Opera 18 review: This browser's seen radical changes… perhaps too radical

Opera 18 If you switch often between tablet, phone, and desktop, Opera 18 may be for you. If you spend most of your time on a PC, it will make you sad.

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Opera has always been the Avis or RC Cola of Web browsers—just behind the leading two, even as the identity of the leaders shifted over time. Opera 12, reviewed some time ago, was the last of one development path. Since then, the rendering engine has shifted (to the Chromium platform) and so has the design direction. A series of rapid-fire releases began with Opera 15, and Opera 18 is the latest release build, with Opera 19 in the testing stage.

The Quick Access Bar might as well be hidden behind a locked door in a disused lavatory with a sign reading “Beware Of The Leopard.”

Opera 18 takes an extremely minimalist approach to browser design, perhaps because there is now a focus on phone, tablet, and desktop interoperability. It’s so minimalist, bookmarks are no longer considered an essential part of the browser experience.

The “Stash” feature may be very helpful, but it should be in addition to more traditional functionality.

By delving into some obscure settings, one can activate a “quick access bar,” and then jump through more hoops to simulate the typical bookmark menu. Sort of. In place of bookmarks, the developers encourage you to use their “Start Page” and “Stash” features, the latter letting you store webpages for later on a “Stash” page. Because everything is page-based, you have to switch from what you’re looking at to go to the Start Page or the Stash. Want to browse your history? That also takes up a page.

This is a depressing change. Opera 12 made great use of the mostly-wasted horizontal space on desktop monitors, with sidebar tabs (a must for me, since I will not use a desktop browser without a tab sidebar), and a multi-pane second sidebar that held bookmarks, history, downloads, a notepad, and more. Opera 18 has none of this, just a vast blank space 1920 pixels wide on my screen.

This is what Opera used to do with the left-hand side of your screen. I miss it.

Being able to see only one thing at once, in 2013, is ridiculous. On a small tablet or phone? Sure, that’s understandable. On a desktop? No. Not acceptable, Opera.

Apparently the folks at Opera understand not everyone is on-board with the 1995 flashback as they are keeping Opera 12 actively maintained.

Additional features in Opera 18 include integrating the search bar and the address bar into a single text field, which is fairly neutral to me. You can add multiple search engines and use them by prefixing your search with a code character. Themes—basically, just wallpaper—are also available. Tabs can be dragged from one open window to another. A “Discover” feature shows news and other articles in various categories, sort of a built-in StumbleUpon, but it doesn’t have a learning feature to tune what’s presented to you, beyond a basic category filter.

Otherwise... it renders pages. So does every browser. I judge a browser on what it does besides rendering pages, and in the case of Opera 18, that’s not much. I encountered very few bugs, and the few I did find either could not be replicated or were clearly related to third-party plug-ins. Speed is fine. It’s not as sluggish as Explorer (what is, other than an Etch-a-Sketch?), but it’s not noticeably faster than its peers.

The new “Discover” page shows an assortment of stories in various categories.

Obviously, with multiple releases in this new direction (15 to 18), there is a target audience for the stripped-down feature set. The forums are full of people who are extremely...enthusiastic...in their support for the new design and eager to respond to critics with the grace, tolerance, and understanding that the Internet has been known for as long as I’ve been on it, which is longer than I care to admit in public. If your browsing situation is one where you need every pixel for display, you might find the new Opera to your tastes.

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Review: Dooble enters the crowded field of alternative browsers

Dooble is another entry into the large field of "web browsers that aren't Explorer, Firefox, or Opera." As with most such entries, it is reasonably functional and has a few new ideas, but it doesn't offer an overwhelmingly compelling reason to switch from your primary browser.

The main focus of Dooble is privacy and security. Dooble operates by default in what other browsers call "private mode," and the user explicitly grants exceptions to retain data from various sites between launches. It will request a password on application launch. A built-in cookie browser is easily accessible from the main menu bar, making it simple to see what data sites are tracking (if you know how to interpret the information). The more secure HTTPS protocol is on by default, as well.

