Most people today are either using Internet Explorer or hopefully Firefox, but you never hear about that much about Opera. Opera is one of the fastest browsers I have used and I have yet to get a pop up on it with no extras installed. Also as far as web standards go it has about the same CSS and XHTML implementation as Firefox and Safari.

Whenever you watch a tutorial on web design or something of that nature they usually are using Mozilla Firefox as their browser and if on a mac will probably show you the site in Safari to compare the slight differences in how CSS behaves using stuff from CSS2, 2.1, and 3. And of course they will show you how most of the newer CSS will not look the same in Internet Explorer 6 (because it does not meet web standards and has been keeping back designers for a long time due to usability issues). However you will never see anybody mention Opera. Why is this?

I think that most people dont use Opera because of how the browser was in older versions. In older versions there were no problems as far as speed and web standards, but you had to pay to get a version that was completely free of pop-ups. However now that has changed and it is better than ever. When I use Opera sometimes you can really see the difference in how fast it loads the pages even against a browser such as Firefox.

Another cool feature about Opera 9 is the inclusion of widgets. Now we have all heard a lot about widgets lately everyone seems to be using them (especially since Vista will have "Gadgets"). Now I find no real use for them, but if they strike you as something you need I would go for it. I mainly just like some of the custom widgets for certain events like one that gives you all the world cup events and reports the score. Or a bittorrent search engine which is pretty cool. Your local weather and so on.

So my advice go and download the latest version of Opera at http://www.opera.com/. And if you are still using Internet Explorer 6 at least get Internet Explorer 7 beta, but I would deffinitely suggest installing a second browser like Mozilla Firefox or Opera 9 (note: do not delete Internet explorer if you do install one of these browsers because currently it is the only browser that supporst microsoft update feature). You wont believe how you ever lived without tab browsing once you do.