Tell me about Opera (the browser, not the music)

I’ve been using Firefox for a long time, but for the last few years it has been pissing me off royally. Freezing, seizing, bogging down; what was once a great, fast, slick experience has become a slog through the thickest quicksand of the internet.

Chrome is an option, but it lacks so many features that it really doesn’t cut the muster as an everyday git-er-done browser. (in particular, it sucks for searching in a page and for printing)

Recently, I installed Opera. It seems as full featured as Firefox, but as fast as Chrome. But I’m still figuring out all of its ins and outs and whys and wherefores. For example, why do some of the tabs have little “dog-ear” corners on them?

Any other advice, tips, tricks, or insights into Opera? Or recommendations for other browsers that are full featured and powerful, yet not memory hogs like Firefox or security nightmares like IE? Thanks for any opinions!

Opera user since c. 1998… it is my favorite browser but it’s a love hate relationship. Enable key shortcuts and the the Z and X keys become left-arrow and right arrow without having to use the Alt key. Going ‘back’ a page is much faster in Opera than any other browser, which is great. The Speed Dial feature is awesome once you have all your favorite daily pages defined. The hateful part is that it kind of thinks like this: ‘how much memory do you have? Great I’ll take it.’ Some Java apps don’t work well and some sites simply don’t support Opera and stop right there. It does not warn or prompt when you are about to close a window with multiple tabs, and that is a pain if you have open sites with passwords.

The personal information feature is great… you pre-fill in the fields with your name, address, phone number, email, etc., so that when you need to fill in this information (when making purchases for example) the info is already there - you won’t have to type it in every time. Personally I turn off the remember passwords feature.

Opera will crash (as will every other browser) but Opera will then resume at the point of the crash; it didn’t always do that. It’s also very customizable down to bare bones task bars which will give you more viewing space. In addition be sure to modify your file extensions so that when you open a MPG file it opens with the player of your choice. (The default is p.o.s. Quick Time which thankfully you can change to Winamp, or whatever.)

Definitely you want to Opera as an option on your PC. It doesn’t hesitate like IE which is a big plus.

I use Opera in both Windows and Android. It works great in both. I originally started using Opera because it allowed browsing without images and would load up all the tabs that were open when I last closed it. Other browsers will do that now, but it wasn’t as common back then. I also use Opera when I’m concerned about security, it’s a lot more obscure than IE and Firefox so I would assume less exploits are made for it. If I’m reading a forum it’s still faster to browse without images, especially if there a lot of ads.

Thanks, that’s all good advice!

I’ve noticed that, unlike most browsers, it seems to refresh or update open tabs, even if I haven’t gone to those tabs lately. Sometimes I like this, but other times I don’t. Is there a way to control that?

PS - I am also using it on Android, which is what prompted me to give it a try on my Windows 7 laptop.

Funny enough, I just stopped using it about two weeks ago.

I moved to Opera from Firefox. I’m using Chrome right now but I don’t love it.

About a month ago, Opera started running very slow for me and I couldn’t figure out why- I was fully updated, no virus dragging me down. It just started to hesitate on everything.

I far preferred my best Opera experiences to my current Chrome experience, but I was no longer getting Opera at it’s previous best. Frustrating to not have greener pastures to move on to. I suppose I’ll try going back to Opera soon. Maybe an updated version will fix whatever problem I was having.
Lukeinva is right to point out that some sites just don’t support Opera. I learned soon enough that if something wasn’t working on a particular website to just try it in a different browser- this usually addressed the issue.

I haven’t given them a try yet, but Waterfox and Palemoon are Firefox-based builds that try to correct some of the issues people have with FF.

Well, I think I am going to have to abandon Opera. It has started popping up warnings about invalid security certificates on every freaking site I visit! (Including this one.) Multiple times! Anyone have any experience with that? I have been to the Opera help pages, which arrogantly assert that Opera is behaving correctly and ALL browsers should do that. Riiiight.

Unless I can solve that issue, I guess I will try out the above-mentioned Waterfox and Palemoon.

Thank you Thank you Thank you!

I’ve been using WaterFox for almost a week now, and it is awesome! All the functionality of Firefox, but with none of the stupidity. I’ll come back in a week or two and let you know if it is still in the pink, but so far, it is the answer to all my prayers! Youse guys ROCK!