On Working With Opera

I’ve been experimenting with Opera for the past month.

The world, at least the Windows world, is divided into Internet Explorer and Firefox users. With a contingent of Google Chrome users and Safari users. I’ve never used Chrome — Google’s EULA was creepy as hell — and while I’ve given Apple’s Safari a try, I haven’t really liked it.

I’m different. I use Opera.

I started using it in college. I remember downloading Opera 3 and playing around with that. I didn’t like it. Around Opera 5 I started using it more. Around the time of Opera 7 it became, if not my primary browser, my more-often-than-not browser. With Opera 8 it finally became my primary browser.

Now I’m running the Opera 10 Alpha. It’s fast. It’s lightweight. It has everything I need in a single package that’s a small download (about 5 megabytes).

Opera is, I’ve decided, the George Harrison of browsers.

If IE and Firefox are the John and Paul of browsers (or Paul and John, depending on how you view them), Opera is the quiet browser in the background that just flies like a virtuoso guitar player, like George Harrison. It’s like a spiritual experience, in a way, using Opera. Much like listening to George Harrison.

Basically, Opera is the browser for me. And how can it not be my browser, when its Javascript engine is codenamed “Futhark,” and as everyone knows, if I were an ancient language, I would be Futhark. 😆 What can I say? I do love my runes.

One feature of Opera that I have never really used has been its e-mail client, M2 or, as its going by now, Opera Mail.

For the past month, it’s what I’ve been using (almost) exclusively for my e-mail needs.

I’ve used the Opera Mail interface for about three years now; it’s the same interface Opera uses for its RSS feed reader. It’s also the Usenet client, and I’ve used Opera for that as well. (Yes, I do occasionally use Usenet in this day and age.)

But for e-mail? No.

In the Opera 10 Alpha, the developers added HTML functionality to e-mail. Previously, Opera’s e-mail client had been limited to composing in plain text. It could display HTML-formatted e-mails though the browser’s rendering engine, but it couldn’t reply to an HTML e-mail in HTML format.

I should note that HTML was not a make-or-break design decision for me. I rarely compose rich text e-mails. If you write to me in rich text, I’ll reply to you in rich text. If you write me in plain text, I’ll reply to you in plain text.

Instead, it was the fact that I’m using an Alpha version. We’re talking pre-Beta here, people. We’re talking bleeding edge code here, people. An Alpha! 🙂

God, I sound like such a nerd. I’m not even a tech head.

I wanted to get the full experience out of the Alpha. And I realized that I’d never ever given Opera Mail a fair shake.

So I spent about half an hour configuring the e-mail client in Opera about a month ago. I worked out how to leave my e-mail messages on my server; I wanted to be able to also download them into The Bat, the e-mail client I’ve used since 2000, for back-up since I didn’t want to lose them if the Opera Alpha went unstable. I figured out how to delete e-mail messages in Opera and have them deleted on my server.

And then I started to play. 🙂

Opera Mail does some interesting things with e-mail.

I can designate someone a “Followed Contact” and I get a special folder where all my e-mail messages to and from that person are sorted. The one kicker is that if a person has multiple e-mail addresses that they use, I have to do multiple “Follow Contact” designations, one for each e-mail address. But one cool thing is that I can assign icons to my Followed Contacts; for instance, one person is a red petunia. Other icons are little headshots from Opera’s icon library that vaguely resemble the person in real life. Or they’re just generic, non-descript stylized heads and shoulders. Or in the case of Keith DeCandido, it’s the Frankenstein Monster, because there’s not a single icon I can choose from that resembles Keith at all.

E-mails from mailing lists are automatically sorted into folders. At least, they’re supposed to be. One list I subscribe to, HASTRO-L (devoted to discussion about the history of astronomy), doesn’t sort, and I’ve found no way to convince Opera that messages from HASTRO-L are from a mailing list to put them with my other mailing lists. But for that, I’ve created an actual filter.

Yes, Opera does filtering as well. A writing market newsletter gets filtered into its own folder. Comic invoices get filtered into their folder.

Then, I can assign labels to received e-mails. If it’s an important message, I can mark it as Important, and the message shows up in a special folder called “Important.”

