Opera Now Free

Opera Web Browser No Longer Requires Licensing Fee

For those who wanted to try Opera and were discouraged by the licensing fee and ads within the browser, this is excellent news. Even more excellent news is the fact that web designers can now view their sites in Opera without having to pay to use the browser. This will expand the support for Opera to more websites.

A part from the lack of support on certain websites, which anyway isn’t major, I find Opera a great browser. From a user point of view it has excellent features which make one’s web surfing experience quite pleasant.

An Overview of Opera’s Features

Opera’s security features are strong and the browser is generally features packed. Here are a few that I particularly favour:

• Tabbed browsing. This is my favourite feature. Like Firefox or Safari, Opera gives you full control over tabs, i.e., you don’t have to set preferences, like one has to do with Maxthon for example, which will open tabs every time you do a certain action. You can open tabs as of and when you want. Just right click or Control + Shift + click on the link you want to look at and that’s it.
• Customizable Skins. For those like me who like aesthetics.
• Support for RSS Feeds. You don’t need to use a third party RSS reader, you can have your feeds at your fingertips with Opera.
• Built-in e-mail client. I didn’t delve into this in detail, but this is a great feature. Opera opens a sidebar which contains your mailbox folders. This allows you to keep browsing while also viewing your e-mails. Whenever you want to compose a message, Opera will open a message window in a new tab, leaving the web page you are currently on where it is. You can also use Opera’s chat or webmail service.
• Strong security control. Full control over cookies, stored passwords (which you can decide not to store), cache and browsing history.
• Quick Preferences. If you want to make quick changes to your preferences, you will find some of the most common preferences already listed under the Tools menu for Windows users and under Opera for Mac users. I didn’t try the browser on other systems, but this feature is available in all versions. With Quick Preferences you can access the most handy settings without having to go through your preferences pane.
• 007 Browsing. You can set Opera so that websites can identify it as Opera, Internet Explorer or Mozilla.
• Pop up blocking. Fully customizable, no need for third party blockers.
• Built in search engines. A small toolbar on the right hand side of the browser will allow you to perform web searches using Google and other search engines right within the browser. Unfortunately the customization of this feature is limited.
• Voice control. Some people talk to friends, others talk to co-workers, Opera users talk to their browser. That’s right you can perform tasks with Opera using your voice.
• Great online support. If you have questions, Opera has some great Flash tutorials which will give you a visual explanation of the features of this browser

There are other superb features, which you can explore on Opera’s site. These are just the ones that struck me the most or that were immediately visible. Though I find Opera loading sites a bit slower than Firefox and its support throughout the web isn’t as wide as other browsers, Opera is definitely a promising competitor.

Opera Everywhere—Even on Your Mobile

Image from Opera.com

Not only Opera works on Windows 95-XP, Mac, Linux, Solaris Sparc, FreeBSD, OS/2 and QNX, it also works on mobile phones. With big companies such as Microsoft and Adobe getting ready to tackle Mobile Content Publishing, Opera’s support on mobile phones is definitely the right move. More and more services are making it easy for users to have their online experience through their mobiles, including e-mail access and moblogging (blogging through mobiles). Mobile Content Publishing will be the next online revolution and Opera seems to understand this by making their web browser available to mobile users. Directly from Opera:

Check out the Opera for Mobile page.

All these features now available for free will increase the number of Opera users. This is something web develpoers should take into account.