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It is also a good thing because more people might discover Opera Show which is a viable alternative to Powerpoint (if you don't use Animations) and uses HTML/CSS (Open Standards) as a format.
More info here: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/operashow/

They make more money from mobile devices, true, but I'd hardly say that the desktop revenues only accounted for "a tiny fraction". From their latest financial statement:

Income from Internet devices was MNOK 15.1 in 3Q04, up from MNOK 9.4 in 2Q03. Income from desktop products was MNOK 9.4, up from MNOK 8.7 last year.

So, the desktop browser still accounts for ~40% of their income (that's the total income from the desktop browser, ad revenue plus licence fees). The whole report can be found here.

Make it easier to disable flash temporarily so I can turn it off on those sites that abuse it.

I like to browse with text size increased. But every time I open a new tab or window, I have to re-increase the text size. So let me set an option so the text size is always 125% or 150% of normal, unless I reduce it. And no, changing font sizes in options does not do the same thing.

When increasing or decreasing text size, my place in the current web page is lost. I have to scroll around to find where I was. Make changing text size preserve my current place on the page.

Remember what tabs I was reading (and my place in those tabs) so if Mozilla crashes or I close it, I can go back to where I was instantly.

Ship with more themes and a few of the more popular extensions already installed.

Add an HTML verifier to Mozilla. Let me choose an option from the menu, and Mozilla will verify the HTML of the page I'm viewing.


Sounds like you might be interested in Opera.

Who can apply for donations?
Schools, primary through secondary (K-12). Web designer schools, organizations, or companies, as well as Internet cafes. Organizations for the physically and mentally challenged.

Who can apply for donations?
Schools, primary through secondary (K-12). Web designer schools, organizations, or companies, as well as Internet cafes. Organizations for the physically and mentally challenged.

It's another sign of Opera's desktop browser shifting from being a flagship product to being a testbed for the mobile version. All the features that make the mobile version a great embedded browser were first trialled in the desktop version, from small screen rendering mode to smooth image zooming.

As another example, the Opera 8.0 Beta includes voice command and will read out sections of text for you - another technology that will be of much more use on a handheld device than in a desktop browser.

Music - XMMS (WinAMP on Windows), is there even a comparison to Windows Media Player here?

WinAMP ist not FOSS. It's a free (beer) closed source app.
Both are just a joke comparing to iTunes.

Video - MPlayer, it even runs without X Window. Can Windows Media Player run video in MS-DOS?

What kind of argument is this? Who cares about DOS? WMP is OK when you install the missing codecs. (I prefer VLC though)

Web Browser - Mozilla FireFox. Internet Exploder doesn't even compare.

And Opera? Firefox is also my favourite browser, but Opera has many interesting features that you can't find anywhere else. Opera is commercial or free (beer) software, but not FOSS.

File Browsing - Nautilus, Konqueror. They crash 100% less of the time that Windows Explorer crashes.

What are you doing with Explorer? I didn't see it crash the last couple of... er... years.

And no annoyingly built-in Internet Explorer that's available even if I denied access to iexplore.exe (which I do on spyware-infested clients' computers).

How about blocking Explorer.exe and deleting iexplore.exe? (That's what I do when I have do mess with Windows.)

And let's not mention the horrid Mac OS X versions of MS Office.

Yeah, MS Office:mac is sooo bad when compared against GNUmeric and OpenOffice. OK, GNUmeric and OpenOffice only run in an X-Window, don't support drag&drop, looks ugly-as-hell, etc. while MS Office supports all that stuff. Wow, GNUmeric and OpenOffice are soooo superior.....
(BTW: Yes, I know about NeoOffice/J - it's my main Office suite. But NeoOffice is != OpenOffice)
Abiword compares to Wordpad, not Word (or OpenOffice Writer).

Instant Messenger - Well, GAIM may be missing some features of proprietary AOL AIM, but one of those features missing is the spyware.

Trillian? How about that?

Programming - Do I even need to compare the long list of free, open-source and standardized Unix/Linux tools to the not-quite-as-affordable MS Visual Studio??

A lot of developers say that VisualStudio is the best programming environment. Others say it's Xcode. Both aren't FOSS.

PS: No, I'n not bashing FOSS. Most apps I use are FOSS like Firefox, Thunderbird, or Fire Messenger, but theres more closed source software that's better than it's FOSS counterparts than just Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Opera is cool. Trillian is cool. MS Office:mac, Explorer (not IE), or Windows Media Player not so bad either.

