Domain: operawiki.info
Stories and comments across the archive that link to operawiki.info.
Comments · 38
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Re:Differentiation?
Now compare to this list of Opera 'firsts':
Opera really wasn't the first in most cases, and they implemented the features very POORLY, only to have other browsers eventually come along and show them the right way to do it.
Tabs: Opera was second behind another little known IE shell, and their method of cycling tabs in LAST-USED order, and having those tabs appear as loose windows INSIDE of the Opera window was a nightmare that resembled MS Office 7's multiple open document windows, more than it does modern tabbed browsers. In fact, when Mozilla came out with tabs, OPERA COPIED THEM, so now Opera has TWO completely different methods of handling tabs. What made Mozilla's tabs great was the "open in background" option... With that, I'd be perfectly happy managing dozens of windows. It was the "new windows" opening in the foreground and having to be moved that was the real hassle, and the innovation.
Pop-up blocking: Worked poorly in Opera. It blocked the majority of popups, but several still got through, and in the process it broke plenty of legit sites. Mozilla did it right. And everybody and their mother thought up pop-up blocking long before Opera or anyone else did it... The devil is in the implementation details.
Fit to Window: I was crying, loudly, in public forums, for this feature on my PDA for YEARS and YEARS before Opera released it. Their implementation was over simplistic, more like disabling style sheets or removing the "<table" tags than what we use today. So they don't get credit for implementing the current smartphone browser zoom and fit-to-width methods (which do things much differently).
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Re:Differentiation?
They're obviously hurting financially. By switching to Webkit (and now Blink) they were able to lay off over 90 developers, some of whom had been with the company for 15 years. This sucks - for the developers, obviously, but I'm sure nobody was happy about making that call; but according to salarylist.com, the average software developer salary is around $81,000/yr which times 90 developers is 7.29 MILLION dollars a year. Not sure if Norway dev pay is equivalent to the US average, but you get the rough picture. That sort of sum could make or break Opera as a company.
I've been a fan of Opera browser for a very long time - I started using it right after it became free. Opera pioneered a great deal of features that are browsing must-haves today, implementing them years before any competitor. They remind me of another company that hailed from their land-mass-sharing-neighbors in Sweden: Saab. A car company that pioneered many innovations that were later incorporated in automobiles across the board. The first to do this, the first to do that - turbochargers on production cars, cabin air filters, very high crash safety standards, active seat belts (okay, that one didn't last long), active head rest restraints, refrigerated glove box (for taking that Chardonnay to the picnic of course), headlight washers, heated seats, the use of computers to automatically monitor and adjust the engine's operations based on the type of fuel used and sensor input, direct ignition, traction control, air conditioned seats, etc, etc, etc. Now compare to this list of Opera 'firsts':
http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations
Saab was bought by GM. When that happened, all their cars were mandated to be cross-platform cars. They shared chassis with other cars; some models (and SUV and a hatchback) were blatant rebadges of a GM SUV and a Subaru (nicknamed the Saaburu). Now Saab is no more.
Sounds like what is happening to Opera, unfortunately.
I know 'car metaphors' are a Slashdot tradition, but I find this one particularly apt.
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Re:Opera is my favorite browser
Just in case you don't know, switching to "mask as Firefox" in site prefs usually fixes these things. Something here http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#webdev may be useful to you; dunno if the neptune plugin still works. One thing I'll miss about Opera is being able to put buttons on the start bar.
The likes of Google seem to deliberately break stuff for Opera users so it's not always the company's fault. On the other hand, they haven't bothered integrating hardware acceleration yet despite having a working version in 2008, so if you want to play Angry Birds you need to use something else, which is another reason I'm jumping ship. -
It's not just about extensions...
I can Ctrl+Click [to open link in a background tab] in any other browser BUT Opera.
There is no easy way to make this handy feature work without a hack because you cannot re-map ctrl left_click.
So you never ctrl+clicking or none of you ever actually use Opera at all? -
Re:And in other news
Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with thisI'll be completely honest, I don't care. It isn't Free Software. Until that changes, I'd rather use w3m than touch it.
um..."yea!" for you??
The parent was making comment on innovation, not whether it was Free.
Next time, a little less straw, man.
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Re:And in other news
Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with thisI'll be completely honest, I don't care. It isn't Free Software. Until that changes, I'd rather use w3m than touch it.
Where the fuck have you been for the past 5 years? Of course Opera is free.
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2005/09/20/ -
Re:And in other news
Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with thisI'll be completely honest, I don't care. It isn't Free Software. Until that changes, I'd rather use w3m than touch it.
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Re:And in other news
Oh please oh please can we PLEASE stop spreading this nonsense that FF ever innovated anything?
