Opera 9 Review
Published April 30th, 2006 9:32 PM EDT By Daniel GoldmanThe first beta version of Opera 9 has been out for a little over a week. This version includes many new features and changes from previous ones.
Overall Opera included lots of new features and many new fixes. Gmail, for example, now works with the Opera browser.
If you come across any websites that haven’t worked with previous versions of Opera, chances are that they work in Opera 9. This is not to say that Opera 9 works fine with all sites. One site that I use often, tv.yahoo.com/grid, doesn’t work with Opera 9, the tables are messed up.
The preferences dialog has been slimmed down a lot with Opera 8, but with Opera 9 it has regained a lot.
Opera 9 Beta 1 now ships with an optional Windows Installer (MSI) package, which adds about 1mb to the size of the download file. In my testing experience, I had a hard time with it. I have many installations of Opera on my computer for testing purposes. After I installed one of the weekly builds of Opera with the new Windows Installer, I wanted to uninstall it. Since I installed it with the Windows Installer, I was forced to uninstall Opera from the Control Panel (and not through the install_dir/uninst directory). The problem I had was that there were many versions of Opera listed there, some with version numbers and some without, I had no way of knowing which Opera installation to uninstall. When it came to installing this beta version, I used the classic installer, which is still available (for now) on Opera’s website.
This version is a major upgrade over Opera 8; however there are still some things that are missing. For example, why is the ‘Status Bar’ off by default? All other major browsers have it on. When I hover over a link, I want to see where the link points. Opera does show a tooltip with the link location, which brings me to my next point.
In my opinion, the tooltips are annoying. I have spoken to countless Opera users, who have voiced similar opinions. I think it should be disabled by default.
I would also like to have the ability to drag toolbars to different areas of the screen, just like in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and many other programs.
Perhaps the biggest thing that is missing from the Opera browser is an Opera Update Manager. I don’t want to have to download and reinstall the **entire** program with each update. If Opera issues an update for the browser, all I want to download is that small update. Microsoft Windows doesn’t require you to download and reinstall the entire Windows OS each month with its windows updates, Opera shouldn’t either.
Also, Opera should seriously look into Firefox’s Update Manager. The updates should be downloaded and installed by the browser without much user intervention. I’ve written about it before on Opera Watch (Read: Where is Opera’s Update Manager?).
Here are some quick thoughts on some of the additions/changes of Opera 9:
Widgets
I think Opera was kind of forced into adding support for widgets as a result of Firefox’s hugely popular extensions. Opera maintains that extensions pose a security risk and often run into compatibility issues with upgrades of the browser. I won’t go into the extension debate here.
Extension support is one of the most requested features to the Opera browser. Widgets doesn’t add all the extensible functionality of Firefox’s extensions, but it’s the closest Opera is willing to with at this time.
It has been debated whether Widgets belong in a browser. While I think Widgets are a nice addition to browser, I feel Opera should devote more of its time making **all** websites work in Opera, rather than super-enhancing the widgets support.
By default Opera enables the ‘Opera Widgets’ button on the top of the screen. I think this is a bit confusing and annoying for novice users. With Opera 8, Opera focused on making its browser simpler, the widgets button doesn’t make the browser look simpler. I believe Opera will disable this button with the next beta.
Content Blocker (Ad Blocker)
Opera’s new content blocker allows you to block images from downloading. This can be used to block ads in the browser, though Opera was careful not to call it an ‘Ad Blocker’. If Opera were to officially include an ad blocker, many websites would actively block Opera users from visiting its site.
This easy to use content blocker is perhaps the most important ‘new’ feature of Opera 9.
It should be noted that you can only block images, which means that ads such as Google’s AdSense, which are not images, can’t be blocked. Edit: As has been noted in the comments to this review, AdSense could also be blocked by adding the AdSense url manually.
Ability to easily add search engines to Integrated Search
Another nice feature added to Opera 9 is the ability to ‘easily’ add other search engines to Opera’s integrated search field in the toolbar.
Say, for example, you wanted to add a Slashdot search to Opera. All you need to do is right-click the search field on Slashdot’s website, click on the ‘Create search’ option.
