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So there's a lot of testing that google have to do, since they're breaking new ground.
I though Google fanboyism was already passe...

Could you tell me, what new ground exactly are they breaking here, besides writing a complex IE-only webmail application in Javascript? That's cool, but not as cool as a 5 kilobytes JS-based chess program or a first person shooter...

1Gb mailboxes - everybody offers huge (or even unlimited - my webmail provider does it now) mailboxes now. Kudos to Google for the idea, but it's not really something very difficult to do. Dynamic folders, filters and searches? Opera M2 was here first. Check out their latest 7.5 beta, it rocks! I have 250Mb of e-mail and it has instant searches and autofill for search terms. "Conversations"? I don't have a GMail account, but is it better than Active contacts and Active threads in Opera?

Not to mention the fact that many other webmail providers already have POP3/IMAP access, forwarding in both direction, encryption, WAP access and what not.

So what is so new about GMail? Except the fact that it's a webmail in javascript...

So there's a lot of testing that google have to do, since they're breaking new ground.
I though Google fanboyism was already passe...

Could you tell me, what new ground exactly are they breaking here, besides writing a complex IE-only webmail application in Javascript? That's cool, but not as cool as a 5 kilobytes JS-based chess program or a first person shooter...

1Gb mailboxes - everybody offers huge (or even unlimited - my webmail provider does it now) mailboxes now. Kudos to Google for the idea, but it's not really something very difficult to do. Dynamic folders, filters and searches? Opera M2 was here first. Check out their latest 7.5 beta, it rocks! I have 250Mb of e-mail and it has instant searches and autofill for search terms. "Conversations"? I don't have a GMail account, but is it better than Active contacts and Active threads in Opera?

Not to mention the fact that many other webmail providers already have POP3/IMAP access, forwarding in both direction, encryption, WAP access and what not.

So what is so new about GMail? Except the fact that it's a webmail in javascript...

Search feature sounds pretty much like what M2 client has:

Search your M2 e-mails for almost anything. A search "sticks" and becomes an access point, so that you can easily refer to it in the future.

I realize that M2 is not free and not web-based, but still it makes Gmail's searching much less of a novelty than someone ;) may want it to appear.

The point is that GMail is unique due to the combination of features it has to offer, which among other things include kick-ass UI, search and storage space.

I recommend Mozilla or Firefox.

i'd like to recommend Opera; blocks popups if you want it to, turn off javascript, plugins (like flash. goodbye flash ads), and cookies at will, all within the incredibly useful menu that pops up when you hit F12. also warns you when sites try to set "illegal" cookies. gorgeous browser and very customizable.

I've got 26 things open right now and between a multi-tabbed browser, taskbars over two monitors and a sidebar I don't have any problem getting to what I want. The Alt-Tab Replacement helps too.

Part of the problem with 3D GUIs is that monitors are 2D devices, not 3D. Give me a workable 3D display device and manipulation tools (hint: I'm thinking of 'give me the real world' here) with my 3D GUI and you might have something. Even in the 'real world' however, 2D is often a most useful abstraction. Jakob Nielsen has an interesting column (with rebuttals) on the problems of 3D interfaces.

My idea was not Virtual Reality, but "reality augmentation". The idea being that you would wear glasses (of some type) and could drag windows "off" the monitor to float is space around you. You had two choices at that point. Drag a window to your viewport (the monitor), or spin the viewport (and floating windows) to the view you desired.

That's a fantastic idea, but it would be clunky to use with a regular mouse/keyboard pair. With the sheer number of windows I keep open at the same time across multiple desktops, I would either have to dig through the windows floating in space so I can see the keyboard on my desk to start typing, or I would have to lift the glasses momentarily.

So instead of a mouse, lets add on a dual-webcam system that sits on either top corner of your monitor, and tracks several white spots on a dark glove (motion capture, essentially), and use that to move the windows around, change focus, surf, use web forms, etc. (Very similar to the fictional system in Minority Report.) That way, when you needed to move a bunch of different windows around, you can just sweep them away with your hand, instead of clicking and dragging on each one. If you wanted to type*, there would be a motion you perform with the glove to temporarily deactivate the glove's input. Then head to the keyboard, type away, and when you're finished make the same motion again to reactivate the glove's functionality. I see it almost as a hybrid of Opera's mouse gestures feature and physically picking up windows.

Theoretically, this system could be implemented with current technologies, but a large amount of work would have to go the glasses tracking where they are relative to their surroundings, and keeping the windows static, i.e., the windows would not move with the glasses when the user turned his head-- they would stay in place relative to the desk (or wall). It would also be difficult for the glasses to put up an image that would not be tiring to read for long amounts of time.

Food for thought.

*I've always been against virtual keyboards of any kind, since there's no tactile feedback.

Ugh.. what a hideous color scheme. It took quite a bit of intestinal fortitude to get myself to actually do a search.
I couldn't agree more. I'm glad that I use Opera - one click and bad color choices are gone (and annoying images, pop-ups, etc.). I seem to be doing this more and more these days - I'm totally fed up with colors that increase eyestrain and/or decrease usability.

Better than closed-source alternatives

That really needs to read, "Better than some closed-source alternatives."

Opera is an excellent browser that does not get enough love here on /. mostly because it's not FOSS. However, that should not exclude it from the list of browsers that kick IE's ass all day long.

Opera 7's M2 mail client has been doing exactly that for ages. Instead of folders, it has "filters" -- the difference being that the same email message can be stored in multiple filters. Emails can be put into the filters through logical rules, or by dragging them in (or out) manually. It's quite amazing, really.

M2 offers features similar to GMail: it keeps all mail in one big glom, but offers "access points" (automagically indexed views) by all messages, unread, sent, drafts, contacts, active contacts, active threads, attachments, custom views and more. All searches are saved as views.

When I abandoned my old MUA and imported my old mail, all old folders were converted to custom views, but I find that I seldom refer to them and I haven't needed to make any more, because M2's automatic built-in views cover my needs.

And all this happens in the (relative) privacy of your own machine. I have no fiduciary interest in Opera Software, and I don't play one who has on television. I just think M2 is a good (not perfect) commercial product, and probably safer (more private) than GMail.

See "Opera Software - M2 E-mail Client"

I find that Opera has only one package format for my FreeBSD operating system.

no doubt. look at the downloads page for opera on linux. look at how many different packaging types they have to produce to make it easy to get on your linux machine. thats 12 download options for the "same" OS (note quotation marks mods/flamers, i realize they are not all the same). seems like there coudl be something, or someway to standardize...

Using XHTML and CSS it allows you to create a webpage that, when viewed in regular mode looks like a normal webpage, but when viewed in Kiosk mode magically turns into a Powerpoint-style presentation.

This page explains it -- in fact, it is a demonstration itself -- if you put Opera into full-screen mode on that page you will get exactly what I am talking about, a set of slides for a presentation.

Neat stuff.

Opera's "kiosk mode" is intended for just such uses. You get all the benefits of a web browser (links you can select, etc.) and it's neatly and easily secured against general use.

And they have a donation program for worthy causes, so the price might wind up being US$0.00

Opera's "kiosk mode" is intended for just such uses. You get all the benefits of a web browser (links you can select, etc.) and it's neatly and easily secured against general use.

And they have a donation program for worthy causes, so the price might wind up being US$0.00

I know, it's in mail, but as far as I know, opera's mail client (in the actual beta 7.5 at least) uses bayesian filtering to sort non-spam messages in your views. Opera learns where to sort mails when you drag and drop mails from one view to another so you don't have to set up rules (you can do, if you want but you don't have to).

--

"firewalls create problems while performing daily business tasks on the server from home"

Not a well-configured software one. It's not as safe as a hardware firewall, but it is a heck of a lot safer than running around with your pants down, not knowing when your machine is connecting and what it is sending. It makes it difficult to connect *to* the machine, but your home winbox shouldn't be a remote server anyway.

Grab ZoneAlarm NOW, and put up with a few extra dialog boxes until it is trained.

Furthermore, good Antivirus software will detect many trojans. Get AVG if you have alredy abandoned your AV of choice.

This must sound like free windows security 101 by now, but get AdAware and / or Spybot, and schedule a regular download / check for once every week.

For encrypting sensitive or old data, you can either use windows built-in encryption (which uses your user password, enable this now if your machine is fast enough) and / or pick up a (non-free) copy of Dekart Private Disk, AKA The Bat! Private Disk, a simple encrypted virtual disk creator. Anything you really don't want people to see should go here... Just remember to shut it down when you're done.

Furthermore, don't use I.E. and don't use Outlook. What many people refer to as "computer" viruses or "windows" exploits are really just I.E. exploits or Outlook viruses. Firebird, I mean, Thun... Firefox is a powerful little internet surfer, which while not as flexible as my beloved Opera (ducks), does render pages faster, is more beginner friendly, and is free. Thunderbird is a good mail replacement, though pegasus mail, Opera's built in e-mail client, and the non-free The Bat! are all good choices. If you want the most security possible, try Secure Bat. At 140 dollars per copy, it isn't cheap, but it does encrypt all of your personal files and utilizes hardware token authentication to ensure that you really are who you say you are.

Finally, don't forget to regularly back up your disks to something not normally connected to the computer. For simplicity's sake, I'd attach an external USB drive and run Polder Backup once a week, removing the drive when done. For a more automated approach, get a PC controllable X10 unit, and have it turn on and off the external USB drive, so that backups can be completely automatic.

I've tried every open source alternative I can find, and they're all slower by a lot. I'm using Mozilla FireWhatever now, but I had to turn it off as it took seconds to load. Whereas IE, part of the OS itself (providing many HTML-based services), loads instantly.

I'm going to assume you refer to the time it takes to load up a webpage and not the time the browser itself takes to load... I've found, on my computers, that Opera displays the pages way faster than IE or Netscape. Loads the executable faster too, but as I said, it's on my machines, YMMV.

Granted, it's not open source, but it's fast, it's free and it has a minimum footprint. Oh, and you can get it for Mac, Linux and other operating systems too.

Give it a spin - I would say it's close to the perfect browser, at least for me.

Hmmm.. good point...
if only there was a european competitor to IE ready to start making a fuss,

ahah.... we have a candidate.

Obviously it's as easy to make mistakes when parsing regular text as when hearing voices! This article from Opera's knowledge base is probably a result of that...:)

as for their statement about it being a replacement for powerpoint, I don't think that this will fly either unless they either: a) find a company to make a powerpoint alternative which saves to html files b) make the aforementioned software themselves.

I would find a remote control a better option than speech, since a remote control wouldn't force me to scream "NEXT SLIDE" across the room like an idiot before it recognizes what I'm saying. It would also be much smoother to just press a button on a remote control.

a) find a company to make a powerpoint alternative which saves to html files b) make the aforementioned software themselves.

(Aside) I admire your unwillingness to use the HTML tags to make lists! Down with the man! Up with formless blobs of text!

It's probably too late to mention this, but you did know that they're talking about OperaShow, right? If you've seen it in action, you'd be gobsmacked at how nice it is. One little stylesheet can turn just about anybody's HTML into a slide show.

You are correct, it is a hard arena to innovate in, and Opera is the only company I know that is actively innovating-- and at the same time making their product faster and less resource intensive. Voice recognition will be an optional feature, and will be quite useful especially for those who rely on non-standard accessibility features.

Many of the features opera has increase productivity and are downright addictive on the desktop, but guestures on mobile devices where you have no keyboard (such as a cellphone (with 'intelligent type' etc) or pda) are almost mandatory. Not to mention Opera's Small Screen Rendering (press Shift-F11 in opera to test it out) which makes browsing the web (ie, not WAP) actually possible.

You have to realize that Opera as a product is used on at least 7 different desktop OSs, several brands of Smartphones, PDAs, internet terminals/STBs, etc. Much of the so-called 'gimmicks' are a necessity for one of these other markets. The benefit to the Opera user is getting all of these features regardless of platform, and homogeneity of the product line (meaning Opera on Mac should have all of the features and a similar interface (barring OS/GUI differences) as Opera for Linux).

In fact, quite a few of us have been doing this for some time. What you are reading was dictated using NaturallySpeaking, the speech recognition software the majority use who must (or prefer to) do some or all functions on the computer by voice. Well, "Put in the CD!", doesn't quite work but I can dictate very quickly and I can control everything within Mozilla (and Windows) by voice commands.

I applaud the folks at Opera for their efforts. While a truly user-friendly speaker-independent voice interface for all computers is still a while off, it is the future and in the meantime providing the basic functionality of being able to control things like your Web browser by voice commands benefits many. Some will just find it fun to play with, of course, but others will find it truly useful and for some, like me, it is indispensable; I'm a quadriplegic and have used voice/speech recognition since the 486 days.

Opera and Mozilla are excellent choices and both provide different approaches to accessibility, making one the better choice for some than the other (having choice is great!) but here's a bit of irony -- Internet Explorer is the one directly supported by NaturallySpeaking but while I would prefer Mozilla in any case, Mozilla actually works better for me using speech recognition.

Now, if only we could get speech recognition working well natively in Linux...

[Dictated using speech recognition technology. There may be air oars]

Ok, not really, but I've learned that such subjects get more readers, so now that you're here...

The Opera press release reads:

For example, Opera's presentation tool, Opera Show, can empower users to replace Microsoft PowerPoint, creating light-weight, Internet standards-based presentations that can also make post-publishing a breeze.

After a cursory examination of the features of Opera Show I can see it won't match up against PowerPoint. For example, the tutorial linked above, you'll find:

In order for documents to become Opera Show presentations, Opera must be told how to turn the HTML document into a presentation. This is done by adding a CSS2 style sheet in the document head...
The rest of this tutorial is mainly for those wishing to make or adapt their own Opera Show presentations, which is quite simple provided you know a little about HTML and CSS.

I certainly think PowerPoint wins hands down in ease of creating a custom look for the presentation. PowerPoint also offers near-mandatory features such as printing notes with the slides or printing 4 slides per page.

One of the advantages listed for Opera Show is "It will not annoy your audience with tacky animations." That's one way to spin the absence of a feature, but last time I checked the inclusion of "tacky animations" was the choice of the presentation's author, not the presentation software.

In a nutshell it seems PowerPoint and Opera Show serve different purposes. PowerPoint is for presentations with excellent support for handouts and poor (but functional) support for publishing to the web. Opera Show is for taking existing web pages and turning them into presentations, but does not appear to be a serious tool for giving a talk at a conference, for example, where people expect handouts.

I wrote above that Opera Show doesn't match up to PowerPoint, and it doesn't, at least on PowerPoint's turf. Opera Show is clearly superior to PowerPoint in what Opera Show is designed for; it is just not a PP-killer.

To you, it might be a gimmick. To someone with a disability, this could make life a lot easier.

...it's all well and good. but can the speech recongnition module parsebork? if so, it will be the ultimate presentation tool:

"Now gentlemen, pleese-a turn your ettenteeon to-a sleede-a twelve-a. bork!bork!bork!"

Though I can certainly understand the need to market something unique, and the logic behind "Voice is the most natural and effective way we communicate.....", I cannot ever see myself talking to my web browser like another human being.

I've worked with and supported both ViaVoice and DragonNaturallySpeaking solutions for voice-based typing in word processors, and neither of them felt natural. Perhaps because I'm a geek, or just because I've been doing it so long, I'd rather manually key in exactly what I want and let myself make the mistakes, not the interpretation.

With corrections, it always took longer to do the alleged "easier way" than manually keying in. Even with 99% accuracy, Word Processing was always clunky at best.

That, and every time I scream out "litigious bastards", I don't need it pulling up litigious bastards.

In Opera, You can toggle the sending of the Referrer Header at any time.

Use the quick menu: Just hit F12, then 'f'. (on v6.03 at least)

I can see lots of uses for this. You can use this to hide where you're coming from, such as clicking on info links from BitTorrent repositories of questionable nature. Or when trying to get through to sites who have blocked access via Referrer from Slashdot.

From the online docs:

"
Disabling referrer logging

Do you want Opera to send information referring to the page from where the document or picture was requested?

