General

Thinking Outside The (Windows) Box,
Part II: Free Web Browsers—
Opera, and Conclusion

While many businesses depend on Microsoft and its various product suites, alternatives exist, some of which are not well known. Part two of this series examines free alternative web browsers.

by Lisa Phifer VP Core Competence, Inc. [December 30, 2005]

Opera takes us back again to the opposite end of the spectrum. Until recently, Opera was a commercial or ad-supported product. That may have changed—Opera is now free of both ads and cost—but its many features are still there. We tested Opera 8.0 on Windows XP SP2. It is also available for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, Solaris, QNX, OS/2, Mac OS, Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS. Opera's little brother "Mini" also runs on Symbian, Windows Mobile / Smartphone 2003, Brew, and many other mobile devices.

 

Opera www.opera.com Opera Software ASA Oslo, Norway

Opera's commercial legacy is apparent at install time, when you're given options to create user profiles, startup icons, and quick launch entries. On first run, Opera displays a Getting Started page that summarizes its many usability and security features. For example, Opera supports tabbed browsing, with drag-and-drop tab reordering. Although you cannot drag text onto the integrated Search Engine bar, you can drag objects like links onto toolbars. Web pages can be opened as new windows or new tabs. A nice status display at the end of the location bar shows progress and size when a page is being downloaded. Any closed tab can be retrieved from the cache by clicking on a Trash icon instead of reloading the page. We found this interface very easy to use, if somewhat more visually complex than Firefox.

Opera also includes a built-in news reader (RSS, Atom, NNTP), chat client (IRC), and e-mail client (POP/IMAP/SMTP). Sidebar button can be used to launch these and other related applications like Contacts and Notes (see figure at right). These embedded applications are great if you need them, but excess baggage if you don't. For example, Notes lets you highlight text and links that you want to save for later reference or e-mail to someone else. At first, we weren't certain that was very useful, but we later found ourselves missing Notes when using other browsers. If you use the web for research, Notes are a relatively unobtrusive way to retain interesting tidbits.

Voice commands are another novel feature in the "will I really use it?" category. Upon first invocation, you'll be prompted to download a 10.5 MB voice library. If you choose to do so, Opera can then read any selected text aloud—just click Voice, press Scroll-Lock, or say "Opera speak." Yes, that's right—Opera not only talks; it listens. We find voice commands far more useful on small mobile devices than on desktops, but whether you love or hate voice is really a matter of personal preference.

Opera includes many ease-of-use features. For example, Opera's Wand enables both password saving and auto form completion (see figure at right). Opera provides an extensive, customizable collection of keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. A handy Hotclick feature displays a context sensitive menu for selected text, letting you easily copy text into a new Note, e-mail it, search an engine, get a dictionary definition, or even translate the text into another language.

When it comes to security, Opera is no slouch. Opera is not based on Firefox or IE; it has its own rendering engine that is generally regarded as fast. Opera does not support ActiveX or VBscript. It provides Pop Up blocking with configurable exceptions. It offers configurable Cookie controls. Private data can be deleted manually, but not automatically at session end. Beyond the usual security protocols, Opera also supports TLS 1.1 and lets you disable less secure ciphersuites (see figure at right). Finally, Opera provides insight into the security measures actually negotiated with any site, obtained by hovering your mouse over the lock icon at the end of the location bar.

Of course, this does not mean that Opera is invulnerable. At the time of this writing, a list of 13 (mostly patched) vulnerabilities in Opera 8 could be found by visiting this Secunia advisory. No matter what code you run, vulnerabilities are always possible, and this underscores the need for regular, automated updates.

As with other non-IE browsers, users who browse the web with Opera must consider the likelihood that some web pages will not work as intended. For example, we could not use a Photodex site that required ActiveX. But we were able to use the majority of sites that we visited. Opera does provide broad support for web standards, including XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, and SVG 1.1 tiny. This partial list belies Opera's mobile device heritage—your desktop browser can even be told to display narrow PDA-like pages. Developers will find Opera's HTML code validator and style sheets useful.

Stay Tuned
These are just a few of many free web browsers that can be used instead of, or in addition to, Internet Explorer. Please refer to Part 1 of this series for more general discussion about IE and the pros and cons of using alternative browsers. In the end, many will choose to use at least two browsers—one for daily use, and a second for those websites that just don't play well with the first. You'll probably still need IE to access Windows Updates and other MS-proprietary sites.

Readers may note that some of the browsers reviewed here either include an e-mail client (e.g., Opera), or can be used in conjunction with a separate e-mail client from the same vendor (e.g., Firefox). Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series, where we will examine free Windows e-mail clients that can be used in place of Outlook.

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