Previously, to modify the search options, you had to tinker with Opera’s system files, which was a bit tedious.
One issue that I noticed with creating a new search is the shortcut key. The shortcut key for the search is similar to typing ‘g search_term’ in the address bar, where g stands for ‘Google’. If one doesn’t enter a shortcut key in the ‘Create Search’ dialog, and clicks the OK button, the dialog will close and the new custom search will NOT be created. Opera doesn’t warn the user about the missing shortcut key.
BitTorrent
Opera is taking the lead of bringing BitTorrent downloads to the average user by making the download of a torrent just as a typical file download.
Site-Specific Preferences
Pressing the F12 key allows you to set preferences for just that website, such as allowing pop-ups and identifying as a different browser in the user agent.
For example, bellsouth.com blocks Opera users, however if you mask your browser as Internet Explorer, you can get through to the website. With the site-specific preferences, you could mask your browser as Internet Explorer for **just** that website, while identifying as Opera for all other sites.
This is also very easy to use and an excellent feature for power users.
Webpage Thumbnails
Thumbnails are nice and cute, though I don’t see it being really practical.
I think Opera could make the thumbnails look a bit nicer, by taking away the URL, Encoding, and Mime-type details.
Opera views a thumbnail as a tooltip, so if you disable tooltips, you also disable thumbnails.
AOL Explorer, which I believe introduced these thumbnails before Opera, has a much better and nicer implementation.
Added Grouping by Date and Site to History
Opera’s browsing history has already been very easy to navigate and search, and now with the grouping by date and site, it has become even easier. Internet Explorer always had the grouping by date, but not by site.
Ability to lock individual tabs
Using a tabbed browser, usually means having multiple tabs open simultaneously. Inevitably you will sometimes close a certain tab by accident. How do you prevent this? Worry no more. Right-click the tab and click on ‘Lock tab’.
Yes, I’m aware that you can bring the page back by pressing CTRL+Z, but if the page uses HTML frames, such as Bloglines, bringing the page back will reload the frame which is not what you want sometimes.
I’ve been using this feature a lot since it was introduces in the Technical Preview version of Opera 9 specifically for IRC chat windows. Opera’s IRC chat doesn’t contains a log of your chat, so if the tab closes, you loose your chat record.
‘Find on Page’ highlights matches on page
When you search for a keyword on a page, the matches will be highlighted, a feature which has been available in Firefox for sometime already.
I love this feature; it makes finding things on the page much faster.
New Internal Source Viewer
Nice feature for developers and web designers. Opera’s internal source viewer allows you to see the html code for the page inside of the Opera browser.
Not only can you see the code (with highlighted colors), you could also make changes to the code in the browser and save it, which will cause the page to reload with **your** changes. As a developer myself, I found this feature very useful for debugging webpages, by allowing me to make quick changes and seeing the result right away.
Changed default keyboard shortcuts
In an effort to resemble popular shortcuts of other browsers, Opera changed the shortcut to open a new tab from CTRL+N to CTRL+T. Most browsers use the CTRL+T shortcut to open a new tab. People switching from Firefox to Opera often had a difficult time adapting to Opera’s different shortcuts.
In the beginning this was hard for me; I was used to using the CTRL+N shortcut to open a new tab, now CTRL+N opens a complete new Opera window. However, it’s only a matter of time before you get comfortable with the new shortcut.
I think this change is an important one.
Pages are now called ‘tabs’
This may sound funny, but until Opera 9, Opera **never** had ‘tabs’. It had ‘pages’.
For some reason Opera never called tabs ‘tabs’, it called them ‘pages’. However with the increased popularity of tabs, Opera changed the ‘pages’ to tabs to keep itself in uniform with all other browsers.
Changed Feed Icon
Again, to stay in uniform with the other browsers, Opera changed the (RSS) feed icon to the familiar orange icon. Good decision.
New Wand (Password Manager) Dialog
Opera’s new much need change of the Wand Dialog now sports a simpler look.
