Just Browsing

Well, speed dial is special.

By David Naylor on Feb 5, 2008

My favorite feature is the per-site-preferences (and I mean serious preferences like Referer sending [sic], Javascript on/off, and browser forging). Other than that, Firefox is my browser of choice — I like using Opera for certain tasks. (And Safari for printing!)

By John Silvestri on Feb 5, 2008

Here are some cool features that make Opera unique:
* The wand - instead of using an autocomplete dropdown menu, Opera simply lets you press Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Enter) to fill in and submit saved login information. The login fields don’t even need to be focused.
* Built in mail client - Opera’s mail client is extremely fast and provides a lot of features for power users (such as automatic filters for mailing lists and extremely fast searching). It also has an integrated feed reader, newsgroups, and IRC. (This is all in a Windows binary 1MB smaller than Firefox 2!)
* Create a search from any input field - just right click the query input field on the form and select “Create search” in the context menu. You can assign a keyword to the search too, so you can access it quickly from the address bar.
* Mouse gestures and keyboard shortcut customization built in - no extensions required
* Full page zoom (this is also in Firefox 3, but Opera has had it since version 2!)
* True full screen mode (0% screen space used by chrome) - which is great for Opera Show presentations
* Keyboard control - q/a for previous/next link, w/s for previous/next heading, e/d for previous/next text element (note: the single key shortcuts are not enabled by default in Opera 9.5). Spatial navigation is also available - use shift+arrow keys (Opera 9.5 beta is especially good at it)
* OS support - Opera 9.5 still supports Windows 95 and Mac OS X 10.2 (Opera 9 supports 10.1). Opera’s performance is great for older computers.
* Source editing - “view source” is editable in Opera. And you can view the effects of your changes - even on live websites - using the “Apply changes” feature, which loads your version of the source instead of the one on the server.
* SVG support - Opera’s SVG support is an order of magnitude better than the SVG support offered by any other browser. Try this out in Opera 9.5: http://files.myopera.com/MacDev_ed/sarpsborg2007/spiral-editfield.svg …click on the spiral’s text and start typing, because it’s editable!

By David Bloom on Feb 5, 2008