Use Opera you ignorant morons
You're in luck! I'm going to make up for months of silence (I've been engaging in gentlemanly pursuits) with a wall of text trying to entice you to use Opera, my favourite web browser. I'll also be exercising some amateur marketing theory and framing each section in terms of you, the consumer. Your readership is important to me. I wrote half of this post a year ago, and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) in that time a few of the features that I mention have made their way into lesser browsers.
This article probably isn't for you. You probably use Internet Explorer or Safari as that's what was on your computer when you got it. You don't even use the word 'browser', just 'using the Internet'. You've never had any problems when using the Internet as you've come to accept the Internet's boundaries, which you don't realise are actually just your browser's limitations. You probably shouldn't care what browser you use, after all, using a browser is just a means to an end. No-one refuses to read a book because they don't like the paper its printed on.
You accept webpages cluttered with ads, because you've known nothing else. You use some crass web-based email account, because that's what you've always done. You've never been tempted into improving 'your Internet', because browser choice doesn't come up in general conversation. My friend, there is a better way. By just reading this article you have taken your first step into a larger world.
Imagine webpages with no ads, Opera can block them for you. Imagine your browser telling you when webpages have been updated without you visiting them, Opera's RSS functionality can do that for you. Imagine never having to visit the Google homepage again, Opera will let you type search queries right into the address bar (for any website you want, not just search engines). Imagine changing how your browser looks and which buttons are available, Opera has almost unlimited customisation. Imagine! Core competencies! Synergies!
This is me. I don't want to open half a dozen programs to do basic stuff. As well as being a web browser, Opera also has an inbuilt email client, RSS client, IRC client and it even makes an OK note taker. I'd let it wipe my arse if it were socially acceptable, but that's enough about me. I know that some people hate extra features, and Opera hides these away forever if you don't want to use them to prevent the browser from becoming a bloated monstrosity (*cough* Netscape *cough*).
Moving your mouse several inches up to the navigation buttons on your browser can be such a chore, especially when it's something that needs to be repeated over and over again. If you aren't ready to let go of your mouse just yet, mouse gestures are for you. Want to go back a page? Right click then left click. Want to open a new tab? Hold right click and move the mouse down. There are dozens of things you can do with just your mouse, but you will only ever need to commit a handful to memory.
You find a URL somewhere, you copy it, then paste it into the address bar of your browser and hit Enter. Does this sound familiar? Opera has a smarter paste, Ctrl + D, which will paste your text and press Enter for you. I admit that this isn't an earth-shattering feature, but it's one example of the hundred thousand nice little things that Opera does to make your browsing less of a chore.
Let's face it, boobs are pretty awesome. It can be such a drag to click on a photo, admire it, then click the back button and click on another photo. So much clicking! Opera does away with this hassle by employing 'logical navigation'. Opera can guess which page (or hot slut) will be next, allowing you to go from picture to picture without returning to the menu page each time. For the technically minded, it does this through a combination of reading page metadata and URL parsing, and no other browser natively does it. It also has the benefit of giving a new use to the most useless browser navigation button of all, the forward button. Opera is the porn browser, but if you aren't a pervert, logical navigation is also great for family photo collections both on the web and from your computer's file system.
Separate but just as useful, Opera also features something known as 'spatial navigation'. The ultimate in single-handed surfing, spatial navigation lets you "walk" left, right, up and down the links of a webpage. How is this useful? Ask any command line geek and they will tell you that the keyboard is a much quicker and more convenient input device than the mouse. Using the keyboard to move among all the links in a page (Shift + an arrow key) is extremely convenient, and indeed the more you use it the more you want to use it.
It's all well and good to have your browser set up just the way you like it at home, but when you're at your death-reeking desk job you have to put up with whatever browser the Systems Administrator finds is the least hassle to allow you to use. Even if you're lucky enough to have a choice of browsers, you have lost all of your bookmarks, history and everything else that makes it 'yours'.
Opera synchronises silently with a central server that keeps a record of your bookmarks, custom searches, address bar history and a handful of other things. No matter which Opera browser you use from anywhere in the world (including from your mobile phone), it will be automatically set up just the way you like it without any effort required from you. This feature is disabled by default, if you don't like the idea of big brother knowing how many Prison Break erotic fan-fiction sites you have bookmarked.
