Opera 9 review

You have to admire the folks behind Opera.

They've been plugging away at their independent, alternative browser for years now, watching the big names eclipse their efforts at every turn as their innovations become standard features elsewhere. All for little financial return and not a great deal of glory.

Ever wondered which was the first browser with tabs? Opera. The Opera developers have brought new ideas and innovations to their browser with every new release, some of them more useful than others.

Version 9 continues this trend. It includes a chat client for IRC channels or Aim accounts; it can download BitTorrents without fuss or the need for a separate BitTorrent app; and it comes with a curious version of the Dashboard Widgets already found in Mac OS X.

These Widgets are different, of course. They don't have to run in Dashboard: they'll run whenever Opera is open and you can stick them anywhere you like. Since Opera 9 is cross platform, they'll run on any machine (Mac, Windows and Linux) and look the same on all of them.

If you already use Dashboard Widgets, you might find the addition of more Widgets inside a different app a little odd. But if Widgets do appeal, there's some fun ones to choose from None are provided by default: you have to download each one as you want it, but this takes just a few seconds and they're ready to run immediately; you don't need to restart Opera or any of that nonsense. They tend to lack the glossy gadget appeal of the Dashboard Widgets, but that doesn't make them any less useful. Many are just very simple; the Pandora Widget, for example, just opens Pandora.com's Flash music player.

Opera's tabs now sport a thumbnail preview. Hover the mouse pointer over any tab and up pops a little picture of it. Nice, but it would be nicer if a key command brought up a display of all the thumbnails, Expose-style. Another very clever addition lets you control or right-click in the search field at any website, and create a new search for it. This gets added to the list of built-in searches, reached through the box at the top-right of the window. Sounds like the search in Safari and Firefox, doesn't it? Except Opera invented the idea.

Using Opera is a pleasure, even though, as a cross-platform app, it doesn't feel particularly Mac-like. You might also accuse Opera of bloat, what with all the new features on top of the email client and address book. However, despite the feature creep, it remains a fast and reliable web browser.