Like a lot of people, I tried Opera after they released it as freeware. At first I didn’t like it because of its quirkiness, but I’m now starting to reconsider. I’ve even been using Opera as my default browser for a few days.

The first thing you’ll notice about Opera is that it looks very different from other browsers. They menus & keyboard shortcuts are different, a lot of features such as tabs work differently than most other browsers, and the preferences can seem confusing. It also has some problems rendering certain pages and most bank sites won’t let you log on with it.

However, Opera has some very significant advantages. Opera is extremely fast & stable and has some shortcuts to deal with common web annoyances. The quick preferences menu lets you quickly toggle on or off java, sound, plugins, javascript, or GIF animation. Is there a web site that annoys you with blasting music or annoying Flash animations? Just turn off plug-ins and you can view it without the annoyance. If some site has an annoying background or colors that make the text unreadable, use the author/user mode toggle to force it to use your own colors & styles.

If your bank site doesn’t let you enter with Opera, in most cases changing the user-agent to Identify as Mozilla or IE in the quick preferences menu will let you use the site.

Opera is definitely worth considering. Don’t let your first impression discourage you.