ZDNet Education

Christopher Dawson

Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

By Christopher Dawson | September 1, 2009, 11:50am PDT

Summary: I’ve always been a Firefox sort of guy…One of my techs swears by the latest Safari, but that’s never held any allure for me and I’ve had better luck with Firefox handling the widest variety of content encountered by all of my users. Opera, on the other hand, has always felt like an almost-ran. It’s too bad, because Opera is (and has been for some time) a great, mature browser.

I’ve always been a Firefox sort of guy. It works well, it’s largely standards-compliant, it’s relatively secure, and all my bookmarks are there (a bit tongue-in-cheek, I know, but if there isn’t anything drastically better out there, why switch?).

One of my techs swears by the latest Safari, but that’s never held any allure for me and I’ve had better luck with Firefox handling the widest variety of content encountered by all of my users.

On Windows now, it’s Chrome all the way for me. Super-speedy, especially with Google Apps, where I spend most of my time, a bit more secure (if you drink the Google Kool-Aid and take a look at their sandbox strategy), and the interface is slick on both netbooks and larger computers. Chromium works well in Linux and OS X, but it’s still not at a point where I’d want to deploy it to hundreds of clients, nor do the performance gains on Windows feel as substantial on *nix operating systems (seat of the pants here only, folks).

Opera, on the other hand, has always felt like an almost-ran. It’s too bad, because Opera is (and has been for some time) a great, mature browser. It even works on a really wide variety of operating systems, including mobile devices. So why is it that as we all fire up the labs this fall, finish re-imaging, install new software, and upgrade machines for students and teachers, most of us won’t bother installing Opera?

I don’t actually have an answer for this. All of my Windows machines are running Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5, and Chrome. All of my Macs are running Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 (or at least my techs have almost finished updates and are heading quickly in this direction after a very short summer). The only machine in the district running Opera is my Mac since I just installed it today to give it a spin.

Needless to say, it’s impressive. It seems to do everything well.

So tell me why so few of us are using it…and if you are using it in your labs and on teacher machines (not just on your personal computers), why did you move to Opera?

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “ZDNet Education”

Color-coding wikipedia: how's that for legitimacy?

Oh sure...4 days in and Gmail goes down

Topics

Opera Software, Mozilla Firefox, Web Browsers, Microsoft Windows, Performance Management, Apple Mac OS X, Netbooks, Nettops & MIDs, Linux, Operating Systems, Internet, Software, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Apple Mac OS, Hardware, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Full Bio
Disclosure
Contact

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Vendor HotSpot

The 360° Conversation around Cloud Computing

TECH VISUALIZER brings the social conversation to life... powered by Brocade

Learn More »

Comments

Add Your Opinion

Join the conversation!

Follow via:: RSS; Email Alert

Just In

4sure it's worth it!

thobi3 5th Sep 2009

i use opera for many years now and it's features are just great. even if opera has problems with some pages (or pages have problems with complying with standards) it's worth to be your first-choice-browser!

i don't understand people having problems with opera. the only thing is ime that people just don't know better. they don't know how to use it.

i especially love the keyboard shortcuts. because you can work so much faster with just using the keyboard (ctrl+t -> new tab, ctrl+w -> close tab, ctrl+r -> reload, ctrl+l -> select address bar, ctrl+tab -> switch tabs etc). opening links in new tabs (shift+click), or in background tabs (shift+ctrl+click) just with a click.
and opera has a feature where you just press shift+cursor-keys and you can just go over the links on the page you just see, which can be useful especially if you work with touch pads/notebooks.

also the mouse gestures are just awesome. just use the mouse to work with the pc and not having to look for close buttons, new tab buttons or whatever happy

opera link which synchronizes your bookmarks, speed dials, notes etc on time between desktop, notebook and mobile phone without user intervention. and you can login via any other browser to use them when you don't have your opera available.

you can configure the search-functions. type "g weather" in the address-bar to search with google without any more clicks. just use any keyword with any search-engine available (like wikipedia, dictionaries or whatever you want to. i've got more than two dozen different search-engines defined.).

you have integrated ad-blocker, can set individual site-preferences (deactivate javascript, refuse/allow to open popup-windows for one site only...), rss-reader, a bittorrent-client, an e-mail-client, you can save sessions, irc-client and a lot more to go happy

most of the people, ime, just don't know opera and its features. i think schools have to show that there are different options to choose between. there must not just be IE. they should be shown, that there is FF and opera for all OS like win, linux and mac. show them the easy tweeks, how to set-up the e-mail-client. hot to use rss-feeds, how to use keyboard-shortcuts and how to work with tabs. yeah, spend 30 minutes with opera and you will love it wink

just my 2 cents happy

View in thread

Please Select
Please Select

0 Votes

+ -

Opera 10

Cosmo54 1st Sep 2009

I had been a long-time Opera user, going back to their shareware days, when I even paid for it not once but twice...but no more Opera on my machines. Aside from numerous page rendering errors and the waste of time nonsense of Widgets, Turbo and Unite, I have to agree that their incessant whining is a big turnoff, and for me, the final straw that broke the camel's back. Opera, Begone!

