Look and Feel

Opera sports a metallic interface and an unusual layout with the tabs placed above the address bar giving a slightly different feel when compared to other browsers. It can also be tweaked to take on a Windows native look and feel. The navigation buttons are a little small but they are not difficult to use. Unlike Firefox and IE, Opera doesn't offer a quick way to navigate to previously visited sites inside a particular tab window. However, we found the progress view on the address bar (while opening up any site) very useful as it provided detailed info on what's going on while opening a site such as the transfer speed, time taken, number of elements, etc.

The Speed Dial option offers you a quick way to display frequently visited sites while opening a new tab. The address bar offers more advanced features like looking into Web page content while giving suggestions of websites and not just the site's URL and title. The thumbnail preview when we hover the mouse on the browser makes it easy to navigate multiple tabs. Another unique feature is the Tile and Cascade view located in the main toolbar, if multiple sites are open in the browser. Viewing them as tiles or cascading them is possible for a quick view of all the sites in the browser.

As for customizing the look and feel of the browser, Opera allows you to play around with various color schemes from the Tools->Appearance->Skin and the icons can be easily resized according to your preference. Downloading additional skins is easy -- just click on the 'Find more skins' option to download additional skins right from the browser. Overall, finding our way around the browser was quite effortless. and with some unique features that are not available in other browsers, Opera was the winner in the Design and Usability section.

Feature Set