Opera 9.2

Looking for an easy to use full featured web browser that is intuitive? Want one that can be customized with different styles? Need tabs? Heard of Mouse Gestures?

You need Opera 9.2.

When I first got on the internet in 1995 on my Macintosh Performa 638, I used Netscape. I then graduated to Internet Explorer and suffered with it for years, until Safari came along.

Safari had tabs and could be used with little or no conscious effort. In fact when I am dead tired and just want to veg on some YouTube clips, it is my browser of choice. Then I was saddled with a Dell laptop at work. I ran IE 6 for awhile and quickly dropped it for IE 7 beta. IE 7 is a huge advance over the previous version. Unfortunately that is not saying much. IE 7 leaves a lot to be desired. I hopped on the FireFox bandwagon for a year and was impressed with the themes and plugins. Eventually though, as much as I liked the look of the interface it was the 'user' interface that left me wanting.

Enter Opera 9.2. I had been considering which next generation game console I was going to purchase when I read an article about the web browser available for the Wii. I decided to test the browser before settling on the Wii and I was amazed.

The settings were easy to find. Upgrades happened without putting themes and other options out of service. I could set up email accounts and chat accounts directly in the browser. The big ones for me were the built in RSS feed reader and the customizable search options. The feeds look great and several types are supported. The customizable search allows you to right-click any search field on a website and create a hot key search out of it. If I want to search for Elvis collectibles I type "e elvis" in the address bar to search ebay. If I want to see what movies he was in I type "i elvis" to search the Internet Movie DataBase. "a" for Amazon, "g" for google "w" for wikipedia and so on. You get the idea.

The most recent version also allows you to set up nine 'Speed Dial' websites. When I type "2" in the address bar I get GMail. "4" gets me Apples Quicktime movie trailers and so on. Setting up your Speed Dial pages is easy. click on an open spot and a dialog box with your most used sites and current open tabs appears. You can also just enter most of the address; i.e., apple.com. When you open a new tab your Speed Dial pages load up with current thumbnails of the pages to click on.

Another great feature are the Mouse Gestures. Hold the right button and flick left; you'll be sent back a page right-click a link and flick down and up; you'll get the link loaded in a new tab in the background. Hold the right mouse button and scroll; you'll switch between tabs. It becomes second nature.

Another feature similar to ask.com's binoculars is the ability to hover over a tab and get a pop-up thumbnail of the page without switching to it. This is great for websites that name every window the same thing.

As a geek I understand the urge to hack your browser like you can with FireFox. I also understand the need to have interoperability like you get with IE, however for those of you who don't code and are tired of restarting IE's lame UI. Opera is an elegant and friendly browser.

I am currently testing Safari 3 beta which is easy and beautiful, however I find myself trying to 'flick' back a page and wishing I could search Wikipedia instead of Google in the search bar. When I finally dump this Dell and get back to my PowerBook, I am exporting my Opera links and feeds to the Mac version of Opera. By the way there is a Series 60 version of opera, a MiniOpera for web accesible phones and of course the Wii version with Wii-mote enhanced options, as well as other products. If you haven't seen Opera you should try it because chances are you will end up with a gadget that has it installed.