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Having used both, I prefer Firefox over Opera

BillDem 1st Sep 2009

I often have Firefox, Opera, and IE8 open on my monitors to view web pages I work on. It's a no-brainer that IE8 is my least favorite of the three. That's the case for most people who've used something else for a bit. Yet, I also find nothing compelling about Opera versus Firefox. When I'm not checking web code, I always use Firefox to browse. It just fits with minimal fuss.

I tried Safari for a week. It was so pig slow and buggy on the PC, I couldn't get myself to keep using it. Then I heard about all of the security holes in it. I uninstalled it and never looked back. It's YEARS behind the others in maturity on the PC platform. Both Safari and iTunes are prime examples of the fact that Apple programmers can't write code worth a damn for PCs. "Maximum resource usage with minimal return" seems to be their motto. It's sad because Safari and iTunes run fairly snappy and lean on OS X.

I also briefly tried Chrome, but didn't see enough merit in it to switch. I'm also not a Google Apps user, so the integration had zero appeal. Cloud applications are generally a stupid idea IMHO. BUT, now that Chrome's been out for a while, I'll give it another shot soon to see if there is anything there which would make me switch from Firefox. I'm still skeptical, though.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

But you mentioned Opera

hectormacias 2nd Sep 2009

You dont explain what was your experience with opera

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Opera 10 A Great Browser

chessmen 1st Sep 2009

Having taken Opera 10 for a spin, I must say that I am impressed. I like the new look, and it's very fast. Now there are three great web browsers to choose from; Chrome, Firefox and Opera!

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

I would say four

hectormacias 2nd Sep 2009

Opera, Chrome, Safari and Firefox (in that order)

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Opera, underutilized because

chrome_slinky@... 1st Sep 2009

many people don't recognize intelligent design and quality.

Back in the says of Opera 8 and 9, when Opera was the most fully compliant browser, yet the majority of people complained that opera would not render websites correctly, instead of rallying against the idiots that insisted upon setting up the sites for IE.

Opera is a joy to use, and remains more secure than most others, simply because most don't get it (or use it) - I'll never understand why.

If more people insisted that site would be compliant to standards or not be visited, Opera would be #1.

BTW, I have been using Iron, and for the sites that I visit, it is much less good at rendering than Opera (I use Google only for mail, and use the POP3 feature, as I find HTML mailers really annoying.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Lack of customization

MariusSilverwolf 1st Sep 2009

I run Ubuntu. I use Firefox for my primary browsing. With the addition of FlashBlock, AdBlock Plus, and GreaseMonkey with a few scripts I get the browsing experience *I* want instead of having to deal with bloated presentations by many major sites.

Yes, Opera has ad-blocking functionality, but it doesn't collapse removed frames quite as well and I'm still stuck with Flash videos auto-launching on sites like ESPN.

I love Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, though. I ran Opera Mini on the company Blackberry and I run Opera Mobile as my primary browser on my Samsung Omnia with Windows Mobile.

As for other suggestions on boycotting Opera, well, I'm trying REALLY hard to see things from your perspective but I'm just not flexible enough to get my head that far up that orifice.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

witan 1st Sep 2009

I use Firefox 3.5.2, Opera 9.64 AND IE8 all three. My preference is for Opera, but Firefox has a video download helper ("extension") which is useful because my Internet connection is not that fast. Opera's built-in news reader which I find more convenient than the corresponding features in the other two browsers. I am forced to keep IE8 because certain websites, including Microsoft's own, require it. IE8 seems to be slow, but its features are somewhat better than IE7 or IE6.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

jbach67 1st Sep 2009

I have Opera, Firefox, and IE 8 installed. The only time I use a browser other than Opera is when a page requires IE. I rarely use Firefox since its usually slow. Actually, I let my 3 year old use Firefox...

