No, I don't mean the kind of singing where they belt out a single note for 30 seconds at a time. I'm talking web browser's crazy! I've tried Opera off an on for the past several years, but over the past few weeks, it's developed a more permanent home on my Windows task bar. Here's why:

1. Fresh look and feel. The default UI is clean and simple, the best of all the browsers in my opinion. Opera's implementation of tabbed browsing is also the best. The tabs are nice looking, they pull the website's favicon.ico accurately into the tab (unlike IE 7), and a mouse hover on each tab renders a instant thumbnail preview of the webpage behind the tab. Nice! The default rendering of standard web form controls on the actual web pages like radio buttons, checkboxes, listboxes is pretty slick looking too.

2. Speed Dial. We have speed dial on our phones, why not in our browser? Ctrl+T will open a new tab in Opera just like FF and IE but instead of just an empty screen, Opera gives us speed dial. With speed dial you can set 9 websites in your speed dial numbers 1 - 9. When a new tab is opened you get a grid displaying thumbnails of your speed dial sites. You can click them, or just press the speed dial number and hit enter and your are off to the races. There is a setting for each speed dial site that will keep your thumbnails upated. Very cool.

3. Magic Wand. When you log in to any website, Opera asks you if you want to save the password to your Magic Wand. If you say yes, the next time you go to that login page, all you have to do is click the magic wand icon in the address bar, and Opera automatically enters your login information AND submits the form for you. With one click you are logged in and reading your email, checking your account balance, whatever. SWEET! Who needs OpenID when logging in is this easy?

4. Tons of Widgets. http://widgets.opera.com/

5. No flash on reload. Say you are surfing pages all on the same domain, with the same layout (like ASP.Net masterpages). Pages refresh without the flicker as though they are all AJAX-enabled even if they aren't.

6. Awesome documentation and support. http://www.opera.com/support/

7. Trash basket. When you close a browser window by clicking an 'X', the page you closed is put in your trash basket! If you close a tab accidentally or just decide you want to go back to a page you just closed, you can easily do it by grabbing it back from your trash basket. I love this.

8. Everything stays in one instance. No matter what you do, Opera only keeps one instance open. You can click the Opera shortcut on your desktop as many times as you want, and you will still only have one Opera open (it just opens a new tab). I like this too because like with IE, I forget I already have it open, and wind up opening another instance. This can slow down my machine by eating up resources that arent necessary. I also tend to forget which instance of IE I have certain sites open in. Opera keeps everything clean in my already cluttered task bar this way. I love this too!

9. Expanding Nintendo Wii integration. http://www.opera.com/products/devices/nintendo/wii/features/


I haven't gotten into the nuts and bolts of Opera yet, but it's certainly on it's way to becoming my primary browser. Download a copy here.

stuff opera