CNET Editors' review
Opera 9.50 maintains the program's tradition of striving for the fastest, smallest, and most full-featured browser available. Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, a customizable search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple integration with e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality round out the essentials.
Opera's extras push it to the top of the class. Integrated theme support previews themes from within the interface, and the new version sports a default redo that's an attractive balance between "dark" and "light" themes. Opera's desktop widgets can appear anywhere while Opera is running. The Wand utility combines autofill with saved passwords, and it's hard to ignore the addition of torrent support and real-time fraud protection. The latest version includes reasonable anti-malware protection courtesy Haute Secure.
The expanded features in 9.50 should make any non-believer do a double-take. Opera Link enables Bookmarks, the Personal bar, Speed Dial, and Notes synchronization across all other Opera instances. Quick Find improves the search tool, allowing for full text searching from the address field, the history panel, and opera:historysearch. The Status bar has been restored as a default, the Wand now lets users confirm a successful login before saving credentials, and spatial navigation--similar to Opera Mini and the Wii browser--has been introduced.
The new version is faster, has multiple back-end changes to handle code better, and overall we think Opera has what it takes to unseat even the biggest-name browsers. You just need to hear it sing.
Watch the CNET video review of Opera:
Publisher's Description
From Opera Software:
Opera aims to product the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time online. The latest release is even faster with superior support for Web standards. Opera 9.5 is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages and better at running your favorite Web applications. New features include Quick Find, which remembers not only the titles and addresses, but the actual content of the Web pages you visit, and Opera Link, which lets you access your favorite Web sites everywhere you go on all your computers and cell phones.
Version 9.5 introduces new features Quick Find and Opera Link, adds a redesigned Address bar drop-down menu, and includes new storage and indexing formats for Opera Mail, among a bevy of other features, changes, and fixes.
Opera 9.51 is a recommended security and stability upgrade.
What's new in this version:
Opera 9.51 is a recommended security and stability upgrade.
More Popular Web Browsers downloads
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- Opera
13,336 downloads
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All versions:
4.4 starsout of 3,573 votes
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Current version:
3.9 starsout of 55 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"Better than IE and Firefox XD"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
It is better than IE because its faster and can be customized. Firefox is also great but it usually reports errors more often than Opera. Opera a the best browser ever! :))
Cons
Well the most disappointing about Opera is that it is incapable of installing add-ons. Add-ons are very much important in your security and the like e.g. Mcafee site advisor
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"Yahoo! Mail Beta not supported at this time"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
Neat interface, good speed. I like the Speed Dial Tab function.
Cons
Yahoo! Mail Beta is not supported at this time which is something that I use often. Other than this, Opera seems pretty cool. Did not use it very much because of the Yahoo! issue.
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"fastest"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
its speed
Cons
nothing
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"Best browser by far"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
Opera is just the greatest - if you're a fan of efficency, ease of use, great protection, and awesome features then Opera is for you.
Cons
Because Microsoft still reigns in browsing usage, some sites are incompatable with Opera - usually professional or school related sites that require lots of plug ins to run.
Summary
Use it, and love it. Really is the best browser across the board to both IE7 (is that even a competetor) and even Mozilla. Everything is built in so you don't have to be installing a ton of aps like Mozilla and nothing beats mouse gestures - they really make internet browsing like skating on butter.
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"Version 9.5 is not ready for public distribution"
Version: Opera 9.51
Cons
Anyone contemplating trying or upgrading to 9.5 should read the posts on the Opera bulletin board my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=26 and be aware of the problems that other people had encountered with 9.5.
They should be aware that Opera censors its forum and removes critical posts.
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"It's nice but..."
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
It's a nice and clean browser.
Cons
The use of the Internet Explorer Engine and the "Click to Activate Control" really bug me. It takes up almost as much resources as the new Firefox 3 as well (Especially when viewing flash toons.)
Opera still has issues displaying certain stylesheet styles as well (Don't know what I mean? Register at sheezyart.com, switch to the classic style for browsing pages, and a large black border near the top of the page will be there. Firefox doesn't show that.)
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"The best"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
Opera is the fastest browser, not only because it is the fastest browser, but because it has additional features that enables you to browse faster. It features such things as a password wand, a panel for notes, which is very useful for quickly noting down things or for copying and pasting between different applications, and a quick starter.
I have used Opera as my prime browser for several years and nothing comes even close to it. Today, I use Firefox as second but it is not at all as good as Opera.
Cons
It does not work seamlessly with Google applications, but I believe this is done on purpose by Google because they have business interests in Firefox (alarming monopolistic behaviour). Also, some banks do not work well with Opera because their webmasters are too lazy to make their sites work with anything but IE.
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"Opera 9.50 is the fastest and the most reliable web browser."
Version: Opera 9.51
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"good software but sometimes problem in brousing"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
its security
Cons
its uncompatibility with my computes
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"Still not the best"
Version: Opera 9.51
Pros
Mouse gestures, themes, great widgets
Cons
Not as fast as firefox, just doesn't feel as good as using firefox.
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