Using Opera 9.0 Beta

Update: Opera is no longer beta software as of today, June 20 2006. However, they still did not fix the annoying javascript resize bug. I absolutely love being able to resize my window to predetermined widths using javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(1280,screen.availHeight); .

Usually I don't like using new web browsers on the Mac especially if they do not conform to the normal UI. However Opera 9.0 Beta has some compelling features that make it worth using (kind of). I am not going to use it as my primary web browser; instead I am using its built-in IRC client. Its IRC client seems to be solid so far and enables me to download files using DCC easily. And if you are without a decent newsgroup reader, Opera's built-in one seems to be on par with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Previously, I was using Colloquy but they have not produced a stable Universal Binary yet. And the nightly builds have been giving me nothing but intermittent loss of connections. And, yes, Opera 9.0 Beta is a Universal Binary.

Since I was not able to find any screenshots on this, here is my own:

It took some time to figure out how to move the toolbars around. Basically, you cannot drag the toolbars around. Instead, you have to remove the buttons and add new ones. Took some time for me to figure that out as well. Also, this is not the default theme for Opera 9.0

Overall, browsing with Opera is not too bad. In fact, it does not seem to hog all my machine's resources even when I am viewing a page with flash. It does have some annoying bugs at the moment. One of which is that the following javascript does not have any effect on it.
javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(1280,screen.availHeight);
It has been reported and I hope it gets fixed soon. It's a real pain on the Mac to browse without the ability to resize the window to a fixed width I have a non-standard screen resolution (1440 x 900 ).

Opera 9.0 also spots integrated BitTorrent support but I have not had the time to try that out yet.

Anyway, Opera does have a steeper learning curve compared to Firefox. And it does not have as many plug-ins. However, it does feel to be a more solid browser compared to Firefox.