Opera is more than a browser

By Amir

Browser war huh? After all that posts and reviews about IE and Firefox, today I want to open a new window to those of you who’d love to browse as safe, as confident and as fast as possible!

How many of you have ever heard of Opera?
Do you know that many of those nice features, such as tabbed browsing, already implemented in Internet Explorer, Firefox and the newborn Google Chrome are actually inherited from Opera?

And as an answer to my friends who ask me “Hey dude! If it’s this good, then why it is not as famous?” I can just say “Because it is not AMERICAN! It is Norwegian and that’s why it has every thing sorted and disciplined!
The good thing I love about Opera is its innovative soul! It has been always many many years ahead of its rivals in terms of new and interesting features and services.
The other good thing about Opera is that its damn fast! You have to try it to see, oh no sorry FEEL, the difference!

I warmly invite all of you to go and try it by yourself and comment about it here.

Below is a short list of this awesome browser’s features, as Coxy says:

• Better than Internet Explorer
  If you access the internet using the blue ‘e’ icon you can be considered a bad, bad person. Internet Explorer is made by Microsoft and comes with your Windows computer – and it’s this very reason that most virus/security risks are aimed at Internet Explorer. If you value your security (ie, bank details, passwords, etc) – get a better browser.

• You’re using / thinking about Firefox?
  Mozilla Firefox is the browser that most Internet Explorer users are switching to. If you’ve heard of another web browser, it’s probably Firefox. Whilst Firefox is undoubtably better than Internet Explorer, for most users to make the browser do what they want it to, they have to hunt down and install ‘Add Ons’ making Firefox slower and more cumbersome. Most of Firefox’s popular plugins come built-in as standard with Opera. It’s well known that most of Firefox’s new features are existing features in Opera.

• Speed Dial
  Opening a new tab or window in Opera provides you with shortcuts to your favourite websites. If you’re a socialite, you can be a mere click away from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr and your other favourite social networks – there’d be no need to type urls!

• Opera Link
  Connect your browser to your free Opera Link account and Opera will back-up and sync your bookmarks, speed dial, notes, personal toolbar, search engine preferences and typed history. When you log in at school, work, on any other computer or mobile phone, you have instant access to all your data – and any changes you make away from your computer will still be there when you get home. Get in sync, get a better browser.

If all of us liked Opera, we can ask our IT department to install it on school’s PCs and then we’d get all our favorites and bookmarks, browsing history and Speed Dial everywhere, on every PC we use at school! IS not that great?

• Zoooooooooom!
  Opera zooms pages like no other browser. Seriously. Where other browsers will only zoom the text on the page, Opera zooms everything with the touch of the plus or minus keys. Save your eyes, zoom when reading long articles or small type.
  

• Login with Magic
  The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Return becomes your friend! Pressing it (or the magic wand button) magically logs you into your favourite sites – or fills out long forms for you – so long as you’ve saved that information previous. Login to pretty much any site and hit ‘Save’ when prompted and you’ll never have to remember your username and password again!

• Find Anything!
  Opera comes suited and booted with the latest search engines; Google, Yahoo!, Ask and more. You can also search your history by typing in the address bar. If you can’t remember the name of that lolcats site you were visiting, but remember seeing the word ‘kitten’ on the page, type away and Opera will find it for you. No other browser searches every word on every page you’ve visited! What’s more – you can add any search box on pretty much any web page into your browser by simply right-clicking on it. Another good reason to get a better browser.

• Ultimate Protection
  Opera comes with Fraud, Malware and Phishing protection built-in as standard. Every site you visit is checked against a list of known phishing or fraudulent site to ensure your computer’s not going to get infected with any spyware or viruses and that you’re not giving your bank details away to a fake website.

To be honest, I could go on – but I’ll stop now. There are so many good reasons to give Opera a try; even if you’re happy with Firefox or just don’t give a crap about web browsers – at the end of the day it’ll ensure you’re safe from nasty things on the web, or that you’re browsing that little bit faster.

If one person came up to me after reading this and said “I read you blog, I downloaded Opera.”, I’d be happy for the rest of the day!

Download and installation is free, quick and easy. Opera works on Windows, Mac and Linux… your mobile, your Nintendo Wii, your Nintendo DS and a handful of other devices. Just click the button.