Opera Browser - Revelation or Relic?

A small company in Oslo, Norway, has discreetly been producing innovative desktop web browsers for over a decade, and gathered a loyal and dedicated user base worldwide, who swear by their products, and wouldn't for a moment consider using anything else. They introduced tabbed browsing to the masses years ahead of it's rivals, offers an inbuilt and powerful email client, Bit torrent support, is hugely customisable and has dozens of other genuinely useful extras. Its a small download, lightening fast and reliable. So why, then, have so few people even heard of Opera? And why have I switched to Firefox?

A comparison of a freshly installed Opera versus a freshly installed Firefox is a mismatch, pure and simple. Opera is faster, has a bucket load of features that Firefox lacks out of the box, and feels so much more solid, if that's the right word. When using the two browsers, Opera feels responsive and accurate. I click on a tab and the page switches, instantly. No lag, no feeling of an imminent crash - just a pleasure to use. The whole Opera experience is superior to Firefox, in every way. But there is a problem, and it's a problem that has dogged Opera for much of its life. Opera, whilst always one step ahead in pro-actively developing innovative features, is always one or more steps behind when reacting to the direction the web's users are going.

And whilst Firefox is lacking in many areas, the one thing it can't be accused of is being slow to react to the web. In most industries, being reactive is seen negatively. However the internet is a different animal, and more often that not web browsers must react to rapid developments across a broad spectrum of the IT word. The race is on to bring the offline, online. The big thing today is Social Networking and other similar ideas bringing increased collaboration from web users - Facebook, Del.icio.us, Digg et al.