Yet another review of Opera 9. “There is a lot more to this feature rich, standards compliant web browser and each day I find new ways of using Opera to heighten my browsing comforts. Definitely the developers of Firefox – another web browser that I am really fond of – can imbibe a couple of the path breaking features found in Opera.”
I think this was a great review.
I barely used Opera 8 due to its instability, not to mention quite a few annoyances when running in OS X (such as the Emacs-style shortcuts ctrl+a, ctrl+e etc not working). With Opera 9, however, I’ve started using Opera much more on my Mac (I’ve used the weekly development builds). Come to think of it, I’ve used it almost exclusively for the last couple of months, and it has become rock stable. Safari doesn’t crash often here, but Opera 9 has it beat hands down. If Opera crashes, all the tabs will be there upon restart, so not much is lost. (Saft gives Safari the same feature.)
It’s also very fast and has a great set of shortcuts. I love being able to use ‘z’ and ‘x’ for navigating back and forth, not to mention navigating the links of a web page using shift+arrows. Content blocking as well as site-specific preferences makes it even better. Also, using 218MB of memory after running for a week having over 50 tabs open and almost 100 tabs instantly available from the “Window -> Closed” menu (or Apple+Alt+z) is fairly solid, I think. I’m running weekly now, so I don’t know if it will be less using a final version.
All in all it’s truly a great browser, and if you haven’t tried it, you really should.
How are using the Z and X keys great? They are spaced pretty far apart here, and not very convenient. Are they at least reassignable? I have only used Opera 5, btw, as that was the ONLY version available for my platforms of choice, and probably never will be available again.
Not sure what kind of keyboard you are using, but on my keyboard the Z and X keys are right next to each other. It’s convenient to me.
Every shortcut key in Opera is reassignable. IMO, Opera’s greatest strength is its excellent keyboard shortcut support.
If you go into the Preferences in the Advanced tab under Shortcuts you have the ability to change any keyboard shortcut that opera uses.
For example, they changed the default shortcut to open a new tab from ctrl-n to ctrl-t to be more like firefox in opera 9. However, I’ve been using it since opera 5 and ctrl-n has become so second nature that I just went in and changed it back.
You’d be surprised how much you can truly configure opera to your own needs. Even after 5+ years of using it I find new things all the time.
Z and X are next to each other in a QWERTY keyboard; what 99% of people use.
99% ? You must be kidding, right ?
How? Easily – on QWERTY keyboards they are next to each other. If you have a different type of keyboard, re-assign the keys to whatever is convienent for you. I believe as of Opera 9, QWERTY is the prodominate single keyboard layout. Yes, if you add up all the other keyboard layouts all over the world, there will be more than QWERTY. As for the single individual key layout, QWERTY is #1. So, the smart folks who write Opera decided to use a default keyset for the #1 popular keyboard layout. They also gave everyone who doesn’t use QWERTY a way to change it to suit their layout! How cool is that?
As for running Opera 5, and your platform of choice, there is only one platform Opera only runs at version 5 on – OS/2. If that’s still your platform of choice, more power to you, but that’s like running windows 3.11 still. MAYBE Windows 95. If you want to run old outdated OSs, then expect old outdated software!
BeOS is still at 3.x of Opera, so no way you’re running 5 on it.
If I were Opera, I wouldn’t have even made a version for OS/2. Waste of time and resources for what is essential a dead OS except for legacy ATMs and such.
The author didn’t cover every aspect of Opera, but what he did, he “got right”, unlike many reviewers.
Opera is interesting but damn! can’t they make better themes??
Dude, there are hundreds of skins for Opera available on my.opera.com.
and they are all as if 3 year olds made them.
The standard Windows theme looks superb on Windows. What platform are you using?
Some of those damn kids designs:
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=3465
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=3249
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=1998
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=3899
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=3784
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=181
TBH my impression is that Opera’s themes average a higher quality; Going through their gallery in order of Newest, I can generally see at least a few themes per page that look tempting. Firefox’s gallery isn’t quite so pleasing. Of course, this stuff kinda depends on personal taste. (Charamel for the win on Firefox.)
Definitely the developers of Firefox – another web browser that I am really fond of – can imbibe a couple of the path breaking features found in Opera.
Oh please, no more damned features in Firefox! That’s what extensions are for for crying out loud… The Mozilla devs have already broken their “no more bloat” promise quite massively, let’s have some slimming down and speeding up instead of more chrome… It would be nice to have a standalone, fully functional, open-source browser that isn’t a sluggish resource glutton.
The 100% 24-carat gold feature for me is the “zoom”. Unlike Firefox et al where ctrl/+ increases the type size in relation to the page, often causing overlap, Opera zooms the whole page, pictures and all.
When you run a 1600×1200 desktop this is pure magic – I leave it at +20% (or is it 30% – can’t remember now) all the time and everything is clear and legible, no rescaling.
This is why Opera9 is now my default browser.
at least for me – a lot of sites just refuse to open, it’s extremely unstable and buggy – so bad I’d think I was using firefox (which has to be the most unstable and buggy crap I’ve ever used). You read up on Opera’s forums and you’ll see a LOT of people having problems, many of whom had no issues in the beta.
Case in point, I ended up going BACK to the Opera 9 Beta, build 8414 becuase I had no problems at all in that version.
Begs the question, how do you break so many things between the last public beta and the final?
I’m keeping a beady eye on the forums, too. At present I’m using Opera 8.54, without any problems whatsoever. Ever since I started using it, this March, I remain impressed by the speed of this browser and all the customizability options it presents you with. When the so-called ‘Final’ of Opera 9 was released, I was amazed – I had been following the whole beta saga, and had the impression 9 was simply not mature enough, there were still too many bugs, to be given to the world as a finished product. And I was not the only one. Since then, as I said, I’m keeping a beady eye on the forums. I will only ‘upgrade’ when this final really IS final.