April 2020 • Macworld 91networks, it’s not necessarily a great tool for, say,
watching Netflix selections from other countries.
That’s not the only trick up Opera’s sleeve, though.
It can pop out videos from web pages, has a built-in
ad blocker, and there are integrated messaging
clients that can connect to Facebook Messenger,
VKontakte and WhatsApp. There’s a nice battery
saver feature that reduces background tab activity
and pauses some plug-ins and animations, too.
Opera has a respectable list of extensions, but
being based on Chromium, many of the Chrome
extensions work just fine, too.
If you want to sync bookmarks and tabs with your
iPhone or iPad, there’s Opera Touch, which like all iOS
browsers, uses Apple’s own WebKit rendering engine.
It has a built-in ad blocker like the desktop app, but
no longer includes a free VPN.
- Edge
After years of going its own way, Microsoft switched
its Edge browser to the Chromium engine and joined
the open-source consortium that develops it. Along
with the change comes a version for Mac. There
aren’t a lot of unique features, but not everybody
needs that. One of Edge’s best features is its tracking
prevention, which has three settings: Basic, Balanced
and Strict. It’s nice to see an approach that isn’t just
all-or-nothing. The web page ‘collections’ feature is
perhaps its most unique, and makes it easier to use
web content in Microsoft Office documents.
The new Edge works with most Chrome
extensions, which is a big step up from the old Edge