Opera

Long time followers if this blog might know the fact that I have a particular soft corner towards the web browser Opera. (One among a few percent of opera fans in three world, I guess).

Opera has always been the innovation maker in the field of web browsers. I started using opera (version 7 or 7.5) at a time when internet explorer had killed off Netscape and a budding Firefox was in the market. It will be difficult to convince me that Firefox is a superior browser but I will choose it any day over Internet Explorer. IE is in my case gives the worst user experience. IE has successfully made a bad name for itself that even when sone reviews say version 10 and 11 are good and stable, I no longer bother.

So taking about Opera's innovations, I think it was the first browser to offer multiple tabs. That was very ingenious and useful. Other browsers followed and IE in particular took a long time to  implement.

Mouse gestures, voice control (you can ask Opera to item a new tab etc.) Themes, plugins / extensions (not sure if opera or Firefox was first for these).

For a long time I never saw Google's home page thanks to Opera, as I could do all my searches from the

address bar using "g ", you will bypass the home page and go directly to the search list.This can be extended to any search engine as well as create our own custom search terms and everything.

Opera introduced a new menu system, which was straightaway copied by Firefox. This dispensed with the normal menu system on old windows and added an Opera button at the top left which opened down the main menu.

Opera included a mail client (removed in version 15), a torrent down loader, integrated notes, password manager (which is encrypted, I learnt that Firefox used to store them encrypted).

A couple of features exclusive to Opera are Turbo which speeds up browsing on slow networks.

Later came Speed Dial, Tab Stacking, Private browsing and private tabs (I haven't seen private tab in any other browser yet), ability to pin tabs etc.

The most striking innovation that I felt useful as a Web Developer was "Opera Dragonfly". It was the first time that such a tool was available to see how web pages are handled by browsers. 

The list is almost endless with the features given by Opera, that it would easily over whelm  a novice user. Still I recommend using Opera as your secondary browser, if you prefer using Chrome or FireFox as your primary one.

Check out InFewBytes on Facebook or Opera : InFewBytes for more tips on using Opera. Opera offers a lot of stuff under the hood which might baffle a new user, so look out for tips and tricks from the e-book mentioned in the above link.

Additional Read
Check out the Best Desktop Browser and Opera 10 Alpha for other posts on Opera in this blog.