and now... Will the fat lady sing?

As discussed, I am trialling new browsers - to enrich and broaden my horizons.

I ended up using Chrome for longer than I intended and with good reason, I found it to be the best browser I had used. Previously I was an adherent Firefox fan.

So, how does Opera fare? With more than 220 million users worldwide - surely pretty good?

On installing it and firing it up I was immediately loving some* of the things I could see straight away:

Turbo? Faster on slow connections? You've got my interest.

I could already see that it was lightening quick to load pages, I don't have the stats to hand but I already knew, from the articles that spawned my interest in the different browser nuances, of Opera's reputation at being a speed freak - and it is true - it is super quick. So what was all this talk of Turbo?

Their blurb sums it up, and I can't argue with that - great thinking:

How we squeeze out all that speed When Opera Turbo is enabled, webpages are compressed via Opera's servers so that they use much less data than the originals. This means that there is less to download, so you can see your webpages more quickly. Enabling Opera Turbo is as simple as clicking the Opera Turbo icon at the bottom-left of the Opera browser window. When you are on a fast connection again and Opera Turbo is not needed, the Opera browser will automatically disable it.

Quick search parameters by default... Like it a lot

Clock's CTO has always taught me that the best thing to do when getting new software is to look at every menu and advanced option before using - it is a great tip, it teaches you immediately the flexibility and features that you might not otherwise appreciate.

I love using Alfred as my override for "Spotlight Search" and have always loved the ability to custom create my own shortcuts (does have its disadvantages when using other people's machines though), so when I saw that Opera comes bundled with some pre-installed Search Keywords and ability to do my own, it made me smile.

Add-ons, Extensions.. what ever you want to call them!

Asking around the office no-one uses Opera as their default browser, so I didn't have a head start of knowing which add-ons to install (like I did with the switch to Chrome). I'll be trialling these add-ons, if you happen to be an Opera user and know of decent add-ons please let me know in the comments section

• Snap Links - Select an area containing links and have them open all at once.
• YSlow - YSlow analyses web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages.
• The Developer Briefcase - Various tools to help web developers and designers.
• HTML Color Coder - Colour picker

Again I got myself acquainted with the inspector, seems as good as Chrome's - but not put it to any mean tests yet.

And now for some Negatives:

Why is Chrome not on the import list? 

I ended up having to look for a tutorial to do this, that is not ideal ... I really don't get why Chrome is missing from the list.. definitely not as good as Chromes import (for my use case)

I prefer Chrome page search

Whilst Opera's page search is pretty good - it lacks one thing that Chrome has managed... to show the rest of the results on the scrollbar. Not a major flaw but I still enjoyed using Chrome's page search more.

Is bing really the default SE?

I'm likely criticising without knowing full detail, but is the default search engine really bing? I hope it would have asked me on install or rotated through them by default. Anyway, at least I could delete it and use my personal favourite.. Google!

I want to be able to re-open closed tabs

Sometimes through a mistake or just wanting to pull up a previously read web-page, I can close a tab and want to quickly re-open the tab. Chrome & Firefox (through TabMixPlus) lets me do it, why can't Opera? certainly wasn't there as a menu option.. I enjoy this feature from Chrome and I don't want to have to hunt for an extension

--UPDATE 9/01/12

This was unfair, as pointed out by a couple of colleagues - Opera has a closed tab option that shows closed pages (and you can also use the shortcut cmd+shift+t to reopen closed tab)

Overall

I have only been using it a few days, I'll be sure to detail more once I have given it a good go, then it is decision time:

Chrome, Firefox or Opera as my default browser... sorry IE, I just can't bring myself to even try!