.com open in both browsers, Opera was using 36MB of memory while Firefox was using 28MB. Then with 5 tabs open Firefox jumped to 52MB while Opera rose to 41MB of memory used. Then I opened up 20 tabs in each browser and then let the memory resources settle into what I figured was their stable state. Firefox settled in around 140MB while Opera settled in around 78MB, almost half of Firefox. However the big story here was CPU usage. Using a 2.8GHz AMD single-core processor, Firefox was sapping nearly 35% of my CPU cycles while Opera hovered around 2%. To some people this could be very important so take this for whatever it means to you. For one last test, I closed every tab besides the first and then I let the memory usage settle again. This time Opera dropped to 61MB while Firefox dropped to 69MB. I suppose these results are due to Opera not clearing out its trash upon closing so keep this in mind, however both browsers are victims of this.
BitTorrent!
With the inclusion of BitTorrent support within this browser I won’t be surprised to see a little boost in BitTorrent traffic. While this is all and good, the performance of the downloads and browsing had better not take hit or this would interfere with the main purpose of Opera. To test out the BitTorrent capabilities of this browser I went to my favorite Linux torrent site, LinuxTracker.org. In looking around for heavily seeded Torrents, the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r2 came out on top and weighed in at 636MB. By simple clicking the torrent file I was presented with a window asking where I would like to download this file. I then dug into the BitTorrent preferences section and noticed the standard upload, download, and port options. Nothing special here, just make sure it is configured for your connection. Once I clicked yes, a new tab popped up with the a bar indicating torrent status along with a box at the bottom of the page indicating the vital stats for my torrents. I decided to use uTorrent to compare against Opera since uTorrent is my default BitTorrent client due to my recent investigations. In regards to memory usage Opera hovered around 52MB while uTorrent hovered around 8MB. But the important issue here is that Opera maintained decent web surfing capabilities while downloading torrents. I did notice a slight sluggish response but nothing that would bother me too much. Overall I would have to say the inclusion of BitTorrent in Opera helps to expand its potential market niche.
IRC
In order to use IRC you first need to enter some information into Opera. However once you follow the prompts to setup your account with Opera, it is very easy to then join into a conversation and starting chatting it up with your best friends. When I was running a BitTorrent download and IRC at the same time the conversations were very fluid and I could not tell I had BitTorrent cracking away in the background. In most cases using the IRC client felt natural however when I was really flipping through my tabs and trying to gather information it would be easier if the IRC and BitTorrent clients were in a separate window. I would really like to see the “pop-out” feature like with GMail’s GTalk but it is just as easy to toss these two tabs into a separate window, which leads me to my next topic.
Navigation
While this isn’t an Opera-only feature, I feel it deserves some mentioning. If you have multiple instances of Opera open, you can simply drag a tab from one window to the other. No more opening a new tab and typing in the address. This can be very helpful with boosting productivity when you are performing research. I use this feature a lot in Firefox when I need to organize my sources by various topics, quite similar to when you sort through hardcopies when performing research. With Opera’s very small memory footprint it is possible to devote a single window to various tab topics or however you wish to do it. Besides these tabs, Opera has something called Forward and Backward buttons. Opera tries to make an educated guess on how far Backward you really want to go in web browsing and similarly with the Forward button. I really abused this button while surfing around CNN.com and it did a damn good job of going back to the CNN homepage every time which was useful, especially when I clicked multiple links in succession. While this button could be frustrating for some, I find it very useful when digging through news websites, blogs, or Google searches.
The Wand
I don’t trust electronic security at all. I will never trust a machine with the passwords to my most vital of accounts however I decided to bend my rule slightly to test out this feature. The wand is essentially a super-password saver and auto-login feature. If you go to a website that has name and password features and you sign in, the Wand will ask if you wish to save this information. If you click yes, the Wand saves this data for this specific website and when you come back the fields will be highlighted in yellow. By just clicking these highlighted boxes again Opera will sign you in and you are good to go. I tried to get the Wand to work with the comment forms on blogs but it was a no go. For all those passwords for the various forums I visit, the Wand is definitely helpful in streamlining my browsing experience. Some people may wonder what this offers over cookies. When I clear out a browsers cache, I remove everything but with the Wand being separate, my passwords will still remain while the cookies and temporary files are deleted.
