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Now compare to this list of Opera 'firsts':

http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations

Opera really wasn't the first in most cases, and they implemented the features very POORLY, only to have other browsers eventually come along and show them the right way to do it.

Tabs: Opera was second behind another little known IE shell, and their method of cycling tabs in LAST-USED order, and having those tabs appear as loose windows INSIDE of the Opera window was a nightmare that resembled MS Office 7's multiple open document windows, more than it does modern tabbed browsers. In fact, when Mozilla came out with tabs, OPERA COPIED THEM, so now Opera has TWO completely different methods of handling tabs. What made Mozilla's tabs great was the "open in background" option... With that, I'd be perfectly happy managing dozens of windows. It was the "new windows" opening in the foreground and having to be moved that was the real hassle, and the innovation.

Pop-up blocking: Worked poorly in Opera. It blocked the majority of popups, but several still got through, and in the process it broke plenty of legit sites. Mozilla did it right. And everybody and their mother thought up pop-up blocking long before Opera or anyone else did it... The devil is in the implementation details.

Fit to Window: I was crying, loudly, in public forums, for this feature on my PDA for YEARS and YEARS before Opera released it. Their implementation was over simplistic, more like disabling style sheets or removing the "<table" tags than what we use today. So they don't get credit for implementing the current smartphone browser zoom and fit-to-width methods (which do things much differently).

They're obviously hurting financially. By switching to Webkit (and now Blink) they were able to lay off over 90 developers, some of whom had been with the company for 15 years. This sucks - for the developers, obviously, but I'm sure nobody was happy about making that call; but according to salarylist.com, the average software developer salary is around $81,000/yr which times 90 developers is 7.29 MILLION dollars a year. Not sure if Norway dev pay is equivalent to the US average, but you get the rough picture. That sort of sum could make or break Opera as a company.

I've been a fan of Opera browser for a very long time - I started using it right after it became free. Opera pioneered a great deal of features that are browsing must-haves today, implementing them years before any competitor. They remind me of another company that hailed from their land-mass-sharing-neighbors in Sweden: Saab. A car company that pioneered many innovations that were later incorporated in automobiles across the board. The first to do this, the first to do that - turbochargers on production cars, cabin air filters, very high crash safety standards, active seat belts (okay, that one didn't last long), active head rest restraints, refrigerated glove box (for taking that Chardonnay to the picnic of course), headlight washers, heated seats, the use of computers to automatically monitor and adjust the engine's operations based on the type of fuel used and sensor input, direct ignition, traction control, air conditioned seats, etc, etc, etc. Now compare to this list of Opera 'firsts':

http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations

Saab was bought by GM. When that happened, all their cars were mandated to be cross-platform cars. They shared chassis with other cars; some models (and SUV and a hatchback) were blatant rebadges of a GM SUV and a Subaru (nicknamed the Saaburu). Now Saab is no more.

Sounds like what is happening to Opera, unfortunately.

I know 'car metaphors' are a Slashdot tradition, but I find this one particularly apt.

Just in case you don't know, switching to "mask as Firefox" in site prefs usually fixes these things. Something here http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#webdev may be useful to you; dunno if the neptune plugin still works. One thing I'll miss about Opera is being able to put buttons on the start bar.
The likes of Google seem to deliberately break stuff for Opera users so it's not always the company's fault. On the other hand, they haven't bothered integrating hardware acceleration yet despite having a working version in 2008, so if you want to play Angry Birds you need to use something else, which is another reason I'm jumping ship.

I can Ctrl+Click [to open link in a background tab] in any other browser BUT Opera.
There is no easy way to make this handy feature work without a hack because you cannot re-map ctrl left_click.

So you never ctrl+clicking or none of you ever actually use Opera at all?

Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with this

I'll be completely honest, I don't care. It isn't Free Software. Until that changes, I'd rather use w3m than touch it.

um..."yea!" for you??

The parent was making comment on innovation, not whether it was Free.

Next time, a little less straw, man.

Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with this

I'll be completely honest, I don't care. It isn't Free Software. Until that changes, I'd rather use w3m than touch it.

Where the fuck have you been for the past 5 years? Of course Opera is free.
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2005/09/20/

Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with this

I'll be completely honest, I don't care. It isn't Free Software. Until that changes, I'd rather use w3m than touch it.

Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with this

I'm sorry, but other than the huge advantage that is all the plugins available for Firefox, Opera has always been lightyears ahead of any other browser's features.
http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations
Tabbed browsing and Zooming into a webpage are only the two that seem most important and were introduced by Opera, but they have always been incredibly innovative, much more so than Firefox. Yet there's not a big developer following, probably because it is not open source like FF, that's Opera's weakest part I guess, but as a browser, I love it.

I have not used it but this seems to be a web developer clone, not sure if works on 10:

http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar

Quite a few nice articles on there

For flashblock, you can put a button to enable/disable plugins in your toolbar. Does not work as well as flashblock, but good enough.
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons

For adblock, I still have not found a good way to update my blocking list while keeping my modifications.

So ... you want Opera to include in their main browser a feature that you know is an optional 3rd party plug-in in for Firefox?

Have you considered why Adblock might be a 3rd party plug-in? Apart from the "barebones" bit. Could it be because the first sign that Mozilla is actively including a list of ads to block, they will be sued into the ground in the US and other places for interfering with other people's income? And while they might win such a lawsuit, don't they have better ways to spend their money?

And if they were to lose such a lawsuit, Mozilla might get off somewhat easy, as they are a non-profit organization. Opera on the other hand isn't.

Now, is it possible to make a third party addition to Opera that shares adsites to block? Certainly. I'm willing to bet that it's also possible to use the same lists that Adblock uses. To make things easy to start with, it could use mvps' list as a starter.

And, if you really want to be pedantic, there's always the option of using Google to find what you're looking for. There seems to be quite few attempts at recreating Adblock:
Tamil's My.Opera blog
OperaWiki.info has some suggestions
Lex1's blog on My.Opera also has some ideas

There's even a Flashblock for Opera

Basically it boils down to the same complaints you hear about Linux from people who are used to Windows: "but I need $program, and I don't want to look for replacements".

Now, what is the best option for you? I have the faintest idea. I'm quite satisfied with the built in filtering as it is. If I go to a site that has some annoying banners, it rarely takes me more than 30 seconds to block them, and I can live with that.

Is it as effective as Adblock? No clue - I don't use Adblock or Firefox if I can avoid it. It lacks the basic things that I love in Opera. Funny how that works out - one man's must have item is another man's "meh".

And if you want to be really pedantic, the one thing that Firefox still kind of needs is a built in ad blocker that's as good as Adblock.

Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.

You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:

• Install a web developer toolbar
• or a web accessibility toolbar
• Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
• Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
• All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.

Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.

Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.

I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.

Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.

You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:

• Install a web developer toolbar
• or a web accessibility toolbar
• Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
• Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
• All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.

Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.

Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.

I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.

Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.

You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:

• Install a web developer toolbar
• or a web accessibility toolbar
• Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
• Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
• All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.

Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.

Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.

I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.

Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.

You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:

• Install a web developer toolbar
• or a web accessibility toolbar
• Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
• Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
• All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.

Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.

Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.

I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.

Well, I wasn't implying that one should switch browsers per se. You're right about the other browsers, except that turning off third party cookies doesn't work the same for IE or Firefox as it does for Opera.

But Opera does give you a finer degree of control. You can actually either set 'Accept cookies only for the site I visit' or you can set 'Accept cookies' for the individual site. From the operawiki.info site cookies entry:

If you set the site preference to "Accept cookies", while visiting this domain, in addition to the cookies allowed by the "Accept cookies only from the site I visit" rule, content coming from a remote domain can set cookies for its corresponding domain and subdomains IF AND ONLY IF the remote domain also has a site preference that allows cookies for itself. This means that if you want to allow remote domains while visiting this domain, you need to manually add a site preference for each remote domain and set it to "Accept cookies only for the site I visit" or "Accept cookies".

"Accept cookies" for a site preference DOES NOT cause Opera to behave as if the global is set to "Accept cookies" when visiting the domain. This way you're not automatically getting opted in to remote domains. You have control over what remote domains you want to allow.

This is different then setting unchecking 'Accept third-party cookies'.

