A browser is a browser is a browser, unless it’s Opera.
That’s because Opera is not just for viewing Web sites. It includes an email program and a news reader. A new function, dubbed Unite, even lets Opera perform as a server. Experts say it will likely never achieve mass popularity, but it never hurts to try it out either.
Unite, which went active at the end of November, should allow Opera users to share pictures and texts stored on their hard drive with friends and colleagues via the browser.
“The data doesn’t need to be uploaded to a server,” says Rolf Assev, Opera’s strategy chief. That means people only need to receive a link to start looking at the shared material.
It’s just like Opera, which got running in the mid 1990s, to be the first to use an unusual function like Unite. “The developers have always come up with a lot of ideas that other people copied,” says Herbert Braun, the editor of German computer magazine c’t.
For example, Speed Dial, a function that lets people store important links with previews on a personal home page, allowing them to be accessed with one click, was an idea that was quickly copied by Chrome and Safari.
“What brought me to Opera was the integration, that one didn’t just have a browser, but also a mail client and a feed reader, plus mouse movements as a set function,” says Lars Kleinschmidt, who runs a German opera fan-site.
Mouse movements are programmed in functions activated by specific actions with a mouse. For example, anyone who holds down the right mouse button and then pulls the mouse downward automatically opens a new tab. “That way, you save a lot of time.”
The fact that Opera remains a niche product — despite the variety of functions and the fact that it…