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http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web-standards-cur/

Funny... I was just about to submit this to the Firehose. (PR-Speak Warning; skip to this if need be.)

The above links are to Opera's web standards curriculum.

Not really sure this is relevant. Even though, what exactly is included within 'web development' is open to debate, when you're talking about the dizzying rate of change and new technologies I don't think you're referring XHTML/CSS and the basics of information architecture (whatever that is).

Sure there are advances and changes in those basic technologies but it's fairly slow due to reliance on browser support and standards organizations.

Funny... I was just about to submit this to the Firehose. (PR-Speak Warning; skip to this if need be.)

The above links are to Opera's web standards curriculum.

Not really sure this is relevant. Even though, what exactly is included within 'web development' is open to debate, when you're talking about the dizzying rate of change and new technologies I don't think you're referring XHTML/CSS and the basics of information architecture (whatever that is).

Sure there are advances and changes in those basic technologies but it's fairly slow due to reliance on browser support and standards organizations.

Funny... I was just about to submit this to the Firehose. (PR-Speak Warning; skip to this if need be.)

Funny... I was just about to submit this to the Firehose. (PR-Speak Warning; skip to this if need be.)

Hell, Opera released 9.51 RC1 (now on RC2) just a few days after 9.5...

Already to RC3 today, according to http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/2286880

I hope to see the html 5 video support added for Fx3.1

You're almost certainly going to get it, with Ogg Theora support at the very least (a DirectShow backend for Windows, QuickTime backend for Mac OS X, and GStreamer backend for Linux are also in the works). But the real question that no one seems to be asking is, where is HTML 5 audio support? It's just as much a part of the specification, and Ogg Vorbis is well-known enough that corporate entities aren't so worried about patents. I've seen some work on it recently, but I'm not sure it's mature enough to make the deadline. HTML 5 audio and video support in Firefox 3.1 would be a dream though. Safari already has at least some support for both, and Opera has partial support for audio with video surely not far off. Internet Explorer is obviously going to take a long time to catch up, but I guess we can't have everything...

For a while, Opera was giving away their browser for Wii users. Now you have to pay if you want to access the Internet using your Wii, and Opera is your only choice. There's been some talk about Firefox on the Wii but, as far as I can tell, that's all it is: talk.

You realize that Nintendo and Opera have always been perfectly up front and clear about their intentions with this regard, right? They had announced that Opera for the Wii would be free for only a limited time before it was even released.

Since I downloaded Firefox 4 last week. Apparently it is a special non-bloated version, too.

Opera is adware.

You can pay for it and get a version without the ads. And I hear Opera 7 will have a Bork edition!

What you have been waiting for

Sure thing!

In Firefox, go to http://link.opera.com/

Here's the link to this feature: http://link.opera.com/

Why not https?

Opera Link is further described here: http://www.opera.com/products/link/ (sync between desktop versions, cell phone versions and online on the my opera community) </commercial>

the newly released Opera 9.5 has introduced a sync'ing capability.

The skin thing is easy enough (just install Emil and that's solved), but I don't see what's different about the "sidebar" that you're talking about. I assume you're talking about the panel, but the only thing I see different at all is that there seems to be a bug with regard to button sizes. Is there something else you're talking about?

You are aware that Opera hasn't had advertisements in the UI since 2005, right?

Microsoft and Opera Software ASA aren't really friends :-)

Actually: is Microsoft friends with anybody?

In other news, Opera 9.5, the other best browser, released today.

I'm a former Opera user, but the thing is that I feel Firefox 3's new Javascript speed enhancements and memory fixes making it so fast (and with the scrolling plugin YASS giving it the final touch of smooth "speed scrolling"), that I can't really switch back at this point. I did with Firefox 2 due to the memory issues, but I doubt I will again until perhaps Opera 10 or something is released.

Hmm.. it's certainly not Opera that's holding things back. Initially, it was because Adobe had not released anything later than Flash 7 for embedded devices so neither Nintendo nor Opera could do anything about it. (Read this - Opera would have if they could.

Judging by the comments on that blog now, though, with Adobe's release of "Flash Lite version 3" it looks like it's only Nintendo to blame now.

I'm waiting for Canvas3D to stabilize. Currently there is an Opera build http://my.opera.com/timjoh/blog/2007/11/13/taking-the-canvas-to-another-dimension for Windows and Mozilla has an extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7171 Google should better invest more on that Mozilla Canvas3D extension.

Like this?

Hehe, Opera fans are the Browser War equivalent of "Frist P0st!". Not really adding anything, just making sure everyone knows: We had that feature first! No, look at us! Over here!

If Opera has so many great features so far ahead of everyone else, why is its usage still somewhere around 1% on a good day? If Opera can figure that out, maybe they'd get somewhere.

Well, it's rather hard to invent something second.

To stay on topic though the suggestions for URL completion take ages to appear in Opera, at least on my system, while FF3 is blazing fast in that regard. Rendering time, Opera still rules of course.

