I’ve recently started checking out Opera 9 Beta I’m not sure why I stumbled across it but I have to say, it’s quite a nice browser.

Now I’m a Firefox guy and there are to many good features to pass up, but Opera is pretty slick too. They’ve added support for WYSIWYG editors like those in WordPress blogs. They’ve also got a built in RSS reader, spell check, ad blocker, themes and widgets.

Now I know we need more widgets like we need more web browsers, but I’m hoping that maybe Opera will bring something special to the table, like being able to run Dashboard Widgets. Wouldn’t that be awesome! Opera widgets can be on all the time or just in Widget window mode, much like Yahoo Widget Engine. So far though, there aren’t many widgets available.

The other cool feature with Opera is the number of quality themes. Sure, Firefox has lots of themes, but quality wise, not a whole lot. Opera has many to choose from and some are great. My favorite is Tango CL which knocks the socks off any Firefox Tango theme.

Opera also allows the scroll bars to be themed, has a password manager and has a cool stat bar that allows you quick access to your top ten most visited sites & bookmarks.

Overall, Opera is very polished and coming along very nicely. Now that’s it’s free, I think that Opera 9 will be a great alternative browser.

To get Opera 8, click on the image below, go here to get Opera 9 Beta.