12 Things You Would Love About Opera

You would be reading a lot about Firefox over the net these days. Opera oriented articles are hard to find. So, being an avid Opera user for the last so many years, I thought, I should write an article about Opera Web Browser. I think it has got everything you need. Just install it and you are ready to go. You have already got most of the stuff you would ever need in everyday's work. Apart from this, Opera, I think is the most customizable of all browsers.
So, here is a list of features which I thought a new Opera user would surely love.

1. Light And Fast
Opera has been proved to be the fastest browser time and again. Its lighter and has faster page-load time than any other browser.

2. Integrated Search
This is one of the unique features of Opera, though many other have also introduced it following Opera. You can search Google, Yahoo, Amazon and many other sites with your integrated search feature. You can search directly from your address bar (If you want to search for 'opera' with Google, type g opera and hit Enter).
Apart from this you can add your own favorite search engine. For example, if you want to add Youtube search, go to Youtube.com, right-click in the search field and select 'Create search'. Then enter the attributes, like you can enter 'yt' as the keyword. So, the next time you have to search for a video on Youtube, just use the keyword 'yt'.

3. Better Bookmarking
Bookmarking your favorite pages is very easy in Opera. You have also an option to categorize your bookmarks. And you can also assign 'nickname' to your bookmark. It works as a shortcut. So, the next time you want to visit that page, you can just type the nickname in the address bar and hit Enter and it would take you to that page.

4. Better Password Manager

Opera has a great password manager known as 'wand' to save multiple passwords. Its different from password managers of other browsers in a lot of ways. It works with the Wand button or Ctrl+Enter. See this for a demo.

5. Mouse Gestures
Opera was the first browser to introduce mouse gestures back in 2000. After that browsers like Maxthon and Ace Explorer have followed Opera. Mouse Gestures are easy to use and remember which make your browsing experience a great one. Here is a list of mouse gestures that you might like to use.

6. Notes
I think this is one of the most over looked feature of Opera. With this feature you can jot down important notes for later reference. You can also directly copy and paste texts from webpages. The note utility can be found under 'Tools' .

7. Custom Buttons
This is one great feature of Opera. You can find a number of ready made buttons here. More buttons can be found in this thread.

You can make your own buttons! Opera buttons consist of simple lines of HTML code and you can create your own buttons if know a bit of HTML. If you want to make your own buttons, see this for some help.

8. Great Skins
Opera has a large database of skins and good ones as well! Though the default Opera skin isn't bad, I highly recommend you to try Mirage Alpha, Shadowguard and Macton. You can choose from a large variety of skins here.

9. Thumbnail Preview
It comes really handy when you have many tabs open at one time. You can know exactly which tab has that thing you're looking for. Just hover your mouse on any tab to see a thumbnail preview.

10. Interactive Voice Feature
The voice feature allows you to control Opera's interface by talking and to have documents read aloud. Voice is currently offered in English and runs on Windows 2000 and XP. See this for more info.

11. Widgets
Well, you might need a ruler or a calender or a translator while browsing. Widgets are small web applications (multimedia, newsfeeds, games and more) that make your desktop experience more fun. More widgets can be found here. My favorite widgets are Touchthesky(weather widget), Wikipedia widget, Basketball and Imagegrep(Search images from
Google, Flickr and Yahoo!) .

12. Speed Dial
Well, this was one of the most talked about feature of Opera when Opera 9 got released. But now it has become a part of an Opera user's life. It gives you an easy way to access your favorite websites. See this for a demo.

Well, I've tried my best to write about the best Opera features in the above article but I know I've missed out on many other features like integrated torrent support, chat and mail client, a great Feeds reader, site preferences feature etc. One more reason to use Opera is that it all major Web standards currently in use. Moreover, in the new version of Opera you also have 'History Search' feature that lets you find the page you want to get back to, by just typing one word you remember and also 'Opera Link' which will let you synchronize bookmarks and Speed Dial between your computer and your My Opera account so that you can access them anywhere.

And if you're a Firefox user and you think you will miss the add-ons, then don't worry. Most of the add-ons are already built-in in Opera. And you can make up for them with widgets, buttons and UserJS. Have a look at this page.

One thing you can complain about Opera is that there are so many features that you would tend to forget many of them and would not even know of them. So, just stick to Opera for a few months and you would keep discovering new things. And I'm sure you would fall in love with it.