EX_S - 12:00 pm on Nov 14, 2001 (gmt 0)

First impressions:

It's a lot prettier than the default configuration of the Opera 5.x series. The buttons were attractive but subtle, the forground skin likewise.

The first thing I did was surf all the sites I knew I had problems viewing in 5.12, and I was pleasantly surprised. Even www.graysonline.com.au (famous for lazy techs, rude reps and spamming) rendered okay.

The next thing is to try and view some asian sites to test unicode support. No problems there - they all rendered without a problem.

Surfing seems to be a little faster. Opera claims that 6.0 is 20 - 25% faster than 5.12. I'm not able measure it, but it does seem a little more brisk. The incidence of a page "hanging" before it's fully loaded seems to be less also (or maybe my ISP isn't playing up for a change).

Onto features, the personal toolbar is exceptionally handy. Another feature that is great is the "Quick Preferences". Basically, commonly changed prefs such as enabling JavaScript or cookies are accessable from one keypress. There's a similar menu that allows you to erase all cookies, history, cache etc. with a few clicks.

Email support still isn't quite as good as I'd like. My biggest gripe is the notification - or lack of it. It doesn't create a little mail icon in the taskbar. It doesn't seem to want to play sounds (maybe Opera doesn't support .wav format?). And popping up a window or notification could get annoying if you're in the middle of something. Accessing multiple accounts gets tiresome, though I think it's possible to have all your mail accounts displayed in one pane. I just haven't figured it out yet.

The instant messenger feature works fine... but doesn't store any messages. Ah well, I guess I'll have to stick to the bloated ICQ program.

Opera 6 probably has more features that I haven't discovered yet. Overall, in the few hours I've been using it, I'm very happy to have downloaded it, and it has replaced 5.12 completely. Don't let the Beta nomenclature fool you - it's already better than 5.12.

Well done Opera!