New Opera Isn't Quite a Masterpiece

Other conveniences in Opera 8 aren't new to this release but are still worth noting. Its "Wand" password-storage system allows the entry of saved logins with just a tap of the Control and Enter keys. "Mouse gestures" let you execute some commands by holding down a mouse button and moving the mouse. Its page-zoom feature magnifies both the text and graphics on a page by as much as 1,000 percent. "Saved sessions" restart Opera with the same lineup of open pages as before -- but this option isn't enabled by default.

In many other respects, however, Opera lags behind the times. Its "Find" command is far less useful than Firefox's equivalent, it can't remember most items typed into Web forms, and it doesn't offer to import other browsers' bookmarks and settings when you first run it.

Opera also sometimes has problems displaying sites that appear and function properly in Firefox and Safari -- for example, the ESPN.com home page and a listing of price plans at Nextel's site. Opera also can't show Portable Document Format (PDF) files inline unless you copy a support file from the Adobe Reader directory to Opera's own, a thoroughly lame workaround.

Despite Opera's compact size, it also includes an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news reader, an e-mail component, a Usenet newsgroup reader and an Internet Relay Chat client. Most of these other parts are unremarkable (the RSS reader) or irrelevant to most (the newsgroup and IRC functions).

Opera's mail software, however, includes a clever system of automatic filters and user-created tags and labels. For example, Opera groups a mailing list's messages in its own folder for you. But this thoughtful organization is undone by such nagging glitches as the mail component's fumbling interaction with some IMAP (Internet mail access protocol) accounts, its puzzling lack of standard keyboard shortcuts and the absence of any way to bring over address books from competing programs.

Should you like Opera enough to make it your default browser, Opera can make that harder than necessary. Although this browser happily took over the job of opening Web links on two Windows XP systems, it twice failed to move itself into the spot on the Start Menu reserved for the default browser.

That's a sign of a sloppy programming job. So is the way Opera didn't appear as an available Web and e-mail program in the Set Program Access and Defaults control panel.

If Opera were the only alternative to Internet Explorer in Windows, it would be an easy recommendation over IE. But the free, open-source Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/ ) offers most of Opera's browsing luxuries, plus a few that Opera leaves out. Firefox also doesn't require choosing between paying $39 or accepting the presence of either a large graphical banner ad or text-only ads served up by Google to match the sites you view.

So while Opera is more competitive than before, it beats its rivals in only a couple of cases. One is if you've got an older machine that runs other browsers too slowly. Another is if your eyesight is impaired enough to benefit from Opera's magnification feature. Otherwise, stick to Firefox; given that program's rapid pace of development, you just might wind up getting some of Opera's better features before long anyway.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.