While previous releases of Opera were certainly lacking in a number of major areas when compared to Internet Explorer and Netscape, Opera 5 brings the browser much closer to the two current market leaders. The only core features still missing in Opera 5 relative to the competition (IE5 and Netscape) are built-in support for HTML editing, inline VRML support, Netscape 6's My Sidebar, Internet Explorer's radio bar, and a few of Intenet Explorer's more advanced DHTML technologies.
Overall, Opera excels as an international Web browser and is easily the third best browser on the market. The new ad-supported freeware edition of Opera 5 makes the client even more competitive now that the browser can finally stand on an even price level with the "Big Two". But Opera 5 still has its work cut out for itself if it expects to leapfrog the current two titans of the industry, Netscape and Internet Explorer, anytime in the near future.
Pros: Fast and inexpensive (now free!), advanced multimedia capabilities, Java support
Cons: Lacks a few features relative to the "Big Two," ads present in freeware edition
