Introduction
In 1994, Telenor, a Norwegian telecom company started Opera as a research project but after just one year, later it separated from Telenor and a company named Opera Software was born. One year later, Opera Software released the first version (2.0) of the Opera web browser that supported Microsoft Windows. Over the past 12 years, Opera Software has released several more versions, culminating in the latest version, Opera 9.5.
These days, if I look around the web for a web browser, there are many options: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. After reviewing Mozilla Firefox 3.0 last month, I was intrigued to find out how Opera 9.51 stacks up.
Main Features of Opera 9.5
Multiple Tabbed Browsing
Contrary to popular belief, Opera was the first web browser to offer tabbed browsing! Since the first time Opera started supporting multiple tabbed browsing, it has improved with every release. Opera 9.5 supports Multiple Document Interface (MDI) (windows reside under a single parent window) and offers you much improved tabbed browsing than ever before. If you move your mouse cursor to any tab, it shows the thumbnail view of that page. Individual close(x) buttons are included with every tab as well as a + button on the tab bar to launch a new tab. When you right click on a tab it offers you many options: New tab, Duplicate Tab, Create Follower Tab, Lock Tab, Minimize, Maximize, Restore Tab etc...
Download Manager and BitTorrent Support
The download manager offered by Opera is much more than any basic download manager provided by other web browsers. When you start downloading a file Opera launches a download manager in the form of a new tab titled Transfers. The Opera download manager allows users to list, pause, resume or restart the downloading of files. It also stores the history of recently downloaded files and the downloaded files can be opened right from the browser.
Opera 9 also offers an integrated BitTorrent download manager. Whenever you download any torrent file, Opera displays a dialog box similar to this:
Once you select your desired download path, click on the Yes button to start the BitTorrent download.
Load Pages With/Without Images
Opera is the only browser which offers the option to load a page with or without images. This feature is extremely useful if you are stuck with access to low speed Internet connections. To configure, click on the camera icon located on the right hand corner of the status bar. There are three options (shown below).
Speed Dial Browsing
Whenever you fire up Opera, it brings up a page with nine slots which can be used by the user to configure the slots to contain web page links. To make a speed dialing entry, click on an empty slot and enter the website address. To open the page click on the thumbnail or hold the Ctrl key and press the slot number. For example if you press Ctrl+3, it will open the page what slot 3 is containing.