Just what are you claiming Mozilla innovated? Whatever you *think* they innovated,
Compare with this -
Closing the gap on... Opera?!
I'm sorry, but other than the huge advantage that is all the plugins available for Firefox, Opera has always been lightyears ahead of any other browser's features.
http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations
Tabbed browsing and Zooming into a webpage are only the two that seem most important and were introduced by Opera, but they have always been incredibly innovative, much more so than Firefox. Yet there's not a big developer following, probably because it is not open source like FF, that's Opera's weakest part I guess, but as a browser, I love it. -
Re:Question on Features
I have not used it but this seems to be a web developer clone, not sure if works on 10:
http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar
Quite a few nice articles on there
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Re:That is impressive
For flashblock, you can put a button to enable/disable plugins in your toolbar. Does not work as well as flashblock, but good enough.
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtonsFor adblock, I still have not found a good way to update my blocking list while keeping my modifications.
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Re:That is impressive
So
... you want Opera to include in their main browser a feature that you know is an optional 3rd party plug-in in for Firefox?Have you considered why Adblock might be a 3rd party plug-in? Apart from the "barebones" bit. Could it be because the first sign that Mozilla is actively including a list of ads to block, they will be sued into the ground in the US and other places for interfering with other people's income? And while they might win such a lawsuit, don't they have better ways to spend their money?
And if they were to lose such a lawsuit, Mozilla might get off somewhat easy, as they are a non-profit organization. Opera on the other hand isn't.
Now, is it possible to make a third party addition to Opera that shares adsites to block? Certainly. I'm willing to bet that it's also possible to use the same lists that Adblock uses. To make things easy to start with, it could use mvps' list as a starter.
And, if you really want to be pedantic, there's always the option of using Google to find what you're looking for. There seems to be quite few attempts at recreating Adblock:
Tamil's My.Opera blog
OperaWiki.info has some suggestions
Lex1's blog on My.Opera also has some ideasThere's even a Flashblock for Opera
Basically it boils down to the same complaints you hear about Linux from people who are used to Windows: "but I need $program, and I don't want to look for replacements".
Now, what is the best option for you? I have the faintest idea. I'm quite satisfied with the built in filtering as it is. If I go to a site that has some annoying banners, it rarely takes me more than 30 seconds to block them, and I can live with that.
Is it as effective as Adblock? No clue - I don't use Adblock or Firefox if I can avoid it. It lacks the basic things that I love in Opera. Funny how that works out - one man's must have item is another man's "meh".
And if you want to be really pedantic, the one thing that Firefox still kind of needs is a built in ad blocker that's as good as Adblock.
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Opera Addons
Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.
You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:
- Install a web developer toolbar
- or a web accessibility toolbar
- Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
- Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
- All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.
Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.
Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.
I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.
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Opera Addons
Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.
You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:
- Install a web developer toolbar
- or a web accessibility toolbar
- Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
- Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
- All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.
Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.
Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.
I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.
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Opera Addons
Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.
You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:
- Install a web developer toolbar
- or a web accessibility toolbar
- Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
- Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
- All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.
Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.
Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.
I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.
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Opera Addons
Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.
You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:
- Install a web developer toolbar
- or a web accessibility toolbar
- Install custom buttons (there's 5 other pages of buttons on the wiki)
- Edit INI files. If 9 speeddial links aren't enough for you you can increase their number in the INI files, for example. You could also modify the menus to add an entry to open a link in firefox/IE.
- All the panels and toolbars are configurable and removable. For example my setup has no menu bar, has my emails/rss on the left and a button on the status bar at the bottom to enable plug-ins only when I need to. I've also removed the search box since I can type "g slashdot" in the address bar to search for slashdot on Google anyway.
Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.
Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.
I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.
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Re:Solution: Options
Well, I wasn't implying that one should switch browsers per se. You're right about the other browsers, except that turning off third party cookies doesn't work the same for IE or Firefox as it does for Opera.
But Opera does give you a finer degree of control. You can actually either set 'Accept cookies only for the site I visit' or you can set 'Accept cookies' for the individual site. From the operawiki.info site cookies entry:
If you set the site preference to "Accept cookies", while visiting this domain, in addition to the cookies allowed by the "Accept cookies only from the site I visit" rule, content coming from a remote domain can set cookies for its corresponding domain and subdomains IF AND ONLY IF the remote domain also has a site preference that allows cookies for itself. This means that if you want to allow remote domains while visiting this domain, you need to manually add a site preference for each remote domain and set it to "Accept cookies only for the site I visit" or "Accept cookies".
