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I downloaded Opera beta1 last night and gave it a whirl. Not really any earth-shattering difference in feel from Opera Technology Preview 3, which I reported on here a couple of weeks ago.

Opera's claim to being "the fastest browser on earth" has some merit, and beta 1 "feels" even a bit speedier than Preview 3 did, if anything. However, it is not yet universally the fastest browser. iCab beats it decisively on my favorite browser challenge page -- the National Post home page. Picture seem to load in opera somewhat slower than they do in iCab as well, although Opera has some cool picture manipulation features, such as a button you can press to stop pictures loading on a particular page rather than having to change the Preferences. On average, Opera is probably a bit faster than iCab overall.

Stability sems pretty good with Opera beta 1, but it still crashed when I tried too use it to post a story to the Applelinks CGI (TP3 completely locked up my PowerBook when I used it for that -- beta 1 just quit -- there is progress).

Opera is a cool little browser, and different enough from iCab that I can envision using both in the future, perhaps substituting Opera for the things that I now do with Netscape Communicator 4.7.6., but not yet. My biggest complaint with Opera, which continues with beta 1, is that it has no provision to save the content of Web pages as plain text, a facility that is crucial to me for research purposes. Even copy/paste to another application does not always work satisfactorily. I tried that with a Yahoo! Finance story last night, and the copied text pasted with a hard carriage return after every word. It copied and pasted fine but from WannaBe.

Other niggles:

• No "Open this page in" support from the aforementioned WannaBe

• Scrollability (third party scroll automation control panel that I am addicted to) is still not supported

• I wish the default window size was full screen.
• Doesn't support dragging and dropping text into the Applelinks news posting CGI engine.

I like Opera's efficient and informative interface; it provides you with more page loading information that other browsers do. You can also customize its configuration extensively. I found that moving the URL field and progress bar to the bottom of the window to my liking. As with iCab, there is no mucking about with pop-out sidebars and another gewgaws and gimmicks that I never use anyway. Just a nice, plain browser with great performance.

Opera is small compared with Internet Explorer or Netscape, and it feels light, quick, and nimble, in contrast to the lumbering ponderousness of Netscape in particular. Comparisons with iCab are inevitable, since both these browsers are European challengers to the Internet Explorer and Netscape dynasties. They are both commendably small and parsimonious of RAM, and as for software bloat, there is already no contest. The Europeans win. It makes you wonder what Netscape could be like if it lost some of its excess baggage, like the Composer HTML authoring module, which nobody uses, and the build in Messenger e-mail module, which about two people use.
• Very nice implementation of downloads and saves with this window.

Opera for Mac Features:
• Opera is fast
• Opera takes care of itself, making little use of shared libraries, which results in increased efficiency and a faster response.
• Opera is secure
• Opera features 128bit SSL encryption, version 2 and 3. The first browser on the market to support TLS 1.0. This means that you can do secure online ordering of goods and services, online banking without any additional security proxy software or modules, ensuring complete security for your online transactions.
• Opera complies with standards

• Opera is extremely small. Installation takes about a minute. Opera for Mac is a tiny 2.2 MB download, so updating to the latest version is always fast and easy.

• Opera is simple to use with:
- Context sensitive menus
- An online support web
- Dedicated news server supplying quick answers by users to users Session Management
- Start Opera with a number of windows
- Start with the same setup as when you last exited Each window can be with or without graphics Download management
- Multiple downloads are possible at the same time Opera features a special download window with your download items listed. In addition, Opera supports resume download -- if the server stops, you won't have to start again. dedicated Download window with FTP and HTTP file status
- Cookie management
- Opera continues it's commitment to user security and choice with Opera's advanced Cookie management capability. advanced cookie filtering; accept or deny third party cookies
- Web display management
- Choose your own presentation styles: font type, color and other parameters for headers (H1 H6), normal and preformatted text, form buttons and form fields, newsgroup headers, group header and message text and more with your own user CSS. Fly the web the way YOU want! Opera is flexible
- Choose whether to show menus, buttons, scroll bars, progress information etc. If you don't need it, why show it? If you don't like the UI gadgetry, you can turn it off. If you don't like cookies or referrer logging, frames or multimedia, or if it's just Javascript, one click turns them off. If you'd like to customize the look and feel of your toolbar, no problem at all. Opera is customization friendly, so you can see the Internet the way YOU want and not the way the designer envisaged.
- toggle images online and per individual window toggle cookies or referrer logging
- toggle frames
- toggle multimedia
- toggle Javascript
- toggle document and user settings
- Choose font type, color and other presentation parameters for headers (H1, H6), normal and preformatted text, and forms advanced link presentation: Choose color, bold, underline, strike through, etc.
- Link to your favourite email client if you so wish save global and local home pages
- View the web the way you want with user CSS add your login user names and passwords to the Keychain and retrieve them later easily modify button sets, from using a smaller set, text only or even make and use your own plus so much more.
- Sophisticated hotlist import from other browsers
- Retrieve all elements of a hotlist (bookmarks) with one click add all active documents to a hotlist (bookmarks) with just one click Support for multiple graphics formats
• Opera includes support for multiple graphic formats. Support for wbmp, png without alpha transparency channels, gif, jpeg, bmp, xbm, animated gif, and transparent gif formats. Graphics can of course be turned off.

Opera supports the following technologies:
• 128bit encryption
• TLS 1.0
• SSL 2
• SSL 3
• CSS1
• CSS2
• XML
• HTML 4.01
• HTTP 1.1
• ECMAScript
• JavaScript 1.3

With experimental support for:
• DOM
• DHTML
• WAP/ WML

Major changes in this version (B1):
• Submit and Reset no longer displays wrong text when using history-back.
• Bookmark scrolling is now 14 pixels instead of 1.
• Sometimes dialogs would contain strange characters instead of breaking to the next line. Fixed.
• Menu checkmarks are no longer square-root characters.
• Fixed vertical alignment of toolbar buttons.
• ButtonSet now brings up a decent dialogbox telling you which line and column contains the bug, if there's error in the XML-file.
• Single-select forms now supported.
• International characters are now supported in the Address-field, Search-field and Go to Address dialog.
• Crash related to missing Navigation Services (MacOS 8) is fixed.
• Fixed a bug related to storing password.
• Java disabled due to instability.
• Bookmark crashes fixed.
• JavaScript Popup windows (position/size) fixed (see below).
• 2 other bugfixes in JavaScript.
• JavaScript is no longer a shared library, as our compiler has a bug, which currently makes this impossible. This bug caused the Popup Windows to have wrong size and position.

System requirements:

• Opera for Macintosh has been tested on MacOS 7.5.3 through MacOS 9.1. After the Power PC (PPC) version, a 68K version will follow, then an OS X version.

Note that following technologies are not realized/ported in this version:
• Unicode
• Cache preferences
• File upload support
• Full screen view
• Some preferences don't work
• Support for browsing local files
• Drag and drop of pictures

The expiry date For Opera beat 1 is set to 1st of August 2001.

For more information, or to download Opera, visit:
http://www.opera.com/mac/

Charles W. Moore

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