I hate you. I'm sure you're a fine person, but you're probably unaware of the extra headaches that you give the web developers of the world. Often the cool ideas that we dream up of get knocked on the head because 'it's not accessible' or 'a screenreader can't handle it'. Never before has so much effort gone into pleasing such a tiny minority of the population, unless I'm the Federal Government and you are Stephen Fielding. I'm of the opinion that client technology should bend to humanity, and Opera agrees. Opera comes with voice recognition and text-to-speech features, just like the future has!
Couldn't be bothered reading, or can't? Highlight the text (or the whole page), press V (or just say 'speak') and the browser will read it to you! The tone can be changed to anything from a Stephen Hawking synthesiser to the sweet, sultry tones of the Star Trek computer voice. *geek wheeze*
Couldn't be bothered navigating around the web the usual way, or can't? Speak 'forward', 'zoom in', 'log in' or any of dozens of voice commands and Opera will do your bidding. You can even create your own commands if you're really keen. I honestly don't use it much, but it's there for those that will. Vocally navigating around the sort of sites that I browse would result in the neighbours calling the cops on me.
'Fit to width' is a feature that is available to you to ensure that webpages always fill the entire screen, which is useful for 'fixing' those websites that have been made for people with low screen resolutions. Opera can also zoom the entire page, as opposed to just the text as is the case with some other browsers.
You're used to your browser, you may even have some emotional investment in it. Something better coming along will not make you leave your current browser, your browser needs to fail you in some way first. Obviously this hasn't happened yet. Opera can't change your expectations without you using it first, the best that it can do is smooth over any eventual transition as much as possible.
Opera will make your change a little easier and import all the bookmarks, mail and notes from your other browsers, email clients and note-taking programs. There is also a large Opera-loving community out there that can show you how to get the most from your browser, including answering the most asked question of "where in Opera do I find the features that replace my favourite Firefox add-ons".
So now, stop reading and start using Opera. You can get it here, or you can try the very latest alpha version of Opera 10 if you'd like to use the newest features and don't mind a bit of instability.
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Silpheed introduced me to Opera years ago. Since then my acne has cleared, I got a hot girlfriend and I'm totally loaded. Thanks Silpheed and Opera.
It's all true! DJ-Napkin used to be a 97 pound weakling, now he bench-presses a hot babe on each arm and kicks sand in the faces of others.
The fit to width option is a godsend for my toy laptop and the inbuilt email client kicks much arse.
Some interesting features... I've wondered why you can highlight something on a page and automatically open a new tab with the wikipedia search response for that string in firefox, yet you can't simply highlight something and open it in a new tab as a URL (you could easily do a quick check of string to see if it is indeed an address and only include that option on the context menu, even). That would be better than the Ctrl+D tool, and if Ctrl+D does that, what is the bookmark hot key?
Does it put each tab in it's own process so you can fuck off any that are hogging resources or not responding, like Google Chrome does? Chrome also has the universal address/search bar thing goin' on, which i like, and FF's (and Chrome's, i think) addy bar now searches your bookmarks for any string you start to enter, plus you can hard assign strings to any bookmark, for that command-line speed.
Another cool thing about Chrome is that the interface automatically takes up the least amount of window space (leaving more for the actual page content). You can fullscreen FF, but that screws with a popup taskbar, whereas an only-tabs-at-the-top maxed Chrome window will not. How does Opera fair in that regard?
Chrome is cool, but in it's infancy, so while it starts up nice and quick, It's fairly lean (not necessarily a bad thing). It has no nice interface for skins/colours and is missing a few other non-essential-but-nice options. It's context menus are good, it's download managing is quite nice (better than FF's)... I would probably give Opera a go if i felt that i would use any of it's features not already catered for by FF and/or Chrome, but like any real porn addict i download movies via torrents and occasionally obscure forums, i don't waste time with pages of static pics (i mean really... just go buy a stick mag).
Oh yeah, portable FF can easily be synced with your home version for multi-machine goodness without *shiver* an actual database of your deviance being kept, and i like my gmail account, which takes up absolutely no room on my local drives, thankyou. Also, there are so many FF addons that i doubt Opera has a "feature" for them all. Perhaps people will start writing addons/plugins for Opera? Or is that not how it works?
Good to see another post :)
That would be better than the Ctrl+D tool
Indeed Opera can do that; highlight a URL on a webpage, right click and click 'Go to Web Address'. It's also bindable to a shortcut key of your choosing. I think it's slightly less useful than Ctrl + D as a URL on a webpage is usually already a hyperlink. Ctrl + D is most useful when getting an URL from some other place like a text file.
what is the bookmark hot key?
