My Ode to Opera

nce upon a time, the world wide web was still in it's terrible twos and a lot of pot banging was going on. The web browser back then was much more simpler than the ease of plugins today, and the name Google was as non-existent as the search engine specific browser bar .

Flash was still owned by Macromedia and it currently was the upstart against Java games and gaining popularity as a great tool to make cartoons with. If blending frogs or microwaving gerbils was your thing, anyway.

The nature of the internet was for open standards and protocols for the most fundamental of tasks--like creating web pages, for example. But with Windows 98 Netscape's domination of the web browser space continued to erode against the new comer of Internet Explorer.

In these early days the web was much more Java-centric in many instances and half of people surveyed would tell you Microsoft's browser would crash more than Netscape under these instances, while the other declared Netscape the unstable culprit of lost browsing sessions.

Even then, though, there existed a myriad of alternatives to either browser but one of them was the most well known on the Windows side. It's name sounded as if it was picked from a hat, but the iconic red O in Opera has grown on us long time fans.

And today, April 13th 2010 marks a milestone for the Norwegian bunch. They're the first alternative browser available on the iPhone OS . Those of you who have browsed the web on your Nintendo Wii, DS, or DS Lite are already familiar with their work if you've never used their desktop variant.

Still, while it's market share for people on smart phones is a little over 25%, it astounds me to this day that it's desktop version has remained at such a remarkably low adoption rate. It's no joke that it is the fastest browser, from launching to surfing the web. It also has consistently pushed the bar of web browser technology, debuting many innovations even years before the competition.

The only major criticisms against it revolve around some web pages loading improperly. But with such a small market share, it's a browser that often is overlooked when someone is testing their work before making it available to the web at large. In my experience however these issues are rarely encountered, and when they do occur the browser has a lot of resiliency in "repairing" the website in question so it renders correctly.

This one little flaw never burns me, and I've used it since version 3.02. Why? Well, let's set the scene.

In the early days web pages were mostly text interspersed with simple low resolution graphics or photograph scans. Even in this multimedia medieval the proprietors of websites and forward looking entrepreneurs struggled to find a means to gain revenue from that tharr interweb thinger majigger.

At first ads were in the shape of simple animated gifs, then they began to hotlink to various products. And overtime, the PopUp was invented. Pretty soon Push technology (like the largely useless PointCast, especially in the age of RSS feeds.) and Pop-Under ads were proliferating the internet with an intensity that made many of us who ventured the seedy underbelly of the digital domain weary of being stuck in a never ending war between us and the "X" button on Internet Explorer or Netscape.

Often, this already irritating browser behavior would be combined with notorious memory leaks in the oft buggy Windows operating system leaving your computer in freeze frame mode until you had killed the offending pop-up originating web page or restarted the whole system.

One day though, while surfing some of those rather seedy websites for useful software (when the Open Source world was still in it's nerd nursery) I stumbled upon a key to a browser called "Opera." I didn't know why anyone would want to ever buy a web browser, and I had laughed when I saw a version of Netscape sitting on store shelves. But if someone had taken the time to crack it's licensing secrets, it must have some uses, I thought.

And so I downloaded this browser and tried it out.

The difference was immediately recognizable, and I felt as if a blindfold had been lifted off my eyes. If Mosaic was the Ford Model T of web browsers, Opera was the BMW leaving Internet Explorer and Netscape still using manual locks and powerless windows.

To start, Opera popularized the notion of something commonly referred to in acronyms. This would be called MDI, multiple document interface. This is opposed to SDI, single document interface. I'm sure this brainy explanation can be redacted, though, and we'll just say Opera was the first browser to introduce tabs. In 1997 when pop-ups proliferated everywhere if your web browser was Opera if it began to get attacked you could hit one "X" button and restart the application, no having to guess what web page was causing the pop-ups. And better yet, no need to restart the fussy Windows 98.

Opera also distinguished it's self by having a convenient feature that came in handy when a crash occurred too: when you launched the application it would ask if you wanted to continue from where you last were or start a whole new session.

Other innovations continued through out subsequent releases. The list of new functions mirrors many of today's modern browsers and even now the competition is still playing catch up. I'll personally always remember it as the first to have a built in pop-up blocker, search bar, mouse gestures--and yes, even voice recognition. I've never tried that, though. But it gets decent reviews.

Incredibly, I've yet to list all the functions and features of the Opera web browser. Even today with versions existing from everything to Windows to Mac to Linux and back Opera continues to offer the most features in one of the smallest download packages ever. (I remember painfully upgrading to IE 5 and 6 over dial up...less features and twice the size! )

Opera isn't just a simple browser with handy features. For power users who dig just below the surface will find that it sports a nice mail client, IRC chat, BitTorrent, Notes, and even Widgets. It even has a decent RSS reader. Granted, with Firefox you can get plugins that function similarly to many of these features but it's nothing compared to having everything available "out of the box."

My favorite feature introduced just in the last couple of versions is something called "Opera Link. " By simply registering for a free account one can synchronize their bookmarks, notes, speed dial preferences, and more. For example if you don't take your computer home for work, but often still take your work home, you're able to pull down any links and notes you've made through out the day without having to worry about two separate computers.

Speaking of speed dial, while Safari has a cool interactive thumb nail history Opera has had a similar feature for quite some time. Instead of having one "home" page, when you first open your browser you're greeted to a grid that allows you to set 9 (or more if you poke about in it's options) web pages you generally visit. They will load every time you start and gives you a visual cue to where you wish to go.

Not only that, but there's also the option to have a "thumb nail bar" at the top. Or if you mouse over a tab without the bar enabled it'll quickly show you the live web page (even if a video is playing!)

Whilst I can prattle along all day about it's bevy of features ultimately it has several great things going for it, most of all it's security. While Internet Explorer and even the highly acclaimed Firefox have had some issues with privacy and security Opera has had only four known problems in these last few years and has already patched them all. Their ratio of known security flaws to patched problems is less than one percent. Compare that to Internet Explorer's 38%, or Firefox's 5.77.

While Google (and Chrome) have some anti-phising and malware features, so too does Opera. And again, it's had them longer--it's already ironed out bugs in the system. Overall Opera continues to advance the idea of what a web browser can be and even though in the past they had charged for their software or gave it away in an ad-supported edition it's been free of charge and ad-less for years.

The other under the hood advantage it has over it's competition is it's devout following of open web standards. Remember those web pages that loaded funky? That's often a product from unexperienced developers used to coding for only Internet Explorer. With HTML5 on it's way Opera is already showing it's self to be the most compliant browser out there today. Pretty good being that the final switch isn't supposed to occur until 2012.

The release of this latest Opera Mini (which catches it's feature list up to a larger browser, Opera Mobile) that now has support for tabs and Flash makes me wonder what could be just around the corner from those Gnarly Norwegians.

And they didn't disappoint. You can zoom, browse, and really use the web in blazingly fast speeds compared to the native Safari. The reason? Opera Mini filters web pages through it's servers and compresses the data up to 90% before sending it back to you. This single feature manages to trump Safari by 10 fold. It doesn't hurt that it can also save you money if you're paying to browse by the megabyte.

How easy and seamless this demo looks makes a lot of sense, really. Norwegians are generally filled with a good sense of insight and wisdom.