So, There's This Thing Called Opera...

It takes a lot for me to want to switch browsers. I'm pretty much a diehard Firefox devotee. But every so often, I try out new browsers -- Chrome, Safari, even Flock. So when I heard that Opera had a new version out that has all sorts of nifty features, I had to take a look.

Opera is generally viewed as a "niche" browser, used mainly by a group of hardcore fans. According to StatCounter's global stats, Opera has almost 3% market share, compared with IE at 58% and Firefox at 31%. The buzz seems to be growing, however, since Opera 10 was downloaded 10 million times in the first week after its release. The dynamic is vastly different in the mobile world, however: Opera holds over 25% of that market, above even the iPhone at almost 23% and Nokia at almost 19% (via StatCounter).

Some of Opera's features are not exclusive to it (Sessions, Closed Tabs, Password Manager, Find As You Type, and Fraud Protection all have equivalents in Firefox, for example), but there are some interesting features highlighted in its browser tips.

• Speed Dial shows a page with thumbnails of up to 25 Web pages, fully configurable.
  
• Opera Link allows you to sync your bookmarks with your other Opera-using devices.
  
• Opera Turbo routes Web pages through a proxy server for compression purposes before sending it on to you, reducing load time.
  
• Visual Tabs shows a thumbnail of opened tabs when you hover over them or expand the tabs pane.
  
• Fast Forward and Rewind send you to the latest or first page, respectively, of the site you're currently browsing.
  
• Notes seems to be the equivalent of Notepad or Wordpad, integrated directly into the browser.
  
• Bookmark Nickname allows you to give a bookmark a short name that you can type into the address bar -- for example, "fb" for "http://www.facebook.com".
  
• Search Keywords allows you to specify what site you want to use for a search by using an abbreviation (putting "w" in front of your search searches Wikipedia, or "z" searches Amazon).
  

As a web designer, one aspect that is of particular interest to me is standards compliance. The Web Standards Project has a test (Acid2) to determine if your browser is compliant with the most up-to-date standards in HTML and CSS. If it is, the test will display the words "Hello World!" and a yellow smiley face. If not...well, you'll see.

Opera 10.00 and Firefox 3.5.3 passed this test with flying colors. This is how the smiley is supposed to appear:
Firefox 2.0.0.6 didn't do quite so well:
Of course, Internet Explorer experienced epic fail:
So overall, Opera seems to have been developed by people who paid attention to standards -- always a plus. They're also committed to spreading knowledge of their browser and Web standards in general through the educational resources on their site.

Quote of the Week (Couldn't Resist Edition):
"Let your mind start a journey to a strange new world! Leave all thoughts of the life you knew before! Let your soul take you where you long to be!" --The Phantom, Phantom of the Opera