Widgets
This feature rings of OS X goodness. Just like Widgets for OS X, Widgets for Opera must be approved by Opera and then when they are operating they give you extra features like a calculator, Pandora Radio, Tetris, and many other things. To pick up some new widgets simply go to Widgets -> Add Widgets and a new tab will open up w/ a bunch of widgets that are available to you. These widgets are a very cool feature but they come at a cost. With just the Pandora Widget open, memory use jumped by 35MB and CPU utilization jumped to around 2%. This concerns me when I have multiple windows open with multiple tabs and then I have the widget eating 35MB of ram. For comparison, iTunes is currently using 27MB while playing music so it kind of makes this widget more of a toy than something I would consider using all the time. Overall these widgets can help increase your efficiency if you add a few essential widgets and just open them with the sidebar when you need them.
Mouse Gestures
Woah. I am in love. I never have been a productivity nut, however these gestures are just way too cool and they help accelerate my web surfing by so much. I currently use the back, forward, and new tab mouse gestures like they are second nature. To use a mouse gesture you simply hold the right button and drag the mouse in a certain direction. To the left is back, to the right is forward, and down is new tab. I am also finding that I try to use mouse gestures in Firefox and I am greeted with the plain right-click menu. I really hope this is a feature that is integrated into every browser from now on, this can only do good for web surfing.
Miscellaneous stuff
There is a bunch of other cool features that don’t warrant an entire blurb so they will get a mini-blurb here. The X’s on the tabs is really cool and it is still a feature in Firefox that requires an extension. The sidebar on the left side of the screen with the pop-up menus is really cool for navigating everything you have configured within Opera such as Widgets, IRC, bookmarks and the download manager. The ability to load web pages without pictures or with cached pictures only can really increase load times for picture intensive pages like Flickr. If you are on dialup this could be a lifesaver. This feature can be accessed by click the spectacles button on the far right. The Top 10 feature in the URL bar is really cool but I wish they would enable you to open your top 10 in tabs. Another really cool feature is the ability to cascade all the tabs by right clicking on the tabs and hitting arrange -> cascade.
Conclusion
I’m pretty certain that I barely scratched the surface of Opera but I hope I managed to highlight the key features that Opera offers. Now that I have Firefox, Flock, and Opera to choose from for browsers, I am beginning to notice that I spend more time with Opera and Flock. I guess now Firefox just hasn’t got all the features I expect from a browser. For those that just need basic BitTorrent support, IRC, and great browsing then Opera is the way to go. If you are a blogger though I would suggest checking out Flock as I find Flock to be a really nice platform to blog from. It looks like Bon Echo/Firefox 2 is going to have to step up severely to keep up in this new browser market.
June 20th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
[…] Gomeler.com has an excellent writeup on the new Opera 9 Browser covering many of the new features including widgets, BitTorrent downloading, IRC chat, and more. I must admit. Opera has done an excellent job. The widgets are a great addition, although I wouldn’t use them much personally, and having buit in BitTorrent and IRC chat is very helpful for newcomers to these technologies. Way to step it up, Opera. […]
June 20th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Opera 9…
Opera nous offre une nouvelle version de son navigateur Internet !
De la version 7.54 à la version 9.0, Opera a su conquérir de nouveaux utilisateurs par d’habiles techniques de communication……
June 20th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Great review! I will have to give it a go. Thanks.
June 20th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
I’d highly suggest giving it a chance, I’ve been very impressed with Opera. Between Opera and Flock though I think Flock takes the cake for the blog support. Check it out though, it is a bunch of fun playing with all the features.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Thanks for the great review. I am a big Firefox addict; but I am really trying to give Opera a chance this time around :)
June 21st, 2006 at 2:27 pm
RE: Memory usage, after closing tabs you should see a larger memory drop if you also empty the “Trash” icon - which keeps track of recently closed tabs || blocked popups. Accidentally closing a tab & reopening from the trash icon - is near instantaneous reload from cache/memory.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:32 pm
If you accidently close a tab you can reopen it with undo (ctrl-z). Saving sessions is another nice feature.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:33 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
June 21st, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Nice article. I really enjoy Opera and its innovations, but FireFox is my primary browser. Im glad to see that mouse gestures is now a standard opera feature, however it is also available in FireFox via an extension. Also to note that the next build of FireFox does indeed include close buttons on each individual tab. I find the close buttons on individual tabs a nuisance as you can simply middle click on any tab to close it… no button neccasary.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Haven’t used Opera for a very long time, guess I’ll have to give it another try…
Nice Review!!!!…
June 21st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I just want to point out that Firefox extensions already exist for all of the situations and features you mention and many people are glad they’re not standard in Firefox so as to keep bloat out. I’m a fan of Opera though and I hope it helps keep the Firefoxes and IEs of the world honest.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:41 pm
In reguards to the mouse gestures in FireFox, there is an extension called “Mouse Gestures” that gives you the same functionality. And I agree, it’s a huge time saver. It’s become so natural to me that when I’m forced to use IE (which I do for most of my work in the office), it’s annoying to just have the right-click button.
Anyway, thanks for the great review. I downloaded it yesterday and am looking forward to trying out some of the more unique features.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Ive been using opera for about 2 years now and im finally glad to see more than like 1% of the market looking at this browser.
It really is the best, if you also time rendering of pages, you will notice that opera is about 1.5x - 2x faster at rendering pages than firefox.
p.s. to close a tab its down-right like an: L
June 21st, 2006 at 2:45 pm
You can actually “pop-out” any of opera’s tabs into it’s own window. I haven’t tried this with the IRC tab but I know you can do it will all the other tabs, so the irc tab shouldn’t be any different.
To do this just grab the tab and drag it outside of the opera window (and NOT onto another opera window) and the tab is opened as it’s own window.
To get a tab back into an opera window, use the windows side bar. Select the window and drag it back into an opera window
Opera rocks!
June 21st, 2006 at 2:57 pm
get the mouse gestures or all in one gestures extension for firefox
they’re easier to customize than opera’s gestures too, imo
the widgets for opera– not that great
i’d rather use konfabulator/y! toolbar or AveDesk with Firefox
both those programs have small footprints, and as an added bonus i can keep the widgets when i close my browser!
they have much larger, well-developed communities supporting them making nice widgets too.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
[…] This review of Opera 9 covers nearly every feature included in Opera including BitTorrent and IRC. Opera is put up against Firefox and uTorrent with very interesting results. […]
June 21st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
another feature that is great that you left out is the ability to hover over tabs and get a small thumbnail of what is on that tab makes it very nice to find what you are looking for with multiple tabs open but you do have to enable it in the config file
June 21st, 2006 at 3:11 pm
i would like to add the functionality of integrated personalized searches using keyletters in the address bar.
for example typing “g test” will search out test in google. you can add your own search letters now by using a search url and adding “%s” as the variable. for example, you can make a keyletter shortcut y for yahoo and add http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=FP-pull-web-t&ei=UTF-8&p=%s as the code. it will search whatever you add as the search term. i love this about opera since i like to search a lot, i have codes for yahoo, wikipedia, and searches to a lot of other forums. just some more info to add.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:14 pm
I’m a big Opera fan & user for ages now and you have clearly missed the coolest new feature!!!
Use your “right-click” on a page and choose “block content” - there you have the most coolest adverts blocking feature I have seen so far…. easy to manage and completely integrated into the browser… You define per website, what you want to block - that helps to customize stuff especially for sites you visit alot… !!!
Also:
- the ease of personalising the opera interface with buttons, where you want them.
- using + / - to zoom in and out a page
- the in page - search tool (you get these when u click on the “glasses”icon
- the “fit ot width” feature
- you can also let the personal bar and tab bar wrap to multiple lines if you have lots of stuff there, which hugely increases readibility.
…there is so much more, if you do not try Opera - you have no idea what you miss.
hope this was a bit of help,
Sven.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:19 pm
I’m a long-time Firefox user.
I think Opera’s main miss is the lack of extensions Firefox has.
It is true that it is so a featureful browser.
I almost switched to Opera 9 from Firefox, but I soon realized Opera has difficulties with gmail.com. So I remained at the good old Firefox.
However I left Opera on my machine and find myself using it often - it is quite a nice browser after all.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:34 pm
[…] Pretty good coverage of Opera 9 features in this review. […]
June 21st, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Nice article, but it would have helped if you can at least use some table to quickly summarize the comparison, which makes things really clear and easy to understand at a glance. Not everyone is interested to read long paragraph to find out all the technical details, just my 2 cents though.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:58 pm
[…] E para vos provar que eu tento, uma review completa sobre a versão final do Opera 9, assim como uma lista de 10 coisas que só podemos fazer se tivermos o Opera (por muito estranho que isto possa parecer). […]
June 21st, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Thank you for pointing out Firefox CPU usage. It’s horrendous, easily the worst of the 3 browsers. Unusable on slower machines. This is the area where Opera has a true lead over Firefox and will continue to because the Firefox core team just doesn’t care about CPU usage.
June 21st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
mdjake: In gmail, right click and click “Edit site preferences…”, then go to the Network tab and under “Browser identification:”, choose “Mask as Mozilla”. Everything works perfectly, Google just blocks Opera.
