15 Reasons to Use Opera Showcased on Opera's 15th Anniversary
15 years ago this month, a couple of computer scientists from Norway (Jon von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy) decided to combine their efforts in order to come up with a new web browser and what they came up with is Opera, the web browser that now, 15 years later, sets the standard in terms of innovation. Proof of how good Opera is are the 40 million (approximately) people that use the web browser, as well as the fact that recent studies have shown Opera Mini usage increases 157% each year.
Opera’s CEO, Jon von Tetzchner comments: “Geir and I knew the Web would forever change how people live, work and play — the Web browser would be the tool to enable that transformation. Today, I am humbled by what our company, together with the worldwide community of Opera users, has achieved. In the next 15 years, billions of people will join the Web. I am confident we will give them even more reasons to choose Opera. Everyone deserves a good browser, regardless of how or where they connect to the Web.”
In order to celebrate the occasion, Opera has put together several online resources:
- A Top 15 of reasons you should start using Opera here.
- A list of Opera innovations (many of them were later adopted by competing browsers). The list is reproduced below.
- An official press release here.
- A dedicated portal with comics-type presentation of how Opera started, as well as links to the items presented above alongside other Opera resources.
Now, since we mentioned the 15 reasons to use Opera in the title of the article, it would be a shame not to mention them (at least in abbreviated form), so here they are:
1. Tomorrow’s features today
2. Instant navigation
3. Speed
4. Safety
5. Syncing
6. Tabbed browsing
7. Speed dial
8. Save tabs
9. Zoom in and zoom out
10. The Wand (for filling forms and typing in passwords)
11. Unique and customizable
12. In-browser functionality (read RSS feeds, download BitTorrent files, etc)
13. Runs on old hardware beautifully
14. The Opera community
15. It comes free-of-charge
Opera’s CEO, Jon von Tetzchner comments: “Geir and I knew the Web would forever change how people live, work and play — the Web browser would be the tool to enable that transformation. Today, I am humbled by what our company, together with the worldwide community of Opera users, has achieved. In the next 15 years, billions of people will join the Web. I am confident we will give them even more reasons to choose Opera. Everyone deserves a good browser, regardless of how or where they connect to the Web.”
In order to celebrate the occasion, Opera has put together several online resources:
- A Top 15 of reasons you should start using Opera here.
- A list of Opera innovations (many of them were later adopted by competing browsers). The list is reproduced below.
- An official press release here.
- A dedicated portal with comics-type presentation of how Opera started, as well as links to the items presented above alongside other Opera resources.
Now, since we mentioned the 15 reasons to use Opera in the title of the article, it would be a shame not to mention them (at least in abbreviated form), so here they are:
1. Tomorrow’s features today
2. Instant navigation
3. Speed
4. Safety
5. Syncing
6. Tabbed browsing
7. Speed dial
8. Save tabs
9. Zoom in and zoom out
10. The Wand (for filling forms and typing in passwords)
11. Unique and customizable
12. In-browser functionality (read RSS feeds, download BitTorrent files, etc)
13. Runs on old hardware beautifully
14. The Opera community
15. It comes free-of-charge