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Opera does something extraordinary by

iravgupta Updated - 2nd Sep 2009

1. combining a mail client into the browser. This gives you offline access to your mail, and its very speedy. A new mail generates a polished looking sliding alert in the system tray. Try configuring Gmail into your Opera 10 installation, you just might get pleasantly surprised. Its like having the best of both worlds, offline access to mail and just a click required to open any link, without waiting for a new program to load.
2. providing a small notes application, for those snippets that you want to store but they dont qualify for being bookmarked.
3. a lightweight but efficient feed-reader which actually looks and works better than those in Firefox and IE.
4. a smarter download management strategy - a new download triggers a new tab (if its your first download of the session), and upon completion a slider notification from system tray area appears. Unlike, IE and Firefox, new downloads dont give rise to new Window.

5. allowing full UI customization - you can tweak almost every part of Opera to suit your taste. Try that with Firefox, or IE for that matter.

6. syncing your bookmarks and notes across Opera 10 installations - something Firefox team has been working hard to achieve through project weave.

I know, you can do most of this stuff through add-ons in Firefox, but kudos to Opera for identifying the most useful applications that warrant a default integration with the browser.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Browser comparison charts

linuser 2nd Sep 2009

Tech blogs, like ZDNet, could really help users/schools/businesses make desktop browser decisions, by providing summary charts that compare the key features & technical performance of each major browser (i.e. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, IE).

e.g.
FEATURES:
- tabbed browsing
- addon support (perhaps with a rough estimate of addons available)
- HTML5 support (audio, video, canvas, etc.)
- supported OSes
- unique functionality
- ...

TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE (using the same reference PC):
- size on disk
- memory usage
- startup time
- page load times (perhaps with low/med/high complexity reference pages)
- acid3 results: http://acid3.acidtests.org/
- SunSpider results: http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html
- ...

A similar summary for mobile browsers would also be nice.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Atlast

Arun (sreearun) 2nd Sep 2009

At last, somebody is trying to give credence to Opera at ZDNet

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Here's why

Dogcatcher Updated - 2nd Sep 2009

"So tell me why so few of us are using it?"

Tried Opera several years ago. Did not like the annoying ads in the free version, and it wasn't enough better than the competition to warrant paying for a copy. I know the ad banner has been dropped, but nothing yet has inspired me to retry Opera.

Safari seemed to be just another implementation of a browser. Nothing special, and I don't live in the world of Apple, so bye-bye.

I kinda liked Chrome, but its configuration was too rigid. For example, I expect to be able to specify where the cache files are located. Also, I strongly dislike the tabs at the top, where they are separated from the displayed page content.

As for IE8, I want a menu interface, not the badly implemented ribbon.

Firefox 3.x is pretty good, except for the darn Awesome Bar. Yeah, add-ons can tame it, but why should I have to go that route.

Bottom line: Primary browser is SeaMonkey. It has the interface I like, and it uses one dialog box for both URLs and search terms.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

supports windows me

woodpeckerwood 2nd Sep 2009

you geeks are missing the big picture. not everyone is sold on forking out big bucks to upgrade new bugs and making microsoft even richer. it works on my operating system better than the rest period.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Chris, you said it yourself

Palmetto_CharlieSpencer 2nd Sep 2009

"...if there isn?t anything drastically better out there, why switch?"

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

tiamy Updated - 2nd Sep 2009

I've been an Opera users since 2004 and I chose Opera over Firefox because I don't want to be bothered by updates on each extensions everytime I start the browser or FF telling me that this extension is not compatible with this version of FF etc etc.

Besides, I don't have time to choose different implementations of the same extensions and trying them out one by one. When I used FF for a week, I spent about the first 30 minutes of each session trying to tweak it until I get satisfied (which becomes cumbersome).

Lastly, when I use Firefox, I felt that I'm using a "Frankenstein" version of a browser where all different pieces of extensions came from different developers without any consistency. It's like wearing a shirt where every stitch is done differently by another person (can't think of a better analogy, sorry)

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

I have to add...

tiamy Updated - 2nd Sep 2009

Opera's "Back" button is faster than any other browsers I've tried. The only thing that I miss on Opera is private browsing mode. I used Google Chrome for that. grin

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

porno mode you mean.

hectormacias 2nd Sep 2009

"porno mode" come on, say it, hahaha.

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

kentm0300@... 2nd Sep 2009

I REALLY like Opera--and Google Chrome--but when I'm at
my favorite forum, http://forums.grunt.com/forums (it's a
Marine Corps forum), I need to use Firefox. Neither
Chrome nor Opera are able to put paragraphs in my
threads. They come out in one large, unreadable lump.
I CAN paragraph with Firefox. My computering IQ isn't
high enough to figure out why. If I could I'd fix the
problem in Chrome and Opera.
Opera is my overall favorite browser, though.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

school use?

smurffister 2nd Sep 2009

Opera is great but.. in schools?

