The browser has been developed with different priorities than Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator / Mozilla. Specifically, it has been designed for low footprint and very high browsing speed. Notably, Opera displays cached pages much faster than competitors, and also opens new windows faster. Opera was the first browser to integrate mouse gestures as a quicker way to navigate pages. Opera also has some other original features, including background loading of pages, batch opening of bookmark folders, and session management (i.e. you can close the browser and re-open it with all the opened pages automatically restored).
Opera became famous (and somewhat notorious) for its Multiple Document Interface (MDI), i.e. all browser windows were opened in the same parent window. This was later complemented with a taskbar that showed the currently opened windows. Version 6.0 brought a major philosophical change for Opera, with the addition of an additional Single Document (SDI) Mode. Ironically, this happened when many other browsers, like Mozilla and Galeon?, started using "tabs" (similar to Opera's MDI+taskbar, but without assigning individual window sizes to each page) to make navigation of multiple pages at the same time easier. Opera gives the user the choice to use either MDI, SDI or tabbed mode in version 6.0 and is thereby the first browser to support all three modes. Opera also has a presentation mode which allows the use of a single source document for large-screen presentations and web browsing (document parts relevant for the presentation are marked up in a special fashion).
The browser also includes a mail client, a news client and an ICQ-compatible instant messaging client. All three do not have the functionality of their counterparts in competing web-browser "suites", but provide quick access to the most relevant features.
Regarding standards compliance, Opera 6.0 supports most common web standards (including JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets), Netscape plugins and some other recent standards such as WAP and WML? for wireless devices.
Analysis of Success
Since its first release in 1996, the browser has met with limited success. Its availability on many platforms has given users access to a highly functional browser where this choice did not previously exist. Opera Software was one of the first companies active in the area of mobile devices, where it has gained significant market share.
On the Windows platform, Opera has not been able to gain significant market share over its gratis competitors, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. StatMarket? is the primary source for international browser usage statistics. On December 4, 2001, StatMarket? released data assigning a global usage share of 0.67 per cent to the Opera browser. However, the press release states:
Although still far behind Microsoft and Netscape, Opera's global usage share has more than doubled since January 2001, when it was less than 0.3 percent.[...]
Opera usage share has been growing at a faster rate in certain European countries since January 2001. For instance, its usage share in Russia as of November 29, 2001 was 5.88 percent, up from about 1.5 percent at the beginning of the year, StatMarket? reported. And in Germany and Sweden, Opera was at 3.37 percent and 1.8 percent respectively, having grown from a 1.3 percent and .5 percent usage share in January 2001.
With regard to Europe, the differing success mirrors the development of other browsers, for example, according to StatMarket?, in October 2001 Netscape Navigator still held ca. 20% usage share in Germany, whereas its global usage share was ca. 13%.
This differing success can be explained with a variety of factors. Given Netscape's success, anti-Americanism probably does not play a role in the choice of Opera over other browsers in Europe and Russia, however, a more skeptical attitude toward Microsoft, maker of Internet Explorer, specifically is likely to be relevant. Also, in countries with less copyright enforcement, the wide availability of crack?s and [serial number]?s to remove Opera's banners may increase the adoption of the browser by end users.
The generally low rate of adoption can certainly be attributed both to the fact that the browser is only commercially available and to Microsoft's bundling of its own browser with the operating system, which, for many users, eliminates the need to install any other browser.
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