Representatives of the Web browser Opera came to campus Friday to promote their program, an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE).

Opera, which is based in Oslo, Norway, concluded its four-school tour with its visit to campus. The purpose of the tour was to visit the four largest universities that have signed with Opera, said Berit Hanson, spokesman for Opera. The representatives previously stopped at the University of Arizona, Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania before arriving at the University campus.

Hanson said Opera has received praise from K-12 schools as well as universities. Penn State took IE off of their computers and instructed their students to use Opera instead, Hanson said.

The University signed a contract with Opera that will give the browser to all CITES computer centers for free and allow students to download the full version of Opera 8 for free from the CITES Webstore.

Normally, the full version of Opera 8 costs $39 to download from the Opera Web site. There is a free version on the Opera Web site, but it has banner ads at the top of the browser.

The University signed with Opera largely because it is more accessible for disabled people, said Jon Gunderson, director of information technology accessibility services. Hanson said the browser features a downloadable upgrade that allows the user to navigate the browser using his voice. While this feature was not expressly created for disabled people, it is the first browser to feature voice operated navigation.

Gunderson said Opera allows users greater flexibility, providing features such as the ability to personalize the browser. Opera allows the user to modify color schemes, modify toolbars and customize buttons, among other things.

“(IE) pushes (user controls) way deep into the menus,” Gunderson said. “The nice thing about Opera is that they made a lot of the user style features close.”

Safety features are one of the other main benefits of the Opera browser, especially considering the increase in security breaches and financial identity thefts, Hanson said. With the Opera browser, anytime the user surfs to a secure site, the security certificate pops up allowing the user to see who issued the certificate. This safety feature, like some of the others in Opera, puts the responsibility both with the user and the browser.

“The browser provides you with the tools to make sure you’re safe,” Hanson said.

The browser also features tabbed browsing, which allows the user to open multiple windows within the same session and conserve space on the taskbar. Alex Spektor, senior in engineering, said this is one of his favorite Opera features. He said he favors Opera over IE and Mozilla Firefox – another popular alternative to IE.

“(Opera) is really awesome,” Spektor said. “It’s really fast, it loads pages quickly. I think it’s my favorite.”

But Spektor also said that while Opera is better, it cannot replace IE because many pages are specifically designed with IE and do not follow the same standards as Opera. Opera, like most web browsers, follows the w3c standards for web page design but IE does not, Hanson said.

Hanson said Opera is not trying to replace IE.

“You can use them side-by-side. We recommend that,” Hanson said. “Opera is a tool for the internet.”