If you enable this option in File > Preferences > Privacy, Web servers can store information about the site that you last visited before you jumped to the current one. This allows webmasters to analyze how people find their way to his website.

Disable this option if..."
[Remainder of text deleted to fit within fair-use guidelines. Ahem.]

It would wreak havoc on the spirit of the internet to have user-definable Referrer fields, though...

-j.

I'm getting tired of the whole 'Mac user as second class citizen' thing, having to patiently wait for features found in Windows versions of software to get ported over to my platform.

I mean really, where the hell's my Bork?

For those wanting an *exhaustive* (and yet likely incomplete) description of what it has to offer, look here.

Oh, and the trolls whining about bloat should get a clue. It's only 3-4MB, browser, mail, and everything else included. It's one of the least bloated apps I've ever seen (possible exception of windows/total commander). When your browser alone is twice that (firebird/fox/?), I don't see what grounds you have to complain.

And while I'm at it, although Opera *is* ad-or-payware, might I mention that it does its advertising in the best way possible: a context sensitive Google text ad in the toolbar. Not annoying at *all*, and it can even be useful occasionally.

And I could go on, and on, and on. But I'll just mention that the default configuration (both UI and otherwise) is halfway braindead (popup blocking *off* by default, when it's one of the main selling points? wtf?), so just make sure to customize it (which is rather simple, and takes only a few minutes).

And since this is a Mac forum, some good OSX-esque skins are Safrad (which I use myself, not because I want to emulate a mac, but because it actually looks good), Sofa King, and Lars Kleinschmidt's various OSX and iMac skins. They're available here. (Oh, and by the way, this is a preview release, and there is supposedly a new default skin in the works, just so you know.)

*sigh*

Who cares whether you get excited about it? I'm not trolling here, I'm just pointing out that there are lots of people who get excited about using Opera for various reasons. Maybe it's all the accessibility options for persons with disabilities. Maybe they just like certain features you can't find in any other browser (like being able to move tabs around).

Look, I'm not an Opera fanboy. I was excited about the new release, tried it for awhile, and went back to Safari. Neither of these browsers are perfect, and Opera has a load of problems but my point here is that you unfairly and focus on the negative aspects. This is not constructive.

Maybe you should take a glance at the features list before you completely write it off.

Not to mention you can customize the interface to look pretty much however you want.

and not to forget that the opera browser is bundeled with another phone.. i wonder if it can become a defacto-standard.. Press statement..

A new version of Opera has finally been released for Mac OS X.

I do show them Mozilla (firewhatever), and also Opera, my browser of choice, but most decide that it's not worth the hassle to go against the "norm". People are all to influenced by "Groupthink". I stopped them bothering with GAIM or trillian. The pressure to use what's accepted is what really keeps the free software revolution from happening.

> In my opinion everbody should use Firebird or Konqueror... =)

I'm sorry, but Firebird isn't a browser. Perhaps you meant FireFox?

Konqueror is part of KDE, which isn't available for Windows. Windows still has about 90%+ of the internet users, and nobody will switch OS simply to use another browser (especially when you consider most won't even download another browser)

And last, you forgot Opera in your wish-list. They may be commercial (oh no, run, it's not free!) but their browser sure kicks serious ass. Firefox is nice, but Opera is still superior (IMHO).

That would be silly, because it would be stooping to the IE's level.

If I ever see a web page that specifically excludes me because I use a Non-Supported Browser, or deliberately crashes my browser, I'm not going to listen to that web designer's plea of Using Another Browser. Instead, I go elsewhere.

But if I see a site promoting the author's favorite browser in a sensible, non-intrusive way, I'm not annoyed at all - still might not be interested to switch this very instant, but at least I'm not annoyed. =)

Didn't we learn anything from the last browser wars?

I tried firefox and was no way near as impressed with the latest Opera Preview, its still under development but its very stable (crashed less than firefox anyway) and does just what you want without all the crap you dont. Check out the mouse gestures, they are beautiful (i know firefox has them). I don't know an Opera user that has gone back to any other browser after trying it (honestly)

hi.
I too thought it just was a mistake until I read about an obvious hostile action against Opera.
http://my.opera.com/community/dev/articles/2003020 6/
/LosManos

Actually, it's an un-press-released public beta. They had a bad experience with the 7.00 public betas, so they don't advertise betas anymore.;)

Windows

*nix

They are announced on the forums and in the opera.beta newsgroup.

