Though this browser has been around since 1994, its market share is miniscule. Still, it should be praised for hanging on and adding features regularly
Though this browser has been around since 1994, its market share is miniscule. Still, it should be praised for hanging on and adding features regularly
There are winners and there are losers and there are those, who, while not exactly winning, are not losing either because they have mastered the art of hanging on grimly in the face of overwhelming odds. And all said and done, they deserve our praise.
Opera is one such company. Though its market share is a miniscule 0.57 per cent (see box), it seems to be sticking on and also adding features. The latest version, Opera 10 Beta, promises to add functionality that may make browsing a lot better.
Not just eye candy
In any update, most companies cram a lot of features that are not necessary, but are nice to have and Opera 10 has such features for example, there is a resizable tab bar, a resizable search field and the ability to send rich text messages with Opera Mail, among others.
But it also features some fairly serious improvements. One of these concerns speed. Opera says on its site that Opera 10 features a compression technology that provides improvements in browsing speeds over limited-bandwidth connections like a crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe or browsing through your mobile phone while commuting.
Targeting gen next
Opera, realising that its market share is extremely small, seems to be taking specific steps to attract users. Since Gmail and Facebook are extremely popular among today's youth, Opera says that it has optimised the new Opera Presto 2.2 engine in Opera 10 so that it loads resource-intensive pages on sites like Gmail and Facebook much faster.
At one level, Opera seems to be targeting social networking actively. For instance, its site says, 'Write freely in your Facebook wall, blog, or Web mail. Opera 10 beta underlines any misspelled words, so you can express yourself without reservation.' when trying to push the spell-checker. Hopefully, the final release of Opera 10 will have some must-have features to woo the hard core Facebook user.
Enter the dragonfly
But Opera is not stopping with just standard users and is also targeting developers with Opera Dragonfly, which allows users to debug JavaScript and edit CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and DOM (Document Object Model).
While Opera Dragonfly is included in Opera 9.5 and above, the company says that it has also improved its Web developer tools in Opera 10 Beta.
I have been using Opera 9.x for a while now, and I have found that it is an interesting browser with which one gets comfortable very soon. Though we cannot say how well it will do in the market, one must praise the company for its gutsy stand in bringing forth new versions in the face of serious competitors like Internet Explorer and Firefox.
QUICK TAKE
>>Opera has launched a new version of its browser
>>One of the interesting features is improved download speed
>>The browser may be an interesting alternative to people who want to look beyond IE and Firefox
Browser market share in May 2009
Internet Explorer 7.0u00a031.43%
Internet Explorer 6.0u00a025.12%
Firefox 3.0u00a017.71%
Firefox 2.0u00a011.89%
Firefox 1.5u00a01.62%
Safari 3.1u00a01.01%
Internet Explorer 8.0u00a00.87%
Safari 3.0u00a00.68%
Mozilla 1.9u00a00.58%
Opera 9.2u00a00.57%
Source: www.w3counter.com
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