It should be noted security holes, opened by Active-X, are regularly reported on the Web. In February '98, I reviewed the Opera V 3.2 browser . At that time Opera was a bit quirky, yet its small size and snappy performance caught my attention. Many significant improvements were made since V 3.2. They cannot all be covered in the space allowed here.
Some highlights follow.
It is now free. Supported by JUNO-esque unobtrusive ads, many of the features users liked in earlier versions were retained and improved. The newsreader functionality has been upgraded but I have not used it as yet. Frankly, Usenet newsgroups hold strong interest for seasoned Internet users while casual surfers usually avoid this area. Again, I do not use this function when surfing and cannot comment on the Opera implementation.