Muses of Murari

I ditched Internet Explorer browser for Firefox when the latter was first released. Firefox attracted me for its tabbed browsing feature and also for lots of useful add-ons. Recently released Firefox 3 became cooler, for its features like smart address bar, multi line text selection and for ten other reasons.  But, one browser which at present seducing me from FF3 is Opera 9.5

Opera is fast, sleek and super cool. It can be used as an e-mail client. Either you can do a Pop3 or IMAP from you mail server directly to opera browser. And of course, smtp is also supported. I tried IMAP with two of my gmail accounts. The configuration was duh-duh. I was not even prompted me for the port numbers. Opera engine picked up them nicely. I didn’t check for other mail services though.

Remember, Mozilla started with its internet suite which had web browser, e-mail client and IRC chat feature. It was bulky and memory guzzler. But, present day Opera supports similar browser and e-mail client (except IRC, which became near-extinct) and more features, and yet it is one of the fastest and less memory hogging browsers available today.

For a long time, I wanted a notepad like feature in browser itself.  This feature is not present in Firefox, though there are add-ons available. In Opera this feature comes in-built and comes very handy. And also the BitTorrent support in browser is blessing in-disguise for bandwidth hungry movie-mp3 downloaders. The easy interface, mail contacts display, links display, in-built RSS feed reader, speed dial and smart address bar are some of the highlights of the browser.

And another killer feature (in future) is synchronizing PC Opera bookmarks with other Opera versions like Opera mini (on Mobile phones). Opera mini is another cool browser that works in many of the today’s mobile phones. It is one of the best browsers available for non-smart phones today.

Nothing can be perfect. So as this browser. There are websites like Yahoo Maps India which doesn’t support Opera yet. Some times, this browser may leave you perplexed, when simple things like leaving comments on Blogger, failing! (Even while writing this post using WordPress, the blog software prompted for authentication many times!) That’s a BIG thumbs down. Hope these issues will be fixed in future releases. And also the add-ons for Opera are not that extensive like Firefox. So are its user base and followers! I hope Opera will receive its deserving market share slowly but steadily, as Opera team continues to innovate in future.

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