I’ve been an Opera browser vacation for the last couple months, but after experiencing some Firefox problems, I downloaded Opera 9 beta 2 and am going to try using that regularly again. Not saying I’ll be making Opera my primary browser (FF extensions perhaps too useful to discard), but who knows?

I really like the speed and sessions in Opera. Also you can do some useful things in Opera out of the box that require Firefox extensions to emulate. For example, dragging the current URL to your personal bar and then you can have the favicon only showing by editing the properties. Built-in Opera sessions support you can define different startup configurations is also useful. Oh, and hover over the favicon in the tabs and it will show you a preview of the website — handy.

The Opera non-supported list
Downsides of Opera, however, is that it isn’t supported like FF across some websites/sites/services I’ve been checking out lately:

- Google Calendar
- Google Spreadsheets
- blogcharm (posting is fubarred)
- Tablet PC inking inside the browser
- Adify

Developing Opera widgets
Their widget framework [see Opera widget developer tutorial] looks straightforward: HTML, CSS, Javascript and XML.

What the flock?
In other browser news Flock has received more VC funding and is now officially beta 1, whatever that means these days. I was one of few who wrote positively about Flock in October of last year. Most reviewers of the early developer version felt Firefox with extensions was a better solution, so it will be interesting to see how it is received this time around. Mike from TechCrunch says the new beta 1 is currently his “browser of choice.” Make up your own mind by downloading and trying. I still prefer the concept of blogging functionality being baked into the browser vs. using extensions. Logic would suggest that the lower level implementation should be more memory-friendly. Oh, and yes Flock has extensions too.

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