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Really?

I prefer whichever is the best (usually the most expensive). I've always been like that. Sometimes it's also the most popular, and sometimes it isn't, but as long as I'm happy I don't really mind.

I got a C64 (instead of a Spectrum), an Amiga (instead of an ST), a Betamax (instead of VHS), a widescreen TV (instead of a 3:4 one), surround sound (instead of stereo), Opera web browser (instead of IE), etc.

In the end, if the cheaper option doesn't do what you want, then you have wasted your money. If you get the best and pay a bit more, you have something that has given you more value for money. That's the way I see it anyway.

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Help me get a free Opera licence. Click here. It just takes you to their site - nothing nasty. Close the page after that.

Does the average person really need more than a 3 or 4MP camera anyway? I have a 3MP camera and I almost never have it on the maximum size setting.

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Do a good deed for today - Click here to help me get a free Opera licence

Here in England we don't normally have anything that we can't forward through. The worst one is my most recent DVD - Alien versus Predator. It shows a load of crap about not copying the disc and piracy etc, then starts showing film trailers! I've never been so annoyed at a DVD as I am when I put that in.

Paul.

Do a good deed for today - Click here to help me get a free Opera licence.

Ohh yeah. You can allllllmost see my house if you squint.

Maybe in 6 months we'll have the fully zoomed in version. Google are doing a good job I think.

Paul.
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Give Opera a try. Go on. You know you want to.

I should also add that the My Opera forums are a better place to ask questions. The people there really know their stuff and questions are usually answered within minutes.

If you visit http://www.opera.com/ct-magazin/ and enter the code OJD000MN you can get a free license for Opera 7.54. My understanding is that 8.0 is considered an upgrade to 7.54 and is thus free, but I have not verified that.

You will have to wait until the rush to download 8.0 dies down, however, as they are temporarily redirecting all pages.

I can't download 8 (servers are too slow) but I can tell you that not using the features you don't like is easier said than done.

Some people like all of Opera's features, but to me, they just get in the way. The menus in Firefox are organised and small enough for me to use them effectively; in Opera, I always had to scan the menus looking for the option I wanted. See this and this as examples.

As another example, the preferences dialog box (see here. Opera, with all its options and settings, has 21 different tabs for them, compared to Firefox's five. A benefit of Firefox's extension system is that I know where all the preferences are, instead of having to hunt for them. Also, the ones hardly anyone should have to change are in about:config in Firefox.

I know everyone has their own opinion and all that, but sometimes it is not as easy as you'd think to navigate such a featureful program, and I wanted to point that out. That, and Firefox is working for me fine right now (and gestures on a touchpad = tricky), so I have no reason to use Opera.

Oh, and if your Adblock settings block things like that, they're too lenient. Try blocking ad companies, such as *googlesyndication* or *ad.doubleclick* for better results.

"still a bit weak on the JS side"

"and no XML parser"

gmail now worksin opera 8.

The proper way to report bugs in Opera is not via the Opera usenet groups.

Try the bug report wizard

Opera does not support XSLT and XSL-FO intentionally, as you can read here. I suppose it also has to do with Opera's CTO inventing CSS, or having much to do with the development of CSS.

As for an Opera vs. Firefox showdown, the only thing 7.54 didn't have over Firefox was stability on OS X, and a web developer toolbar. It should be noted that Opera has pioneered much of the features that make out-of-the-box Firefox so great, and is an industry leader in terms of CSS support, media queries, etc. OperaShow makes things like Powerpoint unnecessary for the CSS designer.

The reason Opera has so little market share, in my opinion, is that Opera does not have the evangelical fanbase that Firefox has, and Opera also has no intention of modelling itself after IE, which Firefox does intentionally. We have to remember that the inherent failure of capitalism is marketting--which makes less-worthy products more popular to the public.

http://people.opera.com/howcome/1999/foch.html

"Opera would be the best browser out there if it didn't have java/javascript issues."