The default save option is now for the entire server, not just for that page. (I never really understood why Opera use to have the default option set to save the password only for that page.)
New opera:config page
As a power user, you will love the new opera:config page. Now you can make changes to the browser without messing around with Opera’s system files. I really like the search feature on the opera:config page.
This will make the novice user into a power user.
Really neat.
Opera now identifies as Opera
With the rise of interest in alternative browsers, most websites don’t block Opera browser users. Identifying the user agent as Opera was just a matter of time.
Flash no longer included
Opera no longer ships the Flash plugin with the browser.
I wonder if this decision will come haunt Opera in the future. Opera needs to think about the novice user, who doesn’t know what Flash is – let alone how to download and install it.
–
These are some of my impressions of Opera 9. What are yours? Post a comment. Join in on the discussion.
using
That is not true. Add
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com*to your rules and all Google Ads are gone. You can do the same thing with this really annoing layer-ads just find out the JavaScript URL and add it to your Block Content list.using
Tooltips - I like the tooltips. I think it’s much better to have the link address pop up right next to the link I’m already looking at, rather than appear far away at the bottom of the screen. The only improvement I could think of, is that once the tooltip is visible, any mouse movement would hide it.
Updating - I don’t see a special updating system as necessary, Opera’s standalone installer just isn’t big enough to be a problem. I’d rather see a more streamlined and automated install. eg. once Opera has downloaded the new installer, after a confirmation it should be able to run it silently to do the update and restart Opera with no further prompting.
Flash - Including it has been good in the past, the problem is Flash 8 is not available for Win 95/98 (and maybe NT4). Opera had few choices: include both 7 and 8, or include 8 and have some automated system to let Win 95/98 people get 7. Opera opted for the latter for everyone. That ensures everyone gets the most recent Flash applicable to their operating system.
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Congrats on the new site/ better than the clunky blogspot. Hope your vacations went off well.
I’d agree majorly to the new changes and your opinion of the same. If any of the Opera developers are browsing these comments, in my opinion, tooltips is a bad decision to implement. Ditto for Widgets. I doubt whether this serves any fucntionality- beyond saying that “my browser has this and yours doesn’t”.
Firefox extensions (not going in the debate here though) is a referral kind of a revenue for the developers. Hence, it would be assinine to assume that Firefox would actually come up with an integrated browser features; hence the stress on “extensions”- in my opinion, I call Firefox as Explorer in Linux.
The biggest reason to shift from the “stable 8.54″ was the site specific preferences. I prefer to ignore the blinking adverts and instead focus on the content. Further, it loads up faster with the ad blocker turned on. By no means, I am “power user”- but I do appreciate the freedom of choice it gives me. It is indeed a contentious issue as to the source of revenue for webmasters; I personally feel that there would be a miniscule minorty like me who have specific web surfing habits. The jury is still out there; even if the adverts couldn’t be blocked, I’d hardly click on them.
Similarly, the addition of search engines by GUI. Previously, I had to fire up search.in files and then go ahead- this GUI behaviour has simplified my life to large extent; a few clicks and I am done. Further, I have added search engines for those sites where the “preformed” search ini modifications were not possible. For example, medical journals. However, much work needs to done still-specifically the ability to sequence the search engines as per your preference. Just a suggestion.
Apart from these little blemishes, Opera renders the pages double quick. I have personally timed Firefox and Opera (Firefox with faster fox extension enabled) and FF chugs on like a limping tortoise with hemorrhoids. Opera blazes across like a panther (well mostly it does!)
In my opinion, Opera is far the best browser I have ever worked in and stuck on with it ever since I discovered it (from 7.24 release). Perhaps that was the time, when I actually had a net access.
using
I actually think that tooltips, the box that shows the URL (and title attribute when supplied) is very important. It’s an additional visual cue as well as allows someone to determine where the link is going to. I think they shouldn’t be linked to the thumbnail feature though. But for usability, tooltips should be enabled.
The change of including Flash may eventually kick them in the pants, but it’s understandable until either Flash 8 is available for older Windows versions (is there a Linux release yet?) or offer seperate downloads for each OS that has the latest Flash version. Maybe they removed it to cut down the file size, but it really should be bundled.
