Anything & Everything...

Good overview of Opera v10 beta by Jim Rapoza at eWeek.

His opening paragraph is exactly right, and shows that he knows the history of web browser design:

Ever wonder what features will be found in the next generation of Web browsers? Well, usually there’s one easy way to find out: Just check out the latest version of Opera.

Opera may not be the best known or most used Web browser out there, but, over the years, it has been one of the most innovative. Often, features that become mainstays across browsers appeared first in Opera.

You can see from Opera's history of innovation, for example, that original tabs were invented by Opera in March 2000 in Opera v4.0...and now comes Visual Tabs. (Don't forget that Tab Thumbnails were added by Opera long time ago also. Just hover your cursor over the Opera Tab Bar and watch what happens. You may need to check this box first.)

Opera added a search field in the toolbar WAY BACK in Dec. 2000...!

And now, we'll see how long until intelligent auto-Turbo is added by other (desktop & mobile) browsers to minimize flakey WIFI or slow connections.

Remember to set Opera Turbo to AUTO; then it'll only come ON when you need it (and turn itself OFF when your connection speeds up -- or after you complain to your internet provider).

Try Opera 10 Beta with all the new goodies here.

I've just discovered the most AMAZING HD programming I've ever seen in my life. Earth-Touch is based in South Africa and has teams of HD videographers throughout the world uploading their footage via satellite. Cool stuff; growing up watching Wild Kingdom on the old color CRT TVs was never this good.



Watching it on a huge LED TV via Apple TV isn't too shabby either.

I first discovered Opera around 2001, I think. I remember using Opera v4.0 on Windows 98; and paying for Opera v5.0 on a tangerine Apple iBook G3 with Mac OS 9...and, of course, I never looked back.



I've never wasted time with typing WWW or .COM, or closed tabs that I couldn't re-open (or having Tabs, at all!), or wasting time because it took 5x longer for a web site to come up, or save a session of 10 tabs to follow-up with next week, or a million other advantages by using Opera...for NINE YEARS now.

Here's a great site that show's Opera innovations, past & present. The cool thing, when you use Opera, is that you can assume and expect that the other browsers will continue to follow by adding Opera's innovations. Lately, I've been playing with the Opera v10-alpha with Turbo...and it's very cool!

Let me repeat something important about how Opera is faster & easier for you. I have not typed WWW or .COM in my browser address bar since 2001, when I switched to Opera. Don't you wish you had, too...? You can, in one minute.



Happy Birthday to the great team at Opera worldwide...and to Jon, Geir, and Håkon for getting it all started.

When I saw the cool CSS3 capability added into Safari3 to resize tiny text input fields, I was hoping Opera would add that also, ASAP.

While we wait for Oslo, add this feature via a cool Opera userJS script by xErath. (Muito obrigado, João!)

(Thx Chas4 for pointing it out to me!)

Those of us that use the web every day, or work in the industry should try to get a refresher course in how ordinary users (i.e., the whole world) work with their computers and use their browsers when going online.

I see it daily when helping out friends and family and have always been very interested in UI design and feature development and how that relates to user producivity.

One basic usability issue, that I STILL see all the time, relates to typing in URLs. Do you know how many billion people are still typing in "www" or "com" to go to a web site? The majority.

For a real world example, read the comments at this recent NYT article about "user tips & tricks." WOW, doesn't even begin to describe it.

It gets worse. Because of the atrocious user design foisted on the world by Microsoft, IE users never could merely type "opera", then <enter> to go to Opera's web site. You always had to type "www" and "com." What a disaster.

I used to use Netscape a long time ago, up until about v4.5, I think...until I discovered Opera v5.0. We now have millions of IE, Firefox and Safari (and new Chrome) users, still typing in ".com"...since they were brought up on IE, and can't break the habit.

Here's THE easiest and fastest way to go to a web site in your browser on your computer or phone:

Type the web site domain WITHOUT the "www" or the ".com" and press <enter> and get to that web site quickly. And, by using this tip, you will save TONS of time when browsing with Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on your phone...great for getting that info you need much faster.

(OPERA SECRET HINT: If you mis-type something in the Opera address bar to go to a site...instead of backspacing, finding your mouse to click back, highlight, blah, blah, blah, just simply hit the up-arrow key, <ENTER> and use your favorite search engine in Opera, like Yahoo or Google, to correct it for you. Faster, easier. (Where do we see search engine integration in the address bar now? You're welcome, Chrome.)

(And, if you haven't tried Opera v9.6, try it for a few days. You won't go back.)