My observations on Opera 9.6

[technossomy]

I have been using Firefox since inception (late 2004) and other browsers intermittently. By installing a source based distro, I decided to try out Opera again, after abandoning it for their ad-based policy many years back. This time I was welcomed with a much improved version and would like to take the opportunity to share some of my observations in using it:
- Opera still contains a very fast rendering engine and this would be a prime reason for using it.
- The user interface has much improved offering the necessary configurations close at hand and intuitive handling of it
- Built in torrent client
- There are some downsides however, revealing that Opera has not caught up with the times: no ftp client plugin, no view selection source, canceling flash plugin pop-up message cannot be switched off, no pdf viewer plugin
- On the pdf viewer plugin: have been unable to install the Acrobat reader plugin and anecdotal evidence suggests the plugin only works for 32-bit systems.

So all in all, I will be switching back to Firefox again with its myriad of choice for plugins and wide user support, even if that means I will be sacrificing some much needed front end performance.

[oz]

Thanks for the observations.

I always try each new major release but I've not cared for Opera at all since version 4 came out years ago. I loved version 3 and earlier, but I'll probably continue to at least give new releases a chance. I am glad Opera is available for those that do like it, however.