I’m testing out the latest Opera browser (v10) – and while the changes aren’t earth shaking, there are a few great reasons to switch to this new browser, if only for the occasional cybercafe visit.

If you’ve never tried Opera, a quick visit to their site to download and run it is well worth your time. Why? Not only because it’s cool, but it’s important to have a variety of browsers on your computer. After all, if people visit your website with Opera, shouldn’t you now first-hand how it looks to them?

There’s another reason for an additional browser: as I told members in the January 2009 issue of The ActiveBlogging Report (‘For the Love of Opera!‘), Opera makes a great testing tool for web development. It’s very easy to and turn off Javascript and Flash, to make sure there’s no problems for visitors not using those; it also is very easy to ‘forget’ sites and clear the cache, so revisiting a site appears to be the very first time – every time – ideal for testing.

Now, with v10, they’ve added some neat new features:

Turbo cache. Enable it (in the bottom left of the browser window) and their servers grab the web pages, compress them, and then send them to you. The result in my testing was 2-3 times faster than direct access – and that’s WITH broadband! For people using their computers at cybercafes, turning on this setting will make browsing much faster.

The speed difference comes mainly at the cost of images – by shrinking them, files transfer and arrives faster. So you will get the occasional twonky image (there’s a option to see an image without compression), but I found this a very small issue, especially compared to the speed increase.

More Tab Options. Opera was one of the first browsers I ever tried with simple tabbing built in (way before Internet Explorer). And unlike Firefox, the tabs open NEXT TO the tab you’re working on, instead of the end of the list (annoying if you have a lot of tabs open – are you listening, FF?).

Now, the tabs have another setting: click and drag on the dotted line below the tabs, and stretch them vertically – and they become miniature web pages of what you’re working on! Now, rather than cryptic URL fragments on each tab, you get a partial web page image, and it can be as long as you wish. It’s so neat to play with, I expect this feature will be appearing in Firefox shortly.

While this is just a quick overview of the program, it gives you a hint of the changes of Opera. When you need another browser for testing, or just for a faster connection, consider getting Opera 10. A few moments getting used to it can make a huge difference in productivity – especially while waiting for your cappuccino at the local Starbucks.