William Computer Blog

Reviewing Opera 8

Opera 8 was released on April 19, 2005. The software is released for Windows and Linux operating systems and is currently at beta for Mac OS X. This time, I’m going to write about Opera 8 new key features and my experience using it.

Tabbed browsing

Tabbed browsing support in Opera is different from other browsers that support tabbed before. All the tabs are actually windows residing under a single parent window (This feature is called Multiple Document Interface). Using MDI allows the tabbed to be resized, moved, tiled, cascaded.

Speed

Opera software claimed Opera is the “Fastest browser on earth”. According to browser speed comparison, Opera seems to be the fastest browser on Windows. I have not done these tests personally, however, I can feel that running opera is really fast.

Mouse Gesture

Mouse gesture lets you perform browser operation with small and quick mouse movement. There is navigation gesture, which allows you to navigate website faster. Window Gesture, which is useful to minimize, open new window, reload the page, duplicate, or closing the document. Link Gesture, useful to control how you want to open a link. Last but not least, the Wheel gesture.

Notes

This is not a new feature, but I really think this feature is useful. Notes can be used to keep any information that you’d like to review again. I’d love to take notes of everything.

Web Standards

For a web standards geek like me, Web standards support is a must. Opera supports all major Web standards currently in use, including CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 tiny.

Validating a site is very easy on Opera. Click CTRL + ALT + V and opera will automatically go to W3C Validator to validate the site.

Small screen mode

Another good feature for web developer who wish to know what their sites will look like on mobile phone or small-screen devices running Opera.

Voice

You want to use voice to tell opera to go back, next or you want to make opera read the document you are currently reading? You can use Opera voice feature if you have a headset or a microphone.

• April 22, 2005