10 must-see Opera Widgets

Firefox has its extensions, Internet Explorer its plugins and Opera has Widgets. They basically mean the same: addons for your browser of choice that add functionality to it. I don't think that Opera deserves to take the third place in the ongoing browser war, it's fast and resource friendly and many users who rely on Firefox or Internet Explorer should at least take a look at it and evaluate it for themselves.

They may be surprised about Opera after all.Widgets for Opera come in all colors and shapes and you can compare them pretty much to the excellent list of extensions that are available for Firefox.

The major difference is how they add the functionality. Widgets for Opera usually open in their own window (like a mini sized popup) and one can opt to have the widget always on top.

This means that they stay on top even if Opera is minimized. I actually prefer to browse the Opera website for Widgets because it looks much cleaner and professional than the one for Firefox. Not a fan of the windows marketplace at all. All widgets are free to download which is another similarity that Opera and Firefox share. Enough of the babbling, here is the list of 10 must-see Opera Widgets.

1. Gmail Checker - displays a very small icon with the amount of mails currently unread in your inbox. Can be moved around any way you like.
2. Image Grep - nice widget that makes it possible to search flickr, google and yahoo for tags and keywords specified. Displays the results neatly in its windows. F5 refreshes the results, a double-click loads the image in Opera.
3. Mini Del.icio.us - this one is fantastic. It ask for a del.icio.us username at first start and offers a quick and easy way to load any bookmark of that user.
4. gCalendar - read only Calendar that pulls data from Google Calendar. Great for the quick overview.
5. Bug Me Not  - Users submit general passwords to the Bug me not database and everyone else may use those passwords to visit the website and read content that is for members only. Just enter a url and the widget searches the bug me not database and displays the results.
6. Pandora Radio - displays the Pandora radio in the widget window. Easy and fast access to your radio stations.
7. Digg Frontpage - displays the frontpage news of digg.com
8. Fark Frontpage - similar widget that displays news of fark.com
9. Bittorent - searches many torrent search engines, displays result in the widget.

Update: Opera announced that it will discontinue Widgets in upcoming versions of the browser to concentrate on the browser's new extension engine instead.