Great review, but as you expected, you just brushed the surface. You didn’t even go near the site specific preferences or the content blocker, two of the big new features of Opera 9. Oh well, it was better than other reviews, that’s for sure.
June 21st, 2006 at 4:54 pm
If you test the memory usage on firefox and you have Tab Mix Plus extension you should see more memory usage. If Tab Mix Plus creates a new class for its tab features, that class caches the data in the tab, it also stores the history of each tab, so depending on how man tabs you save in your history this can make a big difference on memory.
June 21st, 2006 at 5:12 pm
It should be noted Opera was the first to do mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, etc. They include it all built-in with no need for “extensions” and still manage to be an incredibly small download in comparison and take up far less memory and speed. So those saying Firefox keeps them separate to reduce bloat should realize Opera doesn’t NEED to.
June 21st, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Of all the browsers that I have reviewed, seems to be the most ill-equipped to do anything beyond the standard click and surf routine. While Firefox does have a huge community with lots of support for extensions, that is no excuse when compared to something that natively supports these features while using less resources. Now the reason why I harp on the resources isn’t when I have just a single window up but when I have a single window with 5+ tabs. Then I feel like the memory is being wasted on Firefox when it should be doing other things. I would almost say Firefox is the new IE but with user created extensions, the competition is running away adding features and Bon Echo is still a ways away.
Thanks for all the comments in regards to Opera and what I missed, I had full intention of pushing this out the door and hoping it would be the first review of its kind but it didn’t take flight till early this morning. My purpose wasn’t to review every little bit of Opera otherwise you’d be stuck with a 15 page review, I simply outlined the browser. Check it out if you are even the littlest bit intrigued by it, you won’t regret it.
June 21st, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Firefox still does not have an feature nor an extension for “text to speech”.Speak which appears on the context menu in Opera is a real good feature.
Great review.
June 21st, 2006 at 5:50 pm
I like the customizability of Opera’s user interface (even if the method for customizing it is awkward). For instance, it’s the only tabbed browser I know of that allows for moving the tab bar on a side such that the tabs are vertically arranged, rather than horizontally, which scales far better when it comes to reading a tab’s caption: Even on a low resulotion you can have 25 tabs open and still read their captions; if you tried that with horizontal tabs, you’d be lucky to see the sites’ icons!
Also I like that a bookmarks bar pops down from the address bar when you put focus into it, and gets out of the way when you navigate. Very sharp.
June 21st, 2006 at 5:50 pm
[…] This review of Opera 9 covers nearly every feature included in Opera including BitTorrent and IRC. Opera is put up against Firefox and uTorrent with very interesting results. Includes screenshots of Opera in action. […]
June 21st, 2006 at 5:51 pm
i have been using Opera since 7.66 and it has always been my preferred browser. Most of the reviews that I read are not well done and not neccessarily correct. Yours is, and I want to say great job. Opera 9 is a great browser.
June 21st, 2006 at 6:13 pm
[…] link […]
June 21st, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I’ve been a long-time fan of Opera.
But in the past 3 months, they have managed to push me away…
I submitted (along with a dozen or so other people) a question concerning opera’s inability to open websites that it was able to open the day before. I was told to “pack your —- and get off the forum”.
I have been running the V9 betas, and all seemed to be well.
Yesterday, I installed the new release… it crashes reguarly, and complains of missing .dll files.
The voice features, which worked in the beta, no longer work.
I have tried to make it work, and I have tried to explain away all of the websites that don’t work with opera as “this website doesn’t work because it isn’t written well enough to work with a GOOD browser.”
Today, I posted a five paragraph explanation of my history, and growing disappointment, with Opera.
Their response was to delete my post 10 minutes after I submitted it, and closed my account.
I have been polite, reasonable, and forgiving with them. The only thing I posted that could be construed as offensive, was when I quoted their techie… and I even posted the “bad” word in l337!
So, I am moving on to FireFox.
Opera may be the “most standard” browser, but the rest of the world seems to live on a diet of “non-standard” web pages that only work on IE or FF!
They (Opera) have a good vision, but their elitist attitude on their support pages, as well as their growing incompatablilty with web sites (like google!), and their inability to release a new version that works WORSE than last week’s beta… it’s all enough for me to throw in the towel and move on to something that may not be as ‘good’, but that at least functions!!!
