Last week was really hectic, I just got off from my training in Dell. It’s really going busy after we implemented Oracle Siebel. As there’s still complains about Siebel and helpdesk is frequently bombarded with strange inquiries from end user, we decided on compiling those problems and brainstorming them under quality’s perspective and under normal operational parameters. Subsequently we also got some help from Dell India on financial data security and manning an effective and robust CRM Solution. I really can admit that dell is a superb organization to work. I really learnt many important things- some were simple while few were exceptionally complex.
But the best and simplest was Opera browser. Before this I only heard about the browser, never actually worked on it. Recently I got the chance to actually look at Opera and through it. And you want to know what I say- Exceptionally Simple. The first thing I noticed is the symbol of Opera. I think it goes by the software- very simple n elegant.
It get’s loaded on the memory pretty fast and has loads of creative features. It decodes the pages with much faster rates and can handle multiple encryptions very easily. I felt it is a mixture of the best of Mozilla’s Firefox and Internet Explorer. As far as I can remember I started learning internet with Netscape Navigator and gosh in early nineties it was the leader of internet business. I mean it was the most popular browser at that time. HTML was really pure and simple. Eyeing Netscape’s success in the field Microsoft packaged it’s browser-IE with windows operating systems. That was completely to tilt the supremacy of Netscape. And IE actually became popular- mostly because windows started to grip the market. As a result a split appeared that the webpage designed for one will not work in other. And this started the Browser wars- or I call it B-Wars.Netscape released Navigator version 4 at around , I think in the year 1997 which had lot many bugs and problems handling CSS and JavaScript standards. Microsoft simultaneously launced the IE version 4 and that turned the tide completely. I remember I used to go to Dishnet Dial for my internet sessions and they used to prefer navigator but suddenly everything changed – it was IE in all machines. I was in class 7th. Little did I knew that this is the beginning of a war which will bring new contenders in the arena and will flush the end user with a whole bunch of browsers. Eventually Netscape found that it’s fighting a lost battle and navigator vanished from almost every machine. By the time IE 6 was released, the market share was touching 96%. This actually slowed down many things. Lazy developers designed websites for IE only. Designing them for other browsers or making them platform independent required an in depth knowledge and effort. I am quite embarrassed that my client’s website is also “best viewable” under IE. These actually compelled users to stick to IE even after advances were made in other browsers. The war resulted in the web which is full of in-compatibility and irregularities. HTML was of course blown apart as just a structural Mark-up language. But finally things have improved within last few years. IE’s supremacy is no longer absolute and new players like Mozilla , Avanti and Opera are doing great. Surfers actually have lot’s of options to choose from a number of browser. Opera Software’s browser is a really good piece of work. Billing itself as “The fastest browser on Earth!”, it is a free browser with excellent standards support. The amount of ideas and helpful features that they’ve managed to cram into opera is really something else. Your desktop is kept tidy through its tabbed browsing features, which opens all webpages in dockable windows inside a single instance of the application.The best thing I like is the speed dialing feature which helps you to log in to your “hang out sites” very easily. There are a range of tools to help you find information on the net easily, from integrated search-enabled toolbars to instantaneous looking-up of selected words.Two very helpful features are the page-zoom feature, which allows you to zoom in the entire document, instead of just the text; and the developer shortcuts to turn off stylesheets and images. In other browsers you have to go through multiple menus or use bookmarklets for this functionality.The interface is clean and sleek. Whereas the interface in browsers like Firefox is strictly controlled, in that nothing gets added to it without it being absolutely necessary, Opera’s designers don’t seem to have been so discerning. As a consequence, the menus and toolbars can be overwhelmingly filled with options that you generally won’t need to change.The browssr retains the information of the last session. Let’s suppose you were watching a particular video on youtube and suddenly your broadband gets off, what will u do? Of couse you will bookmark it but with opera it automatically get saved in browsers session record and next time when you will start the browser it will be on the same page.The browser has in-built mail client and news podcast .The browser built into Nintendo’s wonderful Wii is based on Opera, so if you want Wii owners to be able to surf your site in between bouts of Wii Tennis, you should test in Opera first.
All in all, Opera is definitely worth a try in place of the more established browsers. It may not have a large following, but it is a very promising offering, and is pioneering features you will undoubtedly see appearing in other browsers down the line. I liked it.
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