CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 06/20/2006
- Released on: 06/20/2006
It's easy to download and install Opera. As with Internet Explorer and Firefox, upon first use of Opera, the browser invites you to import your current Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and mail from previous versions of Opera or other browsers.
The basic interface shares many of the same features as IE and Firefox, but after using Opera 9 for a few days, we noticed a few irritating interface omissions. For example, in IE, Netscape, and Firefox, you can right-click over the Back arrow to see a menu that lists your most recently viewed pages. In Opera, a simple mouseover reveals only the URL of the last page visited; a right-click offers a choice to either "remove from toolbar" or "customize" the icon, but there's no mention of the pages you've visited. On the other hand, Opera's double-back arrow and double-forward arrow are quite unique and very nice, allowing you to jump back by domain, rather than returning to each page viewed within a given domain. While Firefox offers many extensions to customize its look and feel, Opera, drawing upon a much smaller developer community, offers only a few skins, keyboard shortcuts, and preset RSS feeds.
We think the inclusion of BitTorrent within Opera 9 is a bit overblown. True, offering a built-in media viewer is very cutting-edge, and eventually other browsers are likely to adopt built-in BitTorrent-like media players. Currently, however, you'll have a hard time finding legal BitTorrent to download. Though some U.S-based commercial television networks have announced their support for the technology and will start offering it in the fall of 2006, for now there's nothing. Also, in random tests, we found that although we could download two-thirds of a file very quickly using the peer-to-peer technology employed by BitTorrent, the download often hung during the final third. While individual downloads will always vary depending upon their source computers, we had several incomplete downloads of various sizes. Finally, not all corporate environments allow BitTorrent, so you may encounter firewall difficulties, as well.
Opera 9 embraces AJAX technology by offering tiny desktop applets called Widgets. Widgets offer specific functionality, such as currency conversion, that stays on top of your desktop screen. But Widgets are not new; they're available all over the Internet and will be a part of Microsoft Windows Vista when it launches next year. It's unclear why the browser needs this feature--other than because it's cool.
One truly handy feature within Opera saves, then reopens, frequently used tabs whenever you relaunch the browser. If you order your tabs the way I do, you'll appreciate the time savings here. Speaking of saving time with tabs, Opera now allows you to mouse over any tab to see a thumbnail of the current content, but the images are too small, with more than half of the preview window displaying the URL of the site. In addition to providing built-in zoom to magnify Web pages, there's Opera Voice, which will read aloud Web content.
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"Opera is awesome, and to the editor...it does provide a list of previous pages"
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