Opera has torrent support, and opera unite is another nice little way in and out of the machine. (If someone gets it to work!) many students like file sharing. i know i do too.

My point being, opera is full of these little features and sharing tools and widgets. who knows what security problems they can cause in school full of people trying to learn to use this new browser...?

Students like to try anything they can with their machines when their bored, right?

but hey, i'm no expert. and i use opera everyday without knowing half it's features.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

Lintn 2nd Sep 2009

I like Opera and have used it for awhile. I like the interface better than Firefox and I have had fewer crashes with it. The only reason I don't recommend it is some sites just do not work on it, or do not function properly. Thankfully I have been running the beta version and have not found a web site that is not compatible yet.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

Ted007Johnson 3rd Sep 2009

Don't forget Opera's Web Standards Curriculum which aims to bring Web standards education to universities.

http://www.opera.com/company/education/curriculum/

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Opera is the THE best browser for students

nilotpal_c 3rd Sep 2009

i)It has an integrated note taking ability which enables you to copy notes easily while researching a topic
ii) On top of that, it synchronizes the notes across multiple desktops along with bookmarks (bookmarks and spped dial are also synced across mobile platforms), a great convenience feature, especially helpful if one forgets to bring the pendrive.
iii) Usually when researching a topic, I find that I have multiple (many times crossing 50 ) tabs open. You can just save that browsing session, and open the same browsing session with saved history whenever you want- you dont lose any information
iv) It has the best history search among the browsers. Even if you forget the name of the site where you got information from, and have nnot saved the session, it is usually easy to retrieve that information.
v) It is probably the fastest browser if page loading times (NOT artificial javascript tests) are taken into account. Furthermore, it has a highly configurable user interface and mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts. The slowest link in browsing is the user. It shortens the user related time by having a superior user interface. Furthermore, the gap widens with Opera 10 with turbo enabled in case of slow connections.
vi) It is the most security hardenable browser, with the best security controls among the browsers out of the box. Furthermore, it has the best security response times. A school browser needs to be secured properly
vii) Adding custom search fields and search engines is a snap, besides having the widest array of search engines built in.

Of course, deploying a browser is also an administrative decision, and people just go with the defaults, because an additional piece of software means a greater administrative burden. However, a researcher or student is missing a lot if he/she does not use Opera.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

lauralou 3rd Sep 2009

The Opera website has some information about installing Opera in campus computer labs, check it out at http://www.opera.com/company/education/lab/

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

An Open-Source opinion for a Closed-Source App

chaz.broam@... 3rd Sep 2009

Actually, I am what you call a Linux fanboy. I only use Windblowz when I have to use my wife's PC. Even that is Windows XP, because I won't allow any further Windows operating system in the house. If we ever get a new computer, it either will not come with Windows on it, or I'm blanking the hard drive and installing Linux - to hell with the warranty! So, needless to say, I am all about open source software.
Then I upgraded Opera to version 10 (for those of you who don't know, Opera is closed source). One word - WOW! I love the Turbo. I use Widgets on a normal basis, when I use Opera. I don't normally use Opera, but that's changing. =D I haved exported my Bookmarks to Opera 10 now. I have messed around with adding buttons, swapping skins, and otherwise customizing the interface to my own desires. I must say, I am impressed.
I don't know what this Unite is, but I hear it's coming in the next versions later. So, I don't have to worry about it now. If the writer of this article/review would research things a bit better, then he would know this.
I do want to say one more thing: The new default skin is rather better looking than the previous default skins IMHO. I still changed it so I could get a slimmer version of the same look. One thing Opera needs to think about is slimming down the Status bar down at the bottom - where the Turbo button is - because I would rather the interface get the hell out of my way.
Here's a suggestion for Opera: instead of the Progress Bar stacking on top of the Status bar (as I have my Progess bar go down to the bottom), it would be better if the Progress bar used the Status bar. There is all that space going unused - waisted.
Anyway, I think that's my two cents, and a little more. =D

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

RE: Opera 10: Worth deploying in schools?

shibuza@... 4th Sep 2009

YES!!! Just loaded up opera v10 this AM, up from v9.64. Been using it all this AM & I'm actually excited over the improvement in speed of page refresh & loading on dial-up. Will recommend it for any & all.