If you want the real truth behind Opera's so-called "JavaScript issues", read this:

http://my.opera.com/haavard/journal/36

A dude in a cape!!

They just got another customer

Here is an easier way to get Opera 8 for free (legally)....

Go here and enter code OJD000MN

(I just checked and the site is slow so it may be slashdotted, but just try back later - I just tried it and it works)

You have to use a real email address because they will send you a registration code to use for Opera 8. It will register it as the full ad-free version. Enjoy!

Opera's press release. Google cache.

Not a good image for the product, if he needs hitchhiking.

(This is a partial repost from my own blog entry on Opera 8

Opera is giving away free licenses to people who help spread Opera. That's right, you can get a free license for an ad-free Opera, provided you do the following:

1. Register an account at the My Opera Community
2. Create an affiliate link on your blog or web site. Your link should be to http://my.opera.com/username/affiliate/ (substitute username for your My Opera username, replacing any spaces in your username with +). You can use either a text link, or one of the supplied banners.
3. Get fifty people to download Opera[1]

[1] It's actually getting them to visit my.opera.com, but: People should really, really try Opera 8. It's quite brilliant, and in many ways sets the standard for what a web browser should and should not do.

(This is a partial repost from my own blog entry on Opera 8

Opera is giving away free licenses to people who help spread Opera. That's right, you can get a free license for an ad-free Opera, provided you do the following:

1. Register an account at the My Opera Community
2. Create an affiliate link on your blog or web site. Your link should be to http://my.opera.com/username/affiliate/ (substitute username for your My Opera username, replacing any spaces in your username with +). You can use either a text link, or one of the supplied banners.
3. Get fifty people to download Opera[1]

[1] It's actually getting them to visit my.opera.com, but: People should really, really try Opera 8. It's quite brilliant, and in many ways sets the standard for what a web browser should and should not do.

http://my.opera.com/community/gfx/banners/

You get a free license just by linking to Opera.

Hmm, maybe a link to the Opera Homepage would be handy, instead of just a forum post?

Go here: Opera

Enter your name/email and use "OJD000MN" as Code.

Download Opera 8.03 Beta, install.

Wait for the email from Opera (it wont be in english, but you can make out the Registration Key for Windows/Linux/OSX)

Click on "Help -> Register". Enter Registration Key.

You have a Free Registered Version of Opera!

The linky got me a proxy error, so here are some others.

Product page with download links etc.

The Register

The Google

...and what is up with OperaMan?

The linky got me a proxy error, so here are some others.

Product page with download links etc.

The Register

The Google

...and what is up with OperaMan?

Here are the links to the Opera web site and downloads.

Here are the links to the Opera web site and downloads.

screen shots here

I actually agree with this Langa character, albeit out of context: There are no panaceas!.

He is correct, but I'm not sure who it is that is proffering FireFox as a cure to all your web browsing issues. (Now a real panacea would be useful. ;-)

Seriously, I think the author falls short of his stated intention of comparing MS IE and FF.

One thing he misses is that when he brings in the "large number" stuff (which he brings up) is that the prevalence of IE means that each of the vulnerabilities in the more popular browser (regardless of which that may be) are available on more machines than for the less "popular" one. As IE is available on (basically) every Windows desktop, a single vuln in IE is multiplied by that large number. (Thanks to MS incorporating an application into the operating system libraries.) [And no, I'm advocating comparing the raw number of vulnerabilities out there as a measure of the comparitive security of one browser over the others.]

Oh yes, I don't see the $#!+ on Yahoo! either, thanks to proxomitron.

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/accelerator/

Needs the Opera browser to work, it seems.

I had a chance to try it out before it was slashdotted, and if further developed, it can be an alternative to the Opera mobile proxy which delivers smaller pages for mobile phones to reduce gprs costs.

IBM's big enough to deal with both and it seems that IBM and Opera still have a healthy relationship.
Their co-operation on xhtml+voice stuff seems interesting. The voice control in the latest Opera beta for Windows is pretty cool. It might not replace the good old mouse and keys for most of us anytime soon but I'm sure there are circumstances where it can be a real boon.