Appart from that, I completely agree with the rest of your points. Let’s just hope I start hitting CTRL+T more than CTRL+N
Nice review.
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“It should be noted that you can only block images, which means that ads such as Google’s AdSense, which are not images, can’t be blocked.”
You can block anything, just type its url to the content blocker preferences window.
Also, your forget to put the ‘ht’ to tp://www.bellsouth.com/’s url.
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I also like the tool-tips. They cause an annoyance only when the site I am viewing shows it’s own custom tool-tips which overlaps with opera’s tool-tips.
When I view the source of some page the Edit –> Find option becomes grayed out ( Ctrl+F still works though).
Also it is possible to block google ads.You need to get the code from the source and add it to content blocker manually.
I agree with you on the display of thumbnails. A part from the title of the page the other details aren’t really needed.
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I disagree about tooltips and Status bar. I think Status bar is useless. I takes a lot of space and proides only one information. If you like Status bar, just enable it.
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Hello!
Nice review and almost complete: you forgot about all those new web standards implemented.
Yes, I also want the status bar enabled by default.
However, I do NOT want tooltips disabled. They are very useful for elements with the title=”" attribute. I would even like tooltips enabled in widgets :).
I agree with you on the problem of the thumbnails. They are ugly currently “thanks” to the information shown on the left of the tooltip.
I would like thumbnails enabled by default when cycling through pages. Again, the cycling of pages also looks ugly. It should look much better.
Opera Update Manager: yes! This would, of course, be a great addition.
The “Flash problem” is not a big deal, if they will provide an automated way of downloading and installing the latest version of Flash Player for my system (be it Windows 95, or Linux).
I very much like the site-specific preferences, content blocker, search engine editor GUI, opera:config, internal source viewer and the BitTorrent support.
Great review and a very nice new site!
using
You can block AdSense, InteliTXT and other ads with Opera 9 content blocker. You just have to enter path manually in Prefs.
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For some reason Opera never called tabs ‘tabs’, it called them ‘pages’.
Well, they’re not really tabs, cause Opera has a Multi Document Interface (MDI). Calling them as “documents,” though, may be more confusing, so they used a logical term for it: page (they are webpages after all). Tabs as a term came later.
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I actually like tooltips. Especially since I use the title image tag a lot myself. I put space at a higher premium (especially since I have a 12″ widescreen), especially when tooltips does the job for me.
I can’t find the mask browser option in edit site preferences. This seriously has me mystified. I hope it’s not because I installed over my old version of Opera o.o
I quite like widgets…just waiting for better widgets to come out. A lot of them just turn out pixellated on my screen for some reason.
Good to see that BT actually works on 9 beta. In previous versions of Opera, it never worked.
Webpg thumbnail: agree that most of the info aside from title is unecessary.
Changed shortcuts: couldn’t bear unlearning my old habits…I just changed the keyboard shortcuts
Thanks for the review! I learnt about a couple of features I didn’t know about before!!
One feature I’d love to see is a “backup personal preferences” option, ala “Microsoft 2003 save personal settings wizard”. A one-click wizard to save bookmarks, notes, mail settings, toolbars/shortcuts/menus etc etc, and an “import personal settings” menu item would be great!!
Oh yeah, still waiting for them to separate would RSS feeds into a different panel too.
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I think Status Bar should stay off by default. It takes a lot of space and provides only one information. If you like Status bar, just enable it. Tooltip is much more practical. Opera is better than all other major browsers!
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How about Gmail contacts? Are they working now?
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It turns out I was wrong about not being able to block Google AdSense. I edited the review.
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I can’t find the mask browser option in edit site preferences. This seriously has me mystified. I hope it’s not because I installed over my old version of Opera o.o
To set the mask option, right click > Edit site preferences > Network > Browser Indentification…
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I’m glad to see about better custom search ability. I have created my own custom searches for IMDb.com and m-w.com, which of course mean creating the search code and adding it to the search.ini file.
