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.

Revamp in order

Over the past one and a half years, my life, perspectives, likes, dislikes and even thoughts have come leaps and bounds. So i believe a quick revamp is in need for my blog also. Feel free to comment me on the changes that you see.

This will be my 49th post. Incidentally it is a number mostly associated with my favorite football club that is arsenal. Arsenal had gone 49 consecutive Premiere League games unbeaten from 2003 to 2005 - a national record. Speaking of arsenal, i have become infected with Arsenalitis it seems. It has become a part of my blood, thoughts and life. So this 49th post is dedicated to the team that plays the best football in all the land :)

I was able to buy a sony cyber shot camera last year and have been experimenting with my photography interests for some time now. Most of my better efforts have been uploaded in mu Orkut and Facebook albums.

Opera has come out with version 10 and i had been following all the great developments from them all throughout. I use Opera mini 5 from my mobile device and it is an absolutely wonderful product. Fantastic UI design, navigation and exceptional usability makes me think that Opera have done it this time. What more can they do to improve. Will have to wait and see.

Will post more soon, chow

Opera 10 alpha

   Opera has just come out with the alpha release to Opera 10 web browser, just a week after launching Opera Mini 4.2.

Check it out from here : http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

The New features are :

• Updated engine : Opera Presto 2.2 is the newest rendering engine for the Opera browser. It provides significant improvements in speed, performance and security.
• 30% Faster on the real Web : The optimized Opera Presto 2.2 engine performs much faster on resource intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook.
• Great-looking standards : With an Acid3 100/100 score, Web Fonts support, RGBA/HSLA color and SVG improvements, Opera 10 alpha is ready for the next generation of Web applications. 

Check the acid3 tests from here.

The other features are :

• Inline spell-check : Opera 10 alpha underlines any misspelled words so you can express yourself without reservation.
• Auto-update : Opera 10 alpha makes it easier than ever to stay up to date with the latest version.
• Web Fonts and SVG : Typography on the Web will never look the same. With the Opera Presto 2.2 engine, Web Fonts can be used -including SVG font files.
• Opacity through RGBA and HSLA : Transparency is the new black. In Opera Presto 2.2 it is easier to make page elements transparent, with the addition of an alpha transparency argument to the RGB and HSL color models.
• Opera Dragonfly evolved : Opera Dragonfly is now even better for debugging Web sites and allows the editing of the DOM and inspection of  HTTP headers.

Opera 10 final is expected to arrive in the first half of 2009.

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New favicon for Google!

      Hey Google have changed their favicon. For those new to this term,a favicon is a small 16X16 image that is displayed next to the address of the site and propably seen in Opera and Firefox. Blogger has a kindof B in its favicon. It is just a graphic used to associate something with a site.

       Google had been sporting this image as their favicon for a long time. It consisted of a capital G surrounded by four lines that make a box with different colors (those of the Google logo).


     It had a sort of corporate mean look to it. And it also looks boring and a bit complex with the different colors and all. So i guess the google developers have finally decided that its time to change.. Have a look at this :



    This is the new favicon. Its a blue small case g from the Google logo. It also sports a small shadow as well adn looks deliciously fantastic. I guess it signifies some freedom from the old bounded coroprate logo.  This one is more close to the styles of Google.

     To see it for urself make sure you clean your cache and type in any of google.com, image.google.com or any other google based service...

Best Desktop Browser

   As you guys may already know there are loads of internet browsers out there in the market today. And as you are using one already, you may be interested in knowing which browser comes with the complete feature set and the complete package. Here we are going to look into the features of Opera Internet Browser and some minor comparisons with Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

    First of all thinking of browsing without tabs is a big no-no, at least for many avid internet users. Opera was the first browser to implement it way back in 2000. Now it is a standardized feature in most browsers. Opera tabs can be cascaded, tiled and rearranged. Opera tabs save their states the next time you open them. IE does not offer this feature. Firefox loads the page straight off the internet the next time it is opened, while Opera shows from the cache. It is worthwhile to note that the much anticipated Internet Explorer 7.0 provides a maximum number of 6 tabs, not too much appreciation for the guys at Redmond.

    Opera 9.25 comes at a download size of 4.7 Mb compared with 5.7 Mb for Firefox 2.0 and some 24 Mb for IE 7, then again download size doesn’t matter much these days. But it is important to note that even at this reduced size, the performance advantage is greater over the other browsers.

    Another great feature of Opera is its cache system. It loads and renders pages quick. When you hit the back button, you go back to the page in your cache. It doesn't reload the page from the site. That is a very good feature.

    Opera has a consistent interface on all platforms, unlike Firefox which varies a bit with platform. Both provide a lot of customizations and skins unlike IE 7, which still has not met with the expectations. At this point I would like to say that the most stable browser from Microsoft could be Internet Explorer 6 with all Service Packs and updates.
 
    Opera has an inbuilt Download Manager that can even resume downloads, Firefox also provides this but is a bit distractive with a popup and unable to specify the folder for saving the downloads. Opera has Built-in IRC client, Built-in email client and Built-in news reader.

    Customizable style sheets to change the display with all the useful ones built-in. Can't read that site with the ping background and red letters? Make it black and white for ease of readability. Opera provides users the power to view a site in their ways.

    Using a slow connection, toggle images on, off, or from local cache, a great way to save your bandwidth.

    On the fly user agent switching. This means you can probably use Opera on that bank site that says "Internet Explorer 5.0 or above necessary to use this site."

    Searching made easy with Integrated Search! The search box next to the address bar where you can enter the search term and select some of the most commonly used Internet search engines to directly get your result. Further more you can invoke the search page from the address bar. If you want to search some term with Google, type the search term preceded by g.
E.g.: g Opera Browser
And press enter to invoke the Google Search page with search term as “Opera Browser”.

   There is a great feature called note taker where by you can copy some important text onto a note collector and easily retrieve it anytime with just a couple of clicks. Language translator is available for converting text between different languages. It also provides an encyclopedia service.

    Now for some great Artificial Intelligence (AI) development, just think for opening a new page, saying “Opera New Page”! That’s what the Voice Library can do for you. It can even read the web page content for you. Clearly this feature is not available in any other browsers as of today. The library is about 10 Mb download, but those who want to use it can download it for free.

    Tests on browsers conducted by independent organizations and researchers show that Opera is the fastest to render CSS and HTML. Opera supports all major Web standards currently in use, including CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 basic.

    Mouse Gestures and keyboard shortcuts offer some cool ways to use this browser.

    Safe, secure, powerful and fully customizable, the Opera Web browser is over 30% faster than IE, and faster and more secure than Firefox. Recent benchmarks show that Opera even exceeds the speed of Firefox with multiple tabs opened. Opera delivers robust security and a far-richer feature set than any other Web browser and it's free.

    So I would conclude that for leisure, or for serious web development purposes 
and looking from all persepectives, Opera would be the leader of the pack.