Faster browsing in Opera 9

Opera seems to be the fastest browser available. Yet, you can tweak it to make it even faster. Following are two simple tips to get your Opera fetch your pages faster for you.

• Disable the built-in fraud protection feature
• Decrease page loading time by removing the redraw delay.

Disable the built-in fraud protection feature

Each time you enter a URL in Opera, it goes to sitecheck.opera.com to check if the site is listed in the known list of fraud or phishing sites on the Internet. However, this check delays the page load by 3-5 seconds. To see this, type in an address in Opera and hit Enter. Watch Opera first going to sitecheck.opera.com to verify the site, on the status bar (You might need the status bar enabled to see this!). Unless you are the kind who surfs unfamiliar territories everyday, you can turn this option off safely without worries.

The good thing is that even with the fraud protection turned off, you can still verify whether a site is fraudulent by clicking the question mark button (?) at the right side of the address bar. I feel this is a much better option for most of us.

If you are ready for that extra 3-4 second advantage on each site load, follow these steps:

• Goto Tools > Preferences in Opera
• Click the Advanced tab
• Select Security in the list on the left
• On the right side, make sure you have unchecked the box that says Enable Fraud Protection.
• Click OK to save your setting

That’s it, you just saved a few seconds on each page load.

Removing the redraw delay

One of my favorite features in Opera is its ability to render pages as it gets them. Most of the time, I don’t need the page to be loaded completely to see what I need or to click where I want to go. But by default, this feature is turned off and Opera waits around a second or two before rendering the page. You have to manually turn this on to get this extra boost. Follow these steps to remove the delay.

• Goto Tools > Preferences
• Click the Advanced tab
• Select Browsing in the list on the left (the second item)
• In the list that says (the first item on the right) Loading, select Redraw Instantly.
• Click OK to save your setting

Opera will load pages at blazing speed after you remove this delay.