5 Reasons I Prefer Opera (Opera Web Browser)

Member Name: sunpig

Product:	Opera Web Browser
Date:	04/08/01 (378 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Faster browsing, incredibly useful features, free download

Disadvantages: Not all web pages accept that Opera is a valid browser, some web sites won't work at all

If you're relatively new to this whole Internet thing, you may not remember the olden days when there was no such thing as Internet Explorer. Web browsers started out as simple things (ah, good old NCSA Mosaic!), used by researchers for publishing papers and documents. Then came Netscape, and an increase in popular and recreational usage of the Web. Around 1995, Microsoft decided they wanted a piece of the pie (it was only later they decided they would like to have the *whole* pie), and out popped Internet Explorer.

Now, in 2001, the Internet is one of the main reasons people have a computer at home. Your web browser is now much, much more than a simple document reader: it's your gateway to the on-line world. Chances are, it's the first thing you start up when you switch on PC, and it's the last thing you shut down. It's a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a telephone, a shopping centre, a village hall. There are few people who would dispute that it's a communications revolution.

And more likely than not, your gateway to this revolution is Internet Explorer. But why?

Two reasons. First of all, Microsoft fought a hard battle to make Internet Explorer the default browser for anyone using any form of Windows. Because most people use a Windows PC (sorry, Mac fans), and have a natural reluctance to change default options, Microsoft was going to win that battle from the start. (Although recent court actions in the US have proved this to be an illegal business tactic, this conclusion is about five years too late for it to matter.) But secondly, Internet Explorer is a *very good* product! It had features that people wanted, and after version 5 it was *much* faster at displaying web pages than Netscape was. As we all know, on the Internet speed matters.

But is there anything *even better* out there? For me, the answer is yes, and the product is Opera.

I say "for me," because of the way I
use the Web. My browsing habits include reading a lot of sites whose primary purpose is to serve up news, opinion or information in text format. I'm out to absorb as much information as I can, as quickly as possible. I don't care about pretty logos or snazzy animations. Just plug me into the wire and feed me from the source!

I first tried Opera earlier this year, when I was revamping my own web site. I was trying the page designs in the various versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape. I'd just read an article about Opera, so I decided to try it out as well. After just a few hours of using version 5.11, though, I knew I had something special on my hands. So I kept on using it, and being pleasantly surprised by how good it was. And a few days later I was hooked completely. At work, I still use Internet Explorer (most of the projects I work on use IE as their sole target platform), but it seems awkward and slow now, just like Netscape did when I first switched to IE.

So here is the list of things that, in my opinion, make Opera a better product than IE (in reverse order):


5) Multiple Document Interface (MDI)
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With IE, if you open up multiple windows, each window gets its own button in the taskbar at the bottom of your screen. Opera works differently: you open up a single window for the browser application, then any web pages you open up appear as multiple windows *within* the master browser window.

This kind of interface is called a "Multiple Document Interface" (the application contains multiple documents within its window). The way IE does it is know as a "Single Document Interface" (each document has its own window). Older versions of Microsoft Word (Word 97 or earlier) used the MDI style, but with Word 2000, it went over to SDI. I personally prefer the MDI way, because I often browse with a lot of web pages open at the same t
ime, and it doesn't clog up my taskbar quite so much.


4) Gestures
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These will be familiar to anyone who has played the game "Black and White". A gesture is a short way of accessing a particular function, or of issuing a particular command, simply by moving your mouse in a particular way. For example, if you hold down the right mouse button, then move the mouse down, Opera will open up a new browser window. Move the mouse down, then left, will minimize the current window, and so on.

The most useful gesture is the shortcut to the "back" button: hold down the right mouse button, then click the left button. I find this a beautiful feature, because it shows a fabulous understanding of user-centred design. First of all, studies have shown that the "back" button is the most used button in the browser. Also, the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has a rule called "Fitts' Law," which states that the time it takes you to click on a button depends on two things: how far away the button is, and its size. The farther away the button is, the further you have to move your mouse. And the smaller the button is, the more you have to concentrate to hit it precisely.

With the "back" gesture, you don't have to move the mouse *at all*. The back button has effectively become as large as the entire browser window, and it is always right underneath your current mouse position.

Of all the features in Opera, this one is the cleverest.


