LinuxElectrons Reviews the New Opera Browser on Linux

Opera is a cross-platform Internet browser. Opera started out as a research project in Norway's telecom company, Telenor, in 1994, and branched out into an independent development company named Opera Software ASA in 1995. Opera Software develops the Opera Web browser, a high-quality, multi-platform product for a wide range of platforms, operating systems and embedded Internet products.

Opera has every browser feature imaginable built in, except AOL and Yahoo! instant messengers. Here are some of the features:

Surf in multiple windows
Opera Mail, intelligent e-mailing
IRC-compatible chat
Newsreader
RSS newsfeeds
Integrated Google search
Pop-up blocker

Installation
Just download and install the rpm. Its that easy. Opera is free, but takes up some space for advertising if you did not purchase the software. The ad space Opera uses is not much and is easily tolerated. Opera has no AdBlock plugins either. Users have resorted to CSS tricks to implement ad blocking. Implementing ad blocking in CSS is too much of an inconvenience to be effective. Heck, you spend all your time editing CSS instead of browsing the web. In the forums, one user stated that the developers did not implement ad blocking because Opera depends on ad's for the freeware version.

How Does It Look
Opera is skinnable. You can download new skins from a menu button inside Opera. Here is a snapshot of Opera using the BlueCurve theme. The icon placement and toolbars have been customized by me. Customization is menu driven with drag-n-drop items.

Opera uses the QT (www.trolltech.com) API for the GUI. Opera's speed is probably due to a combination of QT, and good programming by the developers. One thing I have noticed is that the Bitstream fonts render better in Opera than Mozilla/FireFox. The font rendering is probably a QT bonus(?). Opera has a similar menu selection for the fonts as Mozilla. However, in Opera, the fonts you choose, can still be overwritten by a websites CSS. The default fonts you pick are only used when there is no CSS or font definition. Whereas in Mozilla, you can override all fonts regardless. If you notice in the above snapshot, the fonts have no Linux equivalent. The remedy would be to install the Microsoft Web Fonts or other TrueType font that suits your tastes.

Another one of Opera's features is called Small-Screen Rendering (SSR). Its used primarily on PDA's and phones. To see this feature in action, just click on "View" and select "small screen". Below is a SSR snapshot from the same page a shown above.

Features
There are so many features packed into Opera, its almost a Desktop unto itself. One feature that Opera brags about is its small size. The Opera executable file size is 6.6MB and with no libraries. FireFox is approximately the same size including the many libraries it uses. How about memory footprint? Loading the FrontPage of LinuxElectrons, Opera consumes 74MB, whereas, FireFox consumes 75MB. So much for all those small size myths.

Opera contains an embedded mail application. The mail application is also used to manage NewsGroups and RSS feeds. The mail application contains all the features one expects from a modern mail program such as, filters, spam management and so forth. My personal taste is to use separate programs for each of the above named apps. I've tried using the all in one approach before, but always end up missing a cool feature that makes life easier. However, the mail application in Opera is on par with KMAIL.

Opera has these cool fast forward and rewind buttons. The rewind button takes you back in your history list. Say you have followed and traversed numerous links and your history is kinda too deep for the casual wade, just hit the rewind button a few times, and presto, back at the beginning. The fast forward button was a little less intuitive for my brain. I suspected that the fast forward button would take me forward in history (my own little time machine), unfortunately, it looks at the current page and tries to guess your next link click. However, the forward button functions how I thought the fast forward button should function, a page at a time though. The "panel" is highly functional and does not consume that much real estate. Clicking on an icon in the panel opens up another small window in the browser right next to the panel. You can even "get panels" from the Opera website.

Wrap-Up
I see no reason to quit using Mozilla/FireFox today, especially with new plugins being added all the time for Mozilla. If I were using Windows as my primary operating system, I would jump ship from Internet Explorer to Opera. I'm sure Opera has a place somewhere on the Linux Desktop, but just not on the average Desktop, especially while FireFox is around.

Pro's:

Very Fast

Program loads quickly
Page load and rendering is fast

Email with filtering/spam
IRC Chat
Notes
F.Forward and Rewind buttons
Skinnable

Con's:

No AdBlock
Cannot override fonts
Bookmarks - forced alphabetical
Cannot change size of text area in search bars
Costs $40.00 USD