Thread: Opera 8.53

Opera has long-since been accepted as a formidable player in its field. A long-standing advocate of open standards, Opera's underlying architecture is based on standards-based web technologies. This ensures compatibility with all web sites that are created using open standards. Since Opera went free in September 2005, the software has become much more enticing.

Most appealing with this browser is its minimalist approach-everything from
the install size (just 3.7 MB) to install time (under 7 seconds) spells efficiency. There are a plethora of options for configuring the browser in accordance with individual tastes. Its support for tabbed web pages, mouse gestures, integrated compatibility with search engines, integrated e-mail client (called M2) with spam filtering,
RSS reader, popup blocker, password manager and form filler make for quick and convenient surfing. Perhaps one of Opera's most interesting features is its Small
Screen Rendering capability, allowing the browser to correctly display web sites on a screen of virtually any size.



With the interface being completely configurable, you can modify every element of the web display or the interface. There are other thoughtful touches such
as "Quick preferences", which provides one-key access to commonly accessed options like toggling web features (Flash, Java, etc), enabling proxy servers, pop-up blocking, etc.

There are, however, some instances where sites render incorrectly in the browser. But this is, more often than not, non-standard programming practices in creating web sites, other than being a fault of the browser. To maximize compatibility with web sites, the program also has an option to identify itself as IE or Firefox-a neat trick for countering sites that are specifically programmed to run optimally on select browsers.

For: Quick page rendering; efficient size; standards-based engine; integrated mail client; RSS reader; pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing; free.
Against: Some web sites do not render correctly.
TESTED