And something Opera invented first! (Among other things like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures in a browser, a zoom feature that also resizes images, etc, etc.). And Opera 9.50 even searches the contents of pages you have visited for more WIN.

Can't you buy/use real Opera Mobile for it?
http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/

Even its 2 years old (9.5 soon) version 8.65 works ages ahead of built in Webkit Nokia thing.

Also keep in mind that "E" series are actually Enterprise/Business oriented. Expect built in VPN or PBX from them but not very good multimedia. "N" series are the lifestyle friendly stuff.

Nokia music player isn't great but unlike iPhone, you got lots of options. Closed source, open source, commercial or freeware.

Missed which boat?

http://www.opera.com/b2b/

Try to accomplish same thing with thousands of amateurs not caring about real life implementing thousands of lines a day.

Opera is _the standard_ on mobile devices. You know the trend everything moving to non personal computers? Where is Mozilla Symbian S60 version? Where is mini Mozilla runs on a server serving potentially to near billion J2ME powered handsets? Where is Mozilla Win CE? Why Nokia spares millions to their number 1 competitors HTML rendering Webkit? How can Opera sell 2 years old code to Symbian S60 users? How can people bug them 24/7 about the upcoming 9.5 near begging "Give us an Alpha, we will pay for it"

Gnome, KDE, the actual Qt (trolltech) are moving to webkit. Why? Ask them.

Remember Mozilla could fit to a single 1.44 floppy? Who missed the boat I really wonder.

Opera hasn't done that in years. Actually almost three years.

Er, what? Opera provides binaries for x86, x86_64 (in the most recent beta build only), PowerPC and SPARC, and all of the above come in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. You can explore the relevant parts of their FTP site for yourself if you want to check.

Er, what? Opera provides binaries for x86, x86_64 (in the most recent beta build only), PowerPC and SPARC, and all of the above come in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. You can explore the relevant parts of their FTP site for yourself if you want to check.

Opera sidesteps the problem of QAing their Vietnamese language pack by not having one:

http://www.opera.com/download/languagefiles/

(I'm not trying to slam Opera here)

Certainly with open source you need to understand who is providing what, but the open source part isn't the problem, the who is the problem, just like with anything else.

The Opera Browser is closed source, yet it kicks Firefox's ass and has been the most innovative browser in existence this past decade.

It is leaner (small installation size), meaner (better resource management - try opening 200 browser tabs in firefox I dare you! I've done it in Opera), and faster (Faster page loading times, etc) than all the other browsers out there right now.

If they say KDE copied OS X because it supports OS X Widgets, you can tell them about this page:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-widgets-specification-1-0/#acknowledgments

"The specification for the widget object builds on Apple's [Dashboard] reference."

IMHO if everyone agrees on one specification, doesn't re-invent their own standard, Widgets _will be_ huge. They aren't huge because of anarchy yet.

I can tell what people did copy. Xerox. Of course, in MS case, it was like copy of copy so it sucked.

It would be impossible to make a working website by being totally loyal to the markup rules.

It's called GNAA last measure and is a rather unfunny troll package.
Avoid it by not clicking any links that point to anything hosted on on.nimp.org, notlong.org or similar. Be aware of redirection services like Yahoo's (rds.yahoo.com stands for re-direction service) or tinyurl.com.
Also, if your browser allows endless alert() loops, you might want to switch to a sensible alternative that let's you halt all javascript from an alert() dialog box.

I had a nice long reply almost ready, but Firefox crashed before I could submit it.

I have a solution for you.

The USPS holds a statutory monopoly on non-urgent First Class Mail, outbound U.S. international letters as well [as] the exclusive right to put mail in private mailboxes, as described in the Private Express Statutes

Hmmm... that is interesting. I knew about the mailbox (as I alluded to earlier), but not about the anti-competitive statues. Lately, people on slashdot have been correcting my facts with information as opposed to disagreeing with assertions. I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate it.

I do understand their point: that by making extra money via their monopoly can be sunk into equitable distribution. It's certainly a different arguement than what I thought it was.

I'm just going to say that I believe that (a) an unfettered free market[1] tends toward the optimum possible allocation of resources[2]; and (b) the unfettered free market is, more importantly, the only system which does not itself depend on the presence of aggression[3] to function. For whatever reasons you probably disagree with (a) and don't care about (b), so really the gulf between our basic principles is much too great for there to be any purpose in debating our respective conclusions at such a high level.

I think you mischaracterize our disagreement. I think some utilities, including telecommunications, should be available at a reasonable cost to every citizen, at some level. So, the efficacy is sort of irrelevent.

So, I don't particularly care about efficency in that vein. Conversly, what you believe I don't care about, freedom from aggression (or rather coersion), is very important to me. While I do not claim that other systems are free of coersion, I'll claim that free market theorists fail to recognize several types of coersion that applies to the free market.

