I like Opera (apart from the singing) (Opera Web Browser)

Member Name: quirky

Product:	Opera Web Browser
Date:	23/10/01 (461 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastic interface, all the windows in one big old window, supposedly faster...

Disadvantages: Small % of pages don't load, can crash from time to time

The little Internet Explorer icon that sits on my desktop is starting to gather dust. Although I used it everyday for many a year, it now lies redundant thanks to this beauty.

Although most people would mock you if you suggested using something other than IE for "smurfing the web", Opera is actually usable. And it does a lot of things a lot better than Explorer. Which means it is light years ahead of Netscape?

Good Features
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The big thing that Opera boasts about is its speed. To be honest, I haven't really found surfing, i.e. loading and display of web pages, a great deal quicker. What I have found though is that Opera tends to start a bit faster and without dragging my laptop to a complete stop.

For me, the best bits of Opera are the mouse gestures and the all-in-one window. There is nothing worse than a load of popups all clogging up space on the main Windows task bar. This never happens with Opera, as all the windows are contained within the browser.

The mouse gestures are used to do everyday tasks that normally require button clicks. So, instead of moving all the way to the back arrow and pressing back, you just hold the right button down and move the mouse left a bit. Absolutely brilliant for lazy people! Similarly, there are gestures for forward (right button then move to the right) refresh (right button and move up then down) close window (right button held, move down then right, in an L shape) plus many others.

After playing with these for a few hours, you will not be able to use IE's clunky user interface. In fact, I wish all software featured these gestures. I keep trying to close Word documents by dragging down then right.

You can also use Opera as an email client or news reader. As an email client it's ok, you can even import your settings from Outlook Express, but it is not much better than "functional", although all the gestures are still i
n there. The newsreading isn't as good, see "Bad Features" for details.

Overall the compatibility is very good. Well over 90% of web pages I have tried it on work as expected. This is over several months of using it, not just a quick blast for the sake of this review.

The level of customisability is also excellent. It is very easy to configure the file types that Opera will be associated with, whether it is the default browser or not, how image downloading should be handled, your privacy settings (and how to deal with "cookies") plus other aethetic touches. I particularly like how easy it is to change all the button graphics if you have an artistic talent!

Bad features
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As a newsreader, it is pretty awful. The list of news group articles appears in one window, clicking on one opens up a new window with the message in. It isn't as good as a dedicated newsreaders multi-pane design, that's for sure.

Due to its single window design, you lose a chunk of "screen real estate" because Opera needs its own task bar with all the web pages you have open on it. This can be turned off or moved to one of four positions, but it is not completely mobile. There is a big gap along the top row, next to the menu items, that I would love to move it to, for example, but cannot. In Internet Explorer, it is possible to move bars and buttons where you please, a shame that the Opera people didn't copy that idea.

Also, the free version has a giant advert slapped in the top corner that can't be removed. The fully licensed version is $37, which deos seem a trifle expensive considering they are competing with a free browser already (IE.)

The compatibilty problem is a pain when you chance upon a page that doesn't work. As this doesn't happen too often, it is forgivable, but still annoying. Pages that don't work too well are those that use IE specific HTML
(the stuff code that web pages are written in), very badly written HTML, or some pages that use plugins that are designed for Internet Explorer.

Sometimes it crashes as well. Not as often as Internet Explorer, but it still happens. Luckily, when it does, you are given the option of restarting with all the previously opened pages as they were. Handy if you had a load open at once.

Summary
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It is very hard to think of faults with Opera though. It is a very proffesionally put together web browser. If you are expecting it to behave in a completely different way to IE, then don't. It feels very similar. The differences are in the "neat touches" that have been added. Once you have been using it for a while, it is very difficult to go back.

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