I did the research. It seemed to be obfuscating and contradictory. The world was globally connected, and yet it revolved around IE. I embarked on a quest to become more; I sought to rise above the endless tribulations plaguing so many others. I wanted to help. I wanted to transcend the masses; I wanted to Be Free.
It was by happenstance. Discovery. A story now lost due the legend it spawned. It started with the tale of another way. An alternate source of unseen power that was said to be unattainable before, yet now, it appears, reborn. Opera. I wished to experience the supposed functionality and form for myself.
These past 7 months, I have been using the browser in tandem with Firefox. I notice many similarites, even down to the command prompts. The article that intrigued me to discover was that most of what the monster that Firefox has become was once innovated and introduced by Opera years earlier. In fact, it has decidedly innovated and recaptured the market in the past few years it helped pave more than a decade before. Once a corporation's best asset, Opera became a free web browser only a few years ago, and it has risen to become a sleeper titan of a program. Compact & Integrally-engineered, it is a sonic and secure web browser that can be seemlessly transitioned to your mobile device, gaming device(the Nintendo Wii uses the browser within its gaming engine) and every single operating system conceivable. It has now been 25 months operating the Opera system exclusively, and I am here to exult the praises for such an elite browser that others are continually seeking to mimic its abundant features, yet still fall short in completing the monumental task of unseating the prime being.
If you do not already operate the Opera browser, and would like to try
the experience of running a highly-acclaimed, superbly-secure, & integrally-
instituted web application, you may find the download here, for whichever OS
you find most appropriate: http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?custom=yes
[I'm thinking I should get back into marketing after re-reading my iterations of high acclamation) :p
It is now on ver. 9.51 (I guess the basis for this entire epiphany to finally promote the product I hold so dear now is that I just received the notice to update the browser from v9.27... We can leap into and experience the new age together)
Questions, commentary, & discussion... I am open and most willing to debate the topic. :callme:
*Although the following quotes are a year and two years old respectively, they accurately portray the supremacy of the program. Quotes supplied by members here and from elsewhere (wtalk).
wvosis wrote:http://www.opera.com/
Opera; they tout themselves as having the best security (which according to Secunia they're right at least as of this writing right now) and having the best formatting layout (which according to the Acid2 Test again they're right). I like it so far since it has most of the same features that Firefox has and mouse gestures already built in. It's not as "plug-in friendly" as Firefox so there was a fair amount of customization that I had to do to get Opera to look just right for me.
All that being said, give it a try. Everyone...honestly.
BTW I don't believe that SeaMonkey is Mozilla Foundation per se they're affiliated but not the same body.
PS
Secunia's Opera report
Compare with Mozilla's report
Acid2 Test Results through wikipedia
hobblyhoy wrote:Well let me start off by saying that I once too was a firefox fanboy. Hell I'd been with mozilla since firebird. Then I decided to give opera a chance. They had just made there browser free so I thought, eh. Why not? Since then I am NEVER going back. The features and stability of opera have one me over for a lifetime. Alright, On with the show...
I. Myths and Truths
MYTH: Firefox invented tabs. FALSE opera developed "tabbed browsing"
MYTH: Firefox is the most secure browser. FALSE the latest version of firefox features a variety of unpatched security flaws. Currently the most secure browser is Opera, with 0 [known] unpatched vulnerabilities
MYTH: firefox had the first built in popup blocker and integrated search. FALSE take a wild guess as to who came up with these first.
Please visit this link for more information: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD ... Myths.html
1. The quick access icons
When on any website you can grab and drag the emoticon on that website onto the a set of quick access buttons. These buttons make navigating to websites MUCH easier. I outlined them in that dark yellowy colour in this screenshot here:
From left to right is Neowin / Albinoblacksheep / Wtalk
2. Turning off scripts for specific pages.
You ever get to one of those prank sites that locks you with some kind of popup or flashy thing? Weelll with opera you can easily disable those on the first box. Heres an example:
Point in case: http://home.comcast.net/~wolfand/ and http://www.birthday.jamontoast.net
3. Display photo information
Straight from opera you can see a photo's editing information before you have to download it. It even shows you stuff that isnt normally displayed in the windows information viewer like if the program was edited with photoshop CS for mac it will say so. Heres a brief view of what that looks like:
4. Jumpstart on downloads
As soon as you click a download link. The download starts. Even while your on the Open / Save as screen. This gets you a nice little jumpstart on download.
5. Continue where you left off
say youve got 15 tabs open, then you close opera. As soon as you open up opera again it loads all those tabs back into place! It automaticly saves them constantly as well. So if opera crashes it just puts you RIGHT back to were you were(you actually get a choice of doing this or your homepage). This feature can be turned off quite easily if you REALLY like your homepage.
6. Support for bittorrents
Thats right. From inside opera itself you can easily download torrents to your computer. It places them in the same location as your other downloads as well for easy viewing. Of course it also shows your upload/download speeds. As always Heres screenys:
7. Customizable Search engine
This is definitly a first of kind. You can actually goto your favorite searching website (maybe gamefaqs if you use them alot, or possibly something like katz.ws/phazeddl/serialdevil)
Heres how it works. You goto your favorite search site area place, and you right click in the area where you would do your search. Scroll down to "create search" and click it, Like so:
After this you get a box wanting to know what you want to name it and what you want the shortcut to be. I shortened mine for simplicity…
After this you can find you search in the drop down box next to the Google search box, or you can simply type “d (search term)” into the address bar.
As you can see so far opera has a trend of making things as easy as humanly possible
8. Content Blocker
This is basiclly a more powerful/easy to use version of firefox's plugin "adblock"
Here’s how it works: you right click anywhere in the page that’s not right clickable content (text or background) and choose “Block Content” This makes everything but images on the screen grey out where you click on everything that’s an Ad. At this point you click on “Done” and it won’t show anything from that point on. Here’s an example:
This features even works on things like flash documents.
9. Pop-up Blocker
I dont know how it does it but this is a suped up pop-up blocker that somehow knows when a pop-up is bad, and when its good. Sure it fails from time to time, but so do ALL popup blockers. This is the best popup blocker Ive used so far between google toolbar and firefox.
10. The search function
It was unannounced yet improved in this version. Some may not like the new style but it makes scrolling threw pages much easier. It basically goes through and highlights all the terms in yellow, and the current marked term appears in green background.
I must say that this is the ONE area where firefox wins I have always loved the realtime search of firefox. I can live without though. No biggie.
UPDATE! Turns out opera has another search function thats like firefoxs but its EVEN BETTER!!!
YAY! opera FTW All you have to do is press the period key on the number pad and a mini search function on the bottom pops up.
11. Grabbing rapidshare links when they've been shortened.
Ahhhh, YA. I got your attention now HAVN'T I?? :)
Alright so we all know how this works. You goto download some 50 file software only to realize that whoever coded the links did it incorrectly so that they turned into links, which then caused them to shorten.
This means you cant copy and paste into rapidget right? WRONG! with opera you can go up tools then down to "Links" Youll get a popup on the side of the screen. Scroll down until you see the rapidshare links.
Now click the first link. Hold [Shift] then click the bottom link. It should look like this:
Alright now just right click any of the now selected blue area and click on "copy link address" Now just paste into rapidget!
This right here is the PERFECT situation to use this:
http://www.wtalk.org/showthread.php?t=15885 (sorry sub)
Are you really going to right click > copy link adress all of those links???
12. Mouse Commands
This is a feature that you all probably have in firefox, but opera has it built in. I dont seem to make as much mistakes when I use opera's on as well. One thing you should get used to is for [right click + down] is a new tab instead of UP. This may seem like a pain in the begining and the temptation is strong to change it to up, but youll find over time its actualy MORE comfortable to right click down, rather then up. Everything else is roughly the same. down + right = close tab. down + up = refresh
You can customize more commands.
13. If you have a microphone you can talk to opera
This seems a bit weird but if you have a microphone and your just too damn lazy to click for yourself anymore you can click an action key and tell opera to do something (go back/go foreward)
This feature Ive noticed isnt available on the Mac version of opera. I've never used this and it seems a bit silly in my opinion.
14. Widgits!!
Not just for macs anymore :P
The downside of these is that you tend to forget about and never use them. I could also see these as being a bit of resource hog. The average size of the widgit is a bit oversized too. Hers a screeny (hehe, yes thats mac logo in the center, YES its a windows machine) anyways:
15. Site Specific Preferences
Basically this lets you set specific preferences for certain sites. For example I can go to a warez site that I may not completely trust and right click on the page and choose “Site preferences” Where I then change popups to “block all popups” and do other things like….Block all cookies, disable sound, gif animations, java, and plug-ins, mess with the style of the page, disable JavaScript, as well as disable other smaller details.
16. The trash Can
Ever close a tab you REALLY didnt mean to close? Ever want to go back to that link that your buddy sent you an hour ago? Now you can!
Its called the trash can.
To the right of the tabs and above the google bar, youll see a little rubbish bin. Go ahead, and click it!
Hey, theres everything you've been to!
If the tab you want was the last tab that you closed, you can press CTRL + Z and reopen it.
Bottom line: Opera is solid, fast, fun, and fully functional.
UGHHH. Were at the end. After writing all this up and taking screenshots Ive put in a good 2.5 hours into this guid of how Opera pwnz Firefox. I appreciate any comments. Good or Bad. And I would LOVE it if you could make the switch to the superpower that is Opera.
Thanks for baring this thing all the way through,
-Nathan (aka hobblyhoy)
http://www.opera.com/download/
EDIT: 8/28/06 added trash bin
