Peter's Blog

Been using the Opera web browser for two days now and I like it more and more. Why?

• The full screen mode (F11) is truly full screen: all controls disappear, it's just you and the web page. On my Dell D410 laptop with it's 12" screen this means I get max screen area. I find it best to customise the toolbars to get a pop-up progress bar so you can see your downloads working because you don't get the spinning thing in the top right that tells you something is happening.
• No rendering problems so far, no worse than Firefox: this may be a sideeffect of Firefox's growing share of the browser market, forcing developers to make standards compliant web sites. All Opera has to do is follow the standards.
• Comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts and an online tutorial on how to live without a mouse. Worth mastering this to avoid using the trackpad. Example: Z and X to go back and forward a page. Once you try it you wonder how you lived without it.
• Email client is growing on me too: flip from web browser to email in no time. The email client is quirky, like nothing else I have used, and I am still learning it. One thing I don't like about it is that there seems to be no way to suppress images in email so dodgy spam is shown in it's glory.