Opera: A developer’s browser
My previous entry will suggest to the reader (and by suggest I mean scream aloud) that I am not fond of IE. In addition to this I mention that I use Opera as my primary browser. Typically for windows users, if you are not using IE you are using Firefox. Opera is a less popular browser, but I think much more useful for developers.
Out of the box Opera has several features that have made my life easier many times. One of them is fairly simple: if you want to validate a page, all you have to do is right click and click validate.
Another feature allows you to dynamically update the source code of a site. All of the popular browser allow you to view a page’s source, but Opera allows you to view that source, edit it, and have the changes applied to the currently open page. This if very useful for making adjustments to a layout, or on occasion, making a broke page work. For example, I was trying to register on a site using a captcha. Normally this isn’t a problem, but in this case the text field only allowed 4 characters, while the image contained 5. All I had to do to work around this was view the source, and change the size attribute to 5. This is the only case I can think of off the top of my head, but there are others.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Opera’s developer console lets you view the DOM structure of a site and view cookies. If a site is hard coded to only work in IE or firefox, Opera can identify itself as either of those. If you want to open a page in another browser all you need to do right click select open with and choose any installed browser. The list keeps going.
If you haven’t given Opera a try you should definetly do so.
As much as I agree Opera is a good browser (it’s fast and is the most accurate when it comes to web standards) it lacks expandability on a scale of FireFox. If I need to validate a page, block adverts or even track the time I’ve been surfing, there is an add-on for it.