(Image source: Opera.)
Opera has been my primary browser for a while now. I still use Firefox to update my WordPress sites and IE7 for Windows Updates but Opera — hardened by disabling Javascript and cookie support and further fortified by the mighty Proxomitron — is my choice for the bulk of my surfing.
There are features in Opera I find indispensable now. Mouse gestures, Speed Dial, context menu options for dictionary and Wikipedia lookups as well as translation, the ability to reload closed tabs, searching eBay and Google from the address bar … the list goes on.
Those aren’t necessarily unique features — if they aren’t in Firefox’s default configuration, they’re available via extensions or will be reproduced in a future version soon enough — but taken in toto, they’ve made surfing the web a more pleasant experience for me.
Never content to sit on its heels, Opera the company is constantly adding and tweaking features to Opera the browser yet remarkably, the newest version of the browser, version 9.5, is faster than previous versions. Whatever they’re doing in Norway, they’re doing it right.
That’s not to say the changes are always for the better. They might be better for the Opera userbase in general but not necessarily better for me specifically.
Continued…
