Why Opera Has Been My Go-To Browser for Years
Some don’t put much thought into the web browser they use. For most, the decision pretty much lands on whatever default browser is installed on their operating system, which means Chrome, Safari, and Edge.
I’m not going to trash those browsers but I will say that I haven’t touched them in quite some time. Why?
Before I dive into the why, I should also mention that Opera has been my default browser on the Linux desktop for a very long time. When on MacOS, however, I tend to go with Arc browser. But even with that fancy interface, Arc doesn’t always reach the bar set by Opera.
With Opera, there is one feature that is so superior to other browsers that it’s not even a competition. And the team behind the browser is doing its best to catch up to the UI found in Arc… and it’s getting close (more on that in a bit).
But it’s that first feature I mentioned that keeps me singing the praise of Opera (I also happen to enjoy the music genre as well).
The feature in question is called Workspaces and it elevates tab management to heights no other browser can match (although Arc is getting close).
You might not think tab management would be such an important selling point, but hear me out.
I gave up on bookmarks a long time ago. Why? Mostly because I found my bookmarks getting well out of hand. I’d wind up with so many bookmarks that it didn’t matter how well I attempted to organize them, they would quickly become unmanageable. And with the advent of pinned tabs, I saw the writing on the wall that bookmarks would someday become irrelevant.
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Opera Developer edition with a custom theme.
And now, with features like Workspaces, bookmarks are nothing more than a fading memory.
What Is Workspaces?
It’s actually quite an elegant solution to having so many tabs open that you can no longer discern what tab is what. With Opera, you can create workspaces such as Work, News, Social, Shopping, etc. When you want to visit a site related to one of those workspaces, you switch to the workspace in question, open a new tab, and visit the site. That site page will remain in that Workspace unless you close it or move it.
There are other browsers that offer a feature like Workspaces, but Opera does it one better. When you pin a tab to an Opera Workspace, that tab does not appear anywhere else. This is great because it means I can pin all of the Google services tabs I use in a Workspace named “Work” and don’t have to worry they’ll crowd the other Workspaces.
Workspaces are very easy to set up. All you have to do is right-click anywhere near the top of the sidebar (where Workspaces live) and select Manage Workspaces. In the resulting pop-up (Figure 1), you can edit current Workspaces, add new Workspaces, and even delete those you don’t want.
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Figure 1: You can create as many Workspaces as needed.
Once you’ve added all of the necessary Workspaces, you can switch between them by clicking on a Workspace icon at the top of the sidebar.
You can also move tabs between Workspaces by right-clicking a tab and selecting Move To > WORKSPACE (where WORKSPACE is the destination Workspace).
AI
I’ll confess that I’m not a big advocate of AI. However, I do use AI for one thing — research. I find AI to be a good alternative to using a search engine because I don’t have to deal with all of the ads and other junk that goes along with them.
As far as AI is concerned, I find Opera’s Aria to be one of the best available options for built-in browser artificial intelligence.
Aria comes included with Opera and there’s no need to connect it to one of the major AI services (which also means it’s free). Aria can produce text and image output and even offers a text-to-speech option so you can have the browser read the results aloud.
To access Opera’s AI, click the Aria icon in the left sidebar to reveal the pop-out where you can enter your queries (Figure 2).
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Figure 2: Opera Aria explains what Linux is.
The UI
Recently, the team behind Opera released a new feature called Dynamic Themes, which allows you to create a unique theme to perfectly fit your personality or mood. With Dynamic Themes, you can select from Classic (all themes), Aurora (dark mode), or Midsommer (light mode). With each theme you can then tweak the base color by dragging the dot between Warm, Cool, Calm, and Vibrant to make creating a custom theme very easy (Figure 3).
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Figure 3: The Dynamic Theme configuration window.
What I really like about the new Dynamic Themes feature is that the theme extends beyond the start page and into all window elements, creating a cohesive, all-encompassing theme.
I realize theming a browser UI doesn’t make it perform better, more secure, or easier to use but when you work in a piece of software all day, there’s no reason why that software can’t look exactly how you want.
One thing to keep in mind is that Dynamic themes are currently only available to the developer version of Opera. If you want to give the feature a try, download and install Opera Developer and I’m confident you’ll enjoy the new take on browser theming.
You’re probably dead set on not budging from your default browser but I would highly recommend you give Opera a try. I’m guessing it’ll only take a few quick minutes for you to realize how out-of-date, boring, and inefficient your current web browser is.
