Opera Browser - Revelation or Relic?

A small company in Oslo, Norway, has discreetly been producing innovative desktop web browsers for over a decade, and gathered a loyal and dedicated user base worldwide, who swear by their products, and wouldn't for a moment consider using anything else. They introduced tabbed browsing to the masses years ahead of it's rivals, offers an inbuilt and powerful email client, Bit torrent support, is hugely customisable and has dozens of other genuinely useful extras. Its a small download, lightening fast and reliable. So why, then, have so few people even heard of Opera? And why have I switched to Firefox?

A comparison of a freshly installed Opera versus a freshly installed Firefox is a mismatch, pure and simple. Opera is faster, has a bucket load of features that Firefox lacks out of the box, and feels so much more solid, if that's the right word. When using the two browsers, Opera feels responsive and accurate. I click on a tab and the page switches, instantly. No lag, no feeling of an imminent crash - just a pleasure to use. The whole Opera experience is superior to Firefox, in every way. But there is a problem, and it's a problem that has dogged Opera for much of its life. Opera, whilst always one step ahead in pro-actively developing innovative features, is always one or more steps behind when reacting to the direction the web's users are going.

And whilst Firefox is lacking in many areas, the one thing it can't be accused of is being slow to react to the web. In most industries, being reactive is seen negatively. However the internet is a different animal, and more often that not web browsers must react to rapid developments across a broad spectrum of the IT word. The race is on to bring the offline, online. The big thing today is Social Networking and other similar ideas bringing increased collaboration from web users - Facebook, Del.icio.us, Digg et al.

No sooner does a new idea spring up, than Firefox has a new extension to make the most of it. Even Microsoft's IE7 is more responsive to the concept of a toolbar or button. Opera does have the ability to cope with Bookmarklets and there are User Javascripts available. If you can find them, and therein lies another issue. But it's not enough, and for Opera it's not a new problem. There has always been an issue with how Opera works with the web. In it's early days, it was simply unable to display many web pages, which was a killer blow to it's growth. This may not always have been Opera's fault - the argument is that any web pages that they were unable to render, were improperly designed. But that's tough. Can you imagine a car manufacturer complaining that the world's tyre manufacturers were building the wrong sort of tyre? Change the wheel design, or you'll have no tyres, and the product won't go.

I have switched to Firefox because I can view any web page. Because I have the IE tab extension. I have a del.icio.us toolbar. Boost, to maximise the fun of my Facebook. Add to Netvibes, JustBlogIt, Smartdigg, Customise Google - all installed according to my own personal preferences, all ensuring I get the most out of my web. And that's the key. Web browsing is a personal experience. Opera is an exclusive club, with just 3% of the market share, and that's unlikely to change. Because it is exclusive not only in the sense of having a limited user base, but also in the sense that it fails to allow its users to have full access to the web. Opera may have released the Alpha of it's Version 9.5, but it is still most definitely a Web 1.0 browser, seemingly ignoring the fact that the rest of the world has moved into Web 2.0. Opera does what it does superbly. Better than anyone else. But it just doesn't do enough.

So where does it go from here. I have a sneaky suspicion that it will go to one of the mega corps. Who is anybody's guess. Microsoft? Google? Perhaps not Yahoo, who seem to have enough on their plate at the moment, and may themselves be Redmond bound. Opera has an awful lot to offer to both of these giants, and not just in desktop web browsing and the patents and technologies they possess. Opera has made huge inroads into the mobile browsing market, with versions out for PDA's, cell phones, portable media, and their most recent and biggest coup - the Nintendo Wii. The mobile technologies, contracts and the huge opportunities they offer are bound to tempt someone.

Until then, Opera will remain a flawed diamond, existing happily in relative obscurity. Which is such a shame.