IBM's big enough to deal with both and it seems that IBM and Opera still have a healthy relationship.
Their co-operation on xhtml+voice stuff seems interesting. The voice control in the latest Opera beta for Windows is pretty cool. It might not replace the good old mouse and keys for most of us anytime soon but I'm sure there are circumstances where it can be a real boon.

Yup, and that's the reason for Quirks Mode. Old pages either have no doctype, or a doctype from a very old spec, so this triggers browsers' backwards-compatibility mode. Slap a new doctype atop your pages, and then yell "More features!", "Less bugs!" back and forth at yourself.

• Microsoft Corporation
• Mozilla Foundation
• Opera Software

The Opera 8 Beta I use has a nice turn plugins on/off button which I put next the turn images on/off button. Admitedly these are global rather than per site, but in most cases flash is used in adverts so it doesn't trouble me having plugins turned off all the time.

the whole delete your cookies thing is silly. i run several web sites that use cookies to track logins, not for me to track them but for the site to track who is logged in. the browser sends the cookie to the site, and if the cookie's id matches the one stored in the database, the user is trusted. this is a fairly good way of identifying logins and if you delete your cookie you will simply be logged out. most sites use cookies this way and if you have a good browser, you can see what info is stored there anyway. i suggest opera because it has a good cookie manager that also integrates well with its password manager. if those numbers are correct, then 58% of internet users have been misled by some media outlet into believing that browser cookies are evil. that's not to say that some aren't used for marketing purposes, but really, if you think a site is trying to track all that info then find a better site. don't just randomly delete cookies, some web administrator put them there for a reason, and it's probably to help you use their site.

They have removed it. Here it is (rescued from Google Cache)

P2P Revolution: Opera Announces Platform-Independent Real-Time Speech Technology

Oslo, Norway - April 1, 2005

Opera Software's R&D department today announced the discovery of a new technology dubbed 'Opera SoundWave' - a platform-independent speech solution for short- and medium-range interpersonal communication. Based on open standards, Opera's patent-pending P2P speech technology uses analogue signals carried through open air, enabling users to communicate in real- time without the use of computers or mobile phones.

Opera is spearheading the development to let people communicate without using a keyboard, and the new SoundWave technology was accidently discovered during an R&D study to speech-enable Opera's e-mail client. One of Opera's desktop developers needed to find an alternative way to relay a message to his colleague at a time when the e-mail server was down, and was startled to notice that his verbal outcry was intercepted and understood immediately.

"As most people, I have used e-mail as my primary means of communication for many years and accepted that it is not always 100 percent effective," says Trond Werner Hansen, Opera desktop developer and inventor of SoundWave, via a Technical Preview of the new technology. "Opera SoundWave has opened up a whole new world for me, enabling me to get things done faster and more efficiently than before - and it is remarkably easy to use."

More than an efficient way to communicate without keyboard input, Opera's new P2P speech technology solves the problem of frequent misunderstandings in non-contextual communication. Opera researchers realized this technology can incorporate dynamic emoticons far more advanced than those typically used in e-mails and instant messaging. Platform-independent, the P2P real-time speech technology from Opera seamlessly integrates with mass-market services like dating and shopping.

Opera Software admits the speech technology is at an early stage and that there are still problems that need to be solved. There may still be some compatibility issues, especially when roaming in foreign countries. Furthermore, the technology does not seem to work well over distances of more than 100 feet, and several issues related to security and privacy remain to be fixed.

"We have yet to find a good way to deal with spamming and phishing-attacks," writes Hakon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software, in an e- mail. "This may not be a problem in closed environments, such as walled gardens, but it can become a challenge on more crowded networks where you may be exposed to messages that are not meant for you, or you may have limited or no means of determining the identity of the sender."

"Opera's vision is to provide the best user experience, and the use of real-time speech technology is the natural step in the evolution of efficient interpersonal communication," writes Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "Our research shows that there is a great need for this kind of technology, and we expect the market potential to be significant."

