tedster - 4:13 pm on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

I'm on the other side of the street from jd. I love the Opera interface because it is so customizable (I don't like the default but I haven't even see that for years).

Recent innovations such as Speed Dial have already popped up in other browsers.

One key thing area I've always felt set Opera apart is the usability intelligence that's embedded into the interface. That saves me untold time in the day, every day. Here's what I appreciate regularly:

1. Opera Notes - user determined chunks of text that are commonly needed for qopy/paste.
2. Remembering the order in which tabs were given focus
3. Making history available for an entire session - even after tabs have been closed they can be reopened with the entire history still available.
4. Easy "View Source" customization
5. Quick preference changes for plug-in activation, java, javascript, etc
6. Forward and Back buttons that display from the cache, with no delay (or overwrite) from new server calls
7. One click access to the RSS feed reader in a Panel

There are a bajillion more small touches that won me over and keep me happy. And I do love my custom interface, which is quite minimalist.

However, the average web user probably doesn't even notice all these goodies. And that's been the marketing challenge for Opera. Their user base is a different breed from any more general target market they might expand into.

[edited by: tedster at 4:41 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2009]