Opera is back! With Opera 12, everything we loved about Opera is back along with many new twists. Here is the ads from Opera's site.
Since Opera 6, Opera was my favorite web browser. It was fast; It pioneered tab-browsing and speed-dial; It has everything an Internet user needs -- e-mail, chat, web and even a social-feature (blogging); Moreover, Opera has bookmark and note syncing feature, a feat even Microsoft IE9 does not have yet and Chrome and Safari have recently started to have. However, when Opera 12 comes out, I don't have an Opera in any of my devices (a laptop, a desktop, a netbook, two Androd phones and an Android tablet; what? iCrap? I have never used and will never use one.)
The reason (for currently not using Opera) is that I need to use a (non-standard) de Facto encoding to read blogs and forums in a certain language since at least over 60% of text in that language over the web is encoded in the de Facto encoding. Actually 60% is a very conservative estimate, the actual figure is easily over 80% and even close to 100%.
Since Opera was a very standard-abiding citizen, I can't read most blogs and forums in that language and cannot perform any communications (e-mail, IM etc) in that language using Opera. To make the matter worse, I had moved much of my computing needs to Google's products -- GMail to read all my e-mails in many e-mail accounts, Chrome to browse, Picasa to store photos/videos etc. Although Chrome (and Firefox) abides standards, it has a backdoor for the aforementioned non-standard encoding. That's why I was happily using Chrome for past few years. So I installed Opera 12 from sketch.
Opera is as delightful as always. It installs in mere seconds (on my 3 years old mid-range laptop).
A quick browse over the web tells me that Opera 12 is competitive -- I feel like it is as fast as Chrome and as stable as FireFox (no Safari comparison as I still can't find any bad Opera feature.) Afterall, it does not need any more features as it is the one that first implemented all modern browser features.
If you want to try Opera 12, just straight ahead to www.opera.com. It is worth trying. When you do, let me give you two pieces of advice, use Opera's web-session feature and use hand-gesture. It rocks and, as far as I know, no other browser has it.
Are you still here? Ok, Web-session is a group of tabs that you open. For example, imagine opening multiple news site in the morning (at coffee table) and opening multiple social networking sites in the evening (at your desk). Opera calls each set (group) of sites a web-session and save/open the sessions just like a word processor.
Hand gesture is a productivity feature (power user feature). Instead of going to a button and clicking it, a user can control the browser using hand-gesture -- pressing right-mouse-button and moving the mouse. For example, to reload a page, one would press right-mouse-button, move up and move down the mouse.
Now, go ... try Opera 12.
Logged on Doughnut I/O. U.E. 1339682342.
Since Opera 6, Opera was my favorite web browser. It was fast; It pioneered tab-browsing and speed-dial; It has everything an Internet user needs -- e-mail, chat, web and even a social-feature (blogging); Moreover, Opera has bookmark and note syncing feature, a feat even Microsoft IE9 does not have yet and Chrome and Safari have recently started to have. However, when Opera 12 comes out, I don't have an Opera in any of my devices (a laptop, a desktop, a netbook, two Androd phones and an Android tablet; what? iCrap? I have never used and will never use one.)
The reason (for currently not using Opera) is that I need to use a (non-standard) de Facto encoding to read blogs and forums in a certain language since at least over 60% of text in that language over the web is encoded in the de Facto encoding. Actually 60% is a very conservative estimate, the actual figure is easily over 80% and even close to 100%.
Since Opera was a very standard-abiding citizen, I can't read most blogs and forums in that language and cannot perform any communications (e-mail, IM etc) in that language using Opera. To make the matter worse, I had moved much of my computing needs to Google's products -- GMail to read all my e-mails in many e-mail accounts, Chrome to browse, Picasa to store photos/videos etc. Although Chrome (and Firefox) abides standards, it has a backdoor for the aforementioned non-standard encoding. That's why I was happily using Chrome for past few years. So I installed Opera 12 from sketch.
Opera installation took only seconds.
Opera is as delightful as always. It installs in mere seconds (on my 3 years old mid-range laptop).
Opera 12 Start-up Screen
A quick browse over the web tells me that Opera 12 is competitive -- I feel like it is as fast as Chrome and as stable as FireFox (no Safari comparison as I still can't find any bad Opera feature.) Afterall, it does not need any more features as it is the one that first implemented all modern browser features.
If you want to try Opera 12, just straight ahead to www.opera.com. It is worth trying. When you do, let me give you two pieces of advice, use Opera's web-session feature and use hand-gesture. It rocks and, as far as I know, no other browser has it.
Are you still here? Ok, Web-session is a group of tabs that you open. For example, imagine opening multiple news site in the morning (at coffee table) and opening multiple social networking sites in the evening (at your desk). Opera calls each set (group) of sites a web-session and save/open the sessions just like a word processor.
Hand gesture is a productivity feature (power user feature). Instead of going to a button and clicking it, a user can control the browser using hand-gesture -- pressing right-mouse-button and moving the mouse. For example, to reload a page, one would press right-mouse-button, move up and move down the mouse.
Now, go ... try Opera 12.
Logged on Doughnut I/O. U.E. 1339682342.
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