Story: Opera 9 Beta 1

Posted by: Alex Quinn (Sunday 15 October 2006, 6:19 PM)

This reviewer is uninformed. Opera has had a side panel, tabbed browsing, and a pop-up blocker for many years.

The author says, "...although we miss the Favorites side panel in IE and the new Places side panel in Firefox 2 Alpha 1..." Both the bookmarks and history have been accessible and quickly searchable from Opera's sidebar for years since at least version 7 (2003)

The author also states that tabbed browsing and popup blocking are new in Opera 9. In fact Opera introduced tabbed browsing in their version 6 in December 2001, before Firefox even existed. (For fairness' sake, tabbed browsing was invented by Adam Stiles in 1997 in his Netcaptor browser. So, Opera can't claim to have "invented" it per se.) Pop-up blocking has been an Opera feature since at least Opera 7, if not before.

This guy obviously didn't do his homework before writing the review. Consequently, the review came out a little unfair. Despite its relatively small market share, Opera has been a leader with browser features and is constantly being copied by Firefox and now IE7. It would be nice if the reviewers would present it as such.