Why I Love Opera

Posted on March 14, 2006 in Browsers

OK, I am very very bored. I can read articles at Clogger but I can’t reply to them. I still love you all. I read you as faithfully as ever. I miss you. So let me tell you about why I like Opera.

A few weeks ago, as my faithful readers will recall, I switched from IE to Opera after testing both of them against Firefox. Opera won mostly because it didn’t screw up my layup like IE did. It ran faster than either IE or Firefox. It brought back the pages inside the window feature that I had missed ever since Netscape went under after the stupid Microsoft-Netscape war. And most important, Opera did not use Active-X controls. So it is much much harder for a hacker to compromise your computer by luring you to a webpage. Opera also suppresses pop-up ads. Without the need for a plugin.

Some other nifty Opera features: You can dump Bloglines if you want (but only if you really want) and follow your favorite blogs using Opera’s built-in RSS feed reader. Like Firefox, you can hide your private data from Big Bill and his Corporatist hacks. You can make notes for future reference and send them to friends. Opera features a magic wand which allows you to remember userids and passwords. You can switch skins.

I don’t need most of this stuff. But blocking the ads and Active-X parasites eases my mind. How many times have you been taken down because IE or Firefox picked up an Active-X propelled virus?

Opera is clean. It does the job.

Unfortunately, one thing Opera cannot do is fix Clogger.