"Accept cookies" for a site preference DOES NOT cause Opera to behave as if the global is set to "Accept cookies" when visiting the domain. This way you're not automatically getting opted in to remote domains. You have control over what remote domains you want to allow.
This is different then setting unchecking 'Accept third-party cookies'.
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Re:Easy.
The buttons there will do it; e.g. "Toggle the Menu & Personal bar on/off AND dropdown the main menu" (I would link it, but the comments system doesn't like them). On Unix you can also use Alt-F11; look in Preferences -> Advanced -> Shortcuts -> Keyboard Setup, search for "Disable Menu". Delete "Platform Unix" and it'll work in other OS's, or make your own keybinding to "Enable Menu Bar | Disable Menu Bar".
It would be nice if more of these were provided by default, rather than having to go out and find/create buttons yourself.
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Re:Easy.I was annoyed that I couldn't cram the Home-Reload-Back buttons, URL bar, and google search box onto the same line with the "File Edit View
... Help" menus. This is a very useful capability on older laptops with small screens. I just now installed 9.5, and guess what: you still can't use that dead space between "Help" and the right edge of the screen. IE was the first to allow that. Firefox wisely "copied" IE to allow the same. What did the Opera guys do? Nothing. They apparently don't like anything they didn't come up with. Fuck them. Bitch much? Turn off the menu bar, replace it with a button, all done. Yes, by default it uses the OS standard menu bar, which doesn't do anything special; didums, it's trivially replacable, and has been for donkeys years. So, no, fuck you. -
Re:Opera screen real estate vs FirefoxExcluding the Menu Bar (Opera uses the standard/forced top one) Including it. It's certainly not "forced"; I have it disabled, with a Menu, Feeds, Bookmarks and Closed buttons and the status bar where the menu used to be.
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Re:Opera screen real estate vs FirefoxOpera's interface is every bit as customisable if not more so. False. I challenge you to put a "back" button next to the Help menu on the menu bar, then. You can do it in IE. You can do it in Firefox. Opera forces that space after Help to be waste. Here it is:Screenshot
:P
There's a back button, forward button and an addressbar next to help. Not technically what you said but close enough that it shouldn't matter. Probably technically cheating aswell as it's not the 'real' menu bar.
You're right that you can't put stuff in the menu bar in Opera though, and you should be able to. It is a waste of screen space. In order to make that screenshot (without manipulation), I used the custom buttons page on http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons to add each of those menu items to the "Main Bar" (after clearing it), then I added the back button and decided to go a step further and add the address bar and forward. I had already used the toggle menu bar custom button to hide the actual "Menu Bar" (I normally don't have a menu bar even, the panel is enough).
If you look closely I have the entire main menu as a button in the tab bar (labeled "Menu" with a black arrow next to it). If I click that I'll get a menu with all the main menu bar items in it. Over on the right I have a view button which will display the "view bar" where I've hidden the menu toggle button.
I could have combined everything on the menu into the tab bar instead but it wouldn't have looked like the main menu colorwise. I could have everything in one bar like the great-grandparent has in their firefox screenshot. Less than their screenshot even if I put everything in the tab bar instead of a seperate one.
Also there is a panel toggle on the left of the screen. I typically don't use the main menu except for the File-> Import/Export menu options so hiding the entire thing makes sense since all bookmarks, history, widgets, mail and newsfeeds are available in the side panel and most settings are accessible via keyboard the shortcuts F12+none, ctrl, shift.
If you really want to get bitchy about wasted space you could put all the menu options, the addressbar and everything normally in a toolbar into a custom panel and get rid of every bar (even the tab bar if you want) and just have the panel toggle at the edge of the screen. Hide it when you don't need it. You can't get much less wasted space unless you changed the theme for your desktop to use less space for the window decorations (I think that would be going a little far). The entire window would be space for the page except for the small scrollbar on one side and the panel toggle on the other (not necessary with keyboard shortcuts). -
Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu
You can toggle the menu bar with a button from that site in Opera to get rid of it if you really want to. I currently have the button in the view toolbar (hidden by default) that Opera has, with a non-toggle menu button on the far left of the tab bar (where the panel toggle would be by default) acting as the main menu. I rarely ever use the menu anyways; the panel has all the mail client and bookmarks access I need.
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Re:Opera screen real estate vs FirefoxThe thing I like about Firefox is how changeable it is: Screenshot I've been organizing the bars like that since I started using FF, and I find it makes for much better use of that space than just a gray, blank area. Opera's interface is every bit as customisable if not more so. Right click on any toolbar and click "Customize." The "Toolbars" tab will let you play with which toolbars you want to show, and where you want them. The "Buttons" tab will allow you to place just about any button anywhere you want. Finally, you can even make your own buttons. See the Opera wiki for more information: http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons
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Re:I'll probably burn in karma-land for thisIf this were news about IE, I'd care. If it were news about Firefox, I'd care. Since I'm a Mac user, if it were news about Safari I'd probably care, at least a little (although I use Firefox). But Opera? I don't even test my stuff against that browser - it's just never been particularly relevant.
First off, Opera use is large enough for the company to survive on revenue from Google from the search bar(just like FireFox). I've seen figures of 1 to 2% of use, and when you factor in the huge number of web surfers, ~1% is nothing to sneeze at.
Now, I realize that Opera zealotry is as fervent as the worst Mac fans, and loses nothing to the Nikon/Canon camps; but really - the installed base is tiny. When I look at my site stats, Opera doesn't even show up (and even Netscape 4.x still has a tiny sliver of the pie). So I'm not sure even the "competition is good for everyone" argument particularly applies here.That's pretty narrow minded thinking. Many of the features in Firefox and and it's extensions are Opera innovations or it was the first browser to have a good implementation. You can see some of the innovations here . Of course, Opera has taken some cues from Firefox too, but I think it's safe to say that all the browsers have benefited because of the existence of Opera. Hence, it's not 'irrelevant' just because there are hardly any hits from Opera on your site. Many of the features you enjoy in Firefox have their root in Opera.
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Re:Can't wait
You can block Flash with Opera using user stylesheets:
http://operawiki.info/FlashBlock
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/09/opera-and-f irefox-extensions-ii -
Re:The only thing stopping me from using Opera
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Re:med school apps suck
I don't know about that. Switching my user agent to IE using the Web Developer Toolbar got Opera 9.02 to a login screen.
(Ha ha. The post is [loosely] about med school, and the captcha is "interned".)
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Re:A painful subject
Opera 9.02 works with all the sites I visit regularly. This wasn't true of 8.x admittedly.
And for things that don't, notably ytmnd, there's a "View in Internet Explorer button" you can install.
And you get the speed, slick UI and peace of mind that a browser with a negligable market share is not a tempting hacker target. I like the Wand thingy, and the way you can click at the edge of the screen to get a links pane. -
Re:HTTP PipeliningThis is NOT just Opera fanboyism, but Opera however *does* do pipelining by default (with a safe fallback)
Opera pipelines by default - and uses heuristics to control the level of pipelining employed depending on the server Opera is connected to
Reference -
Re:Sad Co-incidence
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu drag and drop the buttons file, edit,
... to a toolbar of your choice and then disable the menu bar (don't remember the keyboard shortcut, I have a mouse gesture assigned. Easiest way: go to http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#toolbar - drag the "Menu" button to any toolbar, click it to disable the menu bar, and then remove the button again) -
Re:Sad Co-incidence
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu drag and drop the buttons file, edit,
... to a toolbar of your choice and then disable the menu bar (don't remember the keyboard shortcut, I have a mouse gesture assigned. Easiest way: go to http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#toolbar - drag the "Menu" button to any toolbar, click it to disable the menu bar, and then remove the button again) -
Re:Opera compatibility vs the other two?
ya, see, this is exactly my reasoning, only in reverse. I have Opera with the web developer menus installed, which comes standard with 'open in FF' and 'open in IE' context menu options (besides a plethora of other stuff)... so why the
heck should I suffer those two other browsers? :) Ah well, to each his own. :)
OBlink to the webdev toolbar thingie: http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar -
Re:I find firefox more configurable (screenshot)
Opera can do this as well: http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu
Add menu buttons to your topmost toolbar and switch off the menu. Search the forums if you need more help. -
Re:Internet Explorer on Windows
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#webdev
You can also add these lines to Opera6.ini under[Document Popup Menu] & [Link Popup Menu] sections:
Item, "InIE"="Execute program, "iexplore.exe", "%u""
Item, "InFF"="Execute program, "firefox","%u""" -
Re:Extensions
The WebDev toolbar does everything I need it to do...
http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar
Very useful. -
Re:Adblock
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Re:Give Vista Developers A Break
Holy Carp! How long have I been using Opera and never noticed that...
I just tried it, and it works. That's great! I hope I remember it. I ought to put a button on my toolbar for it. ...Done. Found it in the usual place, at http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons . -
Re:Adblock?
Not AdBlock per se, but you can achieve the same functionality.
My advice? Give it a fair try. Download it, and stick with it for, say, a week - it's free (as in beer, no ads or whatever) for desktop users. The UI is, IMHO, the best Opera has to offer, but it takes a bit to get accostumed to. Once you do, though, you just can't go back.