PT Much has been written about the browser wars and Microsoft's zeal to dominate the browser market. The context of most of this coverage has been Microsoft versus Netscape, with Netscape generally portrayed as David against Microsoft's Goliath. But Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator aren't the only games in town when it comes to browsers. There are viable alternatives to both of them. The most prominent alternative to emerge has been Opera.
Opera is a small, lightweight browser from a Norwegian company.
Opera 3.5, the latest version, is a paltry 1.2MB download, far smaller than the download file sizes of IE or Navigator. Opera Software is also offering free e-mail accounts to its users. To have full Java support, you'll need to download Sun's Java plug-in. Opera's interface is highly customizable, and we found that pages loaded significantly quicker in Opera than in either of the two more popular browsers. Opera can also import your IE and Navigator bookmarks easily, making it a snap to switch completely or to use Opera as a third browser for the times when surfing speed is of the utmost importance.