Opera Launcher

Opera Launcher is a lightweight widget developed for the Yahoo! Widget Engine, that provides a shortcut to the Opera web browser via a dock icon. It is easy to install and set up, even by users with little or no experience in software apps.

The interface of the application is represented by a small, square frame that bears the Opera logo. Unfortunately, you cannot undock it from the sidebar and move it to any position on the screen via the mouse cursor.

Clicking this icon brings up a web page in Opera. In case you have installed the web browser to a custom location, then you can access the Settings panel to modify the default file path.

Unfortunately, Opera Launcher does not integrate any configuration options of its own. Thanks to the default settings supplied by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, you can make the frame stay on top of other windows, ignore mouse events and prevent dragging. Plus, you can set its opacity level to a preset value, ranging from 20% to 100%.

The compact widget is not a concern to the computer's performance, since Opera Launcher requires a very small quantity of system memory and CPU. Its response time is very good and it performed well throughout our evaluation, without causing any problems to the operating system, such as hanging, crashing or popping up error notifications.

The Yahoo! Widget Engine project has been discontinued, thus the widget shall not be receiving any future updates. Nevertheless, Opera Launcher comes up with the simplest possible way of launching a webpage in Opera.