Need for Speed. Review on Opera

I had never liked Internet Explorer from the time when I got a net connection, some time way back in '97-98. I used to use Netscape Navigator then, which was pretty fast and stable. I had always thus used Netscape... 3, 4, 4.5, 6, 7 and 7.1.

Suddenly someone told me about this browser called 'Opera'. I had actually knew about it much before, and had also gave it a try when it was in a buggy state. But after downloading Opera 7.50, my opinions changed about the browser.

Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

Opera is all about speed. Good efficient coding reflects in the speed with which webpages are downloaded and displayed. It downloads the important text portions first, and then downloads the formattings, thus letting us to go through the page faster than Netscape and of course IE, would. It also supports pipelining, and can make around 128 connections to a website at a time.

Safety and Privacy

It is a real safe browser. No code loopholes, an inbuilt pop-up blocker that blocks unwanted popups depending on user's choice, cookie deleter that can delete stored cookies upon exit, cache deleter which deletes cached pages and images, storing wand passwords with a master password......... its all in it.

UI

It has a cool and neat user interface. New webpages can be opened in tabbed windows within one window, rather than opening them in separate windows. The web elements - radio buttons, check boxes, text boxes... all gets a new style with its built in default style sheet.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Browsing the web without the mouse is an added advantage for Opera. Simple keyboard shortcuts allows one to open webpages, perform searches in various search engines, cycle through opened webpages, go back, go forward, etc.

Mouse Gestures

Opera includes a feature called Mouse Gestures. By simply clicking and moving the mouse in different directions, different actions can be done.

Additional Features

Opera has many more additional features, such as typing 'g' and whatever you want to search for, would open Google's search results page. Many more search engines can be configured. Bookmarks are well managed too. There's a contact section, where you can store your contact's information; a Notes section, where you can type out notes which you can later insert into textboxes; a Download Manager, where you can monitor your downloads.

Additionally, it also has a built in Mail Client and Chat Client included within it. The zoom function is also splendid. It can also emulate other browsers such as text-based browsers and the like.

But despite of these many factors, many websites still doesn't support Opera...I just dunno why.

Whatever it may be, Opera will surely rule the browser segment one day.