Here’s what’s interesting about the way Opera Mail works.

All of these folders? They’re virtual folders. No message is actually moved anywhere. It’s how you use the e-mail that determines where Opera shows it to you.

What this means is that I’ve altered the way I deal with my e-mail.

When the e-mail is downloaded, Opera tells me which folders have messages. Now, there’s a folder called “Unread” that has every unread message, and there’s a folder called “Received” that has every single message, read and unread, that I’ve received. But I don’t start with those.

I start with my Followed Contacts. These are friends, and if they have e-mailed me, I look in the folders there first. I reply to them as necessary, I mark them as read, and then I move on to the mailing lists. I clean those out, deleting most of the messages. Once I’ve done both the Followed Contacts and the Mailing Lists — that’s the bulk of my daily e-mail — I look in the Unread folder to see what’s left. I delete the deleted messages off my mail server, then I’ll use The Bat to pull the remaining messages off the server to archive them.

Opera Mail is not perfect right now. It occasionally locks up the browser while I’m composing an e-mail reply. I’ve had some difficulty attaching files to e-mails.

Otherwise, I’m happy with it. I don’t know why I didn’t give it a fair shake earlier, in all the years that I’ve been using Opera.

Opera Mail isn’t a reason for anyone to give up their other e-mail clients if they’re happy with their browser. But if you are using Opera and you’re not using Opera Mail, give it a try and use it for a month.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

12 thoughts on “On Working With Opera

  1. Cool review.

    I have used Opera for many years, and my last try out is Alpha 10 like you. Well, I have used Alpha 10 on daily basis since it came out. Well, since I discovered Opera Desktop team I have always used the bleeding new browser they have presented to the audience.

    But I have never been a friend of it`s mail vlient actually. My main mail program is Apple Mail, and it works good. (same on my iphone).

  2. i always use Opera since Opera 8. I used most of features in Opera except Torrent and Mail Client.

    I using Windows Live Hotmail and other Windows Live Services. and i think Windows Live Mail is better than (at least it synchronize with Windows Live Account).

    So, I really want Opera ASA to add Calendar to Opera. and improve Opera Link (very great if it can sync Cookies). so, i think Opera Contact should improve too.

  3. I’ve been really pleased with the latest build of Opera 10. I’ve had no reason to fire up Opera 9.64 for a few weeks now. 🙂

  4. Opera Mail was the first client where a folder worked more like a view then a bucket, and thats what I always liked about it. That and the fact that it was right there inside my favorite browser since version 5.

    Now I’m on Alpha 10, and there are things that I would like to see different, but I would rather live without then switch to IE or FF.

  5. Nice review!

    To me, Opera Mail IS oone of the main reason I can’t get away from it. Although I have multiple email accounts and I have to use other clients as well since I don’t want to get confused from having Opera Mail handles all of my accounts.

    The thing is: Opera Mail is REALLY fast at fetching mails. Leave Thunderbird or Windows Live Mail far behide (not to mention Windows Mail which is even worse than Windows Live Mail). I don’t care much about HTML email editting since I mostly write email in plain text.

    I love Opera. But there are some stuff Opera Dev team needs to work on. It still not prefect when it has to deal with foreign languages (or in my case, Thai). And it sure crash quite often compare to FF (IE is the worst in this arena though).

    I’m so excited about Opera 10! Hope it will come out as beta soon (I wasn’t happy with Alpha, it wrecked my inbox).

    Cheers, from Thailand

  6. @Andrew Timson

    “These “folders” sound to me like they operate exactly like the labels in Gmail do.”

    Yes, they do: take a guess as to where Gmail got the idea!

  7. Good review; with imminent upgrade to windows 7 I’m investigating non Microsoft browsers and email clients. All info from all users gratefully received.

  8. So darn right on the money! (andy gray 🙂

    I re-tried Opera mail – it used to be very buggy – and here is all I gotta say.

    operaMail + Imap + gmail == kickass!!!

    2 killer features == the automatic keyword index + search
    filters.

    Its the most under-announced piece of software engineering ever.

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