Opera 9 Nordic, nice and free

Paul Hosking
Thursday, 22 June 2006 09:08

Your IT - Home IT

Give it a go, you might like it - Opera 9 is unique amongst browsers. It has that Scandinavian essence which makes it interesting to look at and it works in a way that makes you wonder, the same way you wonder when you see your first IKEA chair, and think how do they get trees to grow in such strange shapes and why doesn't it break when you sit on it. In the online world dominated by mega corporations, globalization, aesthetic conformity and one size fits all, Opera is the shining beacon of diversity.

Opera 9 does everything just that little bit different. It asks strange questions when it starts up, but not all the time. When you click on an RSS feed you seem to open up a list of emails which are in fact the headlines of the RSS. I'm not really sure who would want to get their news in that way but hey, it takes all sorts. However, that's the point. Opera is different. If you like "that sort of thing" then you will move to Opera and never look back.

Opera 9 is fast. When you first get it going, which is really easy, it seems slow visiting your regular sites. However, don't worry, it speeds up.  This initial slowness happens because your regular browser has saved caches of frequently re-used files on your machine and you need to down load these into your Opera cache, before Opera can really show its speed. But is it faster? Well there are bench mark tests which prove claims that it is faster than its two main competitors. I think it feels faster, because of the way it renders the screen with a blink and a flash. But for me if there was really a truly faster browser out there I feel that the whole world would adopt it in an instant.

Speaking of rendering, Opera does seem to do some strange things with CSS based layouts which will infuriate, my web designing brethren, most of whom swear on a daily basis about the extra cost and time it takes to make a CSS layout work in both IE and Firefox. Making a site completely compliant with all these browsers has got to have an effect on the cost of site construction and maintenance.

For me, I really have to stay with what most of our readers are into which is not surprisingly Windows IE and Firefox (in that order), but I still have Opera there, and love to see what weird and wonderful things it will do to my layouts.

If you are Windows user and you've never been in the least bit "Apple curious" then I'd stay where you are. Don't stress yourself about the amazing world of diversity that you might be missing out on by not trying Opera. But if you have the adventurous spirit, and you're not afraid to reach into your self and find the inner Sven, then why not give it ago, It's free.