I must admit, I had no idea that Opera was so instrumental in so many browser innovations that I had either attributed to Netscape/Mozilla. Yet from this article, I found that there are claims of Opera being first on a number of fronts. Most surprisingly, again according to the article, Opera was first to provide tabbed browsing!

Another shock for me was the discovery of Opera being the first to block pop-up ads! I mean I knew it was among the first, but honestly, I thought it was Netscape or Mozilla proper way back when that led the way here. Guess I was wrong there, too.

The last thing that totally caught me off guard though was learning that Opera was the first browser to allow the user to easily erase their private browser data. Honestly, I had not really ever thought much about this. But come to think of it, the dates do sound about right based on what is being described in the above linked piece.

So why then is Opera still lagging so far behind Firefox? I mean clearly, it was doing stuff way before that browser and yet it only has a portion of the market share. Any thoughts as to why? Hit the comments, let’s hear some of their theories.

[awsbullet:opera+browser]