“Opera bills itself as “the fastest browser on earth!” — and indeed it is fast. But to laud it only for its speed would miss the point. Much more impressive are Opera’s other features for surfing the World Wide Web. Consider the menu item for quickly deleting cookie files that Web sites leave behind to track you. Or the item for rejecting pop-up windows, such as those pitching wireless cameras from X10.” Read the rest of the review at CNN.
CNN Reviews Opera 6
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Nice to see a great review on such a non-techie site. I’m a big fan of Opera, being a user since one of the 2.x versions. The latest is just great, in my opinion and it’s always good to see such a positive review of software you love.
Opera should create a ‘light’ version, without the gesture recognition, email client, news client, im client, and skinnability. Its getting more feature packed (ok, bloated) with every release…
Ya a light opera would be nice again, just straight web browser
I havent checked due to having dsl for bandwidth so I never catch the size while downloading the new versions but I remember it used to be an installer that could fit on a single floppy disk, thats not possible anymore is it?
I miss the days of software that small.
Surely that’s what you want if you want a lite browser… GNU’s <a href=”http://www.gnome.org/applist/view.php3?name=galeon&prevpage=listrec….
While Opera is a fine browser, I have always found it to be a bit clunky compared to Explorer or Mozilla.
I now use Mozilla 0.9.7 almost exclusively on Windows. Except for watching video clips on CNet
Mozilla rocks!
ciao
yc
I like Opera. So nerr..
But getting rid of the email/news and IM clients would be nice.
The thing is tho. Ever (big) browser has ’em (read: Netscape, MSIE) so Opera has too.
Re: GNU’s Galeon.
Not using GNOME or Linux.
Actually, you CAN lighten it by removing those dll’s from the installation. Check out the FAQ section, its really good.
snipped from their site:
Open opera.ini in a text editor and add the following information under “[USER PREFS]”:
Show News Client=0
Show IM Client=0
Show E-mail Client=0
—
Now, there you have a slimmer version, in memory print at least. IIRC, you can also now go to the Opera dir and delete the Omail32.dll.
Opera was my browser of choice. 6’s new interface was refreshing after being stuck with the original UI for so long, and Opera was speedy.
But recently I installed Internet Explorer 6. NOw I use IE6 instead of Opera. IE is much faster than Opera, has a much cleaner UI and pages look MUCH better in IE.
Opera is definately an exellent browser, and plenty of reason for MS to worry – it’s fast gaining popularity. But it’s indeniable, that right now, the BEST BROWSER is Internet Explorer!
I really love Opera, and use it all the time. I particularly love the fact that the version I use all the time is only like, 3.2MB to download. But I do agree with some of the above comments. If they got rid of the e-mail, news clients etc perhaps they could make something even smaller and neater which would surely kick ass even more.
Anyway, Opera is great. Well worth the money. I’m so glad companies like them are still around. Now if only they’d update the BeOS version…
Mike
That is good information. I went to the FAQ section on the Opera site and did not find those tweaks in the obvious (to me) faq pages, so that was good digging around.
For those looking for a light version i would say it is rather light. I’m not a fan of everything and the kitchen sink browsers like mozilla. I do very much like opera. It is very fast and clean. And some of the features like the page tabs rock. Mozilla has this but for me it sucked and took me a while playing with the settings to work in any decent way. I need to try K-melon again. I have yet to though. Last time i tried i was having problems in which all mozilla browsers i tried crashed on startup. With XP the problem went away though. Mozilla can be nice but still is very buggy and after working great for a few days now is slow as hell on my computer and crashes alot. Though i must say MS has done a nice job with IE6 except for that whole security hole thing. I used to hate IE and found it slow and ugly. Both those are now gone and i find my self using it very much. I fear i may have to shoot myself. Hell my computer is all XP now. This is not good. MS is making really nice product these days. All they have to do now is stop their evil business practicess (which the anti trust thing might help) and i will have no reason to use anything else.
Bang!
Thud!
“. I used to hate IE and found it slow and ugly. Both those are now gone and i find my self using it very much.”
I know that Opera is fast, but between IE5.5 and Opera on a DSL connection with an Athlon 1.2ghz & Win2k, the speed gain using Opera is so small that I can’t tell the difference. For that reason, I stick with IE, since it is obviously more compatible with more of the web.