June 21st, 2006 at 6:26 pm
There was an extension for Firefox that did text to speech. However the developer has not updated since 1.0.3 of Firefox (some old version) and you can get it to work just from the hacks out there to get around the version check. Besides, the voice for Opera is better (less mechanical. I sure do like this feature. I’m kind of a closet Opera user. I still recommend Firefox and I still have my bookmarks in Firefox. Though these days I encourage clients to try both. Good overview.
June 21st, 2006 at 6:30 pm
[…] 新版的Opera 9å·²ç»æ£å¼æŽ¨å‡ºäº†ï¼ŒGomeler.com上对该版本有一个详尽的评论，但我对这个æµè§ˆå™¨å…´è¶£ä¸å¤§ï¼Œæ‰€ä»¥åªæ˜¯ç²—略的看了一下，真æ£æœ‰å…´è¶£çš„朋å‹å¯ä»¥ä»”细阅读。Operaæˆ‘è¯•ç”¨è¿‡å‡ ä¸ªç‰ˆæœ¬ï¼ŒåŒ…æ‹¬æœ€æ–°çš„9.0，ä¸è¿‡é€šå¸¸å¾ˆå¿«å°±åˆ 掉了，相比之下，我还是更喜欢Firefox/Flock，Opera 9ä¸çš„新特性，比如Bittorrent下载和IRCèŠå¤©å¯¹æˆ‘æ¯«æ— å¸å¼•åŠ›ï¼Œè€Œä¸”其对å„个网站的兼容性也ä¸æ˜¯å¾ˆå¥½ï¼Œå½“然它的资æºå 用率è¦æ¯”Firefox低很多，这是Firefox需è¦å¦ä¹ 的。 […]
June 21st, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Try seting up an RSS feed with Opera. It’s a very slick feature.
June 21st, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Pity it is not supported well by websites. The speed is good.
June 21st, 2006 at 7:30 pm
I would highly suggest even just trying out Opera. I’ve been using it since 8 and I’ve been beta testing 9 the whole time. It’s great stuff and I really enjoy it. I really think if more people tryed it more and more people would use it because it really is a great browser.
June 21st, 2006 at 7:44 pm
I especially like Opera 9 for its SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) implementation
June 21st, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Excellent review. I am a dedicated Opera user myself now and used to be a dedicated firefox user. I like Opera’s speed the most. I personally feel that as Opera’s user base and it’s community expands all of it’s weaknesses will dissappear. The biggest right now being widgets, web developer, and plugins support. Without the “Web developer” plugin for Opera I wouldn’t have been able to switch. Now that I found that plugin I have not looked back. I would like to offer my advice for diehard firefox and IE (bah) users, give it a week and I feel you will refuse to go back. I actually have learned of new features of Opera from reading the comments in this review so I would like to thank the contributers there as well.
June 21st, 2006 at 8:49 pm
You forgot :
1)Mail. Better than Outlook and lightening fast searches through everything in the mail account.
2) SVG- A life saver.
3)SPEED! Opera beats every other browser hands down,
4)Acid 2 Compatibility. While this wouldn’t affect the usage per se, but look at the super smooth rendering of the web sites. Specially CSS.
5)Memory leak was a problem with the betas and it hasn’t been conclusively fixed, imo. However, since I am using the Linux version, I don’t see an escalated CPU usage. With multiple tabs opened (often at times 50+), no hassle.
6)Right click, scroll the mouse wheel and walla- you can reach out to any tab.
7)Thumbnail previews- not a great feature (I dont find it useful) but still can be improved with the next release.
June 21st, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Yeah for another great article, Chris! I’m sorry that I’m in a time zone with an 11 hour difference; I don’t find out what you write until much later. I think it’s great though.
Lots of love from Thailand!
June 21st, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I love it when FireFox users comment on “bloat” :-) Opera is around 3.0 megs - which includes RSS/Mail Client/etc etc etc. Lord save us from the bloat puleeze.
June 21st, 2006 at 9:27 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
June 21st, 2006 at 9:51 pm
You forgot the ease of searching.
In the address bar just type g item to search for
and press enter and it searches google for you. No need for that stupid search box. Its unattractive.