I’m also glad to see the site-specific settings. I thought this was one (of the only) neat feature of the latest Netscape browser - being able to run the IE engine on certain sites. (Not that I would want Opera to do that. Identifying is plenty good enough for me.)
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The IE status bar is off by default, to my knowledge.
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Question :
I use Adblock Plus (Flock). It has a subscription feature, (auto updating list). Can I get anything like this for Opera.
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Daniel you have written an excellent feature list. Some of those features are like NEWS to me even though I consider myself to be a well-informed Opera user. I completely agree with you on Widgets and shortcuts.
Most of the improvements are great.
ABOUT TOOLTIPS
Till I started using the Twelve layout I never used the status bar. I got this habit from Opera 7 which had huge icons that took a lot of space for th UI, so I removed the status bar. Even now I find status bar useless though, the tooltips show the entire address, the status bar on the other hand is limited in what it can show by its size. Try seeing this in your statusbar. But tooltips are annoying. Especially in yahoo websites news.yahoo.com and my.yahoo.com, where Opera hides the tooltips generated by those pages. The best solution is one of these
1. Either something like Multipop where you have the option of setting a modifier key like Ctrl+hover to show tooltips and disable them by default (except for the rest of th UI)
2. Or the tooltip is visible when you bring the mouse over a link, but goes away on any movement of the mouse.
UI tooltips (including page thumbnails) should be treated separately from tooltips for webpage links. With option to disable them separately. At present I have disabled tooltips, I use Multipop JS and have set the status bar visible. Tooltips should also display the “Alt text” for images.
UPDATE MANAGER
One very small problem with FF’s update manager. It installs the update automatically next time you start FF. Imagine you had to check something quickly before you leave your home, you fire FF and instead of starting in 10 seconds like it normally would it starts in a minute you are annoyed, you dont know what is happening, that one minute looks like an hour because you are in a hurry. When it finally does start you realize it was installing the updates without your knowledge, while you were wondering if it has frozen and were about to kill it out of frustration.
ADDING SEARCH
One problem it seems is that you could even add the “post a comment box” at the end of this post as a search. Which is a mistake. I have not tried it but I think I can post to this particular post using the search box if I added the box to my searches.
BITTORENT
I hope they improve the BitTorrent client with time. In its present state it is rather primitive. Anyway, I do not see any reason for moving away from uTorrent. I would also like the ability to disable Opera’s default BitTorrent client. At present I do not see any immediate method for disabling Opera’s BitTorrent client from trying to download. Once I click a torrent file I can either click OK or Cancel, there should be an option to use System’s default BitTorrent software. I think the setting can be changed by modifying MIME types, but how many people know about MIME types? Or how many people know about right click >> save target as (my current solution for downloading torrent files.)
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What I expected from Op9, but am worried I will not find in the final release.
1) Better M2 - with IMAP support improved. I wanted Rich text editing, while I find it kiddish, but when I introduce people to M2 lot of them ask for this feature (would make M2 heavier though)
2) Ability to organize RSS feeds into directories.
3) Support for something like MHT or Unipage, so that I could save an entire webpage instead of saving several small files inside a folder.
4) Indexing of notes and bookmarks too so that I could search them like email.
5) Better control over widgets. Especially the ability to slectively load/unload widgets like Konfabulator.
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I strongly disagree. Why should every program have its own upgrade manager system integrated into it? That just makes it cumbersome to upgrade all programs. You’d have to start all your programs, one by one, and use each program’s upgrade manager to manage its updates.
No, the update manager should obviously be part of the OS, not the individual applications. Rather than spend an hour updating my programs every day I just want to do something like
aptitude update && aptitude upgrade
which will do the same thing in a few seconds. This is how you currently upgrade opera in debian, ubuntu, etc. and it works fairly well. (It would be even better, close to perfect, if opera would put the packages on some deb repository.)
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@Marcus, Firefox’s update manager updates automatically in the background whenever you launch it, almost without your knowledge and intervention. The size of the download is smaller (good for people with slower connections). This method is certainly good for my dad who does not know anything about software and net - more than he must know. So it definately has its plus points. Microsoft is deinately not going release a tool for upgrading non MS Software. Each application would have to upgrade itself on Win platforms.
