Review: Opera 9.50 Debuts In A Tough Browser Market

Browser preference seems to be as personal a question as "boxers or briefs?" IE or Firefox? Browser choice especially becomes a preference issue for home use, where security and performance is not as mission-critical. In businesses though, IE still holds the majority share of browser usage. Most companies, even with the ever-increasing feature-richness and performance of a free alternative, like Firefox, opt to stay with the IE.

It would seem, however, that businesses, especially OEMs and solution providers, would take a greater interest in Opera. Opera holds fast in its position following Safari, Firefox and IE in browser popularity.

Opera has had significant presence in the mobile browser market.

Opera Software has shown a commitment to working with businesses in tailoring their browser for other vendors' devices. (For exampl, check Opera's own specially designed browser for use in Nintendo's Wii. Opera also provides custom browsers for a host of other mobile devices, automotives, televisions and VoIP solutions).

With Opera 9.50's launch earlier this month, we also saw the introduction of Opera Widgets SDK, designed for developing apps to run cross-platform and cross-device.

For these reasons, Opera holds much value for custom solution providers and developers. The Test Center took a look to see how Opera 9.50 fares on the desktop end.

Performance was of high quality. Even with thirty tabs opened, Opera zipped along while browsing. Reviewers opened a multitude of SVG, and Flash sites, all of which were rendered in seconds and without any crashing of the browser. The plug-in installs tested Flashplayer and Adobe Reader and caused no discernible issues. The time to "cold" open Opera to the home page was less than two seconds on a Vista SP 1 desktop with 2 GB RAM. CSS handling looks to be Opera's tour de force, however.

Feature-wise, Opera offers up some unique functionality and others that do not differ greatly from anything IE or Firefox offers. For instance, Opera 9.50 has Extended Validation Support, available in both FF 3 and IE 7. Other security in Opera: fraud protection, SSL v3 and TLS support and automatic 256 bit encryption. Security is enhanced by the fact there is no support for Active X.

The side panel gives detailed page information on a Website, including MIME type, the size of the page in bytes, number of line elements, the display mode and even the last modified date of the page. There is also a security analysis done on the page and reported in this view. Other useful features include a session manager, and also the ability to view a little-bit-larger than an thumbnail image of any tabbed pages, while a user is on the active tab.

Opera continues this graphical concept, with Speed Dial, which essentially, lets a user view bookmarks graphically.

Pause/resume downloads are featured in this version, which is built in bitTorrent support.

Like Firefox, Opera is highly customizable, but does not have as many add-ins. Mouse gestures are customizable. Opera Link lets a user synch bookmarks and Speed Dial items to a mobile device.

Voice recognition is built in. Voice commands can be used to navigate though tabs, email, bookmarks and other tasks. Voice recognition executed a number of commands during testing flawlessly, using a headset with built in microphone. The voice feature is only available in English at this time, and reads aloud as a robotic, male voice. (Perhaps there will be some choice with voice preference in the future?) Opera's Website lists voice compatibility only with Windows 2000 and XP.

Sure enough, testers could not get it to work on a Vista SP 1 machine, but that could be a driver issue. Voice can integrate with Opera Show -- a feature of Opera browser that's an advanced presentation tool and can allow a presenter to wow an audience by advancing through the presentation vocally.

Opera is a sturdy platform for developers, OEMs and solutions providers but lacks the mass appeal of Firefox, the installed base of IE or the popular hardware tie-in such as Safari has with Apple's iPhone. It remains to be seen how long Opera can play without that extra market boost, but in the right scenario it's hits the right note.