Opera Goes Free
By Gerard McGarry on 21st September 2005, filed in Internet Technologies. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
I just learned (via Shaun Inman) that the Opera web browser is now completely free. For those of you still using Internet Explorer, Opera is a well-established alternative web browser that had been very successful in the mobile browsing market.
In previous versions, Opera displayed small advertisements in the top of the browser as a means of funding development of the browser. The adverts could be removed by paying a small subscription fee.
According to the Opera web site:
Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.
Fully Featured Opera
Before FireFox came along, I regularly used Opera for web browsing. It has an amazing set of features and is very useful for hardcore surfers. Some of my favourite features:
- Extended Bookmarks functionality. If you have a folder full of bookmarks, you can elect to open all of the bookmarked pages at once.
- Notepad facility. Excellent for doing research - you can copy selections of text into a note in the sidebar of the browser for later reference.
- Tabbed browsing. Essential. Enough said.
- Saved Sessions. When you exit Opera, it will remember all of the pages you had open at that point and will automatically reload them the next time you start Opera!
- Recall closed tabs. If you accidentally close a tab during your Opera session, you can restore it through an option in the Window menu.
Now, FireFox has tempted me away, but with this latest news I might give Opera a second chance. If you’ve never experimented with alternative web browsers before, now is a good time!
Update: Some tips and tutorials for Opera users here.
