Aims to be friendlier to new usersOpera Software has released version 8 of their relatively popular browser, aptly-named "Opera". The overwhelming demand for the browser has spurred the company to put up a simple, content-less page providing only direct download links to the browser so as to answer the demand.
I won't go into all of the details about what's new, what's been changed, etc. as there are many sites discussing this information. I'll share my opinions, though.
I tried Opera about a year ago, back when it was at version 7.5. I found it to be quite aesthetically pleasing, and it was damned fast. It started about as fast as Internet Explorer, and it was mighty quick at rendering web pages. The thing that set me back about it was the sheer amount of options and other minor bloat. I would have switched from Firefox then and there if only it had a simpler interface, and not as many whiz-bang options right up front. As a result, I've been a Firefox user ever since it was still called Phoenix.
Firefox, as a browser, is decent. I don't understand all the hype about it, as it's not exactly light-weight. Sure, it beats IE hands-down in terms of UI and security, but it's slow, it takes ages to come out of swap if you've had it minimized for a while, it takes a long time (compared to IE/Opera) to start up on a slower computer. It's also not quite as fast at rendering web pages. I've just installed Opera 8 on my work computer, and I'm liking what I see. There is no longer a huge amount of options throwing themselves in your face. In fact, the interface is surprisingly simplistic by default.
I'm going to play around with this thing a bit more -- I might just switch if I don't find anything that irks me too much.
Here is the English Win32 download. I highly recommend you check it out if you're curious to see what the other camp has to offer.
