Opera: My Way To Store, Organise and Share Bookmarks

I’ve always been interested in the latest shiny thing so when I was asked to review Opera’s feature-filled latest release, Opera 26, I jumped at the chance.
Opera, like it’s musical counterpart, has always been the choice of aficionados. It doesn’t come included with your operating system and nor is it peddled by the world’s largest search provider. You have to make the conscious choice to be an Opera user. And oh are you rewarded for that choice.

In countless performance tests, Opera comes out ahead. Opera is often the first of the major browsers to implement new features — it had tabbed browsing 6 years before Internet Explorer — and seems determined to continue this tradition. While the gaps have closed between modern browsers — especially when it comes to how they render webpages — there is still room for them to differentiate.
I’ve come to appreciate Opera more and more as I’ve used it. Everyone knows Opera is fast and stable. What I’ve grown to love is the interface and their innovative takes on Speed Dial and Bookmarks.

The Interface

The latest version of Opera is gorgeous. I checked it out on both OS X Yosemite and the Windows 10 Technical Preview, and I really liked how it respected the design conventions of both operating systems. Other browsers are guilty of ignoring the OS style and having the same design across every platform. It’s great to see Opera tweak the design of their browser to fit in with whatever OS you’re running. Few things look uglier than an app that’s clearly designed for one platform being forced to run on another.
1 design Opera: My Way To Store, Organise and Share Bookmarks [MacBook Air and Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Giveaway]

Aside from the platform specific changes, the underlying design is the same. It’s clean, minimalist and very pretty. There is little to distract you from the web content. The interface of the Speed Dial, Discover and Bookmarks sections is also stunning. They’ve gone with a flat, tile-based design reminiscent of Windows 8. It works great.

Speed Dial

If you’ve ever tried to create a bookmarks bar filled with favicons to quickly navigate between your favourite sites, you’ll know it just doesn’t work. The targets are too small and the bookmarks bar looks ugly and takes up precious screen-space. Opera pioneered Speed Dial back in 2007. It’s a customisable grid on the new tab page for the websites you visit most frequently.
2 speed dial Opera: My Way To Store, Organise and Share Bookmarks [MacBook Air and Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Giveaway]

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Kiran Upadhyay

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