June 21st, 2006 at 10:45 pm
[…] Read more […]
June 21st, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Opera simply rockz :D
Its super fast, super sexy, secure and functional
June 21st, 2006 at 11:45 pm
I did not like opera 8.5….had problems rendering alot of pages correctly but this seems to be way better in this 9.0 version and more stable without the cheap feel to it opera 8.5 had. I’m using alot…almost ready to dump firefix soon as I put it through more tests and see if it can fully replace firefox til firefox 2.0 comes out. What opera needs is people to make userscripts for the opera userscripts website (like greasemonkey) for firefox then I’d be fully happy with 9.0
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:05 am
[…] Opera 9 tocmai a aparut. M-am grabit sa-l instalez pentru ca am mai folosit versiunea 8 (incantat de unele caracteristici aparte, cum ar fi mouse gestures si notitele) si eram curios ce s-a imbunatatit. In ciuda factorului noutate -care la mine functioneaza din plin- si a unui numar mare de caracteristici aparte, nu sunt convins. Am accesat cateva site-uri din Opera 9, inclusiv blogul meu si sunt cateva probleme la editorul online, probabil legate de interpretarea CSS. Cititi un review detaliat despre Opera 9. […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:34 am
i’ve been using Opera since version 3.0.
when people stuck on IE, i was using Opera.
Firefox was not even been thought by it makers back then.
all of the features are sooo great, but it just missing 2 main thing, that gonna makes Opera the loser of the browser wars if not fixed in the Opera 10.
1) the lacks of extensions (this is a pretty important one, since it makes its community grow)
2) PAGE VIEWING SUPPORT!!! it is not a secret that many important websites BLOCKS opera. this is SUX.
i just can’t figure out, a young browser like firefox can get full support on yahoo, gmail, and other websites, while opera (now in version 9; with IE in 7; and Firefox in a mere version 2) doesn’t get full support from websites.
this what makes potential low end user (which makes up 90% of the cake; these newbies are the ppl who use IE out of naivety, which are most of IE market share) doesn’t want to make the switch.
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:51 am
What about Gmail chat ? I couldnt activate the Gmail Chat with Opera 9. Should I do some settings changes ??
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:54 am
Opera 9 is great except for the memory leaks. Leaving a torrent download on all night brings your system to a crawl by the morning. Shutting down Opera, and releasing the memory from that state took my system over a minute.
Apart from that the features are great. The mail client is very good, and the default fonts are shiny. Opera’s RSS/ATOM feed handling capabilities are also much better than FireFox’s.
Just for the record, FireFox does have an extension that gives it mouse-gestures.
June 22nd, 2006 at 5:45 am
[…] Uppdatering Gomeler.com har lagt upp en recension av Opera 9. […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 5:46 am
[…] Update Gomeler.com has added a review of Opera 9. […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:09 am
I have been a fan of Opera for over a year now, and am loving Opera 9. For me the accessibility features make it really stand out. The zoom feature is superior to that which I have used elsewhere, and voice is really useful.
I really like the RSS features, which seem to have been improved further since Opera 8.
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:10 am
[…] The Opera 9 browser has a lot of new features that I readily look forward to reviewing. Two of these new features that really caught my eye were BitTorrent support and Widget support. Other features that I enjoyed in my previous review were the IRC client, Opera Mail, and the tabbed browsing interface. One feature that some people may find useful is Opera’s new mobile phone browser, Opera Mini 2.0. Continue here to read full review.. […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:32 am
[…] This review of Opera 9 covers nearly every feature included in Opera including BitTorrent and IRC. Opera is put up against Firefox and uTorrent with very interesting results. Includes screenshots of Opera in action.read more | digg story […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:19 am
[…] Gomeler.com: “Now that I have Firefox, Flock, and Opera to choose from for browsers, I am beginning to notice that I spend more time with Opera and Flock. I guess now Firefox just hasn’t got all the features I expect from a browser.” […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:37 am
[…] This review of Opera 9 covers nearly every feature included in Opera including BitTorrent and IRC. Opera is put up against Firefox and uTorrent with very interesting results. Includes screenshots of Opera in action.read more | digg story […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Some Opera features that I use frequently, but hasn’t been mentioned (or deserves re-mentioning):
â–¶ Opera Notes.
It’s great for quickly saving any text from a webpage along with its URL.
I also use notes to write quick drafts/web forms (like this reply), as they are saved by Opera automatically.
tip: notes can be emailed (right click ⇨ send by mail)
â–¶ Super-fast searching in all aspects of Opera. This ranges from incremental searching (i.e., find-in-page) to searching through ALL your email, to quick-finds in Notes, Bookmarks, History, Links,…even Keyboards/Mouse shortcut configurations.
â–¶ Easily access and diverse user control of the display. Sounds a bit cryptic, but Opera gives me many ways to quickly change how a page is displayed. This includes switching between User/Author style sheets, No/cached/Load images, disable/enable plugins, Fit-to-Width (no horizontal scrolling!), Small screen rendering, and Zooming in/out.
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Opera rulez!
