The Opera Directory
The "other" other web browser, Opera is the little browser from Norway that is now over 15 years old. It may come as no surprise that a web browser is the subject of a number of websites. We have attempted to collect here some of the most valuable links.
Official
Opera's main site covers a lot of ground. It is the place to go to download Opera, or to learn how to use its various features.
The My Opera area is the nexus of the Opera community. If you have a feature wishlist, a widget, or just want to talk to people about the browser, My Opera has something for you.
Beginning with Opera 9.5, My Opera is also the mechanism behind Opera Link, which allows you to synchronize bookmarks between different computers and mobile phones.
In April 2009, Opera celebrated its 15th birthday with a bit of fanfare. They cheated on the date a little (by using the date when work on the project first started, which is more of a conception date), but no matter. The 15th birthday portal has some interesting tidbits, including comments on the past and future of the browser from Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie.
If you would like to know when a particular version came out, when a particular feature was introduced, or which version of the rendering engine was used for a particular release, Opera has a very complete history that should answer your question.
Fan sites
The Opera Wiki, run by NonTroppo, is a valuable resource for tips on customizing and modifying Opera. Particularly neat are the various custom buttons, which are usually Javascript-powered. "Open Page in IE" and/or "Open Page in Firefox" are highly recommended.
30 Days to Becoming an Opera Lover (updated for Opera 8) is a classic series of articles that provide a solid grounding in Opera's capabilities. While it is now a bit out of date (it's even old enough now that the site publishing it has reorganized, republished a not-as-good version, and driven us to link to Archive.org instead), it is a great way to get started with Opera.
The address book conversion tool can convert contact information from other email applications for use in Opera.
Related
Opera Watch is a blog covering Opera-related news and bits, run by an Opera "technical evangelist".
Haavard, of Opera's QA department, also maintains a blog.
Håkon Wium Lie, Opera's CTO, has written several articles for A List Apart. He also does interviews (on CSS and on CSS, Opera, and everything else) and was the person that originally proposed CSS.
Opera was a founding member of the WHATWG, the group that jump-started efforts to build a new version of HTML. That new version, HTML 5, is winding its way through the long road to being an official W3C standard, as of this writing.
And more
Opera released a Bork edition of Opera in 2003, which translated MSN web pages into the Bork language of the Muppets' Swedish Chef, in protest of MSN serving munged pages to Opera.
In 2005, Opera's CEO pledged to swim from Opera ASA in Norway to the United States if the Opera 8.0 release attracted 1 million downloads in 4 days. It did; he didn't. Many speculated that he would in fact swim to the US embassy in Norway, a much more achievable goal.