Opera Browser Review

No, I'm not up to an opera.com" target="_blank" title="Opera web browser">Opera browser review , though Opera is a good browser. While some people contemplate their navels, I'm contemplating widgets. Tweaking my home page, web surfing, or enhancing my profile at 
MySpace or Eons, I often want a new 
tool, or something cool to share. Widgets fit the bill.

Ages ago, a James Garner-Lee Remmick movie, 
Wheeler Dealers, featured a product called, widgets. A Texas tycoon set out to prove he could sell anything to anyone. He 
invented a product that didn't exist, called it widget and hoodwinked 
half the free world. That's the first time I remember encountering the word.

Free Opera Web Browser Is One Place to Find Widgets
Today's widget 
is a program snippet that does one task, hopefully very well, and lives in a 
separate html Web page. Widgets are almost always free.

Here's an 
example. I rely on the Google Tool Bar, a plug-in for IE (Internet Explorer) or Firefox. With a free Opera web browser, that tool bar is a 
separate accessory that floats on top of the browser. You can dock it 
(lock it in place) or drag it around with your mouse. Such widgets can be installed at will or deleted at will. They're easier to take or leave than a traditional plug-in is. 
Widgets come as digital or analog-style clocks and TV-listing guides. 
They can be games or puzzles, or play music. They bring you stock reports. There 
are hundreds of widgets that fit browsers, social networking profiles, or 
Web pages, and make cyber life more organized.

I've installed 
widgets on my Google personalized IGoogle page. 
I've set them into my personal Yahoo! home page. On 
my Eons page (look for user mkp), I have a 
fortune cookie widget that provides my visitors, on mouse click, with daily 
words of wisdom. Last week, I found a timer. Remember my column 
about staying healthy by taking frequent computer breaks? This timer does it for me - 
it counts down whatever time I set and alerts me. Took ten seconds to install.

There are even widgets for Apple users - thousands of them, I'm 
told.

Where to Get Widgets
To find widgets, I searched around the page I wanted them for - Google, Yahoo! FaceBook. I found links that connected 
to widget directories with short descriptions and user comments 
on hundreds of widgets. Often, I downloaded the widget, it 
self-installed (one click and done). I could try it 
for a few minutes. Then, a dialog box asked me if I wanted to keep it.

Some cautions. I found it's better to stick to widgets with positive user-comments. Widgets are created by independent programmers, and I've gotten some pretty buggy ones - sometimes 
hard to uninstall. So now, I do a little homework before downloading - hoping 
other users weed out the dreck. I'd stay clear of unknown 
sites for widgetry. As always, caution and prudence 
wins the day. But there are certainly good widgets out there to 
enhance the web experience or just entertain me.