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Opera, the Forgotten Browser


DigitalX

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When he reads the glowing stories detailing the wonders of the fledgling Firefox web browser, Jon von Tetzchner can't help but wonder why his own baby is so often ignored.

 

Von Tetzchner is the CEO of Opera Software, maker of the Opera web browser. In the sort of grand comedic tragedy that echoes its name, Opera went from spending almost a decade as Internet Explorer's understudy to getting an occasional polite mention in the cavalcade of media attention currently being directed at the new superstar -- Mozilla's Firefox browser.

 

But the show ain't over till the fat lady sings. And Opera intends to put on a grand performance this year with a fresh version of its browser, new offices in North America and Asia, an expanded public relations campaign and an increasing emphasis on becoming the browser of choice for entertainment and mobile devices.

 

"Obviously we would have liked it if Opera got more media attention. At the same time, we believe it is good news that there is more interest in browsers," said von Tetzchner. "We now need to work hard to make the most of this opportunity. We believe we have a product that can handle comparison very well."

 

Ironically, many of the features that are now favorites among Firefox users first appeared in Opera, such as Multiple Document Interface, known as tabbed browsing in Firefox, and Mouse Gestures, which allow users to control the browser by moving their mouse instead of clicking on icons.

 

Opera can also match Firefox's boast of enhanced security -- that is, better security than what IE supplies.

 

"IE was designed to be integrated into the operating system and with other applications as much as possible. From a programmer's point of view this can be considered positive, but that also applies to programmers who are making viruses," said von Tetzchner.

 

"From a security perspective it is better to have less integration between the browser and the OS and other apps. At Opera, we have made a lot of decisions where security has been put higher than convenience. Sometimes it even hurts our users a little because sites that use code that could be used to do damage won't display in Opera. But we have to put security first."

 

The newest version of Opera -- its name is still a secret -- is slated to be released in February. Among the new features is the Trash Can, an oddly named but useful addition that acts as a sort of extended bookmark for stored history. The Trash Can also allows users to save a series of pages as a "session" and then reload that session later.

 

Voice Interaction, Opera's splashiest new feature, allows users to control the program by talking to their computers. Websites, e-mail and documents can also be read aloud by the browser.

 

"Voice Interaction is a progressive part of our vision that web browsing will soon move more into mobile phones and other small devices and browsing will need to be a hands-free experience," said Michelle Valdivia, Opera marketing communications manager. "This is very early, premature technology, but Opera wants to get ahead, get it out there and into practice to be future-ready."

 

A new Start bar contains icons for Top 10 favorite links, Home and Bookmarks. And Opera's new Fit-to-Window function adapts web pages to fit to the width of your screen or browser window, eliminating the need to scroll horizontally -- a great feature for small- and medium-sized screens on mobile phones or other devices. Fit-to-Window also works nicely if you want to tile pages next to each other on your screen or adapt website content to fit a specific paper width when printing.

 

"There is a lot of innovation in the new version and a lot of improvements under the hood," said von Tetzchner. "We know that we need to be better than the competition to attract users. Since 1995, the competition has been free and supported by major corporations with big budgets. This applies to Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. We are the only vendor that has had to really focus on making a better product to survive."

 

Opera includes e-mail and newsreader clients and comes in two versions: free, with an ad banner in the top right of the browser window, or ad-free for $39. Registered users also get direct tech support.

 

Von Tetzchner said he doesn't believe the ads in the free version have kept users from adopting Opera. He thinks the problem is that many users simply don't know there is a free version of Opera.

 

The Opera team members hope the new release, which can be previewed now in beta form, will finally bring Opera the attention they believe the application deserves. They aren't dissuaded by the statistics from tracking firms WebSideStory and OneStat.com that show most users who have opted to replace IE seem to be turning to Firefox, noting that the number of Opera users has doubled over the past year.

 

WebSideStory and OneStat both put Opera's global usage share at a little over 1 percent. But von Tetzchner sees good times ahead.

 

Opera Software, which is based in Oslo, Norway, is opening offices in the United States, Japan and China in 2005. The engineering department now has more than 130 people and is growing, von Tetzchner said. And Opera's management team has its sights firmly fixed on becoming the most popular portable browser on mobile gadgets and in pervasive computing and home entertainment devices.

 

"With its European base and its planned new offices in Asia, Opera is in a great position to take the lead on mobile devices. Mobile infrastructure and interest is well-developed in those areas," said Manhattan-based marketing consultant Barry Shapiro. "Whether Opera will take a significant part of the desktop market is doubtful but debatable. Who'd have thought Firefox would be taking market share away from Microsoft a year ago? That said, I don't see Opera replacing Internet Explorer on the corporate desktop, and I'm not sure it can beat the geek cachet of open-source Firefox. Mobile and media devices may well be Opera's swan song."

 

But the company isn't giving up on the desktop.

 

"At times things have been tough, given the market conditions, but we have stuck to our task," said von Tetzchner. "We believe it is best that there is choice and we aim to deliver the best browser. That's been our goal from day one."

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Opera suffers from two flaws:

- it's not free

- it's way too complicated for most users. I spent a week looking at it and there are so many options under one menu that it made me go "man, that's overkill"

 

However, Opera is MUCH BETTER than Gecko in an embedded environment such as a STB, PDA, phone, etc. In fact, I'd much rather see a "powered by Opera" logo on a phone than a "powered by Mozilla Gecko" or "powered by Mozilla". Simply because Opera has many many different build modes, like "tiny", "desktop", "textonly", and so on, and Mozilla/Gecko only has a couple (embedded, desktop). Minimoz (Mozilla Embedded) is okay, but it's still slower larger and less fun to use than Opera Embedded.

 

But on the desktop I wouldn't give up my Firefox for anything. Okay, well, maybe the MozSuite or Epiphany (both are Gecko).

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