Actually, it's an un-press-released public beta. They had a bad experience with the 7.00 public betas, so they don't advertise betas anymore.;)

Windows

*nix

They are announced on the forums and in the opera.beta newsgroup.

"Sorry, but an e-mail client is going to have to be at least as good at searching archives as Eudora for me to switch."

It takes literally less than a second to search through tens of thousands of mails. It's done by indexing the mail messages and thereby making searches work instantly.

Maybe Thunderbird should do text indexing as well, since this seems like the way to go. After you've worked for a while with Opera's mailer it can be difficult to go back to other mailers since it's so insanely fast and convenient.

It can be confusing to use the mailer in Opera if you don't understand what it's all about, since it's quite different from everything else (kind of like Lotus Notes, only in a good way), but there is help available.

"Sorry, but an e-mail client is going to have to be at least as good at searching archives as Eudora for me to switch."

It takes literally less than a second to search through tens of thousands of mails. It's done by indexing the mail messages and thereby making searches work instantly.

Maybe Thunderbird should do text indexing as well, since this seems like the way to go. After you've worked for a while with Opera's mailer it can be difficult to go back to other mailers since it's so insanely fast and convenient.

It can be confusing to use the mailer in Opera if you don't understand what it's all about, since it's quite different from everything else (kind of like Lotus Notes, only in a good way), but there is help available.

Opera 7.5 is the current beta release.

Sure there is

There is no Opera 7.5 yet. Current release is 7.23

It is built into Opera

To emphasize the highly professional nature of Nmap, all instances of "fucked up" in error message text has been changed to "b0rked".

I wish i could do this kind of stuff in my programming, it's freaking hilarious.

Some people do

Using a TV as huge monitor: I own a very recent TV with 100 Hz (storing a 50 Hz PAL picture and displaying it twice) that also has a VGA input, limited to 640x480 @ 60Hz. You can not calibrate the picture geometry as exactly as with a high end VGA monitor, so squares look like hand-drawn boxes and circles look like eggs. High contrast test pictures (three bars white-black-white across the entire screen) influence the geometry as well. So this is no solution you want to use day by day for several hours. But it is usable for surfing and mailing. Some problematic websites assume a resolution of at least 800x600, so you have to scroll a lot. Opera in full screen mode (F11 key) is usable.

Using a beamer: This beasts are loud, need a lot of power, and a replacement light bulb costs half of a new beamer. But you get 800x600 or even 1024x768 at a screen size of 2 meters or more, depending on the quality of the beamer. But you need the room for that picture.

Huge keyboards for nearly blind people or people having trouble with fine motor manipulations: Simple! There are several vendors offering custon keyboards for electronic cash register systems. Those systems are essentially stripped-down PCs, so you should have no interfacing problems. A friend of mine (suffering spasticity) uses a standard PC keyboard combined with a cash register keyboard at work. That keyboard has a matrix of programmable push buttons and can be equipped with key caps that fit one, two, or four (2x2) pushbuttons. He uses it with 2x2 key caps, so he has the 20 most used keys on the cash register keyboard rapidly available even with spasticity, and for the other 80 keys, he still can use the standard keyboard, with a "speed penality".

Mouse replacement: I don't look at my mouse, I feel its case and buttons. I know where it is placed, about 5 to 10 cm right of my keyboard. No need to look away from the screen. So I guess blind people should have not much problems using a mouse. My friend (suffering spasticity) uses a standard mouse (now wireless, but just for fun) with no special hardware, I just slowed down the settings in the mouse driver (low speed, low acceleration). He's not as fast as me using Windows, but he reaches nearly the speed of an average Windows user. A touchpad or that little nipple on IBM laptops would be horror for him, but I think he could also work with a trackball, with a little training. We also tried a special mouse driver that used a low cost PC joystick to move the mouse cursor. It was quite usable, but my friend decided to use a standard mouse, mostly because the driver conflicted with the games that needed a joystick.

Tux2000