Time to try Opera ;-)

Popups? What popups? Get a better browser dude!

A few years ago I bought up some of those Virgin WebPlayers and I-Openers from eBay and other places, and proceeded to hack into them with the instructions provided.

The WebPlayer I'm using in the living room has Windows 95 on it reduced down using LitePC, and has Opera running as a web client. Also installed is Identafone, a piece of software that will display caller-id information on the screen. Add a cheap USB network adapter, plug in the phone line to the modem, and fire up the web browser to bring up a variant of the Block-random script provided by the Gallery distro, and you have a Photo Frame/Caller-ID box that has a small footprint and has no moving parts (no fan or hard drive).

I've also done the same thing with the I-Openers, installing a small 10-Gig laptop drive or so using a custom IMOD2 Kit. They both run very well and you end up with a much more configurable picture frame than a store-bought one for around a third of the cost. Now, I wish I could do something with some type of Linux distro on these guys, and I'm sure that it's possible, but I just haven't had the time after doing these. Ideas anyone? Would a Linux distro run on these boxes and still have enough memory to run a GUI to display photos?

So it does exactly the same thing that Opera M2 has done for years: viewing threads easily, finding spam, organizing mail, etc., except that you have to log on to a JavaScript-laden page to actually do anything.

Gmail is a great webmail service, but it too is nothing new.

"err...that is factually incorrect. The new beta is 17 megs vs. firefox 1.0 at 5 megs.err...that is factually incorrect. The new beta is 17 megs vs. firefox 1.0 at 5 megs."

ow32enen800b1.exe 3 564 KB (that's 3.5 MB, not 17)

"Like what exactly?"

The fact is that Opera is not just a browser, while Firefox is. I stated this in the post you replied to.

Instead of writing a knee-jerk response just because I happen to like Opera more than I like Firefox, how about actually reading and comprehending, and most important of all, don't make statements when you don't actually know what you are talking about.

You claimed that Opera, or its equivalent, was available for free. I showed you, with factually correct information, that you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

"The rest of your post is just statements of opinion so there is no use commenting."

Now, that I happen to prefer Opera's smooth, polished and integrated approach is indeed an opinion. But you cannot ignore the fact that Opera is a unique product.

Actually, I believe that this is a free upgrade for all those with a valid version 7 license.

If the dropdown menu is bugging you, you can make your own button which just switches between author/user mode: Opera button maker.

Just add two actions as Cycle (>), from Select author mode to Select user mode, with the User mode icon, like so: "opera:/button/Select author mode > Select user mode, , , User mode".

You may also like to look at my.opera's toolbar setups section.. and I heartily recommend Minimalist Native in the skins section :)

If the dropdown menu is bugging you, you can make your own button which just switches between author/user mode: Opera button maker.

Just add two actions as Cycle (>), from Select author mode to Select user mode, with the User mode icon, like so: "opera:/button/Select author mode > Select user mode, , , User mode".

You may also like to look at my.opera's toolbar setups section.. and I heartily recommend Minimalist Native in the skins section :)

Here is the changelog that list all the new features.

The only way to block ads is via a third party application which blocks servers/ads via filters, but the space taken up by the ads still blank. In Firefox, the space is removed.

The only way to block ads is via a third party application which blocks servers/ads via filters, but the space taken up by the ads still blank. In Firefox, the space is removed.

As already said, you won't have to pay for Opera 8. Not only that, the License has become less restrictive, so that one license is valid for any number of installations. Which means you can install Opera on any number of computers in your home. See an announcement from an Opera employee

What also needs to be mentioned is that the Licence has changed for paid customers. Quoting:

In fact, we've just given all Opera 7 customers a free upgrade, and added to this, we've changed our license terms so that there is only one license for all desktop platforms, which means that you can install Opera on any number of computers in your own home, regardless of the (desktop) operating system used. Yes, that's right. You can install the registered version of Opera as many times as you like with just a single license.

Linked page says Opera 7.54u1.

Opera 8.00 Beta 1 - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe
Opera 8.00 Beta 1 w/o Java - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe

Linked page says Opera 7.54u1.

