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If you're interested in support for Opera-like gestures, please vote for bug 76537 (of course, you'll need a free Bugzilla account to vote).

In case you're not familiar with the feature, Opera has gesture support. For instance, to reload a document, just hold down the right mouse button, and move the mouse up then down. Or, to go back a page, hold down the right mouse button and click the left mouse button ("forward" is just the reverse: hold down the left mouse button and click the right mouse button).

Alex Bischoff

I don't know about Linux (unfortunately, haven't been lucky enough to get an install to ever actually take...) but under Win32, even Mozilla pales in comparison to the speed and ease of use of Opera. Check it out, you'll love it.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

Art At Home

Gotta watch that "fair-use" stuff... it's extremely limited and does not refer to modification at all. You have the right to quote small snippets in a academic context, parody, and a couple of other small things, but it does not extend to arbitrary modification.

Both systems would be an end-user activity that adds value, in the user's mind, to the information already present in the website.

First, there is no "right" to add value to somebody else's copyrighted work. If your use isn't covered under the extremely limited fair-use clauses and you don't have permission, you are legally out of luck.

The changes are not made on the server, they're made in the browser. Just because Opera allows you to zoom a page, is it violating fair use? No. A website delivers you some information, either free, or in exchnage for something (money, advertising data, etc.). At that point, as long as you're not duplicating it for others, it's yours. You can feed it through a program to do word-count analysis, you can feed it to a translation program, you can feed it to a program which shows you how it looks to people with color-blindness or other vision impairments, you can insert your own commentary on the page, you can rot13 it, encrypt it, delete it, etc. Copyright is about copying. If the information is delivered to you in a physical form (like a newspaper), you can destroy it, give it to someone else, etc., as long as you're not copying it.

In fact, the web gives you even more options: if the server permits, you can fetch the page through another server which translates for you, or processes the page to show you how it looks to a color-blind person. You used to be able to have whole collections of commentary on web pages, but the commentary was so useless that there's no money in it...

What Microsoft is doing is creating a filter in the users' browsers which adds complementary information. In theory (in other words, ignoring monopoly practices and considerations), users have every right to use that browser to perform that task, or to choose a different browser, to perform other information-processing tasks.

Basic browser stuff that [Opera] does better. Opera also has better cookie management.

Microsoft is the first to implement *A* version of P3P. It is not implementing *THE* version of P3P. It's bastardizing it, because that's how Microsoft operates: embrace, extend, extinguish.

The best thing you can do for the web is to BLOCK MSIE v6 for the time being. Send a message to Microsoft that you want them to quit screwing with standards.

There've been net-wide rallies behind common causes before (blue ribbon campaign, f'rinstance). It's time for another one.

--

Since it's only two programs, I've modified the Mozilla startup script and created a startup script for Opera to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to find libjpeg.so.6.2, instead of 6.1. I've tried upgrading ImageMagick, but both non-SuSE rpms and the source break, and the SuSE rpm essentially requires upgrading all of SuSE. oh well - DLL Hell is warm in the winter...

1. First of all, the fact that Smart Tags can be toggled by the user does nothing to help me since most users will never toggle them or even look for the setting. If they're on by default, they'll stay on. If they're off by default, they'll stay off. I doubt that Microsoft really will leave a new feature disabled from the start, it doesn't seem like them.
2. Secondly, I'm not sure of how many users would download COM objects, but then again, I've never actually tried to find out what an average user thinks of the "Run Content By XXX" security box. (Also keep in mind that it costs a fair chunk of change to sign an ActiveX control.) I also have to wonder how many users will either personally disable downloading ActiveX controls or have their "smarter computer friend" do it for them thanks to the various security flaws in the ActiveX model.
3. Embedded XML in my webpage. Lovely, that'll really make the W3C HTML Validator happy. So I suppose now my choice is "write correct HTML" or "write for Smart Tags" - of course, customizing Smart Tags isn't something I'm likely to do manually anyway. (Especially since I'm not planning on "upgrading" to XP any time soon.) Plus I have to wonder how third party browsers will handle embedded XML...
4. Smart Tags are controlled by Microsoft - and whichever OEM sold the computer. What, you really think that your average user is going to go out of their way to download new Smart Tags? Unless it's transparent, they'll be stuck with the defaults.
5. DLLs? DLLs?!? You have to be kidding me. Smart Tags are actually full blooded computer code!?! Oh, I just can't wait for the first "Smart Tag" virus to come out. Unless the download isn't transparent (see above). (And don't forget, MS has a pretty poor record of implementing security checks properly - I really have to hope that all the OEMs are smart enough to preconfigure boxes so that new users are running as normal Users. Can you imagine a host of newbies running as Administrator? *Shudder* - Wait - how do we explain to them that they can't install WinAMP anymore? *Shudder*)
6. What the hell do the default set do exactly, then? From what I saw, Smart Tags creates a little menu of options for each instance of some word that they find (or is it more complicated than that? Really don't have the time or inclanation to find out). Still sounds like MS will be controlling web content... even if I can develop my own Smart Tags I highly doubt that I can effectively get users to download them...

--

Opera allows the popup JavaScript function by itself to be disabled. Take a look.
Opera Home

Oh, and I'm using Opera to post this, which is also an excellent browser for Windows - always fast and usually stable. Its main advantage to all other browsers is its killer UI with mouse gesture recognition, lots of hotkeys, excellent bookmark management etc.

Also, if you filter JavaScripts and animated GIFs using a local proxy like Proxomitron, even Netscape 4.7 becomes rock stable (I can use it for days without a single crash). Really, if you don't want to use IE, don't use it.

gutier writes: "It seems that Netscape has recognized that it has lost the browser battle, and has decided to restructure itself into an "Internet Media Hub".

I don't understand what you mean by Lost the Browser War. It's not something you can win or lose, unless you're talking about giving up from the frustration caused by the monopolistic, anticompetitive tactics of a certain company.

As I see it, Netscape is still unopposed when it comes to web browsers. Opera may be gaining, but no other company provides browsers that run on the wide variety of platforms like Netscape does. Netscape runs on AIX, HP-UX, SCO, SunOS, Solaris, Digital-Unix, Irix, Linux, Mac OS, and Linux. Konqueror is making inroads, but nobody has as complete a market as netscape.

Descent? Or decent?
I assume decent.
Opera
Konqueror

BTW, whoever marked my post as flamebait is an idiot. Have a nice day.

If they'd just done a simple, Windows-only, WWW-only program, what incentive would there be for people to use it, when IE is already there?

Because it is a better WWW-only program?

No, the true value of Mozilla (and the Communicator suite which preceded it)

Value?!?! Communicator sucked because of all its "features". You would think they would have learned from their mistake.

Netscape knows that trying to compete with Microsoft on the Windows platform is suicide due to Microsoft's bundle-opoly.

So Mozilla decided to create their own "bundle-opoly" by making you use only the internal Mozilla tools for accessing the web.

Microsoft had no bundle-opoly on the Mac Platform. How come Microsoft defeated Netscape there?

The Mozilla project is still meaningful, and I believe it is one of perhaps three or four programs whose continued existence are absolutely crucial to the preservation of a world in which Microsoft does not have 100 percent market share of all three major sectors (desktop, server, and embedded).

Mozilla existence will do nothing to preventing Microsoft from taking 100 percent of the market as long and it insists on being bloatware. Browsers like kmeleon(0.4 is out) and Opera will.

This message has been proudly posted using OmniWeb on Mac OS X

I hope that gestures take off. I've been using Opera for a few days now and have played a bit of Black and White too.

I don't know if it's just the novelty value, but I'm finding them useful. Hold the right mouse button and moving around is very easy and quickens things up if you're browing with the mouse (no need to reach to the keyboard again). It's a lot quicker to hold right mouse button and drag up and down than it is to find the reload button and click it.

I agree with the poster above, there needs to be a well defined set of gestures that will work in all applications before it really takes off.

I've tried it under Linux, but it still seemed a little buggy. However, it does have potential to be used within the business context (especially with cvs/diffing)

--Robert

What part of Opera's licence prohibits distribution and bundling? The licence seems to specifically allow the software to be "freely copied, stored and distributed by any person or organization, providing that the person or organization meets the terms and conditions of this document in full."

I don't see anything in those terms and conditions that would prevent RedHat distributing it.

Netscape 6 is a miserable attempt at release software.

Yes.. and it should be, they were forced to release early due to "market pressure". Netscape 6 is based on a build of mozilla just before Mozilla M18 was released, so it has every right to be miserable :-)
Netscape should have waited. The mozilla crew don't have such pressures, and they're doing the right thing by going so slowly. Since 0.8, it's been kicking ass IMHO. Also, Opera is rather stable now, uses little memory & is extremely fast (as of 5.0b8, they fixed most of the stability problems) - it also gets the antialiased fonts if you run it under KDE2.

I disagree. I also run Windows as my primary OS; IE is by far the slowest browser I've used. For raw speed, nothing right now beats Opera. Although supposedly it sticks to the standards to most, a lot of pages dont look perfect in it. Mozilla is definitely getting MUCH better. I'm actually using it right now: much faster than IE6.0 in just about everything. These are my experiences; your mileage may vary. As an aside, does Slashdot use http/1.1 compression? One of my favorite game news sites now uses it, and everything loads perceptibly faster...

The MDI interface is exactly why I like Opera. No more clutter on the task bar when I have 10 browser windows open!

Also, Opera remembers what windows it had open last time it ran. When Netscape crashed I just had to try to remember which windows I had opened, with Opera I just restart and I'm back to where I were.

Opera still has a bunch of bugs and crashes every now and then (just like Netscape), but because of the feature I mentioned above, it isn't as much of an event as a Netscape crash. I'd highly recommended Opera to those who haven't yet tried it.

--

Opera.

Fast, light, solid. Not free, but worth the bucks. A fine example of what Windows software ought to be. Cheap, good, AND fast.

Yeah, yeah, call me a heretic for recommending something that ain't free, much less not berating her for not running Linux.... fsck it, I yearn for the old days when you had to know a few things to get on the 'net. But I'm not gonna be a sourpuss about it. If they figure out the Linux guys are helpful, just maybe we'll get a few converts. :)

Use Opera

It's got a 2MB footprint (12MB with java plugin, uses 1/10 the RAM and is 10 times as fast. It's also compatible with any Netscape plugin, in fact you don't even need to reinstall them. Just point Opera at your Netscape plugin directory.

You are supposed to pay for it, but it's pretty damn easy to find serialz on Google.

Opera works on Linux too.

This may get modded down as offtopic or a troll, but I love the new Opera so much that it's worth it to get the word out.

The new Opera for Linux rocks my socks. 5.0b8 is out, and it's a heck of a lot more stable than Mozilla ever was for me. Mozilla 0.8 was still too buggy, bloated and slow for my poor little Pentium 233 to handle. Opera is quick, looks pretty, renders pages better and faster than Netscape or Mozilla, and it's still free. Yes, you have to pay ~$40 to get rid of the banner ad in the button bar, but since I don't use the buttons, I just move that whole toolbar to the bottom of the pane.

I also like the selective restrictions you can place on things like Java popups, and the fact that you can specify sites from which to allow/deny cookies. Hell, it even saves your state on the rare occasions when it crashes, and when you restart it, it will ask you if you want to open it with the same pages you were viewing when it tanked. Now if they'd only release a Solaris port so that I could use it at work. Either that, or opensource it so someone else (maybe me) can port it.

When set to "Opera" or "Mozilla 3.0", the My Netscape page doesn't load at all, displaying an "invalid browser" page, saying you must use NS 4.x or IE 5.x. (Apparently they think NS 6 sucks too). Setting the User Agent to "Mozilla 5.0" or "Mozilla 4.76" (strange, since the real NS 4.76 works) result in the same one-columned-stretched layout as Mozilla. However, when Opera is emulating MSIE 5.0, it works perfectly!

So apparently, it's not that the page couldn't display in Mozilla, it's that My Netscape intentionally screws up the page for Mozilla!!

Opera has an "Allow documents to create windows" option that you can set.

• IE specific DHTML / JavaScript
• Java
• Plugins (except for Opera-specific plugins... Flash will be available as an Opera native plugin very soon)

It is adware, but for those who have a problem with that it's fairly easy to figure out how it does it: it retrieves XML files from a certain pair of servers in the opera.com domain which feature urls for the ads... set up your proxy to block anything to those servers and you're set.

I was joking sparky! I just said that because people are always complaining about Mozilla being bloated. And yes any browser that weighs in at over 3 megs is bloated. See Opera for and example of what a browser should be. If their linux version was even half as good as the Win32 version, I would buy one in an instance. I have nothing against Mozilla. I haven't really used it in months. It may be doing fine.

Bloat isn't necessarily bad. Netscape isn't as bad as you think. At least not the version I'm using. 4.76 on Mandrake 8.0 beta 2.

It was just a joke. Put down the pitchforks.

Opera? Mozilla? NetPositive? Lynx? That seems to be pretty good right there...

I can't tell you how many people I've talked with, technical people mind you, who don't know that there's any browser besides IE.

You've talked to lots of technical people that aren't aware of Netscape?! Are these the "technical people" who clean the fry vats at McDonalds?

Now, I'm not saying that Netscape is a good browser, mind you... (I just can't believe a technical person hasn't heard of it)

I really really dig Opera, and you're right -- way more people need to give it a try. The bug reporting on their site is fine, but they would really be top-notch in my books if they'd let us browse their bug database.

* Security in *nix sucks

I'm hoping that you mean Linux security, since this isn't true at all for many other UNIX OSes. For Linux, I think the security is good enough for what it is, when it is used right. The problem is that many applications and servers don't use it right. POSIX.1e-style capabilities (see Linux-privs - POSIX.1e Capabilities for Linux, http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/linux-privs/) are probably the answer. A more legitimate qualm with the *nix model is that it is coarse-grained. I think at least a handful of UNIX OS's have responded with support for Access Control Lists, which provide more fine-grained file access (see Extended Attributes and Access Control Lists for Linux, http://acl.bestbits.at).

* X Windows sucks

The X Window System catches a lot of criticism, some of it well-deserved. Most of it, however, is purely inane. It works very well, all things considered. Most of the technological deficiencies (i.e., mainly rendering technology) are resolved with modern extensions. Naturally, there are better ways to do it. We could have a much better architecture. But that's all hindsight. What we're looking at is not a transition that would be based on advantages, but on disadvantages. Until the limitations of the X Window System outstrip the convenience of using what's already there and well-supported, we have X. But Xfree86 is good enough for now. There might be alternatives in the future (Berlin, http://www.berlin-consortium.org/).

* the xterm gui-cli interface sucks

I'm stumped. You determine that you need the CLI for some task while you're in the GUI. What better interface can you get than actually getting the CLI in the GUI? (Which is what Xterm does for you.)

* all the shells suck ...

They seem to have everything I need and want, and more. Filename completion (with cycling through potential matches), redirection (especially with file descriptors, as in bash), good line editing, conditions and looping, scripting, ... Maybe I'm thinking inside the box, but I can't think of anything that I've needed to do that hasn't been made easy (if not trivial) by some shell.

* file system in *nix sucks

Well, it's not as if every UNIX uses the same file system. I don't understand this claim, really. Are you arguing against heirarchical file systems or against the file systems themselves?

* netscape in *nix sucks

It performs very well for me, as do Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org) and Konqueror (Konqueuror). There's a lot of hype around Opera (Opera), but I've never tried it. There are particular deficiencies in each of these, of course, but most of them perform the task of web browsing well enough. Not to forget, of course, Lynx (Lynx).

Anyway, there are legitimate issues. Standardized package management on Linux would be nice, ACLs/Capabilities would be nice... And I'm always up for a new Window Manager or Desktop Environment. I use Sawfish/GNOME (Sawfish, http://sawmill.sourceforge.net/; GNOME, http://www.gnome.org/). But, eh, keep complaining: anything that gets me new toys to play with can't be too bad.

After playing all day yesterday with browsers, I've come up with a way to handle cookies that I'm happy with.

Opera 5.02 has a great feature called "throw away new cookies on exit". It will accept all cookies, but when you exit it tosses them. So, you set up cookies for all the sites you want them for (like slashdot), exit opera (it only saves cookies on exit), check them using Opera File Explorer (see below), then start it back up and check off the "throw away new cookies on exit" option under File|Preferences|Security.

Now, doubleclick and everyone else can throw all the cookies at you they want, and they will be erased when you exit Opera. But, you also still have your stored cookies for the sites you want. Works great! No other browser can do this as gracefully. Opera 5 seems very cool (although I've only played with it for a couple days...).

Links:

Opera: http://www.opera.com

Opera File Explorer (you will need this to view your cookies and decide which to keep): http://www.westelcom.com/users/jsegur/

- Twid

Opera. It's adware, and closed source, so the purists won't go there. But it WORKS.

Having the system figure out what you like would be a waste of time. Just put a new section in the user preferences to select kinds of ads to view. Opera does this for their ad-ware browser, and it works just fine. My wife set up our copy at home to cover our combined interests as soon as she got into the prefs.

Opera.
--

So don't download Netscape 6 then.

Opera 5 is the browser I use for my everyday browsing now, and it's just a 2 MB download...

--

nick

Some of the things it does (and still being small) includes:

• Full control over cookies
• Turning on/off images per window(a button in plain view)
• A transfer window with the files you downloaded and its stats
• When it crashes it can bring up where you left off at.(opion on start up after crash)
• Zoom pages in/out

You're thinking of the accesskey attribute of HTML 4. Very nice, if you have a browser that supports it, like iCab. There may be others I'm not aware of or have forgotten at the moment.

Also, Opera allows you to access nearly all the browser features with keyboard commands. I don't think it supports accesskey (yet), so you can't move around in the document itself.

-ChristTrekker (moderating today)

Opera 5.0 (which is now free, kinda) can keep you well informed about 3rd party cookies too. And at ~2megs, its a lot quicker to download than IE5.5...

Here we have the umpteenth article this month alone, while ignoring Opera's announcement that they will be releasing Opera browser for free (as in beer) for Linux and the Mac OS this year.

Christ, no wonder so many posts these days are by folks in the 200000+ UID range (no offense. I'm just saying that CT et al. seem to have pissed off at least 150000 people).

Funny. The ad banner is one of those demotivators: "Blame: The Secret to Success is Who to Blame for Your Failures"

All those whiners who asked for slashcode were the ones who turned it into a spaghetti mess.

Why stick around? Slashboxes are a good thing. Time to go remove USPTO from my prefs, as it's just wasting bits at the rate CT posts the stupid things.

Here we have the umpteenth article this month alone, while ignoring Opera's announcement that they will be releasing Opera browser for free (as in beer) for Linux and the Mac OS this year.

Christ, no wonder so many posts these days are by folks in the 200000+ UID range (no offense. I'm just saying that CT et al. seem to have pissed off at least 150000 people).

Funny. The ad banner is one of those demotivators: "Blame: The Secret to Success is Who to Blame for Your Failures"

All those whiners who asked for slashcode were the ones who turned it into a spaghetti mess.

Why stick around? Slashboxes are a good thing. Time to go remove USPTO from my prefs, as it's just wasting bits at the rate CT posts the stupid things.

In the real (i.e. commercial) world, in most cases it is not worth supporting Netscape or MacOS.

But it takes even more effort to exclude them than it would to simply let them in and see the crap that you couldn't be bothered to clean up.

Of course, we need to develop applications that work on browsers on PCs, WAP phones, STBs and suchlike, but no-one can afford to support every possible platform and configuration.

Get some decent tools, then. You know, one that produce valid HTML 4.01 Strict, and valid CSS2 to go along with it. Ones that don't let you set fixed sizes for fonts. You know, so that the design philosophy of "graceful degradation" would actually be realized, and the web would be accessible to everything. If there was just one decent tool like that to use, it would take no more effort than it currently does. Maybe Mozilla will come with a decent authoring tool. I bet the folks at Opera could do it if they wanted to.

Targeted advertising isn't all bad, as long as it's targeted correctly.

I agree. I'm glad that Opera 5 allows you to customize the ads sent to you, instead of invading your privacy in an attempt to deduce that information like DoubleClick does. I hate the thought that people I don't know are compiling statistics about me. It happens all the time, I know, but I still don't like it.

I just downloaded Opera 5.0 and there is a built in search box to the status bar.

Google is the default search engine.

Numbered, but in no specific order...

1) Like scotpurl said in an earlier comment. Have a good working search engine.

2) As important as content is that it is updated on a regular basis. Old inaccurate info on a gov. site will make it much less credible.

3) Get a good graphics designer. No one likes browsing an ugly, badly designed site.

4) Take paper, pencil and a couple of coworkers and brainstorm a layout of the site hierachy. How many subgroups are needed, what should they contain. What belongs in the site and not.

5) Relevant links to other departments with whom your department has connections.

6) No browser specific code. Preferably no Java or Javascript either. Use Opera as test browser. It follows most standards. If it works in Opera, it will probably work very well in IE/NS too.

7) If you have to use frames, make sure there is a way to get to the main page from every frame, if you enter the site the "wrong" way. *classic*

8) If the Law allows it, a contact list, with key persons in the organization. Photos are great.

9) A well written introductory page to your agency. Who are you? What are your purpose? When should I contact you? Who should I contact?

10) No pr0n! ;-)

--

"I'm surfin the dead zone

Opera is quite fast. See previous slashdot article.
Richy C.
--

Okay, now that was quite the over-the-top rant.

Now that I'm a little calmer (though Taco still has me really pissed for putting such terribly misleading, ignorant information on a site that has so much influence), I'd like to rephrase a bit.

I've been working on the beta software for the past three years. Opera's staff has always been top-notch: they take the feedback gratefully, deal with priority issues quickly, and really have the idealistic goals of creating a fully-compliant, robust, user-tweakable browser that is truly best-of-class.

During the beta period of the adware, we beta testers hammered hell out of Opera management and programmers. We knew that adware would be a potentially flammable decision, and we made damned sure that Opera fully understood the need to separate the advertising from anything even remotely associated with personal data, including browser habit-tracking.

We also demanded that Opera provide *EVERY* possible detail of the adware implementation, so that there could be no doubt that there were no privacy problems whatsoever. We did registry searches, binary file text searches, re-wrote the "welcome to" text, grilled them to death. We even halted release while we dealt with a few niggling details in wording.

You can be damn sure that your privacy interests were fully represented.

And then to have Taco shoot off his mouth without having a fucking clue how the advertising is implemented, without bothering to spend three minutes of his precious time actually reading Opera's well-detailed and highly informative privacy statement...

...well, hell, it's just too much.

For all our efforts to make sure that there couldn't be controversy, we never accounted for the possibility that influential media personalities wouldn't actually *try* to be responsible.

So, please, don't be a Taco: before you get your panties in a know about privacy, go [read the Opera privacy statement] and educate yourself.

I'm not saying that the adware is wonderful; I personally don't like it being full-height, and I'm worried that they may serve overly distracting animations.

But there are *no* privacy flaws, and it is a *wonderful* browser. It'll take a few days to get comfortable with it, but I am confident that almost everyone will find that its features will make it faster and easier to browser the web.

--

Christ, there are a lot of *IGNORANT* Slashdot users out there. Most of them are making comments and passing judgement without having the first fucking clue what they're talking about, because THEY'RE TOO GODDAMNED LAZY TO DO SOME RESEARCH.

For starters, go read [their privacy statement], which is a helluva lot more upfront and detailed than anything you've seen from any other software company.

Then download and install the software. Back up your registry first, if you're really paranoid, and use InCtrl to track installed files.

Oh, *LOOK*. The advertisement is a standard-sized banner, affixed to the toolbar. It's wholly seperate from the web pages.

Now slap on some port-monitoring software.

Oh, *LOOK*. There's *NOT A FUCKING PRIVATE DETAIL* being passed to the ad server. You get a user id so that it knows what ads it's sent you, and *THAT'S IT.*

No information about your browsing habits are shared. No information about your name, address or anything else. If you *choose* to select the variety of ads served you, it naturally has to tell the server that you want tech ads, but not women's hygiene product ads.

Gettafucking clue.

I won't even begin to dwell on the idiocy that surrounds the free versus commercial software crap. Sixty employees, one product: of *course* they gotta make money from it. They don't have the opportunity to fund their browser from sales of the OS or office suite.

Have fun, moderators. Don't let your personal bias show.

--

Registered users of v4.0 do not have to pay to upgrade to v5.0. See: http://www.opera.com/press/opera5_4questions.html

According to the press release, Opera has experimental support for DOM. Then again, Netscape and IE don't exactly have sterling support for DOM, either.

I dare you to tell me that Opera doesn't desperately need some anti-aliasin' lovin'.

There is no privacy infringement in Opera 5! This comes straight from Tollef at Opera, the guy "in the know" about the Linux port. He says if Opera puts out spyware, he and a good deal of other people he knows will leave Opera.

OK, that said...I'm using my karma bonus (which I rarely do) so maybe this will get noticed. Opera is a good browser, and, I think, a good company. I registered as an alpha/beta tester for their Mac port, and have been following Opera for over two years now. I've been reading the opera.* NGs for the past week as info about Opera 5 has been leaking out. I know what I'm talking about.

The ads are served independently of the web page. They are part of the UI. They don't tell anybody what you were looking at. They only report if the ad was clicked. You get to customize the ads you see...it's not based on your browsing patterns. Read the privacy policy if you're still not convinced. (That means you, CmdrTaco.)

If you like Opera, you'll pay the $39 to register it and remove the ads. However, a free version is a great way for designers to test with more browsers, in particular, a very compliant browser. I see this as a good thing. If you're really paranoid, then fine, don't use it.

Posted with Opera 5.