Re: Using Opera

At 12:12 p.m. 05/18/98 -0400, yippie1 wrote:
>Has anyone used the Opera browser at
>http://opera.nta.no/ ?

Yes, I like it very much.  Also note that http://www.operasoftware.com
is an alternate URL for it.

>I'm curious as Opera makes claims that it is
>a superb choice for users with a handicap; it
>can be navigated with the keyboard only.

I don't have "a handicap", but the keyboard navigation is pretty
nice.  I use a few keyboard shortcuts simply for the sake of speed.

>Additional claims are Opera stands out
>from the rest in that it actually adheres to
>the HTML standard, making it the ideal
>reference browser for web designers tired
>of adapting their pages to either of the competitive browsers.

It's good for testing because it does HTML 3.2 pretty good, and
is highly configurable -- more than either MSIE or Navigator --
allowing you to easily toggle images/colors off and on, disable
or enable frames (vital for viewing "noframes" tags), and other
fun stuff.

It's only "missing" three major things:

* Full HTML 4.0 support (hopefully coming soon)
* Support of any kind for stylesheets (hopefully coming soon)
* Good support for Java (which I won't miss)

It does most everything else you'd want -- SSL, javascript,
plugins, etc.

One big selling point is the size -- it's still small enough
to fit on a floppy, and yet compares favorably to Navigator and
MSIE versions 3.*-something.  Very fast both to start and load
pages, with lots of cache-level controls makes it good for
older computers.

Wow, I sound like an evangelist, don't I?  Drawback is that it's
not simply a marketing tool for a huge corporation (as MSIE and
Navigator are), but a real product supporting a staff of around
15 people or so; this means that it's not given away for free, but
costs $35.  (Half-off discount for educational users, such as 
me-the-university-employee.)  I think it's more than worth it,
though, and I urge everyone to give it a try.

No, I don't get paid for this. :)

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org>
Vice President, Marketing and Outreach, HTML Writers Guild
  http://www.hwg.org
Education & Outreach working group member, Web Accessibility Initiative
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Received on Monday, 18 May 1998 12:31:20 UTC