Being the underdog of the Internet browser war, Opera still haven't given up it's effort of becoming top 2 or maybe top 3 browser. For you info, IE currently dominates the browser market, occupying 70% of the browser market while Mozilla Firefox occupies 20%, Safari 6% and Opera 0.8%. That 0.8% is really really low. Even Google Chrome beat it by 0.1% since it's release a few months ago.
I have been using Opera since version 8, thanks to the recommendation of a friend (jitren~). This version 10, codenamed Peregrine, retains the same visual interface as the version 9.5 Opera and up.
That visual not really bad, nor it is attractive. I just feels that that big black bar is taking too much space for tabs. I know the appearance can be changed, but still, why do Opera want that bar to become so BIG?
The Opera 10 boasts about it's ability so scored 100/100 in acid3 test. But, in my case, I only get 98/100. No matter how many times I refreshed, it still remain 98. Perhaps my download got a bit corrupted?
Since it's only an alpha version, I expected it to run into many problems, such as missing objects in browser or crash unexpectedly. Here, I must say that I'm pretty impressed with this alpha version, as it display correctly on websites that I frequently surf, expect for 1. It's the Blogger 'Create Post' section. It won't display all of the options such as font type, font size, alignment and etc. When I'm typing this post, I don't even know whether I'm in "Edit Html" or "Compose" mode.
Well, so far so good. I really like Opera browsers. Simple interface, fast load speed, and non-IE look, it really belongs to the royal section of web browser. But I will still be using Firefox for now, because I dearly need the Google toolbar (Gmail notifications and Pagerank) and the Flashgot extension (to intercept every download).
Click here to download the Opera 10 alpha 1.
Got any opinions about Opera? Or do you disagree with my preview? Then leave your comments~
5 comments:
I think opera is really good. I used to use Opera along time ago, couple of years back. It was the fastest browser and at that time it was practical for me since i was stuck with only 56k modem.
It was really useful in loading pages really fast. But these days we are so used to firefox or IE, we have our plugins, toolbars, bookmarks, it just makes it harder to go to another browser.
The resistance to change is greater now(due to increased familiarity with existing browser). Not that opera is not good.
Firefox however has been not perfect. Crashing at times. I might have a look at an alternative browser. Was interested in checking out Chrome. But no time yet.
Chrome is cool. It dedicates the most space to the content rather than the interface. In Firefox I usually use "classic compact" theme to increase the size of page view.
You are likely not getting 100/100 on Acid 3 because of some non-default setting. For example, using some user javascripts, enabling Fit To Width, etc.
Awesome!
nice to know that another fellow malaysian is loving opera!
Loved reading this tthank you
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