Opera is a web browser for Microsoft Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux operating systems, developed by Opera Software. Opera Software is a Norwegian software company publicly listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, with the majority of ownership and control belonging to Chinese businessman Zhou Yahui, founder of Beijing Kunlun Tech which specialises in mobile games and Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360. Opera is a Chromium-based browser using the Blink layout engine. It differentiates itself because of a distinct user interface and other features.
Opera was conceived at Telenor as a research project in 1994 and was bought by Opera Software in 1995. It was a commercial software for the first ten years and had its own proprietary Presto layout engine. The Presto versions of Opera received many awards, but Presto development ended after a milestone transition to Chromium in 2013.
There are also three mobile versions called Opera Mobile, Opera Touch and Opera Mini. A gaming browser called Opera GX was launched on 11 June 2019.
Features
Opera has originated features later adopted by other web browsers, including: Speed Dial, pop-up blocking, re-opening recently closed pages, private browsing, and tabbed browsing. Opera includes a bookmarks bar and a download manager. Opera also has "Speed Dial", which allows the user to add an unlimited number of pages shown in thumbnail form in a page displayed when a new tab is opened. Speed Dial allows the user to more easily navigate to the selected web pages.
Privacy and security
One security feature is the option to delete private data, such as HTTP cookies, browsing history, items in cache and passwords with the click of a button. This lets users erase personal data after browsing from a shared computer.
When visiting a site, Opera displays a security badge in the address bar which shows details about the website, including security certificates. Opera's fraud and malware protection warns you about suspicious web pages and is enabled by default. It checks the requested page against several databases of known phishing and malware websites, called blacklists.
In January 2007, Asa Dotzler of the competing Mozilla Corporation accused Opera Software of downplaying information about security vulnerabilities in Opera, (which were fixed in December 2006). Dotzler claimed that users were not clearly informed of security vulnerabilities that were present in the previous version of Opera and thus they would not realize that they needed to upgrade to the latest version or else risk being exploited by hackers. Opera Software responded to these accusations on the next day.
In 2016, a free virtual private network (VPN) service was implemented in the browser. Opera said that this would allow encrypted access to websites otherwise blocked, and provide security on public WiFi networks. Either VPN or Turbo can be enabled, but not both.
In July 2018, Opera was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York City at an initial offering of $12 per share.
Crypto wallet support
In 2018, a built-in cryptocurrency wallet to the Opera Web Browser was released. Announcing that they would be the first browser with a built-in Crypto Wallet. On 13 December 2018 they released a video showing many decentralized applications like Cryptokitties running on the Android version of the Opera Web Browser.
Standards support
Opera was one of the first browsers to support Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
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