When it comes to features, Opera has always been a trailblazer, leaving Firefox and IE to play catch-up. For example, today's Firefox 2 saves your session in the event of a crash, so you can pick up where you left off when you recover. And you can save a group of tabs as a bookmark, new in both Firefox 2 and IE7.

Guess what? Opera pioneered these features back in version 7, released in 2003. Crash or prematurely close Opera and it's no loss, just relaunch for an instant encore. You can also save your browsing sessions under the File menu on the menu bar. And in version 8, Opera added a trash can icon to the page bar where closed tabs and blocked pop-ups are saved, just in case you need them.

Opera continues to lead the way with every major upgrade. Version 9 introduced thumbnail previews, which make it easy to find your way among multiple tabs -- just hover your mouse over any tab to see a thumbnail image of the Web page. Also new is the content blocker. See something you don't like on a Web page -- an ad or an offensive image, for example? Just right-click and choose "Block content" to make it disappear. Opera remembers your choice, so the next time you visit that page the content remains blocked.

Opera 9 also incorporates Widgets, small Internet applets that run directly on your desktop and can be saved on your system for quick future access. There are games, newsfeeds, reference tools, image tools, even a text editor. Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Yahoo have similar offerings, but the beauty of Opera's Widgets is that you can run them directly from the browser without having to have a Mac or get Vista or download Yahoo's Widget Engine. As of this writing there are more than 800 Widgets to choose from on Opera's Web site, written by programmers from all over the world.

Also native to Opera 9 are file transfers, available from Firefox only by downloading and installing an extension. BitTorrent is a file-sharing system in which users access files from each other rather than downloading from a central server. This load-sharing vastly speeds file transfers. Find the download you want by searching BitTorrent (available on Opera's configurable list of search engines) and initiate the download with a click. But if you use it, remember, BitTorrent requires sharing files you download with others. The sharing is terminated when you close Opera. BitTorrent is enabled by default, but it can easily be configured to limit bandwidth use, or disabled completely.