Why I use Opera
on Friday, July 30, 2010Well, when I was exchanging tweets with @dsubies I said that I am an Opera user and he asked me why I use Opera. Since 140 characters are too few to explain it I said him that I will answer him here. Well, long after that, here is the answer.
At the time I started using the Internet the only serious alternatives were Internet Explorer (I'm sorry, I said serious) and Netscape Navigator. Then I discovered Opera, which included interesting innovations like tabs, pop-ups blocker and a download manager. Approximately at the same time, I started using Linux and one of the more exasperating things were the horrible look, the uncomfortable toolkit, which I think it was some Athena variant (I can't explain this, those who lived with this will understand it) and the instability of Netscape for Linux. A few later, while Netscape slowly died in hands of AOL, Firefox appeared, characterized by its resources voracity and its slowness, increasing my bet for Opera. If you add this to the fact that I used to have old computers, I really needed to use a light and agile browser.
More reasons to use Opera?
- Even keeping its lightness it's a very complete browser and it's extendible (using user scripts, widgets and Opera Unite). In only 13 MB (version 10.60 for Linux 32 bits) it includes a web browser, e-mail and news client, mini webserver (i.e. Opera Unite), IRC client, BitTorrent client, RSS reader.
- Its innovativeness. Have you heard about tabs, pop-ups blocker, sessions, real zoom (and not just increasing the font size as others do at this moment) bookmarks synchronization (Opera Link), Opera Turbo, Opera Unite, user scripts, widgets, mouse gestures, Speed Dial, voice commands and text reading, custom searches, visual tabs, ...? I'm sure you have heard about some of these since the most of them had been included in other browsers, either built-in or through extensions, and those not yet included I'm sure will be soon. But the first browser to include all these features was Opera, so why waiting for other browsers to copy it when you already have it in Opera?
- Even being a very simple browser for newbies (as I checked with less experienced users), it can also be a very powerful browser for advanced users allowing you to easily modify button bars and menus even including JavaScript buttons and menus.
- It also has interesting features for web developers like Opera developer tools and Opera Dragonfly.
- Site preferences allows us to customize browser options for every web site: customized style sheets (CSS), browser identification (Opera, Internet Explorer or Firefox), enable or disable for every site features like images, sounds, plugins, popups, content blocker, JavaScript and JavaScript options, referrers, ...
- Opera supports open standards and is one of the first browsers to pass Acid tests.
And all this is builtin without needing extensions. But if you need more, as I said, you can also extend it through user scripts, widgets and Unite.
And for more information: Opera Help, Opera Tips and Opera features.
Note: although most of the web site is only in English, the browser and help pages are available in multiple languages.
Note 2: this text was written for Opera 10.10, but the latest version is Opera 10.60.