Why I prefer Opera?

April 29th, 2006

Technorati Tags: browsers, Freeware, opera

I’ve been a net user for pretty long since the days of Mosaic & Netscape, and at one time, I actually preferred IE over Netscape! But now, Opera 9 (although it’s in beta) seems to be the browser of choice for me despite all the good reviews about Firefox. I won’t deny the fact that you can download extensions for Firefox to do what I list here but here are a few reasons why I prefer Opera:

1. It’s Smaller but Feature-Packed

Opera can be called the cili padi of all browsers, which packs a punch in its small package - just a 3.8MB download, it includes a browser, chat, mail client, RSS reader, bittorrent client, popup blocker and more. In a 4 year old laptop like mine, I like to keep it as small and as efficient as possible.

2. It’s Fast

Numerous tests by alot of people have confirmed that Opera’s the fastest browser out there on Windows. However, I need to point out that not only is the rendering engine of Opera fast, but there are a few features which make it appear faster which I’ll elaborate later.

3. Sessions

Like most net users, there are a few sites I frequent everyday and what better than to have all the sites displayed at once when I start my browser. Also, sometimes when I’m researching on something (e.g. like checking out a place which I’m planning to travel to) and I have like a gazillion tabs opened, wouldn’t it be such a trouble bookmarking each of them? What about the time when some program starts crashing your computer - will the sites that you were reading just a few moments ago be saved? The answer’s Opera’s Session Saver. It saves all the tabs which are opened, even to the extent which line of the page you stopped reading!

4. Bookmarks

Every one likes bookmarking sites that they like, but what about bookmarking a few sites together? Opera can do that. E.g. I goto about 5 forums everyday and I find it a hassle typing the addresses in or even clicking the bookmarks one by one. What I need to do is bookmark all this sites under a folder in Bookmarks and give it a nickname e.g. “forums”. So, the next time I wanna visit these forums, I just type “forums” in my address bar and all 5 sites will open up in their own tabs!

5. Integrated Mail and RSS Reader

Opera’s M2 mailing client has to be one of the greatest time saver in Opera! I know some ppl prefer Outlook/Eudoramail/whatever but the speed of searching in M2 is incredible! And there’re a few functions in GMail that was already in M2 since 2003 e.g. threaded conversations, labels (called Filters in M2), keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, etc. Also, the RSS reader’s just perfect for me, I use it mainly to tell me whenever there are new items in the websites I frequent and then just go to the website or in the case that I’m offline, I can just read it from Opera too.

6. Mouse Gestures

Mouse gesture is probably the most addictive feature in Opera. Once you’re familiar with it, you would expect all applications to support it. Basically, it’s a way for users to control Opera by using the mouse and drawing imaginary lines on the screen e.g. by drawing an ‘L’ while holding down your right mouse button it closes the tab, draw an ‘I’ downwards and it opens a new tab, etc. Also, if you don’t like the way the default mouse gestures work, you’re free to change them to your own liking!

7. Fast Forward/Rewind

Another unique feature in Opera I use frequently. Rewind is an improvement on the ‘Go Back’ feature where for example, you visited Site A and clicked a few links within the site followed by Site B and clicking a few links again and then Site C all in the same tab. Clicking on Rewind brings you back to Site B’s 1st page that you visited, and clicking on Rewind again brings you back to Site A’s 1st page. Fast Forward meanwhile guesses the next page of a website if the coding allows for it. E.g. clicking on Fast Forward (or doing a mouse gesture towards the right) in a multipage article brings you to the next page without you finding the link for it.

8. Trashcan, Undo Close Tab

Sometimes, I’ll accidentally close a tab which I was looking just a few moments before I switch to another tab or probably wanted to read the previous article in a tab which I’ve closed. But don’t worry, by just using Ctrl+Z you can undo the closing of the tab and all will be back to normal. What if you want a tab that’s closed a few hours ago? It’s most likely in the Trashcan and clicking on the trashcan icon shows you the list of all the tabs you’ve closed previously. Very handy in the age when we just scan through most webpages.

9. Search

I like my tool bars to be clean and pretty as possible, so I don’t like having the Google/Amazon/Ebay Search box around to obstruct the interface and hence, I removed them. So that doesn’t mean I have to goto google’s homepage just to search I can do it on my address bar! Just by typing “g searchterm”, I’ll go straight to google’s results of “searchterm” in no time. Typing “z searchterm” searches in Amazon, “e searchterm” searches in Ebay and “f searchterm” searches within the page itself. Want more shortcuts, you can do that too but needs abit of tweaking.

10. Fit-to-Width, Full Screen

Sometimes I like tiling up a few websites so that I can refer to each of them simultaneously, unfortunately, some of them are strictly designed for a certain screen resolution only. So, here comes Fit-to-Width, it squeezes the website into the width of the window that you opened so you can still see all the text within it. Sometimes, I just want to focus on browsing and do nothing else, so I use Full Screen so that I can see more of the website. What about the address bar? Just click Ctrl+F8 and the address bar will appear, do the same again, and it’ll disappear. What about changing tabs? Use the wheel gesture. Hold down the right mouse button and scroll using the wheel to scroll through the other tabs.

11. Notes

Occasssionally, we need to copy chunks of texts here and there, but copying from a website and pasting them somewhere else like on Word/Notepad takes time. By using Ctrl+Shift+C you copy to Notes and the chunk of text you highlighted is saved to Notes. You can then do this multiple times and it’ll all be saved under Notes, where you can do a quick search later on for easy reference, etc. Furthermore, if you double-click the title of a note, Opera loads the page you were looking at when you made the note so you won’t forget where your source is if you wanted more info from it!

Well, there’s more to it than just the 11 above and I haven’t even covered the Popup Blocker,Site Preferences, Panels, Chat, Customisation, UserJS, Widgets, etc. So, if you wanna try out Opera, why not start today?

Link

For starters I would recommend 30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover to pick up tips and tricks on how to use Opera.

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