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Definition
Opera is an Internet suite which handles common internet-related tasks, including
visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts,
and online chat.Opera is developed by Opera Software, based in Oslo, Norway. It
runs on a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X,
Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux systems. It is also used in mobile phones, smartphones,
Personal Digital Assistants, game consoles and interactive televisions. Technology
from Opera is also licensed by other companies for use in such products as Adobe
Creative Suite.
Features
In addition to the web browser, the other main component in the desktop versions
of the Opera suite is the Opera Mail client, previously known as M2. Opera Mail
supports regular POP and SMTP mail as well as IMAP. It also has an Address book.
Opera Mail also features a newsreader and a newsfeed reader for RSS and Atom,
as well as an IRC client for online chat. New
features in Opera 9
There are several new features in Opera 9. The most important
ones are:
" Simple BitTorrent client, targeted towards novice users.
" Content blocker (also known as AdBlock).
" Thumbnail preview
of tabs (when hovering mouse over them).
" Widgets.
" Site
specific preferences (pop-up blocking, cookies, scripts, user style sheets, user-agent
masking)
" The ability to create search engines from a textfield. Two
revolutionary features in Opera 9
1.You can browse cached documents offline!
I'm not sure when other browsers forgot how to do this but it's been years since
I've been able to unplug from the network and still view pages that have been
saved in my cache.
2.You can quit your browser and reopen it to the
same state. Other browsers have been slow to cotton on to the fact that my browser
state is important data - I frequently leave interesting pages open for days at
a time and a browser crash causes me real pain. Safari and Firefox both have extensions
that enable this but it's great to see it built in to the core product.Sadly,
Opera doesn't persist partially completed form data (so you'll still lose that
half-written blog entry if you weren't smart enough to write it in a text editor
and paste it in at the last moment) but it's still a huge improvement over the
rest.
As far as I can tell those two
features have been in Opera since before the current release, but I'd never noticed
them before. Here's hoping other browser manufacturers follow suit.
While
the interface is leaps and bounds ahead of Opera 6/7, it still has a few crufty
edges: the preferences are hard to navigate, the text in the tab screenshot window
comes across as an afterthought, there's a randomly placed recycle bin in the
upper right hand corner and it took me a while to find a skin I liked (tango cl).
The default behaviour for command-clicking a link is to open a new tab and switch
to it; my preference is for opening in the background but I can't work out how
to change that option (though shift-command-click does what I want). Overall though
it rates extremely well.
Technologies
implemented/improved
" XSLT, XPath
" SVG/1.1 Basic
"
TLS/1.1
Accessibility
Opera
was designed to run on low-end and small computers, and with a commitment to computer
accessibility for users who may have visual or mobility impairments.
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