Opera 8.00 Beta 1 - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe
Opera 8.00 Beta 1 w/o Java - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe

Programmer.no
ZDNet
News.com.com.com.com
Original Opera press release
Changelog

Programmer.no
ZDNet
News.com.com.com.com
Original Opera press release
Changelog

You remember what a piece of crap Netscape 4 was?

MSIE was a big piece of crap too back then, more so than now. It and Netscape were what turned me on to Opera. The resume-where-you-left-off" feature of Opera combined with MS Windows inability to go more than an hour or two between blue screens kept me from ever looking back. Though fortunately, I've never had been stuck with MS junk on any of my main work computers.

Are you talking about Opera's Fit-to-Window that comes with Opera 7.6? http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/11/23/i ndex.dml

But if you think I'm browsing webpages on that kind of screen your nuts.

I suppose you are not familiar with Opera's Small Screen Reading mode? Or handheld stylesheets? (c:

Yeah, how can he even make a claim like that? Has he seen Opera's source or something? Read more.

First of all, how can he claim what Opera can and cannot be ported to? Also, everything he mentions is done by Opera already. Read more.

In addition to not being the first company to come up with those ideas, Opera as a company is also against software patents.

I personally use Dillo when memory is tight (I've only got 512 MB of RAM). It's got tabs, is very speedy, generally renders fine and small footprint (~400KB). I use FireFox and Konqueror for my primary browsing, but Dillo is quite handy when I have applications compliling or I'm burning a CD.

I recall several months (possibly a couple years) back in Zaurus dev newsgroup a thread about porting Mozilla to the Qtopia/ARM platform and it was determined that it just simply couldn't be done and maintain efficient memory usage. The specs of PDAs have not changed drastically in the lsat 2 years, so I'm eager to find out if some sort of "breakthrough" was accomplished that allowed Mozilla to have a reasonable footprint on low-memory devices. Opera for Qtopia/ARM will be hard to beat. The only thing I miss is tabs, but it does have its own windowing system of sorts that assists in pop-up blocking and keeping track of opened links. It's also worth noting that Konqueror has been ported to Qtopia/ARM as well.

Either way, I'm excited about the prospect of being able to use Mozilla on my Pocket PC or Zaurus (PocketIE is atrocious)

Opera has a proxy service that resizes images and stuff to make web pages on mobile devices faster to download.

When you buy Opera (at least for a Series60 Nokia phone) you get a 90 trial. It is well worth subscribing to.

FireFox, on the other hand, is quite a nice piece of work, though it is not as refined as Opera.

But Mozilla, as I said, is a bloated piece of trash, and before you mod this Troll, read why I think so harshly of this piece of work.

On numerous occasions, I tried to install Mozilla for people. I have been following its development, and each time there was a release of some type or another, I tried it. Unfortunately, the software never quite worked correctly. On many computers, it screwed things up so badly that the entire user account had to be blown off, or worse, the entire computer had to be reinstalled. Not to mention the fact that it is slow, huge, and slow.

I think that such a browser, if installed in some mobile device, will cause that device to meltdown.

D/L Opera (Recently updated.) With opera, you don't have to install anything superfluous, so it would appear more of an accident.

But make sure that your alternate browser it is a recent version of Firefox or Mozilla. They have responded very quickly to security issues, and are being proactive about security, much more so than the the people behind Konqueror or Opera.

...to Opera. The Voice-Feature lets you control the browser easily including zoom-in and -out what is very interesting for those of us that are handicapped.

...to Opera. The Voice-Feature lets you control the browser easily including zoom-in and -out what is very interesting for those of us that are handicapped.

Easily handled with Opera's MSR (Medium Screen Rendering) :-)

It's missing instant full-text indexing like the Opera M2 mailer has. The power you have with 4 years worth of mail instantly searchable/accessible in under a second is life-changing.

Getting rid of folders sounds scary in the beginning, but you have stopped categorizing links after Google arrived too, haven't you? ;)

Opera even had this feature long before GMail, but GMail got all the buzz.

Have a look at the Opera M2 Tutorial if you want to know why this is one of the few non-free products I use.

A few years ago I bought up some of those Virgin WebPlayers and I-Openers from eBay and other places, and proceeded to hack into them with the instructions provided.

