The top 5 browsers on the desktop (meaning not mobile) are, in this order:
- Internet Explorer (45.11%)
- Mozilla Firefox (29.98%)
- Google Chrome (17.37%)
- Apple Safari (5.02%)
- Opera (1.97%)
Opera is at #5 in the world browser market for a few very good reasons.
Internet Explorer commands the largest share of the market because it came bundled with Windows ever since later editions of Windows 95 (not including the recent EU decision concerning Windows 7 where it wasn’t and replaced with a browser ballot decision on OS install), and of course Windows is the #1 OS in the world as we know it.
Mozilla Firefox commands the #2 position because of blitz-style advertising they’ve been doing in an on-again/off-again fashion since the mid-2000s.
Google Chrome has market share only because Google is the #1 search engine on the planet.
Apple Safari while at #4 has that position largely because it comes bundled with Mac OS X.
Then there’s Opera. It does not come bundled with any major OS (Nintendo Wii’s OS isn’t for the desktop, obviously), nor does Opera blitz-advertise itself at all, nor does Opera have the advantage placing a big-ass button to install itself on the #1 search engine’s home page:
(The above only happens when you visit Google.com with IE, by the way.)
Anyway, the point is that Opera, even as good as it is, simply doesn’t have the "influence" so to speak to compete against the other major players; the fact it has 1.97% of the world browser market share is pretty impressive when that’s taken into consideration.
I personally believe Opera 11 is a good browser. A damned good one, actually. Will it ever rise up the ranks? Unlikely for the reasons stated above. But it’s still great.
Here’s a video I did on what I personally like about Opera 11. If you haven’t used the browser in a while, definitely check it out at www.opera.com. It is of course free to download and use.
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loved this article
My favorite Opera feature is Fit to Width. For some reason that I’ve not been able to figure out, on my old computer, Firefox has renders home pages with weird, ungodly long horizontal borders. On one site it doesn’t even give me a horizontal scroll bar. With Opera I never have to worry about a horizontal scroll bar. Because now Fit to Width is a setting where it used to be a toggle switch.
Watched the video and tried it myself. Sorry, no sale. The install process did not find the latest bookmarks from my current install of Firefox, and the display of gmail is badly messed up.
It also doesn’t work with the beta version of Yahoo mail.
Opera is all I use really. Told me about it on one of the old tech broadcasts, maybe 2 years ago or something like that, loved its speed and sheer simplicity, and i dont worry about email since i use my phone for that, and the speed dial is great. And it doesnt put error-type messages on your screen when you try to close with more than one tab open.