The buttons there will do it; e.g. "Toggle the Menu & Personal bar on/off AND dropdown the main menu" (I would link it, but the comments system doesn't like them). On Unix you can also use Alt-F11; look in Preferences -> Advanced -> Shortcuts -> Keyboard Setup, search for "Disable Menu". Delete "Platform Unix" and it'll work in other OS's, or make your own keybinding to "Enable Menu Bar | Disable Menu Bar".

It would be nice if more of these were provided by default, rather than having to go out and find/create buttons yourself.

http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu

You can toggle the menu bar with a button from that site in Opera to get rid of it if you really want to. I currently have the button in the view toolbar (hidden by default) that Opera has, with a non-toggle menu button on the far left of the tab bar (where the panel toggle would be by default) acting as the main menu. I rarely ever use the menu anyways; the panel has all the mail client and bookmarks access I need.

First off, Opera use is large enough for the company to survive on revenue from Google from the search bar(just like FireFox). I've seen figures of 1 to 2% of use, and when you factor in the huge number of web surfers, ~1% is nothing to sneeze at.

That's pretty narrow minded thinking. Many of the features in Firefox and and it's extensions are Opera innovations or it was the first browser to have a good implementation. You can see some of the innovations here . Of course, Opera has taken some cues from Firefox too, but I think it's safe to say that all the browsers have benefited because of the existence of Opera. Hence, it's not 'irrelevant' just because there are hardly any hits from Opera on your site. Many of the features you enjoy in Firefox have their root in Opera.

You can block Flash with Opera using user stylesheets:

http://operawiki.info/FlashBlock
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/09/opera-and-f irefox-extensions-ii

Try http://operawiki.info/OperaAdblock

I don't know about that. Switching my user agent to IE using the Web Developer Toolbar got Opera 9.02 to a login screen.

(Ha ha. The post is [loosely] about med school, and the captcha is "interned".)

Opera 9.02 works with all the sites I visit regularly. This wasn't true of 8.x admittedly.

And for things that don't, notably ytmnd, there's a "View in Internet Explorer button" you can install.

And you get the speed, slick UI and peace of mind that a browser with a negligable market share is not a tempting hacker target. I like the Wand thingy, and the way you can click at the edge of the screen to get a links pane.

Opera pipelines by default - and uses heuristics to control the level of pipelining employed depending on the server Opera is connected to

http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu drag and drop the buttons file, edit, ... to a toolbar of your choice and then disable the menu bar (don't remember the keyboard shortcut, I have a mouse gesture assigned. Easiest way: go to http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#toolbar - drag the "Menu" button to any toolbar, click it to disable the menu bar, and then remove the button again)

http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu drag and drop the buttons file, edit, ... to a toolbar of your choice and then disable the menu bar (don't remember the keyboard shortcut, I have a mouse gesture assigned. Easiest way: go to http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#toolbar - drag the "Menu" button to any toolbar, click it to disable the menu bar, and then remove the button again)

ya, see, this is exactly my reasoning, only in reverse. I have Opera with the web developer menus installed, which comes standard with 'open in FF' and 'open in IE' context menu options (besides a plethora of other stuff)... so why the
heck should I suffer those two other browsers? :) Ah well, to each his own. :)

OBlink to the webdev toolbar thingie: http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar

Opera can do this as well: http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu

Add menu buttons to your topmost toolbar and switch off the menu. Search the forums if you need more help.

http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#webdev
You can also add these lines to Opera6.ini under[Document Popup Menu] & [Link Popup Menu] sections:
Item, "InIE"="Execute program, "iexplore.exe", "%u""
Item, "InFF"="Execute program, "firefox","%u"""

The WebDev toolbar does everything I need it to do...

http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar

Very useful.

Is there a way to import a filterlist?

Yes. You can get a pre-made filterlist here.

Holy Carp! How long have I been using Opera and never noticed that...

I just tried it, and it works. That's great! I hope I remember it. I ought to put a button on my toolbar for it. ...Done. Found it in the usual place, at http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons .

Not AdBlock per se, but you can achieve the same functionality.

    My advice? Give it a fair try. Download it, and stick with it for, say, a week - it's free (as in beer, no ads or whatever) for desktop users. The UI is, IMHO, the best Opera has to offer, but it takes a bit to get accostumed to. Once you do, though, you just can't go back.