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‘Find on Page’
I think that Opera has done a nice job with their enhancements to the Find function (highlighting, as you mentioned).
But, one important feature missing is notifying the user that they have reached the end of the page. It has happened many times where I was searching for a term and continued searching, not knowing that I had already looped around to the beginning of the page a number of times.
I think that this feature comes standard with any other application/browser, and should be added to Merlin.
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I strongly disagree with disabling the tool tips for a status bar. It’s probably my favorite feature. why would you want a bar that permanently takes up space and that you have to look down to see. plus its really straining to see it. with the tool tips its natural. tool tips save space. and opera should expand their use. for instance they should get rid of the words New tab and put that in a tool tip. you could fit 3-4 distinguishable tabs with the space saved.
I also like the thumbnails when I have a billion tabs open, but I support getting rid of the meta info.
My complaints are with the Internal Source Viewer not having a in page finder. and I’d like a reload from the web option.
I don’t like the orange icon and prefer a blue version of it which I know exists.
I also rather them put more time in their engine then the widgets
finally I don’t like the msi installer and in fact with the malware blockers i use it doesn’t even work. doesn’t it make more sense to keep the old one the default and the msi one as an option for administrators who are the only ones that really benefit from it and wouldn’t have a problem finding it.
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“While I think Widgets are a nice addition to browser, I feel Opera should devote more of its time making **all** websites work in Opera, rather than super-enhancing the widgets support.”
It is extremely important that all sites work. But make sure you understand the difference between “work in” and “work with” Opera. Opera 9 is technically superior to the other current browsers, but unless developers also test with Opera, sites will simply break.
Widgets are such very important for Opera since it stimulates web developers to create applications using all the goodies in Opera 9 such as SVG and Canvas.
using
Yes, yes, yes!
The lack of this feature in Opera annoys me almost daily (usually tens of times per day). One now has to look at the scrollbar before and after each press on F3 to see if it has wrapped. Why won’t the people at Opera understand the obvious fact that people usually don’t memorize the context of each search hit and the look at the match and not the scrollbar.
(It’s like the menus on Nokia’s PoS mobile phone UIs, where you always go 2-3 times through each menu before you realize that you’re looping. The people at Nokia ar so utterly clueless that they don’t understand that when people look for something they don’t pay attention to stuff that does not match what they’re looking for, including scrollbars and line numbers.)
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“browsers use the CTRL+T shortcut to open a new tab.”
Funny, most PROGRAMS* use CTRL+N to open a new document/page (which is what a tab is).If you ask me, browsers such as Firefox aren’t being standards compliant with the CTRL+T shortcut.
*Why limit standards compliance to browsers?
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I may be mistaken since the computer at home (with Opera 8x) is busted, but hasn’t Opera done this highlighting thing for years? I could swear I did it on my computer 3 years ago (before 8.0 even came out).
Actually I’m finding that there are FEW programs that tell you that the search has reached the end of the page. But it is a good suggestion. I wish the programs that I use did it.
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Er, widgets have got nothing to do with extensions. Widgets are the Opera Platform running on a desktop platform.
Widgets were added to Opera Mobile first, remember? As an important part of Opera’s business model?
Again, it’s got nothing to do with extensions what so ever.
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Again, it’s got nothing to do with extensions what so ever.
Which is unfortunate. I ran a small survey amongst my Opera-using friends, and nobody - absolutely nobody - understands this widget deal. I don’t plan on using widgets, nobody plans on using widgets.
There’s only one or two widgets so far that might prove to be somewhat useful, but generally, they suck, almost to the extent of Microsoft’s Clippy.
Wake me up the day Opera allows us to make something that integrates with the browser chrome, or at least gets local file access for UserCSS and UserJS. Right now, there is a number of online games with skin-packs, which are useless in Opera (but very useful for Fx/IE), and Opera is losing even that niche. Everyone I know is pissed with the lack of extending Opera.
