Friday, May 12, 2006

Obook Plugin for Opera

These days, everyone is talking about Internet Explorer or Firefox and forgotten about other web browsers. The Opera web browser, developed by Opera Inc., is an amazing alternative to Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, since it is not popular, few companies have spent the time developing software for the browser. There is no Yahoo! or Google toolbar for Opera. In addition, there are no extensions like those used in Firefox. However, there are some plugins that are being developed and one really stands out. I am talking about the Obook plugin developed by Dmitry Antonyuk, an Opera enthusiast. People refer to it as the scrapbook extension – found in Firefox - for Opera. I think of it as more like the slogger extension than the scrapbook extension. With the plugin, users can capture the webpage and store it on their hard drives for offline viewing. The Obook plugin supports Opera 8+, including version 9 beta.

Obook allows users to create folders and subfolders in order to categorize the webpages. Currently, Obook is still in beta. Obook 1.0 beta 5 is the most recent release. It still has some bugs but for the most part it is functional. Obook creates a new panel in Opera. The saved webpages appear in the panels. In order to add a webpage, click on the Obook icon. During installation, users can choose to add the icon to the right click context menu, address bar, menu bar, file menu or any combination. Folders are easy to create, just click on the “create new folder” icon which appears in the panel. Users can drag and drop webpages to any folder or subfolder.

Despite its beta flaws, it is a great tool for collecting information from the web and viewing them offline. Two thumbs up for Obook.


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