I’m going to be downloading the opera browser soon to preview it for my Mom who is visually impaired. Supposedly you can increase text size up to 1000x (SO what do you get 1/2 a letter per page?). But seriously, any and all opinions welcome. Thx in advance.
You can zoom in 1000%. That’s only 10 times as big as normally. You can fit about a sentence of text on screen at the time at that zoom level.
Other than that, it’s a really good browser. I paid for it and I’m using it right now.
It rocks. I’ve bought it since 3.62.
Note that you can also increase the default font size in Mozilla and Safari/Konq. (and probably IE, I dunno…) The Opera feature you’re thinking of is the ‘magnification’, where it’s done on the fly and everything gets resized, pictures too.
It’s small, fast, and has a load of cool features, excellent keyboard support, and other cool things. Paying for the browser gets you mail, my.opera.com, personalized tech support, and good karma.
The huge advantage of course, is that you do not need to think of viruses made to infect IE.
Though, I have encountered problems using java applets with Opera. That could have been my individual set-up that was at fault.
I like Opera.
Another Opera user chiming in here.
I’ve used it since v 2 and have loved it. It’s fast and efficient. Compatibility problems with some pages with earlier versions have nearly vanished with v. 7. I rarely ever have to open a page now in IE to see it right.
I like Opera very much, even though I have the free version. It’s loads better than IE, IME.
Opera was my primary browser when I used Windows at my job. There are some subtle niceties in the interface (easily accesible prefs, excellent context-menu control et al) that no competing browser has fully matched. Sadly, the Mac version of it has sucked pretty hard, and AFAIK continues to do so.
Thanks for all the replies. I’m not quite so worried about downloading it now. Dantheman that link looks like a great deal for the vision impaired.
Opera kicks ass. I use the zoom feature a lot-- and my vision is fine. (I have a crappy little 14" monitor, though…)
Keypad plus and minus to zoom – and asterisk to go back to 100%.
Another helpful feature is easy setting of user-defined styles. You can force a high-contrast style, if that’s helpful.
Not to hijack, but have you looked at ReadPlease text-to-speech software?
The free version is quite good, but the commercial version is simply amazing. The AT&T Natural voice software is clear as a bell and very human-sounding. I set my mother up with it – her vision is not bad, but she has a hard time sitting upright at the computer. She can navigate to information that she wants, and then have it “read” to her.
(To be honest, sometimes I use it at home for long SDMB threads myself – if I feel that I ought not to be sitting at my desk and yet still can’t tear myself away…)
Well, speaking solely from the standpoint of a frequent browser, I must say that opera as an artform can be uplifting when done well, and irritating when not, but I fail to see what my propensity for random perusal of store-goods has to do with the subject and furthermore…
Oh, wait… huh?
I’m very happy with the free version of Opera. You can set it so you never see a pop-up ad, and I often use the magnification feature to zoom out to look at pictures that are too big to fit onscreen.
Unfortunately, there are some compatibility problems, but mostly with things like java applets and streaming video.
You can? 
It gives me a chubby. (And not just because I can look at porn on it!) I like that I can set it up with little search windows, so I don’t have to go to a pulldown menu if I want to do a “find in page search” or to google something. I also have mine set up so that when it launches, it pops up with all the message boards I go to in windows. It’s like having 7 different homepages!
There are a few problems with it, however, some pages won’t load (usually they’re owned by Microsoft, strangely enough 
) and occassionally, it’ll flake out on me and say that it’s loading a page, when it really isn’t. However, it’s glitches are far outweighed by it’s benefits, and I’ve tried some of the other browsers out there (Mozilla and Netscape) and have found no reason to switch.
The only problem I have with Opera is that I have to sometimes reload a page 3-5 times before it will fully load.
It does a better job of downloading than Mozilla, I use Mozilla most of the time now.
Uh, yeah:
F12 -> Refuse Pop-ups
Sometimes you have to turn pop-ups back on when some idiot has put some actual content in a (linked) pop up, but that minimal effort sure saves you a lot of irritated window-closures.
I have mine set up so that it starts with the SD homepage and most of the SDMB forums maximized and tabbed. (I have three or four other window configurations saved, too, for a variety of different things, but the SDMB configuration is what I usually start with.)
Actually, I read it (wrongly) to mean the ads on the browser itself, which of course aren’t popups and can’t be disabled in the free version.
I’ve never had a problem with popup ads while using Opera. Never. You can, of course, set it so that java windows open (which we usually DO need).
Or better yet, if you have a scroll mouse, ctrl + scroll wheel.
Another great feature is built-in mouse gestures. Hitting the right and left mouse buttons in rapid succession for “back” is a great time saver.
Up until recently, the SD front page didn’t look so good on Opera, though. I often have problems with embeded video files. There are a few other problems but usually they’re the fault of the site, not the browser.
Wow, this sounds great, now all I have to do is upgrade my operating system to XP and download a new browser, and hope my wireless home network doesn’t have any conflicts and…I’ll probably be back up and running by next Christmas. So if I don’t get back until then have a happy holiday. Tomorrow’s change the computer config day. Wish me luck.
Love, love, love my Opera browser. Even though some sites tailored to Microsoft pseudo-standards don’t display correctly, I still use it every day as my primary browser.