Personally I use a browser called Netcaptor (www.netcaptor.com). It uses the IE core for displaying pages but has a tabbed interface similar to Opera which gives me the best of both worlds.
Why Opera defaulted to:
C:\Program Files\Opera\Buttons\Standard\buttons.ini
…for the toolbar is beyond me. They are SUCH UGLY ICONS!
First thing I did was change them back to:
C:\Program Files\Opera\Buttons\Classic\buttons.ini
…in Preferences.
Phew; my only complaint on Opera 6 so far
That and I can’t do my net banking on it. *scratches head* Who decided on those dog-ugly icons, I gotta wonder…
Well folks I have been testing and and playing with these 2 web browsers for awhile now. I started using Opera on BeOS 5 a couple years ago when Opera 3 was out. I really liked the performance, but it wasn’t quite as fast as Net+ for BeOS… to be honest I haven’t found a browser as fast as Net+ ever. So when Mac OS X was released I decided I would test different browsers to find one and just stick with it, so I am still testing and comparing Netscape 6.2/Opera 5 beta/OmniWeb 4.1 beta/iCab 2.6 beta/Internet Explorer 5.1! I find things I like and things I don’t like about each one, but at the end of the day OmniWeb seems to warm my heart and does all the nice stuff like what is mentioned above with Opera 6 when it comes to popup windows and deleting cache files easily. OmniWeb 4.1 beta is alot better than OmniWeb 4.0.6 in many ways, and the desktop icon looks alot nicer than the original. So when OmniWeb does release the full version I will fork over the $29 bucks to get the license. Like I told OmniGroup 4 months ago “why should I pay for a browser if it’s not as good or better as one I can get for free?!” I think they heard me roar and delivered the goods!
Best GUI browsers imo are Galeon, Konqueror, Mozilla, IE, Opera and Dillo – they’re ALL good nowadays in their own way.
Galeon has alot of cool features for handling bookmarks, tabs, cache etc.
Konqueror is an example of GOOD implementation of a web browser into a desktop environment.
Mozilla features a nice HTML rendering engine (gecko – also used in galeon and even konq out of user choice), nice themable look (yeah – XUL is slow, but scriptable IS good
, tabs etc
IE is fast and minimalistic in it’s design (the look, not the 150 mb’s of code of course
Opera is fast, tabbed, features unusual things like gesturing and a desktop-like MDI mode (no, I don’t like it)
Dillo is EXTREMELY light-weight with it’s 300 kb
Browsers are like OS’es – they just increase in amount, each introducing something unique and the others adopting.
Netcaptor is just IE with a bit of thought put into it. But that’s not a good thing. IE is Microsoft imposing their own standards on the internet, and it is better if as many people as possible get away from the IE rendering engine.
Agreed standards are the best way forward. And, having downloaded Opera off the back of this article (I downloaded it around Opera 4 and was unimpressed) I have to say I have stopped using IE altogether. It looks nicer UI wise, works smoother, and works just as fast as IE. It may not render web sites quite as well, but hey, if a web designer doesn’t get his website right standards wise then I don’t care for it to be rendered properly. And to those claiming it was bulky? It was only a 3.2 meg download. Compare that to IE or Mozilla? A lite version is hardly necessary.
It’s just a pity about the adverts on Opera… but hey, they’re a business I guess. I should probably buy it.
You can remove the E-mail, im, and news clients from opera, once installed (prefrences, programs and paths settings), but yea I would like a installer that let you choose which components to install, or better yet download installer packages without the email and im and news clients which would probably scale Opera back down to floppy disk size.
My only problems with Opera are plugins dont work well, but Quicktime doesnt work well in anything but kmeleon for me. And you cannot customize the button UI like you can with rebar, but thats not a problem with mouse gestures and keyboard mapped navigation.
“Opera is fast, tabbed, features unusual things like gesturing and a desktop-like MDI mode (no, I don’t like it)”
You can change this in Opera’s preferences. Then it behaves just like other browsers.
I used to use mozilla most of the time. Now with Opera 6, I use Opera 95% of the time, mozilla 4% and IE basically for Windows update. And Windows update most of the time is downloading security patches for IE! hehe! Opera has great features. I now start up my browser loaded with over 20 sites in several windows with several tabs to each window. Much more fun than opening up each window seperately and getting the bookmark for each one. IE is a pain in the neck when it comes to browsing many sites at once because it doesn’t even have an Exit command-you have to close each window individually!