The Release of Opera 10

After waiting for such a long time, and yeah! finally Opera 10 is out.

I'm sure there are ppl who dunno what Opera is.. (i dun mean the opera of the 'phantom of the opera') Opera is an internet browser, same like internet explorer, mozilla, chrome, etc.. And it had just released its latest version, Opera 10..

First, what's so good bout Opera? 

1. Nice appearance
2. Speed dial
3. More control on the browser
4. Thumbnail tabs
5. Built-in mailbox
6. Download Manager
7. Opera Turbo (new)
8. In-line Grammar Checking

1. Nice appearance.. Dont u feel bored seeing the same layout of ur irritating Internet Explorer, dull Mozilla firefox and always-the-same Google Chrome. For Opera, it is so easy to customize the appearance.. (other browser might have the feature to change appearance, but Opera is the easiest). U can simply change the colour or totally changed the entire skin..  

2. Speed dial. Anyone of u using chrome or firefox? the 'recently use websites' feature is copied from Opera. Speed Dial is a bit different than 'recently use websites' feature (they didnt copy entirely ma) Speed dial allows you to set the url by urself. So that u could put ur favourite sites into it, make it very easy to access. (basically it's just a kind of bookmark that is nicer and faster). When u open Opera browser, usually it let u decide whether to 'resume to last viewed url', or 'homepage' or 'speed dial(blank page)'.  

 

The first picture, I'm using a skin called mironix and maroon colour style. The speed dial is 2x2, means 4 webpages (notice my blog is one of them, lol) can be accessed there. The second picture i'm using another Window skin and using system default colour. Using speed dial of 4x4, which is 16 webpages. there are 12 empty dials which i havent set the url.. The maximum dials can be set is 5x5.

3. More control on browser. As a normal user, usually we dun nid to know so much on its preference.. But sometimes it's good to adjust the browser based on ur needs. When u type opera:config.. It will show various options u can edit and change.. Including the speed, the maximum transactions, blablabla.. and many things that i didnt even know wat is it. The picture below shows part of the configuration u can make.. sooo much e..

4. Thumbnail tabs.. Just for ur information, u know who's the original creator of 'tabs'? Yeah. it's Opera. Tabs are common nowadays. (last time we used to open another window all the time). Opera has thumbnail tabs where when u point to that tab, it shows u a thumbnail of that page.. Also, it allows u to open tab in background so that it wont disturb what u are currently doing.

Just for fun, i drag the tabs to the left corner of the browser. When i point to the page, it shows a small thumbnail of the current page. In this case, it's a speed dial.

5. Built-in Mailbox..  This is something very special about Opera. It has a mail inbox within the browser. For my case, i use gmail to be its default mail. (unfortunately hotmail is not allowed). Whenever i open the browser, it will automatically load the mail in my gmail inbox.. Not only the mail, but its attachment as well. So basically, i dun nid to sign in to read my mail. Just check in the browser. However, this means it's not so secure as everyone who opens ur browser can read ur mail.. Bcareful of this. The mailbox can b used to read mail, as well as to compose mail. Very easy, when u click on hyperlinked email address, u no longer go to microsoft outlook, instead it will take u to this mailbox.

6. Download Manager.. It has its own download manager within Opera.. But it's not particularly fast. It also has the downloading torrent capability. But again, it's not very fast... But at least it provides u the pause and resume download capability.

7. Opera Turbo.  it's new in Opera 10 which believes to be able to run faster with a limited connection speed like UTP, or other uni's connection (almoz all uni's connection is quite bad right? i mean local U).. I dunno the details bout it.. Havent read it carefully coz lazy.. Something like compressing the media files and minimize the usage of the bandwidth to optimize the connection speed.. Something like that.

8. In-line spelling checking. This is not a particular new feature. In fact it seems to be copied from Mozila browser.. probably. It can check the words u type for spelling mistakes.. The misspelled word will be underlined by red doted line.  Not so sure if u can c it in the pic below. 

There are still many advantages of using Opera. I have yet to discover other features of Opera.  I was once IE and Mozilla user.. But once i started to try Opera browser, I'm addicted. I couldnt change to use other browsers. And started to get biased. Anyway, why not a try? U might become another me, addicted to it? lol. U can download the browser from this link, http://www.opera.com/ Why not try it and tell me how?

 

Opera homepage, aso a link i think.

One random picture of 'playing with the tabs and windows'