Opera

I’ve been working on several websites recently and so I downloaded some new browsers this past weekend, one if which being Opera. While I still had a working Windows machine in the house I used Opera almost exclusively on that machine - I loved Opera - it’s also one of the more “web compliant” browsers out there (from what I’ve been told). However, after downloading the Mac version (and seeing some of the updates they’ve made to it) it’s sad to say I’m extremely disappointed.

They’ve added a large banner at the top of the screen that post advertisements, unless you buy the full version for around $40US. Now I’m all about simplicity. I’m a huge Safari (Mac OS X browser) fan. Safari gives you probably the most Browser “real estate” of any browser I’ve used yet. I like my space. Having a giant advertisement at the top of my screen invades my space.

They’ve also added a “Search Amazon” feature and a “Price Comparison” feature. The former takes you directly to your search results at Amazon, the latter, to a site called “DealTime”. If I want to search Amazon, I’ll go to Amazon. If want to compare prices, I’ll go to Froogle. Don’t take away my space.

Another area that Safari blows the competition out of the water is its speed. Every time I open any other browser I get the dreaded “spinny wheel” (”hourglass” to you PC users) and wait while the program loads. Not so with Safari.

Anyway, the point of this blog was not to completly trash Opera or raise Safari on a pedestle (it has its own faults too), but I simply wish that Opera would keep it simple, stay standards compliant (we need more browsers like that out there) and most importantly take users away from their Internet Explorer boxes.