Opera 7
The newest version of the Opera web browser is Opera 7.
A rewrite of the code means that this browser is even smaller than Opera 6 but with lots more features. In fact Opera 7 now has as good support for the W3C Document Object Model as is found in the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape. This means that just about any web page that functions in IE6 or Netscape 7 will also function mostly the same way in Opera 7. There are still a few proprietary tags used in Internet Explorer that are not supported by the other browsers but apart from functions related to those tags, everything else now appears to be fully supported.
Opera 7 has a number of advantages over other browsers that mean that it should soon gain quite a following as people move from the other browsers across to Opera. Some of the features of Opera 7 that the other browsers don't have include:
- Support for the browser navigation bar. Prior to the introduction of Opera 7, the only browser that I am aware of that supported the browser navigation bar was the iCab browser that runs on the Mac. Now Opera 7 also supports the navigation bar. How long will it be before IE and Netscape also introduce this support?
- The appearance of the Opera 7 interface is fully customizable allowing you to set up the browser to work the way that you want. Want tabbed pages in a single window? Opera can do that. Want each page in a separate window? Opera can do that too.
- Switch from Author Mode to User Mode and you have full control of the appearance of web pages. Instead of the pages appearing as the author intended you can apply your own choice of styles instead. There are also options to emulate a text browser, display as early web browsers would, disable tables, and a debug mode to assist web authors with checking the compatibility of their pages. There are high contrast modes and an accessibility layout that are ideal for those with difficulties to be able to better see the page content. There are even options to hide non-linking images or images the size of standard advertising banners to speed your web access.
- Opera 7 also offers control of cookies, java, javascript, images, plugins, and pop-up windows similar to the options provided by recent versions of IE and Netscape. The difference is that Opera allows you to easily change these options on the fly via the F12 key.
This is not intended to be an ad for Opera 7. We have no connection whatever with Opera other than having used versions of Opera from 4 onwards to check the functionality of our web pages. With version 7 Opera have produced a browser that is fast and powerful, possibly the most flexible browser currently available. If you are not happy with your current browser or you are a web page developer looking to check your page compatibility then you need to take a look at Opera 7.
