Opera introduces Speed Dial which vastly improves navigation to your favorite sites. In addition, there's Fraud protection, an anti-phishing detection keeps browsing safe and secure. Other unique features include innovative widgets and a strong pop-up blocker. Tabbed browsing and saved sessions further increase browsing efficiency. You can also add your favorite search engines to the search bar and use beautiful skins to personalize your browser. Version 9.25 includes unspecified updates.
The premise of Opera has always been the same--develop the fastest, smallest, and most full-featured browser available--and the latest version maintains the tradition. Opera has all the basics covered, including tabbed browsing with mouse-over preview, a search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple integration with your favorite e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality further enhance your surfing experience.
With solid basics, Opera's extra features push it to the top of the class. Integrated theme support lets you preview themes from within the interface so you know what you're getting before you download. Widgets (akin to Mac OS X dashboard applications) are small, useful programs that appear in a window from any app while Opera is running. The Wand utility combines autofill with saved passwords. We really like the addition of torrent support and real-time fraud protection for safer browsing.
A new feature in version 9.2, Speed Dial, permanently assigns bookmarks and tabs any digit from one through nine. When you enter one of those numbers into the URL bar, the corresponding site loads when you hit enter. Overall, we think Opera might have what it takes to unseat even the biggest-name browsers if users give it the opportunity. Opera is a must-download for those looking for a full-featured browser with added extras.
