Opera is one of the founders of the browser wars, originating in 1994 by Opera Software, which is based out of Oslo, Norway. Known for its innovation and speed, the Opera browser started out competing with Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer for market share. Since then, America Online’s Netscape web browser has virtually disappeared, and Opera has found a new competitor to replace them in Mozilla’s Firefox. While Opera maintains roughly a 1% share of the desktop browser market and continues to innovate in this area, they have found a lot of success in other markets as well, such as the mobile phone market and building the browser for the Nintendo Wii. Many fans of the Opera web browser tribute Firefox’s success to the advantages it gets from being an open source browser, but Opera says its not considering open source at this time in an effort to improve their market share. The following is a users guide to the Opera desktop browser.

What is the Opera web browser? According to their mission statement, Opera strives to develop a superior Internet browser for their users through state-of-the-art technology, innovation, leadership and partnerships. So far they’ve lived up to this mission statement. Checking in at a tiny 4 MB size, Opera is the ideal browser for older or low-end computers. Its lightening fast speed makes it attractive to modern computer users who are trying to avoid the notorious lag and memory leaks of its major competitors. Opera has also been credited with many of the firsts that we find standard in today’s web browsers, including being known as the browser who invented the precursor to tabbed browsing and was the first major browser to pioneer tabbed browsing.

What are Opera’s features? Opera’s latest effort, Opera 9.0, includes a host of features. Here are some of the ones you need to know about:

BitTorrent Support – Opera features integrated BitTorrent peer-to-peer file distribution and transfer capabilities, allowing you to download large files without a separate BitTorrent application. See Brian’s BitTorrent FAQ and guide for more information on BitTorrent.

Integrated E-mail – You can get your E-mail account built into the Opera web browser, providing easy access to your E-mail.

Tabbed Browsing – View multiple websites within the same browser by using different tabs.

Content Blocker – Simply right-click on the advertisement or image and click Block Content.

Add Search Engines – Right-click any websites search field and click Create Search to add it to your browser.

Thumbnail Preview – Place your mouse over a tab to see a preview of that tabs contents.

Transfer Manager Window – View your downloads progress with Opera’s download manager.

Password Manager – Tracks and stores all your passwords. See this demo for more information.

Mouse Gestures – Opera now supports mouse gestures, allowing you to do more from your computer mouse.

Fast Forward – Detects the link you are most likely to select and goes there. See this demo for more information.

Keyboard Shortcuts – Like any good browser, Opera is full of great keyboard shortcuts.

Enhanced Security – Opera boosts many of the standard security features you’ve come to expect with next generation web browsers, including most recently an anti-phishing feature due out in Opera 9.1.

Customizing Opera

Opera Browser Wiki – Once you’ve downloaded the Opera web browser, the first thing you need to do is bookmark the Opera Browser Wiki. Here you’ll find every accessory you could need, including Opera’s infamous Bookmarklets, Custom Buttons, Custom Searches, and much much more!

Opera Widgets – Opera has widgets available for their browser. While comparable to Firefox’s extensions, these Widgets are generally external, rather than being built directly into the web browser. Here you’ll find weather widgets, news widgets, sports widgets, games, and all sorts of useful web programs. You can check out their most popular widgets to see some of the best widgets they have to offer.

Opera Skins – Opera has many skins available, allowing you to alter the look of your web browser. If you can’t find one you like, check out how to make your own Opera skin.

Opera Setups – You can customize Opera’s menus, toolbars, shortcuts, mouse gestures, and more with the use of Opera Setups. Simply download any ones that you think you would like to customize the browser to your specifications!

Opera Panels – The Opera’s panels feature offers their infamous sidebar, which the extremely popular Firefox extension All-in-One Sidebar was based upon. Here you can track your transfers, bookmarks, widgets, notes, and more, all conveniently placed in your sidebar.

Giving Opera Some Love

Opera Banners and Buttons – If you’re one of the 10-15 million active Opera users, or just want others to know about the Opera web browser, you can check out these Opera Banners and Buttons. They’ll give you the code to place on your blog or website to help others find Opera. <!–[endif]–>

Opera Community – Similar to Flock’s approach, Opera lets their users do the talking by creating a close knit community, which includes Forums. You can even view this compiled list of Opera Logs and Sites, which includes several sites I monitor via my feed reader. My favorite would probably be Opera Watch, which does a great job of capturing the pulse of the Opera community. You can also show them love by getting an Opera Wallpaper for your computer’s desktop.

Troubleshooting Opera – While using the Opera browser, you’ll sometimes find that websites won’t view correctly. I ran into this problem with Typepad‘s rich text editor not working properly. Thankfully, Daniel Goldman of Opera helped me with this workaround. For situations like these, you’ll simply need to make Opera pretend to be Internet Explorer or Firefox for that particular website. This can be done fairly easily. Here are the steps:

1. Right-click the web page.
2. Select Edit Site Preferences.
3. Click the Network Tab.
4. Click in the Browser Identification drop-down box.

Select your preference. You can identify or mask as Internet Explorer or Firefox (many websites are built for IE, so I recommend masking as Internet Explorer).

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoy the Opera web browser. If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend you download it and decide for yourself if you like it. Its free, so you’ve got nothing to lose!