A real alternative to IE (Opera Web Browser)

Member Name: Stalin

Product:	Opera Web Browser
Date:	26/08/01 (241 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast in every department, Renders most pages correctly, Lots of useful features and no bloat

Disadvantages: Missing a few useful features of IE, Still may not work with all sites

It is a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today. With Microsoft's dominance in almost every facet of computing, us poor end users are left with no choice but to accept their products. By so forcefully integrating their browser with Windows, Internet Explorer has become the standard, squashing many other browsers in its path (Netscape will probably never return to its former glory). Web designers are also always designing their sites for IE, often not caring what they look like in other browsers. With these problems, it is easy to see how difficult it is to find a viable alternative. Until now.

I like my browsers of the 'no frills' variety (which is why I dislike Netscape 6). Opera is just a web browser. Well, it does have very basic e-mail and newsgroups, but once turned off, it really is just a web browser. This means that the download is small, and the browser itself is very quick to load and function. But the real advantage is the speed it loads web pages. Although I haven't done any formal tests, Opera just seems far more responsive in this area, particularly when loading old pages, which happens nigh on instantly, whereas IE still takes a few seconds.

I have yet to touch on the main problem with alternative web browsers that I mentioned earlier: compatibility. Well, Opera performs admirably in this department. Many pages look identical to the way they look in IE, with many more having just the odd graphical error. I have yet to find a page that is unusable through Opera. The reason for its compatibility lies in its ability to 'identify' as other browsers. This means that it can fool web sites into thinking that you are actually running IE or Netscape. This means that if a site doesn't look right when masquerading as one browser, you can try another.

Another area of high praise is the interface. There are several useful items that appear on the toolbars that don't in any other browser. There is a
search box, which can be made to search using any number of popular search engines, which is quicker than actually going to the search engine's site. Multiple windows are docked in Opera's own task bar look-alike at the bottom of the screen, which is far more manageable than IE's method. A particularly handy feature for benchmarking browser performance is the extended progress information that appears when loading a page. You are told the standard stuff, like the amount of data transferred so far and percentage done, but you are also told the speed your connection is working at, the number of images loaded / still to load and a timer, showing you how long the page took to complete. This info can also be handy for checking the performance of individual web pages, and indeed your own, so you know if your server needs an upgrade.

Unfortunately, there are one or two niggles I have with this browser. First, although it seems to support most web standards (Java, CSS, Flash etc) it cannot render certain java-based drop-down menus. Most sites have alternative fixed menus, however, so this isn't much of a problem. It also lacks a few features you may have become accustomed to in IE, such as history lists for form elements. But nothing really important has been omitted.

As I see it, there are two groups of people who should give this browser a try. Those who want a fast, frill-free browser, and those who hate Microsoft. As I fall into both of these categories, this browser is ideal for me. Give it a go. We can't let IE take over the 'net!

Summary: