Opera 7

[smurphy]

Just upgraded to Opera 7. It is really small and fast, a lot faster than IE or Netscape. I haven't tried it yet with my bank but I don't expect it to work so you will still need IE for secure transactions.

Everyday browsing it is amazing.

www.opera.com

Cheers,
Scott Murphy

[mojo]

i'm using opera 6.11 for linux as we speak. i just got it the other day, so i believe it's the latest available for linux.

as far as the speed...on windows i've noticed that opera is faster browsing. part of this is thanks to the caching and retrieving, but i set it to update the page with each refresh and it still seemed just a tad faster. my problem with it was that it actually seemed more resource intensive, but i dunno if it's just time to reinstall on that box or what...maybe i'm just fugged.

anyways, as far as the encryption, there should be a way to upgrade it to be 128bit encryption. then after you do that...it'll work with your bank just fine.

[smurphy]

That is also one thing to note. Opera is very memory intensive, storing the cache there for quick access. This is not a big problem as you can tweak it to use whatever amount you want. Very customizable.

I have left it running all day, checking differnet places and downloading driver updates etc when I noticed that my system "seemed" slower. I checked the task manager and noticed that Opera was using almost 50MB on RAM! Once I tweaked it, it never uses more than 10MB and is still as fast, very fast.

Version 7 allows you to customize everything you could in v6.X but is now XP aware meaning that each user has their own bookmarks saved in their profile directory, no more sharing!

Cheers,
Scott Murphy

[GilbertsGrape]

http://eletters1.ziffdavis.com/cgi-bin10/flo?y=eTqe0BgIfQ0DUm0uC70Ap


January 29, 2003
Opera 7 Stands at Head of Browser Class


By Jim Rapoza


Whether Opera is now the best browser available is mainly a matter of personal preference. When it comes to features and capability, the new Opera 7 clearly deserves to stand at the top, right next to Mozilla.
Opera Software ASA has long been an innovator when it comes to Web browsers, introducing features such as tabbed browsing and advanced cookie controls that are now standard in many browsers. With Opera 7, which was released this month, Opera continues to add innovative features while addressing some of the weaknesses of previous versions.

We'll probably go back and forth a few times trying to figure out if we like Opera 7 better than Mozilla. And if you're wondering where eWeek Labs would rate market leader Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corp., that Web browser dinosaur would probably do no better than sixth place.

Opera has long been the best browser option for those users who prefer keyboard navigation to a mouse, and the new Spatial Navigation feature adds even more for keyboard users. With this feature, we could quickly tab through all links in a page using the shift button and our arrow keys.





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Also aiding in page navigation is a new links sidebar panel that displays a map of all links within a Web page. And if Web sites use navigation tags within their pages, these will be displayed within the new navigation bar, making it possible to browse through sites as if they had a contents page.

Interesting but less useful is the new Fast Forward button that looks for next tags within a Web page to ease navigation of a multipage document.

The new Wand feature makes it possible to save Web site log-in information and enter it later with a single click.

General customization of the entire Opera interface has been greatly improved, allowing us to change almost any aspect of the browsing experience. Many preference settings, such as controlling pop-up ads, are now much easier to access.

The mail capabilities in Opera, now called the M2 mail client, have been completely overhauled to the point where the mail client is now a strength for Opera. Managing multiple accounts is very simple, and M2 now has a capable and easy-to-use spam-filtering mechanism.

We really liked the feature in Opera's M2 that made it possible to quickly differentiate those with whom you regularly correspond from less frequent mail senders.

While standards support in Opera has always been good in previous versions, it was lacking in some areas, such as in support for DOM (Document Object Model). In Opera 7, we found the DOM support to be much better, if still less than 100 percent.

Also interesting is the addition of support for some of the nonstandard DHTML (dynamic HTML) code that often makes sites into IE-only destinations. Using Opera 7, we were able to browse sites that use DHTML, albeit not always with the exact same experience as in IE.

Currently, Opera 7 is available only on Windows systems, although previous versions are available on most other platforms, and we expect this version to work on other platforms eventually. A free version with an integrated ad bar is available, or an ad-free version can be purchased for $39.