• 0

Getting started with Opera


Question

I have decided to give Opera a try. Any tips for using it? I would *really* like something to block ads... Can this be done?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

I have to say that Opera loads Neowin noticeably slower (as in MUCH slower) than Chrome... :( Maybe it's because I have a crappy netbook. LOL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I believe you'll find every website will load slower in Opera than in Chrome...

And here's me thinking that it was advertised as the 'fastest web browser' around.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I believe you'll find every website will load slower in Opera than in Chrome...

I haven't found any noticeably slower sites with Opera, but I suppose for the matter of milliseconds that it may take, it's not really a big deal IMO. While performance is good on paper a lot of the time now I think it's more about personal preference. I still use Firefox but I do take Chrome and Opera out for occasional runs as well to see if they have anything to tempt me away. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I have decided to give Opera a try. Any tips for using it? I would *really* like something to block ads... Can this be done?

Tips?

  • You can add any site's search box into the search bar in opera by right clicking on the sites search box and choosing "create search"
  • Use mouse gestures. Right click + down to open a new tab is one of my most used.
  • Accidentally closed a tab? Just press Ctrl+Z (undo) to open it back up!
  • If you ever want to look up what a word means or find out more about it, just hightlight it, and click either Dictionary or Encyclopedia (Wikipedia)
  • You can add websites to the sidebar panes - I find this works best with adding mobile sites which are specially formatted to fit into smaller horizontal resolutions (I have twitter, facebook, ign and yahoo mail as sidebar sites)
  • Find a quote you like, just highlight, right click, create note.
  • If you want a tab to update itself for some reason (you're waiting for something maybe), you can right click on the age and set it to reload every however many seconds you want.
  • If you drag down from the bottom of a tab you can enable tab thumbnails. (You can also move ht tab bar to the left or right sides of the screen)

Can't say what's up with the speed for you though, my Opera loads Neowin nearly 2 seconds faster, than Chrome 17

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I believe you'll find every website will load slower in Opera than in Chrome...

Opera loads practically everything faster than Chrome for me. The only thing Chrome loads faster in is in bootup.

At least for me. I've noticed each laptop seems to be different.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Well for one, it's better than Opera on every benchmark:

The vast majority of those are javascript benchmarks. And funnily enough, most of the web isn't made demanding javascript applications :p Infact, very little of the web depends heavily on high performance javascript (bar Facebook... where Chrome infact performs better than any other browser I've come across). Heck, if you look through the Peacekeeper results you'll see many areas where Opera beats Chrome.

There are also plenty of other unbenchmarkable features that also need to be taken into account, including UI responsiveness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Regardless of how you compare the speeds of the 2 browsers, I believe you'll find Chrome will win hands-down, the majority of the time.

Personally, I wasn't convinced when my gf first downloaded Chrome, but it's definitely better/faster!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Regardless of how you compare the speeds of the 2 browsers, I believe you'll find Chrome will win hands-down, the majority of the time.

Personally, I wasn't convinced when my gf first downloaded Chrome, but it's definitely better!

*shrugs* I have the most update-to-date versions of all the major browsers on my system at the moment. For me, Opera simply loads pages faster, and the UI is more responsive. The only time Chrome ever beats it is on Facebook for my machines. And then there's all the nice quick features included, some of which I've listed above that make the whole browsing experience quicker and more fluid out of the box for the end user, outside of the *actual* engine speeds - and without effecting performance or RAM usage.

Having also just run Peacekeeper on my own system, Opera got 1980, Chrome got 1765, with Opera beating Chrome significantly in areas of actual RENDERING and graphical performance - two areas which are far more important than javascript. Opera also has nearly double the DOM operation speed, whilst Chrome is better at working with arrays, and opera is better at Text parsing. Of course it's hardware independent, and depends on the site, but Opera can clearly hold it's own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Opera is the quickest browser for me on my desktop (which is a good build) but it really struggles on this crappy laptop I'm using now.

I would suggest that on a decent computer Opera is the fastest stable browser by a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

This is an Opera user here - or rather say an Opera fan. Remember one thing - Speed is NOT everything.

OK, agreed JagerMokey (Firefox's JavaScript engine) and V8 (Chrome's JavaScript engine) are faster than Carakan (Opera's JavaScript engine).

But Opera is in reality known for it's unique features-

* The Speed Dial - one of Opera's unique ideas; now being taken to different browsers via extensions and directly integrated into Safari as 'Top Sites'. In 2007, when Opera invented Speed Dial to the present; Opera's Speed Dial implementation is still the best.

* Site-specific preferences - In Opera you can almost all preferences on a per-site basis. No browser gives that much preferences to set on a per-site basis.

* Built-in support for UserJS and UserCSS - No browser has built-in support for applying User JS or UserCSS to webpages. This is only possible via extensions; for example Greasemonkey in Firefox.

* (Coming soon!) 64-bit version of Opera. The unique thing is that 64-bit Opera can use 32-bit plugins too!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I have decided to give Opera a try. Any tips for using it? I would *really* like something to block ads... Can this be done?

Give it a good amount of try and you'll love it - the whole package. I've seen people who say they want to try it out but even before using it have already prepared to reject it.

I use Opera for regular use and Firefox for certain sites that scripts are very useful. Use them side by side all the time.

And lastly I just found out, you need to mask as Firefox here at Neowin. While replying to your post I hit ENTER and the cursor moves back up to the second line (inside quoted post) as if the cursor was previously at the end of the first line. Per site prefs -> mask as firefox, wallah problem solved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.