The redesigned Start page gives you a choice of three views: Speed Dial lets you place key favourites front and centre via a series of tiles, which includes the ability to group related sites together. This left Opera room to focus more on the user interface, and while it’s taken a while to get all the key functionality back, Opera is now starting to fire on all cylinders, particularly now bookmark support has been restored after various failed attempts to move to a different way of storing favourites. The reboot was prompted by Opera’s decision to abandon its own proprietary web rendering engine (Presto) in favour of Google’s open-source Chromium engine. Even now, some aren’t coming back – specifically Opera’s old built-in mail client, which is available on its own as Opera Mail. Rebooted in June 2013 as a Chromium-based variant, the new Opera’s early history was a troubled one, with many long-established features absent. It may not enjoy the same level of attention as other heavyweight web browsers, but there’s still a lot to like about Opera.