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:46 pm
[…] Opera 9: Another Choice […]
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:53 am
[…] read more | digg story […]
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 am
Whew what a bunch of great comments. I wasn’t aware that Opera was not supported by certain websites but if this is true you can simple change in the preferences what Opera will look like to a website. While this is a work-around and not true support, perhaps as the Opera community grows then support will expand. The Widgets are great and they are comparable to the extensions in firefox, just with a different name. Check it out if you haven’t and if you don’t like it simply delete it.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Nice review! For gmail and google calendar, using F12>Edit Site Preferences>Networks>Mask as Mozilla works. For Google calendar, you have to hit cancel to load it, but it still works well.
Oh, the greatest skin in the world is Tango CL!
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:56 pm
[…] This review of Opera 9 covers nearly every feature included in Opera including BitTorrent and IRC. Opera is put up against Firefox and uTorrent with very interesting results. Includes screenshots of Opera in action.read more | digg story You can also bookmark this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos […]
June 24th, 2006 at 12:20 am
[…] Opera 9: Another Choice […]
June 24th, 2006 at 4:13 am
[…] This review of Opera 9 covers nearly every feature included in Opera including BitTorrent and IRC. Opera is put up against Firefox and uTorrent with very interesting results. Includes screenshots of Opera in action.read more | digg story […]
June 24th, 2006 at 6:22 am
The problem with “Opera was not supported by certain websites” is that the sites should be browser independent. Not only that, they should be media independent. But Google, Yahoo and others still use some outdated tachniques, mostly IE-like JavaScript. FF has strong marketshare and is being talked about. So every incompatibility with FF is treated as site error. Incompatibities with Opera are treated as browser bugs and inability to display pages correctly.
PS. Check out this mouse gesture (for going back): hold down right mouse button and click LMB. Reversing the combination gives you forward. THIS is the key feature of Opera :)
June 25th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Expanding on what Ryan said, right click in any search field and choose “Create Search”. It makes creating those a lot simpler.
June 25th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Opera is a great browser. I am using it right from it’s 6th version. IE was way behind in terms of features at that time. Eventhough IE7 has copied some features of Opera n firefox .. it is still very odd to us and lacks features such as mouse gestures etc.
Firefox is good competition to Opera .. but finally Opera rulez … With it’s 9 release .. it is just rocking with all new features.
June 27th, 2006 at 2:25 am
Nice one Chris, though as others have noted it’s more of a “first glance” rather than a complete review (referring to the Digg’s article title).
I’m a dedicated Opera user for a few years now (since v6?). I switch to Firefox occasionally, but I come back to Opera because it consumes considerably less RAM and it’s got many neat features (Notes, nice implementation for Bookmarks, etc.)
I’ve actually read pretty much all of the comments in this thread and I wanted to note a couple of things:
1. You don’t need to click on the “glasses” icon to get to the “Find in Page” function. Click the “/” character in your keyboard and start typing; this is similar to Firefox’s “Typeahead” (if I remeber the name correctly).
2. Built-in Bittorrent support is nice, but if you want to use another client (read: uTorrent) you should do the following: go to “Tools” → “Preferences” → “Advanced” → “Downloads” and uncheck the “Hide file types opened with Opera” box. You should find the “application/x-bittorrent” MIME type (or just sort by file extensions and look for the “torrent” one); edit it accordingly.
Also, Chris — you may want to save screenshots in the PNG format (or… GIF): JPG is mostly meant for pictures (not graphics) that’s why the screenshots came up grainy.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:58 am
“Firefox still does not have an feature nor an extension for “text to speechâ€.Speak which appears on the context menu in Opera is a real good feature.”
This is actually much more than just text to speech. Opera support VoiceXML (X+V) applications (some demos: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/pizza/pizza.jsp or http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/chinese/chinesefood.jsp).
June 27th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Konstantinos, I noticed the jpeg issue also, my only concern was bandwith. I’m monitoring this to see if I can afford to use png’s so we will see for future articles. The review was no where close to being complete because I was time limited, and I really didn’t have too much experience with Opera before I played around with it .
June 27th, 2006 at 11:06 am
[…] Utilizzo delle risorse di sistema: come riportato in questa recensione, mano a mano che il numero di tab aperti aumenta, l’utilizzo della memoria è molto più ristretto se paragonato a Firefox. Non parliamo poi della CPU! […]
June 28th, 2006 at 6:15 am
I’ve given to Opera 9 a try, it’s a nice piece of SW but: no way! Firefox (IMHO) is much better.
