So, I am fairly excited about the new version of Opera being released. Admittedly, I have been using most of the beta and tech previews, so nothing is new to me with this release, but it is still cool. Operas site s listing seven things as their new features: BitTorrent, Content Blocker, Thumbnail Preview, Widgets, Improved Rich Text Editing, Site Preferences, and the ability to add custom Search Engines. So, I guess I should give my meager opinion of these.
BitTorrent: I had been curious if the BitTorrent support would stay in since it was in most of the 8.5 previews and then was pulled from the final product. And oddly, the BitTorrent supports looks and feels just like it did in the 8.5 previews. Which is to say, it looks and feels weak, and it is. For the uninitiated, BitTorrent is a peered way to share files. Unlike a lot of other file sharing programs which connect you to another person, this can connect you to many other people who in turn share the load. (Ok, so that was a horrid explanation, click the link and read their description.) Anyways, normally you would use a separate program to handle torrents, but Opera has opted to add it into the browser. I am not a big fan of the implementation. I guess I like more information with my torrents: progress on individual files in the torrent better listing of seeders and leechers... the kinda stuff you would find in a full blown torrent client. In a version or two this might change, Opera Software is good about listening to its users. And that is also not saying this isn't a major leap. One of the nifty things about this being introduced into a browser is the passive acceptance of the technology. Being introduced into browsers just makes bittorrent one step closer to being something that is used by your everyday users and not just the slightly more elite bunch. Of course, for now, I will stick to using utorrent for my torrent needs.
Content Blocker: This to me is the most important feature they added as far as pulling in more acceptance from other users but at the same time not high on my list of concern. This allows the user to block certain content on a server basis. You see a page with a graphic add you don't like? Right click on the page, select 'Block Content...', and start going crazy clicking things you don't want to see again. As much as I hate to compare, this uses a funky reg-ex window much like the Ad-block extension for FireFox. Now while I will admit I have killed a couple of ads, I will also stress that I don't make a practice out of this because some people can and do supplement their income via ads and I don't like to think I am stealing from them. Because of this, I have not played much with content blocking much in FireFox or Opera. It is amusing to see this feature to be "added" to Opera. The capability of filtering content has been in Opera since at least version 6, which was released in 2001(probably sooner, but I am not sure), and it got an overhaul in version 8. You had to manually edit a .ini file so it was fairly clunky for most people. Opera has a kiosk mode for, you guessed it, kiosks. The original content blocker was added for this mode so that pages could be blocked out of the kiosks (kinda what the parental controls in todays firewalls do, but on a weaker scale). It was never really intended to block ads in this way, but then, I doubt the FireFox people ever thought their filter method would turn into Ad-Block either.
Thumbnail Preview: I don't think I would consider this a major feature, but it is kinda convenient. When you hover over the tab for a page a tiny little preview pops up of what the page looks like. Also, you can enable it so that when you alt+tab through the open tabs it will show as well. Since I tend to have anywhere between 2 and 30 tabs open, and frequently they will be a couple of tabs from the same domain, so the titles are the same, this makes bouncing between open tabs a little faster.
Widgets: I wanted to be excited about this. I really did. In case you did not know, widgets are little semi-autonomous things that exist on the screen in such a way as to not be obtrusive (ideally) but provide easy access to information or some function. It seems a good idea, and some people love them (the wife always has three open on her laptop: time, power, and volume). Being a minimalist when It comes to my computer interface, the less on screen the better, so tiny single function things get on my nerves. But enough with my preferences, I am disappointed with Opera's widgets in two key areas: Opera has to be open so they are not stand alone, and they can't modify system functions like volume. So, we have these things that basically function like specific web pages...but only when we have a web browser open.
Improved Rich Text Editing: I know next to nothing about this. However, now that it is better supported, I might just have to look around and see what I can find. I normally avoid things I can't use.
Site Preferences: I love this feature. This is what lets me visit myspace.com and let me keep my bitching down to a minimum. With this added in, I can tell Opera to behave differently for each domain it comes across. I can block out pluggins, javascript, kill cookies, or play with the way elements in the page behave via custom CSS pages and I can do that for individual pages. Some examples: I hate when people modify my status bar. I turn it on so that I can get potentially useful information about links I am about to click not so they can tell me a link is nifty or that they are cool. But I also want javascript on normally, especially now with all the Ajax crap everywhere. This lets me single out specific pages and disable javascript on them. Or, I can disable items across an entire domain, like myspace.com. My second biggest complaint with myspace.com is that everyone feels they need to have a movie and a song going. I have seen some pages where they have several movies that start up when you view the page. LAME! So, to remedy that, I simply turn off pluggins server wide, and I don't have to deal with it anymore. I no longer have to change the default way my browser handles to deal with a few errant pages.
Custom Search Engines: This is the Holy Grail to me for this release. There are two areas where you can do searches in Opera: the little drop down search thingie, or the address bar. Any search I can find on the net, I can add to these. So, lets pretend I want to add the ability to search my page to Opera. I right click on the little search box on the side panel and go to create search. It pulls up a window with Name and Keyword with Name being auto-filled from the page title. I can put whatever I want for either as long as I don't use the same keyword as I did for another search. Now, I can either select the name from drop down thingie and search, or I can type the keyword followed by what I am searching on in the address bar. At first the keyword parts seems lame, the more you use it the more you realize how much faster it is. Over time you also realize how much time you save by initiating the search from the bar as opposed to going to the page, looking for their search box, clicking on it, and searching or (like I see a lot of people do) going to google, searching for the site, etc. I have accumulated quite a few custom searches: google.com, images.google.com, video.google.com, dictionary.com, opera.com, answers.com, imdb.com, rsdb.org, gracenote.com, en.wikipedia.org, eqtraders.com, allakhazam.com, gamefaqs.com, youtube.com, and of course, toomucheffort.com all with easy to remember keywords.
Ok, now I am bored of typing, so I am going to do something else.