Any key you like! Each of Opera's operations are bindable to any shortcut key, key sequence, mouse gesture or voice command you like. There are always some people who find infinite configuration operations daunting, so there are sensible default shortcuts. Bookmarking a page is Ctrl + T. OK, maybe that one's not so sensible.
Does it put each tab in it's own process so you can fuck off any that are hogging resources or not responding, like Google Chrome does?
No unfortunately :-(. I quite like that too.
Chrome also has the universal address/search bar thing goin' on...
This is one of my pet bugbears. Opera had Firefox's Awesome Bar a full year before Firefox had it. Something mundane for Opera was overnight a sensation for Firefox. Grrr. At least Firefox ported it to the main install rather than leave it in add-on form like nearly all the rest of Firefox's useful functionality. </rant>.
Anyway, Opera's address bar does all that you mention that Firefox's and Chrome's does, plus more. The address bar can be used as a search engine field for a heap of useful default sites, plus custom ones that you can add yourself. I can't remember the last time I've been to Google's landing page. Being a young and hip go-getter, my custom searches include 'ud <term>' for Urban Dictionary, 'imdb <term>' for IMDB and even 'b <term>' for Boredomistan! Who says I'm vain? There's even a few cute defaults, like typing "/." will send you to Slashdot.
Another cool thing about Chrome is that the interface automatically takes up the least amount of window space...
Opera's UI is extremely configurable, though a bit chunky (and therefore in my opinion, ugly) right after install. I like the minimalist approach too, so my UI contains just the menu bar, tab bar and address bar. My bookmarks, history and downloads windows (called 'Panels' in Opera') are hidden away on the far right as a tiny bar a few pixels wide, so when I need them I can flick my mouse to the side and click. Opera like all other browsers has full-screen view, though no one ever seems to use it. I don't either.
...but like any real porn addict i download movies via torrents and occasionally obscure forums...
Did I mention that Opera can directly download BitTorrented files? No? Because it can! You don't get the same finesse of control over the download like you would in a fully featured BitTorrent client, but it's there for those who want to use it and easily disabled for those that don't.
Searching for torrents is easy too with the above mentioned address bar search. For example I have 'iso <term>' for IsoHunt.
...portable FF can easily be synced with your home version for multi-machine goodness without *shiver* an actual database of your deviance being kept...
Alas, Opera doesn't do that. That could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view. Opera takes the view that a user has no 'main' install of Opera, perhaps that's a little naïve. Opera too has a portable version. If you use a portable browser then you already know the benefits.
...so many FF addons that i doubt Opera has a "feature" for them all.
Of course, but Opera comes close. So close that if it came any closer, I'd likely be turned off it. Here is a list of the Top 150 Firefox Extensions and how they map to Opera features. This list is nearly two years old and unfortunately I can't find a more up-to-date one, and as you can imagine both browsers have grown ahead in leaps and bounds since then. That list will at least serve to prove that Opera is a much more fully featured browser than 99.99% of the Firefox setups out there. What that list doesn't show is the functionality available to Opera and not available in a Firefox Extension, or which Extensions were pinched from Opera functionality (and very occasionally, vice versa).
Perhaps people will start writing addons/plugins for Opera?
Yep, Opera has it's own extensions system, called Plug-Ins (functionality improvements) and Widgets (GUI improvements and sometimes separate programs). I've honestly never had the need to use either. There are a number of Firefox Extensions out there that give Firefox some of Opera's functionality, such as Speed Dial.
With all this Firefox bashing going on I think it's time to give some credit where it's due. Firefox's web development extension Firebug is still superior to Opera's equivalent, and the size of Firefox's userbase is something that Opera can only dream of.
Thank you for letting me write the second half of my post.
Heh, no worries, thanks for answering all my boring questions. I really like the sound of that custom search feature. While in-built torrent support is pretty cool, i think i'd probably still use µtorrent. Just checked that list of extensions and aww - Net Usage Item not available. I suppose there's a tray tool for that kind of thing, but it's handy. Since i've been trying Chrome i've missed it. Anyway, i might give Opera a go some time, especially if i'm ever able to upgrade this aging machine - right now Chrome's speed and separate-process tabs are invaluable.
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