Opera 9 Reviewer's Guide

Opera's newest browser, Opera 9, was released on June 20, 2006. It is available completely free on a variety of platforms and languages. Opera 9 is a surfing machine for people of all skills and experience. If you want the latest innovations, Opera has them. If you want the safest and fastest surfing, Opera has that. If you want convenience and productivity online, well, we'veworked hard to make Opera the best browser for you too. Read on and discover what's inside Opera.

Step-by-step tour of Opera

It's easy to get Opera:

1. Download Opera at www.opera.com/download
2. Opera opens to our startup page. From here you can choose to read more about Opera, try Opera Mini, our free browser for mobile phones or join the My Opera Community.
3. If you want to transfer your bookmarks into the browser, select File > Import. You can then select to import your favorites from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape etc.
4. Now you can explore what comes in such a small download....

Reviewing Opera

What's New

BitTorrent

Search in the integrated BitTorrent search field for "Opera." The search results from the BitTorrent search engine are displayed. If you click on Opera 9, you will be prompted to begin a BitTorrent download. While you can choose more advanced options, Opera has done a lot of the configuration for you. Simply click "yes" and the BitTorrent download will begin in the transfer manager. You can choose to stop sharing content at any time after the download has completed by clicking Stop or deleting the file from the transfer manager.

NOTE: If you wish to turn off BitTorrent completely, you may do so through the Opera:config menu.

Widgets

In Opera 9, we added widgets. Widgets are fun, small and useful Web programs you can run directly inside the browser (or on your desktop with the browser minimized. To try widgets, click the Widgets menu item. From here, you can add new widgets from our widget site, widgets.opera.com or manage existing widgets. Opera currently has more than 500 to download. You will also notice that widget management is very similar to our transfer manager and when clicking "Manage widgets", a new tab will open with your widgets listed. You can delete or retrieve widgets with the trash can.

Add Search

Opera pioneered the integrated search field in browsers, so it's no surprise we've tried to stay a step ahead of the curve with this feature. Visit your favorite search engine and right click in the search box. You will be able to select "create search". Once you have selected that, you will be prompted to save the search. You may also select to add a keyword, which is a shortcut key you may use to automatically search the site directly from the address bar. For example, typing "g" space and Opera in the address bar will automatically perform a Google search for Opera.

Block Content

Ever wanted to do a little cosmetic surgery to a Web page? You can do that with block content. Simply visit any site with pictures, flash content or ads. By right clicking on the page, you will be able to Block content. Immediately the page is greyed out with all blockable content remaining in color. You may click to determine which content to remove. Clicking "Done" will reload the page as you want to see it. Opera remembers these selections and will always give you the page as you want to see it. You can always reverse this by right clicking and unblocking content.

Edit Site Preferences

Also available when right clicking a page is the option to edit site preferences. This is mainly for advanced users who want control over how pages handle scripting, cookies, content and network preferences. As with Blocked content, you may change or undo those preferences at any time.

Choose Efficient, Productive Surfing

Tabbed Browsing

Notice that Opera opened with our Start page. From here, you can also click the new tab button and open a new browsing window. You may also right click on a link to open it in a new tab or, with the mouse hovering above the link, hit shift+enter.

Saved Sessions

Once you have a few windows open, click on File>sessions. You will be able to save your current browsing session and come back to it even once you've closed Opera. You can also manage other saved sessions from here. Open as many of your favorite Web sites as you would like with Opera's tabs and then completely close the browser. Start Opera again and all of the Web sites you were previously browsing are right where you left them. Save a session by going to File > Sessions > Save this session. To open a saved session, goto File > Sessions > Manage sessions.

Trash Can

Maybe by now you've closed a couple of pop-ups or a few windows while surfing. If not, open some sites and then close them. Now click on the gray trash can located in the upper right of your screen. In the trash can you will find all your closed windows and even the closed or blocked pop-ups from this session.

Start where you last closed Opera

Simply close Opera and restart. You will have the option to continue from where you last had Opera open, start a new browsing session or open one of your saved sessions.

Mouse Gestures

Navigate the browser using mouse movements instead of clicking on buttons. Go to the previous page in your history by holding down the right button on your mouse while moving it to the left.

Choose Safety

Security Bar

Visit a secure site (must begin with "https") such as your bank or a purchase form on Amazon.com. Note the padlock icon in the address bar. The number indicates the level of security on that site. The small, yellow bar that you see displays the name of the organization that owns the certificate for that site. Click on the bar and access more information about the validity of the certificate.

Delete Private Data

To clear your entire browsing history, close all pages, and stop all transfers in progress on your local machine. Go to "Tools" in the main menu and then select "Delete private data" to remove your traces. Click on the "Advanced" button to choose what you would specifically like to have deleted.

Pop-up Blocker

Visit any site with several pop-ups. Opera blocks them, although you can retrieve blocked pop-ups in the trash can.

Choose Your Style

Look and feel

Express your style with the click of a mouse. You can change the look and feel of your browser by downloading new skins or altering buttons to suit the way you want to use Opera. Opera 9 even lets you improve how individual sites behave or block advertisements on a site-by-site basis. It's your choice.

Skins

Right click outside of the Web page and click on "customize." From here you can change the way Opera looks, from the buttons to the skins. Feel free to play around here. By clicking on the Skins tab, you can completely customize the appearance of your Opera browser.

Opera has many more features to offer, such as notes, hot click, integrated e-mail client and RSS reader... we can go on and on... See more features.

PR Contacts

Norway:
Tor Odland
Communications Director
Tel: +47 2416 4242
Email: toro[at]opera.com

United States:
Michelle Valdivia Lien
Communications Manager
Tel: +1 786 208 6072
Email: michelle[at]opera.com

Japan:
Kaori Kotobuki
Communications Manager
Tel: +81 3 57 68 82 24
Email: kaorik[at]opera.com

Contact us at press08@opera.com