3) Open all bookmarks in a folder
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Opera, like Netscape and IE, allows you to group bookmarks (or favourites) into folders. What Opera also allows you to do, is open up all of the bookmarks in a folder (into separate windows) with just a single click.

There are a number of web sites (news, cartoons) that I like to read every day. I have all of th
ese grouped into a single "daily" folder, so that when I fire up my PC in the morning, I can make one stop, and have all my favourite regular sources appear right away.


2) Toggle images on/off
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A web page typically consists of a body of text, with a bundle of images (graphics, logos, photographs) scattered around the page. The body of the text contains a list of what these images are. What actually happens when you load up a web page, is that the web browser reads in the body of text, and then goes off to download the list of images.

Opera gives you the option of *not* downloading these images. By not downloading the images, you get to see the web page as soon as the browser has grabbed the text of the page. This is inevitably faster than waiting for the pictures to come down the pipe, especially if you've got an old modem, or if the Internet just happens to be running like treacle in the evening.

Now, Internet Explorer also gives you the option of not displaying images. But to do this you have to go into the guts of the settings and click on a fairly obscure option. In Opera, you can do this with a single click of a button on the toolbar. So if you've downloaded a page without the images, then decide you want to see them after all, click on the button, and it will go off and retrieve them for you. Or, you can click on each image placeholder (the location where the image will end up within the body of the page), and download them individually.

For example, I visit www.dilbert.com every day. But I make sure to switch the images off, because there are *dozens* of them, and it takes *ages* to download the whole page, when all I want is just the daily strip. With images switched off, I get the page in seconds, then click on the placeholder for the day's cartoon to retrieve just it. Much faster.


1) Open new window in the backgrou
nd
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If I'm reading through a web page that has hyperlinks throughout the text, I usually want to follow those hyperlinks to see what the article is referring to. In IE, you can click on the link, and go straight to the linked page, but then you lose your place in the original document. Or you can right-click, and select "open in new window", which starts up a new IE window. But this opens up the new window *in front* of the window with your original article, so you have to click, or Alt-Tab back on the original window to get back to where you were.

With Opera, by holding down Shift+Ctrl and clicking on a hyperlink, it loads up this new page *in the background.* You can keep reading the original document, while Opera quietly goes off and retrieves the new page without interrupting you. The, when you've finished reading the original article (or whenever you feel like), you can go and read the linked page.

This is absolutely the top feature in Opera as far as I'm concerned. To take the web site "The Register" (www.theregister.co.uk) as an example: I go to their home page, which shows a list of headlines. I scroll down the page, shift-ctrl-clicking on interesting headlines as I go. By the time I get to the bottom of the list, Opera has loaded up most of the news articles in the background. I can then read each one in its separate window, and close them down in turn. It's like browsing along a bookshelf, plucking out the books that interest you, and putting them in a shopping basket for reading later.


There are numerous other interesting and useful features in Opera (like built-in email, instant messaging, and the zoom function, which is great for web pages with tiny text), but the five features above are so valuable to me that I'm willing to overlook its down side: not all Web pages work with it. The reason for this is that so many Web
sites assume that everyone visiting them will be using either IE or Netscape, that they have tuned their pages exclusively for these browsers. Most sites and pages work just fine. When it does go wrong, then at best you will find that a feature like a help button doesn't work properly. At worst, you'll get a rude message telling you that you should upgrade to a "modern" browser like IE4 or Netscape 4. (Honest! I've seen this.)

And, unfortunately, DooYoo is one of the sites that occasionally produces error messages. On the plus side, Opera can be configured to minimize these messages. (Having to click "OK" on an error message every time I went to a page on DooYoo was quite annoying until I found out how to get rid of them.) For the sites that just refuse to work at all, though, IE is still necessary. But unless you're running Linux (sigh), this is an acceptable fall-back option.

Opera is currently available as a free download from www.Opera.com, or you can choose to pay $39 for a registered version. The only difference between the versions is that in the free version, you have to accept a banner advert stuck in the toolbar. $39 is a very small price to pay for a very sophisticated piece of software. It's certainly worth it to me. But with a free version available for download, and the download itself only being 2.2MB in size (9.8MB if you need full Java support), you really owe it to yourself to give it a look. If you use the web a lot, you could find yourself as much in love with it as I am.

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