Introducicng the Opera Web Browser

The first thing to know about the Opera Web Browser is that it is not a strictly a free product and it is a propriety browser (e.g. not open source). To grab a version with no ads in it and a free upgrade to the next version, it is $39 USD for the desktop version. (Opera 6 is available at $29 USD for your 3G enabled mobile/cellular phone).

Luckily for us who wish to check it out there is a free version that has an embedded advert within one of the toolbars and a whole host of links already included in your favorites to various corporate sites, and it has an indefinite evaluation period. I have downloaded and installed the free version and I have seen no ill effects from it, and it doesn't affect your browsing experience other than maybe you're missing at most 5% of the usually viewing area due to a small banner ad at the top of the window. No spy-ware or ad-ware was included within the free install.

Secondly it is available for pretty much every Operating System that you can think of that has a some sort of windowing system (i.e. it is available for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 and Psion). It great to see this sort of cross platform support. Usually software is only restricted to the various versions of Microsoft Windows and maybe a Mac/Linux port.

First Impressions

First Impression: Opera start up

It took me some time figure out how to reset the homepage away from http://portal.opera.com/. I expected to see it under one of the menus such as Tools > Preferences, or something similar, however it is under Navigation > Set home page (just in case you get stuck).

The browser is very different from both IE and Firefox. At first I felt that Opera looked very bloated but it isn't. All of it is features that you may use, and all the toolbars are pretty easy to add, remove and customize. In fact there are so many features I doubt I have scraped the surface while using it for the past fortnight. In fact it'll be another year until I think I would be using all the features that are packed into this browser.

Also the speed of Opera must be mentioned. Opera seems to download the entire page first and then render the page very quickly, Whereas Firefox and Internet Explorer seem to download and render simultaneously. When I say very quickly, this is an understatement; I should have said that Opera is absolutely phenomenally fast at rendering web pages. I haven't timed it but it is as quick as my Firefox setup that has a plug-in to stop Flash being displayed unless I choose it to. Opera was rendering the pages as quick as this setup with the Flash on the web pages being displayed. I was amazed at the speed. Also the browser isn't heavy on system resources at all and is incredibly stable. Opera hasn't crashed or even momentarily locked up once yet. The interface is constant and responsive.