Another virtue of Dooble is that it's fast, or at least it feels fast (this is a case of subjective perception, not precisely timed rendering tests). I spend a significant portion of my life staring at browser windows, and Dooble renders quickly, even on image-heavy sites. There's a crisp sharpness to it, and this is worth mentioning.

In addition to the Windows edition, Dooble comes in Mac and Linux flavors.

Dooble has some unusual features, and it feels fast and easy to read.

One unusual feature of Dooble is a built-in desktop. While most browsers accept local URLsand present directory listings. Dooble includes a simple desktop/file manager, desktop, with multiple windows, and management functions. Unfortunately, the usefulness of this is limited. For example, it doesn't read file type associations from Windows, so the user must enter them manually, and, having done so, the launching of the application based on the file is sporadic at best. Often, the application would open, but the selected file would not open within it. While I could open text files with Notepad++ or XLS files with Excel, I could not open html files with Firefox or FLV files with VLC media player.

Dooble has hooks for plugins, but, so far, only one is available, a chat/IRC type application. Because the "plugin/extension ecosystem" is becoming such a vital part of Web browsing, as the Web becomes more of an environment in itself, any browser that can't tap into that either needs to include a kitchen sink's worth of features (contrary to the current trend of slimmed-down programs), or risk being overlooked because a useful function can't be added.

I experienced only one system crash with Dooble, which I could not replicate. Given the myriad possible causes of such a one-off event, I'd rate Dooble as quite stable.

Dooble is drifting towards a niche—high privacy, with the program heavily slanted towards safe defaults—but it needs a good bit of work and polish to be good enough as an overall browser for daily use. It performs as well as any browser for the basic functions of the Web, but it is missing those "quality of life" features that are what drives a user to choose one browser over another when all of them are, in essence, presenting the same data. I hope to see functionality added in future versions, and existing functions enhanced and extended.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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The Best Browsers for Your Android Phone

In choosing a browser for your phone, you have to take into account the more tenuous data connection, the smaller screen, and the kinds of tasks that you need or want to do on your handset. Here's a look at some of the most popular Android browsers, to help you decide which one is right for you.

Note: Though third-party browsers are available for iOS as well as for Android, Apple doesn't allow such tools to replace the built-in Safari browser altogether. For that reason, we've chosen to focus on Android browsers here. For a detailed appraisal desktop and laptop browser options, see "Which Browser Should You Use?"

Dolphin Browser HD lets you create a webzine.Dolphin Browser HD

If you're an RSS fiend, Dolphin Browser HD may become your new best friend. Dolphin lets you create a webzine from popular websites' RSS feeds, presenting simplified versions of Web pages with much of the clutter removed to make them easier to read. Though Dolphin can't transform every website into a webzine, it's a handy tool for people who read extensively on the Web. Dolphin also supports tabbed browsing and gesture commands, enabling you to issue specific instructions to your mobile device by drawing shapes on the touchscreen. You can draw a circle to reload the page, for example, or you can draw an F to instruct the browser to load Facebook.

Firefox for Android

Like its desktop counterpart, Firefox for Android is all about the add-ons, which, for the mobile version, include URL Fixer (for correcting common typos in URLs) and Reading List (for saving Web pages to read offline). Firefox for Android is an excellent choice for users who want to tweak and tune their browsers, and add their own personal touches. Unfortunately, the browser can be a bit slow to start up, and it consumes a lot of RAM--a potential problem if you have an older or underpowered Android phone. Firefox for Android also supports tabbed browsing, and you can sync between the mobile app and Firefox on your desktop, to pick up on one device right where you left off on the other.

Opera Mobile and Opera Mini

Opera has two mobile browsers: the full-size (12MB) Opera Mobile, and the smaller (767KB) Opera Mini. Opera Mini sends your page requests to a server, which compresses the pages before transmitting them to your device, making this space-saving browser much faster than Opera Mobile. For its part, Opera Mobile does a better job than Opera Mini of rendering pages so that they look the way they would on your desktop. Opera browsers don't support add-ons, but both of these Opera apps do let you sync your mobile bookmarks with the desktop version of Opera, and both of them permit tabbed browsing.

