Product Reviews

Going head to head with Microsoft is a difficult task. Going up against Microsoft and Netscape would appear to be nothing short of foolhardy, but that's exactly what Norwegian company Opera Software has done with its eponymous Web browser.

Given that every Mac (and Windows) user has at least one browser installed already on their system, it's difficult to see how another company could compete. Opera's approach is to try to provide the fastest page rendering and the most flexible way of browsing.

Of course, as an independent software vendor Opera has to make some money from its product. This means users can choose between a free version of Opera that includes banner ads along the top of the browser window, or an ad-free version costing $39.

Users downloading the product for the first time get 30 days of freedom from ads before they start rolling. This is a good approach to distributing software, as it allows users to experience the browser before deciding whether or not to pay for it.

The key initial attraction for users of Opera is likely to be the speed of page rendering, and there's no doubt that the product is significantly and noticeably faster than its competitors. Using a locally cached page, we pitted Opera against Internet Explorer 5.1 on a 400MHz G3 iMac. We found the page took 12.47 seconds to render under IE, but only 7.22 seconds under Opera.

Age concern

Thanks to its speed, Opera is ideal for slower Power Macs and it's system requirements - it can be run with Mac OS 7.5.3, compared with 8.1 for IE - mean you can continue to use older system software.

It's worth noting that this version is currently only for OS 7.5.3

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and above, with no support for Mac OS X. There's a publicly available beta of Opera 5.0 for OS X, which the company expects to be released shortly.

However, speed isn't the only important feature in a page rendering engine: compatibility with Web sites is perhaps more important. This is where Opera has some small problems, although these are due largely to sloppy coding by Web developers rather than problems with the browser. A prime example of this is the Microsoft Passport site, which failed to render correctly in Opera, although this had no effect on the usability of the site.

Some sloppy developers will even produce sites that will only allow one browser access. However, this is where Opera's flexibility comes into play. It's easy to set Opera so it identifies itself as another browser to Web sites, allowing it to bypass this kind of stupidity.

This level of flexibility is continued everywhere you look. You can, for example, have multiple bookmark files, allowing power bookmark users much greater control over how their bookmarks look. You can also turn off the ability of pages to spawn other windows, ending the misery of pop-up ads.

If you choose not to pay for the product, you can even specify the kinds of ads you're interested in, so making the ads-supported process at least more relevant to you.

Super surfing

As might be expected, the interface follows many of the conventions laid down by Netscape, with buttons for moving backwards and forwards, home and reloading pages. However, two additions to the button bar on the top are very useful. The first is a Search field that lets you directly input a query to your chosen search engine. The second option is a field that lets you zoom into and out of pages, between 20% and 1000% of the original size, a feature that's of particular use when viewing poorly designed pages less viewable on a Mac than on a PC.

Overall, there's little not to like about Opera. Other than the occasional odd renderings, it works pretty much perfectly, and the fact that you can use it under ad-supported terms makes it worth at least trying out. As it's only a 2Mb download, it's certainly worth grabbing, especially if you're fed up with slowly rendered pages under Internet Explorer.