Webupon

The Basics

Everyone has used the Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer at some point in their life, and many have ended up trying/using Mozilla Firefox as a good alternative, but very few have used any other, except maby for Apple Safari which they accidently downloaded whilst updating Itunes.

Opera is a wonderful internet browser that at one time you used to have to pay to use. It has since been made available for free.

It’s main version is for desktop/laptop computers, although they have recently made a version for mobile phones, but in this article we will just be covering the PC version.

Right From The Word Go

For a start Opera is very easy to download and install, going to the Opera homepage will point you towards the download section, or simply googling “Opera” will take you direct to the download page. From here you just click to download it and run it. Setup takes a few minutes and doesn’t require a restart after it is finished.

After installing it, you can boot it straight up. The default homepage is a page about getting started with Opera, but it can easily be changed by going onto “Tools” then “Preferences” to change the homepage to whatever you want.

The Features

Tabs

Opera has tabs, much like Firefox and the latest Internet Explorer 7 (IE were really behind the times before Vista). This means that you can open up preety much as many pages as you want without having hundreds of windows cluttering your taskbar.

Mouse Gestures

Another great feature that seems to be very Opera specific (although once again add-ons for IE and Firefox will allow this), are mouse gestures. By holding down the right mouse button you can then move it in different directions to do cause different effects. Moving the mouse left with go back a page. Moving right will go forward to the next page on your browser. Moving down will open a new tab, etc. etc.

Although seemingly complecated at first, they are very simple and once mastered can save great amount of time and effort, and once you have started using them, there really is no way back. If you choose to start using Firefox, the first thing you will automatically do is download the mouse gestures add-on, purely due it’s ease of use, and win over clicking the back button at the top of your browser.

Skins

These are available right from the start on both Opera and Firefox (but not available on IE), and both are very similar. Basically if you don’t like the look of the browser when you first install it (the black is a little dull), you can apply a new “skin” which are created by other users, which will completly change the look of the browser. There are hundreds of skins, with something to suit everyone. Want everything bright blue? Done. Want a subtle vista matching colour scheme? Done. With a little searching you will find a skin that suits your taste.

Widgets

Widgets, despite their amusing name, can actually be very useful, and can be used for many different purposes. Widgets can do just about anything. There are widgets that show you maps of the world, widgets that allow you to play fun little games such as sim aquarium whilst browsing, some widgets can show you real time webcams from all over the world, others allow you to play radio stations or check the news, and some just tell you the time, or show weather forcasts.

Overall widgets are handy little extras that add that extra bit of entertainment or information whilst your surfing the web.

Torrent Downloader

Opera, unlike Firefox, IE, or any other browser I can find, has a built in torrent downloader. For the average person looking to have a nice looking browser that they can happily surf the net on, this won’t effect them; but for those who know about downloading files through a torrent, this could be handy.

Rather than having to download a dedicated torrent program such as utorrent, all torrentsbei can be handled easily inside a seperate tab in Opera, which allows you to see all the usual information such as seeders and peers, aswell as being able to do all the standard tasks such as setting download limits etc.

This is probibly one of Opera’s greatest achievements, as by having a built in torrent program, whilst it’s competitors do not, it means it can appeal to a wider audience.

Easy To Navigate History

Ever looked at a really good news article, then crossed it down, then wanted to look at it but not been able to find it? Well Opera has it covered. All you have to do is type in whatever you want to find into the adress bar, and it will show you the websites/pages you have visited lately where the specific phrase has been used. A good example would be where I was looking at some motherboard upgrades earlier. If (for example) I couldn’t remember the website that I was looking at that had them cheap, then I can just type “motherboard” into the address bar, and it will show that earlier I was looking at *whatever motherboard* on whichever page of ebuyer I was looking at it on. Overall this excellent way of browsing your history is just genious, and is great when you can’t remember the exact thing you were looking at.

Conclusion

Many things included here are including in add-ons for firefox, or by downloading the popular IE Pro for Internet Explorer users, but the fact that they come built in, means that the creaters of the browser really are in touch with their users, and that is always a major thing when it comes to creating any sort of program, be it a game, an application, or a browser.

Opera really does set a new standard for web browsers, and i’m sure when IE finally gets an update, or when the next generation of Firefox comes out, things Opera has already done, such as including a torrent downloader, or having mouse gestures, will become the new standard for browsers.