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Opera 9 (no spam)

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:46 pm
by fable
I've just installed it, and am so far pleased if confused with the enormous boost to possibilities over IE. Can anyone offer some tips for nifty features, things that Opera can and cannot do? And keep it clean.

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:45 pm
by Vicsun
The RSS client is nice if you're into that. So is the email client. You can drag and drop tabs to rearrange them, and you can use mouse gestures from the get-go; I'd use some time to get into the habit of using them for simple functions if I were you - closing tabs, shifting between tabs, navigating back and forth through your history, etc. I also used the 'notes' feature intensively, since I get urges to write things down every once in a while.

edit: also, quick-searches! This feature is native for firefox too, though very few people seem to know of it. Typing "g <searchterm>", "d <searchterm>", or "wiki <searchterm>" will search in google, dictionary.com and wikipedia respectively (if it doesn't you can add quick-searches by rick-clicking on a search-field and clicking on "add search term").

I'd also like to point out Opera is the fastest browser I've used in terms of startup times and rendering pages. It has also implemented history beautifully so that when you hit 'back' it reloads the page instantly from the cache instead of downloading it again from the web-server. Firefox and IE implemented the same feature recently, though for whatever reason it's much slower.

edit: and sessions too. If you are in the middle of reading multiple threads open in several tabs, but decide to come back to them later, you can close your browser and when you open it again it'll bring it back to the exact same state it was before you closed it. If you had scrolled half way down tab five before you closed it, it'll open with tab five scrolled down half way. I also believe you can save a session and come back to it every time you wish to from then on - this is to say you can have 15 articles on whatever subject open, save them as a session and access them all at once whenever you want to reference them.

Opera is nifty and I should probably start using it again.

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 11:10 am
by dragon wench
I just wanted to bump this because I have a similar query.
I have been using Opera as my main browser for a long time, and I am very happy with V 8.5.
I really like the theme I'm using (meguiddo 1.4), and I have a spellcheck addon installed with 8.5. I'm concerned that neither would work with newer versions, and I've also heard of people losing their bookmarks when switching.

However, the 9 series has been out for some time and is now up to 9.10.
Does anyone have any experience with it? Where software is concerned I am generally of the view: "If it ain't broke don't fix it."
So, that being the case, I'm asking, "Is there anything about Opera 9.10 that makes it worth the switch?" I know it has RRS features and widgets, but I don't use either, so that is not a concern for me.

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 11:23 am
by fable
I'm using 9.10, but because I hadn't used Opera for a long time before that, I'm afraid I can't help you. I like it, bar a few minor annoying features. It does far more than IE, offers more customization, never makes suspicious calls out to Microsoft for no reason at all, and works all the time.

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:53 pm
by xxslainxx
fable one of the main advantages of Opera over all other browsers is the rendering engine used to render certain types of pages.

Opera as i recall is the only one what received a 100% flawless rendering certification on a number of dynamic encoding schemas/languages by W3 and other web standard groups.

Coupled with the speed of the rendering, opera wins hands down over its competition. The only flaw I am aware of is certain here-to un-patched memory leaks. Hopefully that will get fixed soon. :)

A slightly more technical description of the test.
Acid 2 in major browsers

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:19 pm
by fable
Um, xxslainxx, I don't need to be convinced to use it. I already am, and have been, for several months. ;) I was seeking hints or tips on specific features.

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:08 pm
by Vicsun
dragon wench wrote:I just wanted to bump this because I have a similar query.
I have been using Opera as my main browser for a long time, and I am very happy with V 8.5.
I really like the theme I'm using (meguiddo 1.4), and I have a spellcheck addon installed with 8.5. I'm concerned that neither would work with newer versions, and I've also heard of people losing their bookmarks when switching.

However, the 9 series has been out for some time and is now up to 9.10.
Does anyone have any experience with it? Where software is concerned I am generally of the view: "If it ain't broke don't fix it."
So, that being the case, I'm asking, "Is there anything about Opera 9.10 that makes it worth the switch?" I know it has RRS features and widgets, but I don't use either, so that is not a concern for me.
I believe it was actually 9.20 that was released recently. The new feature is the 'speed dial' - a sort of a visual bookmarking thing that looks interesting. When you open a new tab, instead of getting a blank page, you get something similar to this

That said, the main difference between 9 and 8 is the content blocker. It imitates the AdBlock extension for Firefox, allowing you to block ads. There's some other stuff like fraud protection and more control over cookies too, if I recall correctly, but the content blocker was by far the biggest change as far as I'm concerned.