Namely, you leave out the coercive effects:

1. Soceital pressures - society exerts considerable supermarket pressure on people to pursue certain courses of action
2. Social/Peer pressure
3. Inertia - people tend to keep the patterns. This coercive effect is entirely psycological.
4. Intelligence - brainpower is a limited commodity, especially for some people. However, people are can devote far more brainpower to the isolated case when they are selling something, to the many times they are buying something.
5. Information - much like brainpower, there are huge costs to finding out enough to make decisions. (Yes, economists account for propreitary information, but that's all.)
6. The limited amount of capital/social connections/other assets, and their concentration. This is especially applicable to start-up costs.
7. Lastly, the coercive power of laws that favor incumbents. As a very important sidenote, the morality of not using coercive asset redistribution is predicated on the notion that the assets are legitimitely owned. Once one decides that not the entirety of the asset owned is legitamite, then it becomes trivial to say that taxation to bring it more in line is moral.

8. Sorry if I'm getting incoherent, but I've had quite a bit to drink since I started typing this post...

   to the A truly unfettered free market between infinitely powerful, dispassionate and well-informed agents would lead to an optimum allocation of resources (or at least a local maximum.) However, free market theorists tend to discount the cost of obtaining and processing information (with the exception of obtaining proprietary information). They also fail to recognize certain types of aggression.

   I disagree with your second point, not by claiming that other systems are free of aggression, but that your definition is far too narrow.

Or... fix your browser.

The Opera build is available at http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/03/28/public-acid3-build I agree, though, the Acid-3 stuff won't be in a stable release of either browser for quite a while.

Webkit does 100? That's nothing. The newest Opera beta does 106/106!

Why wait for FF4? Use Opera now. Seriously.

Since 9.5, Opera Link gives you automatically synchronized bookmarks, history and more. FF4 Awesome Bar? Have you seen the 9.5 smart location bar with full text history search? And the bookmark nicknames?

I switched to 9.5 for these great features. I still have to get used to the mail thing though (now I use Thunderbird) but Opera Mail detects mailing list headers automatically and keeps your inbox clutter-free with POP and IMAP support.

IMHO FF is just too slow...

Why wait for FF4? Use Opera now. Seriously.

Since 9.5, Opera Link gives you automatically synchronized bookmarks, history and more. FF4 Awesome Bar? Have you seen the 9.5 smart location bar with full text history search? And the bookmark nicknames?

I switched to 9.5 for these great features. I still have to get used to the mail thing though (now I use Thunderbird) but Opera Mail detects mailing list headers automatically and keeps your inbox clutter-free with POP and IMAP support.

IMHO FF is just too slow...

"NO activeX"

Check.

"NO plug-ins, period. Once you introduce a 3rd party software entry point, it's spoiled"

Check.

"No giving out referrer info unless you say so"

Can be enabled/disabled overall and overidden on a site-by-site basis.

"strict cookie control"

Can be enabled/disabled overall, set to ask you before accepting cookies, set to reset cookies back to original state when the browser exits, and to not accept 3rd party cookies. You can also view all cookies with their current values, change their values, delete them, etc. All of this can also be overridden on a site-by-site basis.

"mike's ad blocking hosts file built in, and configurable(or something similar)"

Content blocker to block whatever you want from wherever you want supporting wildcards? You'd have to add this Mike guys stuff on your own.

"CANCELABLE javascript. Wha? Any time you get a javascript prompt, you'll have OK, cancel, and "stop all javascript right fucking now"."

Every javascript prompt includes a "Stop executing scripts on this page" checkbox that you can check then hit OK to escape from endless loops, etc. It also asks you if a Javascript is taking up a lot of CPU/hanging up the GUI if you want to kill it.

"Javscript turn off URL bars, resizing of windows? I don't think so. Leave that to the user."

You have the following options which you can either enable or disable:
- Allow resizing of windows
- Allow moving of windows
- Allow raising of windows
- Allow lowering of windows
- Allow changing of status field
- Allow script to receive right clicks
- Allow script to hide address bar

It also has searching from the address bar ("g search terms" to search google, for example), with the ability to set up custom search providers. True MDI tabs. Built in mouse gestures. Thumbnail preview of tabs. Standards compliant (CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 basic). Built in (and effective) pop-up blocker. The ability to quickly enable or disable a host of annoyances with two keypresses (GIF animation, sound, Java, plug-ins (Flash), javscript, cookies, sending of referrer). It has lots of other features that greatly simplify browsing and lots of options that let you fit the browser to how YOU like it (such as being able to set it to open new tabs next to the current one, and to cycle them in recently used order instead of just always opening them at the end and always moving to the next tab on Ctrl+Tab).

The browser you're looking for is Opera.

Seriously, who in their right mind wants their intertube browser to be their OS shell? Talk about drive-by downloads. I be "driving by" this one that's for sure.