Opera has been around for 14 years, but the latest version is every bit as fast and powerful as the very best of the competition, and offers useful features unavailable elsewhere.
With mobile internet becoming increasingly popular, Opera also offers two versions for use on mobile phones – Opera Mobile and Opera Mini – but for this review we'll look over the regular desktop version - available for Windows, Mac and Linux. A simpler and more transparent process to block/allow unwanted elements such as Flash, JavaScript and Java would be welcome.
Other interesting features in Opera 10.54 include support for themes, including a transparent glass theme for Windows 7; and new support for multi-touch gestures in Mac OS X, such as pinch-to-zoom and three-finger page navigation. Two-finger scrolling here is strangely over-accelerated though.
Opera Link usefully enables synchronising of bookmarks, history and saved searches across different computers, and does so automatically in the background once you've opened a free account with Opera.
The opportunity to open recently closed tabs is a handy asset. And full control of Opera through the keyboard, rather than mouse, will appeal to both disabled and power users. There's even a built-in BitTorrent client.
Issues we encountered include occasional crashes and hangs in OS X, and some unpredictable open of tabs – sometimes in the background as expected, sometimes with the new tab taking focus.
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