The WebPlayer I'm using in the living room has Windows 95 on it reduced down using LitePC, and has Opera running as a web client. Also installed is Identafone, a piece of software that will display caller-id information on the screen. Add a cheap USB network adapter, plug in the phone line to the modem, and fire up the web browser to bring up a variant of the Block-random script provided by the Gallery distro, and you have a Photo Frame/Caller-ID box that has a small footprint and has no moving parts (no fan or hard drive).

I've also done the same thing with the I-Openers, installing a small 10-Gig laptop drive or so using a custom IMOD2 Kit. They both run very well and you end up with a much more configurable picture frame than a store-bought one for around a third of the cost.

Now, I wish I could do something with some type of Linux distro on these guys, and I'm sure that it's possible, but I just haven't had the time after doing these. Ideas anyone? Would a Linux distro run on these boxes and still have enough memory to run a GUI to display photos?

The article (and the FAQ) don't seem to escape the "user controls computer via clicking with a pointing device" mentality. Icons don't need to be large, they don't even need to be present. I'm happily using Opera with just an address and status bar, using mouse gestures and keyboard controls to navigate the interface. Mozilla supports mouse gestures too.

He also ignores the simpler interfaces that are actually very functional. Take emacs, for example. Arguably, it is a bitch to learn how to use emacs effectively; hence I expect that it would rate low on the "usability" scales. Yet it gets to the very core of point 0 (after removing the menu, tool, and scroll bars), while being inconsistent with Fitt's Law etc. In fact, if you assume the user is capable of using the keyboard (she's intelligent, after all) and a scroll wheel, points 1 and 4 are almost entirely redundant.

As for the problem with the taskbar, using a decent PS1 doesn't solve the problem, but it would be a start.

This bug affected IE and Firefox, but not the Opera Browser.

It's no surprise Opera wasn't very successful. Microsoft have a history of tampering with pages in order to break Opera. But please stop with the "M$" nonsense, it just makes you look childish.

How long will it be before Firefox replaces IE?

Not sure
Any day now

A buck says I get modded (again) as a troll because I'm not a FireFox fanboy. Oh well.

A lot of my family members and friends use Microsoft Windows and over the years I must have spent months fixing their systems myself or telling them on the phone what to do. I am tired as hell of playing the pro bono Microsoft support tech and I no longer offer any kind of support for anything Microsoft related to anyone. Period. My immediate family members now all have a dual boot system with their favorite version of Microsoft Windows and FreeBSD 4 with the following free software:

• KDE
• OpenOffice
• Sylpheed-Claws
• Opera
• FireFox

Keep in mind that all of the software above also has versions that run on Windows, so there is no need to use one application under Windows and another under FreeBSD. Great integration, no confusion, easier transition.

The raw Windows partition is backed up in an image file created with dd, so if there's any Windows related trouble they can't fix on their own they just boot the special FreeBSD floppy which employs a simple shell script (using dialog) to let them backup or restore the primary partition image. If you need something more complex like Norton Ghost then I suggest you use the absolutely free and cool replacement called PartImage.

If they have any trouble while using FreeBSD they just click a special icon named "Call for help" which starts a shell script that sends a number of specially crafted packets to my computer's static IP, where such packets are logged in a special file which I see on my desktop (tail -f), so if I'm available I can log into their system via ssh within minutes of any sign of trouble and they do not even have to bother to email me, let alone use the phone to call me. It works like a charm.

I feel sorry for the people who buy Microsoft Windows and then call me to help them out when things go wrong, but I just can't afford to waste my life fixing what should not have been broken in the first place. Enough is enough.

• single click toggling of things such as javascript, java, and cookies
• Ability to easily view, edit, and delete cookies
• debugging of page structure by highlighting certain page elements
• On page menu uploads straight to the w3c HTML validator

• The Zoom function - overlooked by many, this lets you zoom in/out on a page (Ctrl+Scrollwheel!) which, when you have a 1600x1200 display, is often of great help.
• Address bar shortcuts - "g" for google etc. unfortunately not customisable, as it is on Firefox.
• Meta links toolbar - if a page has meta link tags, Opera displays them on a toolbar at the top of the page, no larger than the slashdot OSDN menu.

"I really feel they need to add a "compatibility" mode or something to make it work with broken sites"

The problem isn't that Opera can't handle badly coded sites. The biggest problem today is that sites block Opera on purpose or use browser detection to send it broken code. Try it yourself, by completely hiding that you are using Opera.

"my pleas to Opera developers have fallen on deaf ears"