Availability
A Technical Preview of Opera SoundWave is available at [here]

We're working on it...be patient. ;-)

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/02/21/

You obviously didn't try the demo:

Soundwave Demo

Looks fine to me. Use a decent browser.

Opera now includes SVG in it's latest beta (SVG 1.1 Tiny).

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/03/16/

Maybe that might kick Mozilla along a bit with SVG support :)

What we need is for a high-traffic site (ex. Google, Ebay, Yahoo, etc) to make it so their page will not load completely in browsers that do not meet standards like these. I'm thinking a page that says "Your browser (Internet Explorer) is not XYZ compliant. Please upgrade to a browser that follows accepted standards, like firefox, opera, etc" with a link that would take you to the page anyway.

I know that this would take a lot of balls on that company's part but action like this is the only thing that Microsoft is going to understand. The first big site to do it would lose some amount of visitors but it would also generate more non-IE users and pressure on MS to follow standards. Eventually MS would wise up and comply as the amount of people switching away from IE becomes too large to ignore. The end result is that either IE will be made compliant or it will lose some of its dominant market share, both good things.

Opera runs on most PC and PDA/mobile OSes, including Windows Mobile. Nokia, however, don't offer any phones running Windows Mobile, so you're right that the Nokia phones the article refers to run Symbian OS.

Daniel Glazman claims his CSS can do the same for Minimo as Opera's SSR for massaging webpages into something that fits in a 160 pixel wide screen.

But Opera does much more than applying some styles. See here for the brochure.

Small Screen Rendering is available from the view menu in any recent version of Opera, including Opera 8b3 (Linux). It's surprisingly nifty, though kinda useless on the desktop.

OTOH, the new "Fit to Window Width" feature is super useful whenever there's a horizontal sidebar or if you want to collapse a frameset into a single page.:)

Small Screen Rendering is available from the view menu in any recent version of Opera, including Opera 8b3 (Linux). It's surprisingly nifty, though kinda useless on the desktop.

OTOH, the new "Fit to Window Width" feature is super useful whenever there's a horizontal sidebar or if you want to collapse a frameset into a single page.:)

It's not a CSS hack at all. Each page can have a different CSS for each different type of media, including screen, handheld, print, and more. It's up to your browser to decide which one to use.

In the case of a mobile Opera browser, it will use your page's handheld CSS, if it exists. If it does not exist, the way page elements are displayed is simply altered to the default. For example, table cells are all displayed in one column.

This is the way HTML is designed and meant to be. Pages should use a semantic structure, with elements such as <h1>, <p>, and so forth, leaving the way it's displayed up to the browser or a CSS file (separate presentation from content). Unfortunately, that's not the way most pages are written today, due to failing standards support on the part of Internet Exploiter and lack of willingness to adopt unfamiliar ways, so there's usually only one optimal presentation: your desktop's browser. For those pages, Opera's SSR simply does the best it can.

Opera comes pre-installed or on a complimentary CD on some phones, including some Nokia models. And that is what this deal is about. You don't need a deal with Nokia for offering a third-party shareware program...

See here for the list of current phones where you can either install Opera, or where it is pre-installed.

it helps when the guy that invented css is also the cto of the company. :)

"We should all realize this is typical Opera behavior: Make broad claims against Microsoft in order to attract attention to itself. Works well in politics and now in browser wars..."

If you are a Microsoft fan, you probably don't know this, but Microsoft does the same thing all the time. It's called marketing. Only Microsoft does it with FUD and lies. Opera does it with well founded criticism of the dominant browser, which fails to deliver on its promises.

If you are a Mozilla fan, you probably don't know this either, but Mozilla, too, does marketing, and even lies about its competitors (see comment about Opera's portability).

Don't pretend that Opera is any worse than anyone else, or that Opera's comments are without merit. Don't pretend that "this is typical Opera behavior", when the fact is that it is typical behavior from just about everyone.

Basically, just stop being a mindless zealot, bashing Opera for nothing.