Don’t get me wrong - Opera is still my greatest and only browser love, but it’s NEVER going to gain more attention with such a closed nature. The time they spent on coding widget support, something extremely few people will use, could have been better utilized on actually opening Opera, at least for the multitude of web developers out there. A built-in Web Developer’s toolbar, error consoles that don’t suck (why not a panel, or a tab?!), a JS debugger… That would have been much more useful than an insanely stupid widget system. For god’s sake, even NTLM support and an auto-updater would have pushed Opera ahead a lot.
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Hi Daniel ! Great overview and some interesting points brought together by the additional commentary. I have been using Opera myself for a number of years and although I do really like the O9 experience I think that Opera is missing the boat as far as social software is concerned. Here you have got some more thoughts on that.
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Markus, regarding your comment #20, a software should be easy to use, and easier to upgrade. Firefox updates are excellent.
Why, you ask? If I don’t know anything about computers, the I don’t know about “updates” so I’ll never update. That’s what happened with my uncle, I installed Firefox 1.0 and still was 1.0 when we were already on 1.5.
It’s not the users fault.
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I would like to request opera to have an option to turn off the bitTorrent client if they want to get coporate market. I don’t like widget also (until now) and prefer that they open up the code a bit so that people can develop on it. May be not BSD license (?) which is totally free. I like tooltips and think that status bar is useless and a waste of screen space. I really think that opera would benefit more if they open up the source code, there are community, who only love open source, out there and they are willing to contribute to the open source project. Why not? Opera is already a free software. Update manager? Not bad, I guess. But the negative effects of that in one comment also is true. looping search ?
,it is not a problem for me and it does not annoy me, but it sure does annoy other I guess 
. glad that now I can add the search in the search box easily. I have been using Opera since 5.0 and never try to hack into that to get alternative search options. (I thought that I was power user, not anymore 
) good review and good job to the opera team 
using
As mainly an OmniWeb browser user on the Mac, I’m can’t help to be more than excited by some the new features added to the Opera. Site-specific preferences, easy to add search to Opera, page thumbnails are almost all the features that kept me using OW was the default browser on the Mac (but Opera is my default on Linux and Windows).
Bittorrent, the new shortcut scheme, and content blocker are also very nice additions. But I’m a bit concerned about the move on the flash plugin. Hope they change this before the final release.
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Good article, interesting comments. I have little to add except that I’m not only fully on board with alex’s comment about ctrl+t being “non-standards compliant” (who had ‘tabs” first–whatever they’re called–anyway?). In fact, Opera 9 makes it soooo easy to modify keyboard shortcuts that I did just that: ctrl+n STILL opens a new page (tab) in MY installs of Opera 9. Oh, ctrl+t still does too (I didn’t modify it, just added “n+ctrl” and pointed it at new page…
Oh, and ******** around with ctrl+d was a bad thing, too, so I put that back in for paste and go. Much simpler than forcing myself to switch to ctrl+b after years of such a short, quick keystroke combo.
So switchers had trouble with new keystroke combos. *wah* What about folks who’d been using Opera since version X (for me it was ver 3–I missed the ‘96 rollout of ver 2)? Do football (soccer) players all change their rules any time an American football player wants to play a while?
*feh*
But no problem. It’s Opera. The whole family uses it, and it’s no trivial matter to have them all learn new keystrokes, so averting “support calls” from them was as simple as reinstating the keystroke combos they’ve grown used to in Preferences>Advanced>Shortcuts>Keybaoard Shortcuts.
After all, it is Opera, and has been seriously tweakable and customizable for years, so using the new, much easier interfaces of recent versions, much matured in Opera 9, it’s a snap to correct some of these stumbles *heh* by Opera developers.
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hello, my name is Pikasso.
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I am trying to decide between Opera and Fire Fox, any advice on the strengths and weaknesses of each?
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please allow the user the choice to save .torrent files to the desktop
whenever i try to save one to the desktop opera forces me to try and use opera as a bit-torrent client which is very annoying.
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oh and now im forced to use other browsers if i want to us torrent files because alot of sites block opera as a torrent app
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Opera 9.X uncomfortable!