::A Geek in Korea::

I’m a long standing open source advocate, and I love all things Firefox. Well, MOST things Firefox. I’ve been using Mozilla’s products back when there was still a Mozilla branded browser, and I was quick to adopt Firefox 3 like everyone else when it came out this week.

However, with less fanfare, another browser had been released in the past week that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Opera 9.5 is continuing the tradition of being a great browser that almost no one knows of, and fewer people use, those that do use it however, love it.

Opera and I have a history going pretty far back for a piece of software. It’s the only piece of software I’ve consistently used for eight or nine years. I’ve been using it longer than Firefox, which is probably a close second considering my migration to Linux at home. I first got started using Opera as a browser when they released a version with gestures. I think I might have even been using a version BEFORE gestures got added.

I know I was using Opera when it was still shareware, before it went adware, before it went freeware (free as in beer). The key feature when I first started using Opera was tabbed browsing and the fact that it would fit on a 3.5′ floppy drive. (This was pre-USB key making transporting an entire OS easy.)

The thing that slowed Opera down besides a shareware purchase model and being ad supported was a radical adherence to the .html standards. The browser was so good at rendering pages correctly that it actually did itself a disservce because no website ever followed the standards correctly. Having a website choke because it wants to render crappy pages in IE sucks. With Opera’s browser share hovering around 1% on a good day, no website will ever go out of it’s way to support it with correct web scripting either.

Opera consistently adds features that get ripped off by other browsers. Mouse Gestures and Tabbed browsing were standard in Opera before Firefox took them mainstream. Opera has voice navigation, a speed dial, and all sorts of other nifty features that other browsers will eventually integrate. Firefox’s extensible nature make it very difficult to prevent any feature Opera invents from staying unique to Opera for long.

This makes Firefox a constant competitor for Opera’s users. Why switch to a different browser of Firefox can do everything Opera can with extensions? While Firefox can always gain features, add-ons can sometimes be resource hogs that slow down systems.

Opera comes built with the features at the beginning, and the browser never gets as bogged down with too many add-ons. The “widget” feature of Opera allows you to add web services as stand alone applications, but they are a different beast compared to the numerous Firefox extensions. Firefox is more adaptable, but Opera is usually quicker rendering pages whenever I use it. It’s not a huge difference either way though, a few milliseconds at most.

Where Opera really shines is the embedded market. My Wii runs Opera’s browser and my DS could too.  I desperately wish my phone did as well. An embedded device with Opera will make the best use of the screen space of any web enabled device with it’s unique rendering system. Opera will also allow you to sync your bookmarks, speed dail, and notes between different platforms by signing up for a free my.opera account.

I’ve started using Opera at work. I can sync my browser bookmarks between work and home. I could theoretically do this via delicious, but I use that service as a repository and global storehouse that I want to keep separate. It’s also fun to play around with the different features.

Opera isn’t perfect, despite the speed, and there are a few things I hope they can fix. I’ll continue to use Opera as a secondary browser until they fix some of the following issues:

Opera’s adblock via css is fine, but it takes a little more work than Firefox’s extension that does the same work to set up. Opera’s spell checker needs some work, and posting from wordpress in Opera is a pain because the text field gets mangled when you switch views from Visual to HTML. Also, Opera in Linux occasionally chokes with SCIM, which is the imput method I use to switch from English to Korean.