Chrome for Android Beta

If you have an Android smartphone that runs Ice Cream Sandwich, Chrome for Android might be a good choice. Mobile Chrome supports tabbed browsing, but it doesn't support Flash plug-ins at all. Instead, you'll find some advanced HTML 5 features, plus synchronization with your desktop browser's bookmarks and settings. Although Chrome for Android doesn't offer ex­­tensions yet, it probably will support additional capabilities in the future.

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Chrome for Android Tested: Great Tabs, Slower Than Third-Party Browsers

SunSpider JavaScript Test

SunSpider measures the amount of time it takes a browser to run through a series of complex JavaScript functions. The test ultimately gives us a good an idea of how quickly each browser can load webpages that use a large amount of JavaScript and perform certain dynamic actions. The less time it takes to complete the test, the better.

Firefox ran away with this round, finishing the SunSpider test in just 1.7 seconds. Chrome for Android came in second place with a time of 2.1 seconds. The stock Android browser wasn’t far behind, completing the test in 2.2 seconds. Opera Mobile and Dolphin HD took the longest, finishing in 2.4 and 2.5 seconds, respectively.

 Peacekeeper Benchmark

Peacekeeper is a synthetic benchmark that measures a browser’s overall performance. Results are measured in scores rather than times. The higher a browser’s score, the better it performed during the test.

Surprisingly, it was the Stock Android browser that took the top spot in this test with an average score of 467. Chrome for Android was close behind, notching a 444. Dolphine HD came in a distant third-place with a score of 416, while Firefox and Opera Mobile trailed with scores of 320 and 219, respectively.

Loadtimer Test

Loadtimer.org is an excellent tool used to measure how long it takes to open a specific webpage. We ran the test using a series of different sites and, and averaged the results to get a standard page load time.

In the end, it was Dolphin HD that offered the fastest average load times at 6.7 seconds, followed by Opera Mobile at 7 seconds. Firefox pulled into third place with an average 8.2-second load time, while Chrome and the stock Android browser came in fourth and fifth place with 8.4 and 14 seconds respectively.

Screen Real Estate

One thing you’ll notice when you load Chrome on your phone is the amount of screen real estate you gain versus the stock Android browser. In fact, of the five browsers we tested, Chrome provided the largest area of viewable space on Laptopmag.com taking away just 95 pixels with its toolbar. We measured the toolbars’ pixel size because it is a constant across all devices despite any difference in physical screen size. The stock Android browser offered the second largest amount of screen real estate, with its toolbar taking up 104 pixels. Firefox offered a little less than that with its 114 pixel toolbar. Trailing Firefox were Dolphin HD and Opera Mobile, which featured 184-pixel and 191-pixel toolbars, respectively.

Tabbed Browsing

With Chrome for Android, Google decided to switch up the way it displays browser tabs. Instead of stacking new tabs on top of each other like in the stock Android browser, tabs in Chrome look like a deck of cards that’s been fanned out. Pull the first tab down and it will reveal the tab immediately behind it. Pull the tabs down all the way and they will turn towards you ever so slightly. Open a new tab, and it slides neatly over the previous tab. It’s a cool little touch, that goes a long way in adding style to the browser. Like the stock Android browser, you can also swipe away tabs that you want to close.

Of course, you don’t have to go into the tab view to navigate through your tabs. Chrome also allows you to swipe between them from the main browser screen, an action none of the other browsers support. Overall, we preferred Chrome’s tabbed browsing to the other browsers in our roundup. The animations were fun and made the tabs feel like an extension of the browsing experience rather than a separate part of the program.

 Conclusion

Chrome Beta for Android adds some fun changes to the browsing formula and looks to be a good start for Google. But in the end the browser wasn’t as fast as its third-party competition. That said, Chrome is already able to outclass the stock Android browser in two of our three performance tests , making it a solid step forward in the evolution of Google’s mobile browser development. Hopefully, the company can add the needed zip to Chrome as it makes its way from beta to its final release. For now, the compelling tab management feature alone may put it over the top with some users.

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