June 29th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
I admire the Mozilla products and the ideas behind them, but Opera has been my preferred browser since version 5. It’s fast, reasonably sleek, packed with features out of the box yet relatively easy on system resources, with great cross-platform support. Nice review :)
July 5th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
I’ve been a Opera fan and promoter since v.4 ish.
One thing that is new and nice about v9 is they have added several logging facilities that are helpful to web developers - debugging javascript, and page parsing etc.
-JD
July 9th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Opera has always been my favorite browser,the current Jul 06 version 9 has difficulty with Java Scripts
which no doubt will be addressed very soon Version 8.54 is solid as a rock. You can only wonder why
anyone would continue to use IE. Re Mozilla yes I also noted the sluggish performance. Opera is the best
browser full stop.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:24 pm
I just wanted to point out a few features of Opera you missed. The mail client is very and i mean very fast compared to outlook and even thunderbird for accessing IMAP accounts.
If you have a mouse with forward and back buttons and lets say you opened up the first page of a forum you can hit the forward button and Opera will activate the link the page labeled “next”. Also you can very easily add a spell checker to opera. And the right click menu presents you with many many more useful functions then firefox.
Also id like to point out that Opera is the smallest download of all the 3 major browsers yet it packs more features without the need for extensions. Its cache keeps pages in memory for when you use the back button. It also has content blocking, per site setting for java and cookies. Native zooming of all page elements. It is also the only browser for the pc that passes the Acid 2 test. It also has the best crash protection i have seen.
The only thing i don’t like is the java-script support as it seems to fumble with some Ajax related stuff. Although i suspect this has more to do with the developers being lazy.
July 24th, 2006 at 1:00 am
Extensions are only there to try and make up for firefox being crap in the first place, if i want all the features of opera i would have to download about 12 extensions, a download manager, mouse guestures, add tab button, x button on the tab, sidebar and more. The opera core is much better and passes the standards tests, they even use the same core on phones, nintendos and inflight entertainment systems.
Opera is a much more secure browser than firefox, extentions are just a giant hole for security breaches, firefox downloads and executes them, even IE activex is better than that. Firefox is always adding features which opera has had before it, its faster and you don’t need to muck around finding the right extensions for a missing feature.
If you use opera you will be using the leading web browser.
Firefox fanboys should have a look at the http://www.firefoxmyths.com website. I don’t care what browser you use but if you want the best get opera.
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:59 am
after the mousegestures, I really got hooked on Right-click+wheel, which allows you to scroll through the open tabs lile ctrl+tab
I keep trying to do it in Excel, or just generally windows as a replacement for alt+tab…
August 16th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
My favourite is the “Paste And Go” feature when you paste a link in the Address bar.
Saves a lot of additional clicks.
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:38 am
im a user of firefox for 8 months. but when i tried opera, i never looked back.
the all-in-one mouse gesture of firefox is not as accurate as opera. opera is the best browser. opera has the best moust gesture.
October 4th, 2006 at 3:47 am
Here I am another Opera fan user. Since version 5!!! my old pentium 133 only admited it, Netscape 6, mozilla or IE 6 were too much for poor it. And the rss/atom feed, that is superb!!
To fill in the comment boxes, just fill in the information you want in the preferences - wand - personal information.
But I ve never been able to use the gestures! :(
December 16th, 2006 at 8:55 am
[…] Opera 9, another choice. […]
December 16th, 2006 at 8:59 am
[…] Opera 9, another choice. […]
December 28th, 2006 at 10:26 am
the reason that Opera keeps stays heavy on the memory after you’ve closed tabs is because you can return to a tab if you’ve closed it. so you can ctrl z (default) and get back that tab. one of my favorite features. yes, i love opera ;)
May 9th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Ðаану-ка ребÑтик голоÑуем!!!
ПриданвайтеÑÑŒ проказники и влдаельцы ÑÑайта gomeler.com ))))
ЧТО ыв будете делать Ñтим летом?!
July 8th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I’d also like to let you know there is an Opera portable that can be used on a portable storage, as well as Firefox portable. You should look into those as well.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Opera has addons or extensions, they are just named Widgets… I’m amazed how people can’t see throuh words. They are more acuratly called widgets because they can float around the deskktop outside the borwser, and they are quite stable. This is something Firefox cannot claim.
I really see no reason why to use firefox after using opera. As a matter of fact, http://www.firefoxmyths.com
November 28th, 2007 at 6:41 am
Hi.
Good design, who make it?
January 7th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Feaggigheldinsodstit
barbareaverna
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
August 29th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]