Finesse of surfing with Opera browser

The previous Security Insight newsletter was dedicated to security in Opera browser, and while we were looking at the browser from a security standpoint we found that it had had a wealth of other unique usability features which simply couldn’t be overlooked and not mentioned especially in the article on modern Internet browsers.

With present material, we will briefly run through the usability features which justly reinforce Opera’s claims of their browser delivering "The Best Internet Experience".

Ease of Navigation

Tabbed browsing

Tabbed browsing is not anew these days, but Opera has been the pioneer of this idea to show web pages in separate windows but within the same application, which eliminates the need to open up new windows and thus removing excessive clutter. This feature was copied by others because users have like the capability to open interesting links in new pages without losing focus with the current one and easily switching between multiple pages and sites.

When you look at the link you’d like to follow in a new window, you can right-click on it and select the "Open in new tab". The link will be opened in a new tab window which will become active (foreground). Alternatively, you can perform a non-menu navigation by holding the Shift key and left-clicking the link. To open a target link without making the page active (open in background) you can click on it with your wheel button or by simultaneously pressing Ctrl and Shift keys while left-clicking the target link. If you hover your mouse pointer over the tab, after a short delay the summary of a page will be shown along with some scaled images so that users can recognize the right pages without going through all the open tabs looking for them.

Trashcan to restore accidentally closed pages

Remember times when you accidentally closed a tab or the entire browser and then having to manually run through the navigation history in order to restore them? It would take a minute to do so with IE or Firefox, maybe more if you browsed a lot that day. With Opera’s restoration capability the problem can be mitigated very quickly, simply by accessing the Trashcan icon located in the upper right corner of the program and selecting the closed pages you want to re-open in current session. Blocked and closed pop-ups can be likewise restored by going to the trashcan’s "closed pop-ups" selectable from a drop-down list.

Session saver

Opera allows saving your current surfing session and restoring it back at some future time. What this means is that you can resume reading (or viewing) the content you were at the last time you used your PC without having to memorize all the opened tabs. When you restore your last session all the opened tabs will be displayed in their original order. This is particularly helpful if you were on some valuable content and had to abruptly leave or turn off the computer.

Sessions can be saved from the File menu by selecting the "Sessions" dialog.

Notes

Notes serve as smart bookmarks with quick references to pages on which you made them. For example, if you’re reading a story, you can highlight the desired fragment and copy it to a note. Later, when you need that article, you can access the Notes dialog from the Tools menu and then re-open the article by double-clicking the corresponding note.

Integrated search

Opera features simplified access to search and information portals right from the program’s interface. In the upper corner in a search field you can select the desired search portal, enter the search term there and perform an instant search. The default search engine is of course Google, but you can switch the search provider by selecting others such as www.answers.com or Opera-maintained Web search. Interesting revelation there is that you can perform an instant search on Ebay or Amazon as well for things that you need, and also query www.download.com database for necessary software and even perform controversial BitTorrent search for a valuable piece of software or a music. Alternatively, in the address bar you can type "g" followed by your search keyword or phrase to quickly perform Google search right from the address bar. For example, typing "g outpost firewall" would take us to Agnitum website, the owner of this article. Other quick search letters are:

Other search letters are: "s" – Opera website, "c" – dealtime.com price comparison, "r" Google Groups.

Accessibility

Integrated email client and an RSS newsfeeds reader

Opera has an on-board email client that can replace the free Outlook Express – Windows-included email client or other email reader installed on a system. Frankly, we were not impressed by the previous version of the reader, so cannot say anything definitive about the current one because we haven’t had enough time to test it.

The RSS newsreader was impressive enough and considering the growing number of internet sites offering live newsfeeds, Opera’s decision to include this utility is commendable. It performed well and intuitive, without excessive set-up or maintenance procedures. The only thing a user needs to do to enable RSS on his computer is to go to the RSS-supporting web site and click the RSS icon placed on the right of the address bar in Opera. With a couple of clicks and adjustments, selected newsfeeds will be up and running.

Page view rendering

Opera is capable to change how the web page displayed to fit your screen. A combination of Shift and F11 key will show a small web page instead of a full page by compressing it from sides and making up for this by stretching its height, making it look like a newspaper column. This is useful if you have only a limited width on your desktop. A "fit to window width" feature will remove horizontal scroll bar and fit the page to any width size of an active window.

Additionally, you can zoom in and zoom out the page you’re viewing by pushing respectively "+" and "-" keys on your keyboard.

Voice command

An interesting feature of Opera is its voice command. You can configure the browser to perform different actions such as opening up a new page and going to the specified site by recognizing your voice through the microphone. The basic commands were apprehended quite well in the tests.

Opera can also read out the highlighted text if additional text module is installed which is sized around 10 megabytes and can be downloaded automatically by the browser. The dictation was quite fluent and understandable and we found a great use of it when reading a news article because the text was accompanied by the dictated voice which is useful for non-English speakers to learn the pronunciation. This also helps navigate several pages simultaneously where you hear the voice on one page and looking at pictures at the other.

Mouse gestures

Opera can react to your mouse movements by performing certain navigation operations such as going back and forward in browsing history and going to the homepages. The full list of available actions is provided on this page http://opera.com/features/mouse/ but to be fair enough only a few worked well in out test beta of Opera 9.

Customization of appearance

Opera supports different "skins" and graphic themes and even offers simple tools for users to create and distribute ones of their own. We liked these "frills" but didn’t devote to much time to a more thorough customization.

Summary

Opera offered a wealth of unique features that really deserved to be looked at first-hand and we urge everyone to try this powerful and easy Internet browser. It seems that at a moment it’s hard to find a comparable product in terms of usability and navigation, but we’ll see what the Microsoft will come up with its new Internet Explorer which is to be released toward the end of the year ‘06.