Labs

The dark horse of the web browser race, Opera is often ignored as Firefox and Internet Explorer grab the headlines. Unperturbed, Opera Software continues to crank out updates to its best-of-breed browser, offering innovative, time-saving features and an unparalleled level of customisation.

Since Opera 9 arrived earlier this year, we've been treated to Speed Dial, an optional default setting for new tabs that can house up to nine clickable site thumbnails; an excellent content blocker, primarily for hiding online advertising; a BitTorrent client for fast file sharing; and Widgets, which are tiny web applications that live on your desktop. This is in addition to Opera's excellent tabbed browsing, user-definable keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, and its trash can, which enables you to fish out accidentally closed tabs.

Of course, Opera's abundant features would be irrelevant if the browser engine wasn't up to scratch, but in fact, while

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Opera chooses to go it alone -eschewing the more popular engines that drive Internet Explorer and Firefox - its browser is, in the main, more compliant with current web standards, faster to render pages, and more efficient when many tabs are open, while others slow to a crawl.

Another of Opera's great aspects is the sheer level of customisation it offers. Via Quick Preferences on the Tools menu, you have single-click switching of major web technologies, enabling you to rapidly turn on and off JavaScript, sound, and plug-ins. Individual site preferences can also be set, enabling you to change Opera's browser identification setting to fool unruly (and, thankfully, increasingly rare) 'Explorer-only' websites. Other options within the Tools menu provide more in-depth customisation, enabling you to change toolbar settings, manage search engines and keyword searches, manage cookies, and more.

We reckon it's the best choice for general browsing, and Opera should also appeal to more specialised markets. Click the Address bar's View icon and you gain access to zoom options, User mode (which provides alternate visual modes, useful for website testing), Voice, and the Find in page field. The last of these is also available by hitting / (slash) and starting to type; all instances of your term are then highlighted on the page far more quickly than if you had to mess about with a Find dialog box. And as if that all wasn't enough, the banners and price tags that once cluttered Opera have now gone, so you've no excuse not to give it a try.