Not a fat lady in sight... (Opera Web Browser)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	Opera Web Browser
Date:	15/06/01 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast Browser, Can have multiple windows in one instance, Smallish download

Disadvantages: Doesn't do Active X, Experimental WML support is poor, Bad e-mail and messaging clients

It would have made a great logo though I'm sure.

Anyway, Opera in this case doesn't have anything to do with fat ladies, singing, or anything like that.

Rather Opera, in this case, is a still perhaps little-known web browser developed in Norway by a company called (surprisingly enough) Opera Software. It comes in the usual Windows flavour, as well as BeOS, EPOC, Mac, OS/2, and Linux flavours. It also supports a huge array of languages, including many of the Celtic languages now.

Opera is more of a fully integrated communications package than a web browser. It consists of a web browser, e-mail client, and instant messaging client and all of these features are under the control of the one program. I've never been a huge fan of integration, and the e-mail client provided by Opera is not the best. The instant messaging client is pretty poor too, but the browser is what most people will be downloading Opera for, and it is most definitely the best part of the package...

The best thing about the Opera browser is that it is able to open more than one window without creating another instance of the program. When you open a new window using Internet Explorer or Netscape (if you can get it to work!) then you are launching another instance of that program, whereas in Opera you are just creating a new task within the same instance, making it much more efficient and less of a strain on your computer's resources. This means that when you have a lot of windows open, the download and rendering speed of each page is much improved.

Speed is Opera's main selling point. It claims to be "The fastest browser on Earth".
I'm not so sure about that claim. Internet Explorer 5.5 is definitely much faster in URL retrieval on my system, although Opera is faster to render all the items on a page. This is probably down to the fact that Opera follows W3C guidelines much more closely than Internet Explorer. As I have
already said though, it is definitely faster when you have many windows open, so you may want to consider using Opera if you're one of those people who sits with 20 odd browser windows open at a time!

Compatibility is not bad. All the latest HTML, HTTP, XML and Java standards are supported, so you should find that the vast majority of websites are rendered the same as you would expect from one of the major browsers (IE or Netscape - actually probably better than Netscape. I noticed one or two problems in compatibility with Netscape 6). There is also now experimental support for WML - the protocol used for WAP mobile phone pages. This is extremely poor though... I cannot get it to connect to Genie no matter what I do (it always redirects to the normal Genie website) and it has some problems with Mviva and Yell.

The other major problem is that it does not do ActiveX. Not that many developers use ActiveX, but it does cause problems on Microsoft sites... making them impossible to navigate with Opera. Other than that though, compatibility is just as good as with any other browser. You can also make the browser appear to be either MSIE (Internet Explorer) or Mozilla (Netscape) for sites that check your browser type.

The browser also has a better download manager than the standard Internet Explorer one. You can pause and resume downloads, but there can still be problems resuming a download that was lost suddenly if, for example, your connection suddenly cut out, perhaps because your ISP has a two hour cut off... (Freeserve anyone?)

There's also a whole host of excellent accessibility features. Apart from the squillions of supported languages, including many 'minority' languages such as Gaelic, there's the option to control the browser functions entirely from the keyboard - useful if you cannot or prefer not to use a mouse. There's also a zoom function, customisable typefaces, etc, etc.

The e-mail client i
s, in my opinion, far inferior to Outlook Express and even to the Netscape e-mail client.

It does support multiple POP accounts, but there is no support for HTTP or IMAP. You can set the client to check for new messages every 'x' minutes, a la Outlook... but it just really doesn't feel solid. I just prefer a full e-mail program rather than a bolt-on mini program, which is what this is.

I should also mention that newsgroup support is quite poor in Opera.

Likewise, the Instant Messaging client just doesn't feel like a finished program. It's more like a little add-on. It can run on the ICQ network, which is good as ICQ seems to be the messenger of choice for most people (not including me!) but the functions are so limited that the Opera Instant Messaging is not really that functional. You can choose whether or not authorisation is required for people to add you to their contact list, and that's about it.

Opera is small, it is efficient, and the browser is very slick. As a complete communications package it doesn't quite live up to expectations. However, there's nothing to stop you using the Opera browser but continuing to use Outlook Express and ICQ... it doesn't try to make itself the default for everything and take over your system. At the same time though, it's very easy to launch as it can be added to channel bar during the setup.

The free version of Opera is an 8MB download including Sun Microsystems Java2 (the latest Java standard) and features a few small ads at the top of the main program window. You can remove these by paying a small fee to obtain a product code, but they are really not that intrusive.

Personally, I don't think it's worth switching over from IE5.5 but it is well worth downloading and playing with. You might even decide that you want to use it as your default browser, but I guess it depends on your browsing habits...

Summary: