Having all the major browsers becomes increasingly important for webmasters these days. A site may look very different in Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera. So as Opera announced the release of their newest browser Opera 7, I was quick to download and install...
It gives Opera credit that less than a week after the release; they announced the release of the Opera 7.01... They were quick to fix some security issues that were present in the 7.0 version.
The first thing that strikes me in Opera 7 is the look and feel of the browser... The animated buttons are different from any other browser I've tried. And it doesn't seem like they ruin Operas reputation as the fastest browser around.
Then there are the tabs inside the opera-window. Instead of opening a new window for every new page you'd like to view, you can have all the windows open inside Opera. This makes navigation easy and fast.
In version 7, Opera has also used the new M2 e-mail client. Instead of opening a outlook express or Eudora or whatever other mail-client I've used (and I've used a couple of them during the years) I can now just open Opera for both mail and browsing. Having a mail client is nothing new to Opera, but with the new M2 they have upgraded the client and it is, in my opinion, even better than the one they had before...
With password manager, customizable toolbars, easy skinning, standard compliancy, mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, pop-up blocker and more, Opera has quickly become the browser of choice for me. It is small, fast and less bloated than it's more well-known competitors.
To buy Opera can be a bit pricey for some of us. It's at 39 USD. Luckily, though, there is also the free version if you can put up with the ad-banner.
Check it out @ www.opera.com .
Andreas Kumano Chernus
Andreas comes from the cold northern realms of Norway. He has been developing web-pages for his local church for a few years as well as taking some freelance jobs. He's active in the C-W-M community as X Q mano. His most recent project is the online poetry site: www.xqpoetry.com/ -- For the love of poetry.