Opera 9.5

This under-hyped browser gave us a pleasant surprise when it came close to Firefox 3 in the battle for top honors.In the end, it lost by the smallest margin with a score of 92. When it comes to publicity, this gem usually goes unnoticed, but a thorough check under the hood reveals a very streamlined approach packed to the brim with innovative features. an important thing to note is that Opera has now introduced a host of features that have become commonplace in most other browsers, with tabbed browsing being the most notable one.

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
Opera is as feature-rich as Firefox is but it narrowly loses out to the latter. It has lots of features that are hard to find in other browsers. This includes builtin e-mail, IRC chat and bittorrent clients. an option for controlling Opera with voice commands is available, but it is only for Windows 2000/XP and has not been perfected yet. We found it difficult to understand (maybe because of the accent, and there is no option for voice training). Opera's Mouse gesture is another feature which is useful for someone who wants to navigate quickly. The Opera Community accessible from the Help menu provides an easy way to blog and share photos directly from the browser without opening up other Web service sites.

The Panel Sidebar is Opera's version of the library in Firefox. but it has much more packed into it—bookmarks, Mail Widgets, Contacts, notes, and lots of other useful options. Data sharing is possible through the Opera link—a free service that synchronizes bookmarks, Speed Dial entries, notes, and other personal data between multiple computers. but where Opera loses out most is the Features section. Despite boasting so many innovative and unique features, it disappoints in key areas like bookmark management as it doesn't provide one-click bookmarking, editing and managing with the ease Firefox offers. Password management is still a bit primitive with irritating dialog boxes popping up whenever a password is entered.

The Wand is Opera's password manager but it is not very intuitive to use. and search engine integration is not as good as other browsers. It provides nine default search services but doesn't provide easy access to other search engines like Firefox and Ie do. It also provides very basic History.

Fast Track
By the end of our Speed and Performance tests, we realized that Opera fell somewhere in between Chrome and Safari but did management. better than Firefox. It clocked 6s (cold start), 2s (warm start), and 0.55 s (hot start) in the browser startup test. In the CSS/JavaScript tests, it clocked 320ms/6822ms. Surprisingly, page loading was fast and it scored the highest among the browsers compared. There were some issues while surfing Flash, image, and multimedia heavy sites and we experienced some sluggishness and some elements failed to load. as for compatibility issues, it passed the aCID2 test and the aCID3 test proving that it supported more sites than the other browsers. Opera impressed with its low system resource consumption and the CPU did not feel the brunt of the browser's performance.

Safe Passage
We found Opera safe enough with all the necessary security options available. anti-phishing support, protection from malware-infected sites, secure sites identification, content blocking, and other essential protections for the browser are well implemented. It doesn't provide notifications to check if the browser is updated, but provides an option for manually checking and updating it. It fell behind Firefox and IE here.

Net Worth
Opera was impressive on almost all counts but never took first spot. but it gave Firefox a run for its money as it didn't fall too far behind in all the areas. Opera stood its ground with reasonable showing in all areas of contention and so it deservedly was the runner-up.

Internet Explorer 8

The oldest player in these browser wars is still in contention for its share of the Internet pie. Internet explorer may still be sitting pretty in terms of having the largest user base (78 percent, according to sources) but there is a danger of it falling from its lofty perch, with Firefox, Chrome and the like upping their efforts. To stay afloat in the competition, Microsoft keeps on churning out version after version of their browser. So Internet explorer 8 (still in beta 2 at the time of writing) is Microsoft's latest offering. We tested it to see if it still deserves desktop space.

Look and Feel
Look wise, Internet Explorer 8 is not very different from IE7. The interface doesn't have many elements and is clean and sparse barring the many icons in the Favorites bar. It also offers the smart address bar displaying suggestions as you type the URL but it is not as advanced as Opera's. The Quick tabs button on the left of the address bar is an innovative feature that provides a quick display of all opened tabs. When you open a link in a new tab, all the tabs opened from a particular site are combined in a single color. Customization options are limited. IE 8 offers a decent browsing experience but there's really nothing to rave about.

Feature Set
A few innovative features have been integrated into Internet Explorer 8 and the most notable of them is the accelerator that provide easy access to various Web services from any Web page with just a few mouse clicks. Another unique implementation is Web Slices, which keeps you updated on a particular site or service, but the content is mainly focused for US users. Bookmarks (Favorites in IE) and History management are easy to manage. Add-on support is now available officially. There aren't many outstanding features to talk about and many still need to be improved. Case in point is the download manager which is limited, and there is also no proper password management option.