Opera 9.64 Web Browser

After trying out Safari 4 beta and not being overly impressed with it, I went ahead and downloaded the latest version of the Opera web browser, version 9.64.

The petite 5MB installer file whizzed thru its installation process. I don’t remember a browser installing itself this quickly since Firefox 1.5.

This browser is lightning quick. Pages which ordinarily take a time to load in IE or Firefox load much faster in Opera.

Many of Opera’s widgets are useful, easy to install and moreover easy to uninstall. Widget management is far and beyond better than the way Firefox handles add-ons. However this is not without a huge drawback. Opera widgets essentially run as separate apps. While this isn’t necessarily a problem, what happens is that each widget appears as a task in the Windows taskbar. So if you’re running 5 widgets, that’s 5 things cluttering up the taskbar. Widgets should have a way of running in-browser without separating themselves so much.

Skins in Opera make the browser look better and do not require a restart whenever you decide to change it around.

A knock against Opera is that it does not have a private browsing mode, nor are there any plans to have that feature. Not natively, anyway. You could enable it with the 3rd-party OperaTor app, but it would be better if the feature was native.

My single largest complaint about Opera is the same I have about other web browsers, that being horrible memory management.

When using Opera for a while the memory use will blow up like a balloon. You can watch this happen in the Windows Task Manager with the opera.exe file. A quick restart of the browser fixes the problem, but the fact I have to do that is flat out irritating.

The memory management thing is certainly not an Opera-only problem. Internet Explorer and Firefox balloon up just like Opera does.

Small side note: Google Chrome is the only browser I’m aware of that separates out tabs as sessions where the memory used by a tab is released when closed.

The interesting thing is that when Opera balloons up in memory use, you really can’t tell. But I don’t know if this is good or bad.

Really good features for power users

Cached option for image viewing

With browsers there’s show or no-show for images. But Opera has a third option, that being Cached. If you load a site, then revisit it using the cache, this speeds up load time quite a bit.

A ton of import/export options

You can import/export quite a bit more compared to other browsers. Furthermore the import/export process is easy – a huge plus.

Using Firefox 3 as a comparison:

If you want to export your Firefox bookmarks, this is the b.s. you have to go thru just to do it:

Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks, Import and Backup button, Export HTML. And I guarantee if I didn’t tell you that, you had no idea that was the process.

Opera makes is much easier to do the same thing without hunting around menus just to figure it out.

Print options

Other browsers have one way of printing, their way. Not so with Opera. You actually get options of how you want your web page printed.

Opera Link synchronizes as little or as much as you want

Opera Link will synchronize a whole lot more than just bookmarks, and this is all native to the browser.

This is something I wish Firefox had natively.

What do you think?

Is Opera worth it and still a contender? It’s certainly got the goods. Oh, and let’s not forget it’s got a fully-enabled mail client that does IMAP/POP, newsgroups and IRC!

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Charles Kane
Opera is fast, small, looks good, is sort of traditional (therefore easy to use), has a lot of good tho unobtrusive options – in many ways it is the equal of firefox (barring add-ons). Chrome is fast but is troubled when handling a lot of tabs and still feels a bit beta-ish. IE is a dogs breakfast, has good ideas but just doesn’t work very well – memory probs, slow loading pages, bad with a lot of tabs.
But altho I like – even admire Opera (I used it when it was sporting tabs and fitted on a floppy about 14-15 years ago) I just can’t Love it.
But I strongly recommend it to all IE users – its a much better app than IExplore.
yoyo
Opera has *always* been the best-overall, most advanced browser. Some just don’t like it because it’s not open-source.
OperaFan
Opera does have a private browsing mode, although it is not well known and only accessible through the command line argument “-private”.
This option is described as “private browsing mode. All history and data is deleted on exit”.
http://howto-ubuntu.com eli
I agree that Opera is a terrific browser, and very much a competitor for anyone’s sole browser. The only problem are those certain sites that require IE. Bah! Opera also runs well on dial-up. Another nice feature it has is the Block Content option. You can use this to block a certain image, video, or an ad from being loaded & displayed. This REALLY makes browsing more enjoyable. Visit an annoying site once, block the content you don’t want to see. The next time you visit it, it won’t display the junk you don’t want to see. I love Opera
Frank
Hey, I really enjoy this article! I have come across it several time in the past week or so while surfin search engines and I stop and read this everytime which says a lot. when you said you were not overly impressed with Safari 4, I thought to myself, “Wait, is this me who wrote this article?” But of course, all credit goes to you. I have never been more happy with internet browsers as I am with Opera today. I was happy with Netscape when I kicked AOL to the curb back in 1997. But that was short lived and I was forced to settle with MSN browser, then Earthlink, then I.E., followed by Safari. I tested Opera a year ago against Firefox, but I never took advantage of all the cool extras you can do and how user friendly this was. I guess you could say that Firefox resembled Safari and that’s why I picked Firefox. But I never denied that Opera was a great browser. Then this week, I have re-installed Opera, Browsed all the skins & picked my best ones, took in a few great widgets, turned on Mouse gestures, and made Speed Dial my home page. I’m just not looking back anymore. Opera is the first and only place I use to watch streaming movies and all things on web. There are a lot of good web browsers competing and the choice may not be too easy. But I finally gave Opera the chance they so long-time and richly deserved and proud of that. I hope they stay strong and keep doing what they do best! Thanks – looking forward to Opera 10 someday.