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Opera 6.0 for Linux Released
e1en0r writes "Opera released 6.0 for Linux and 6.02 for Windows today. The new features include cookie management and plug-in support. I've been using the beta release of Opera 6 for a while now and it's great."
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A advisory was issued on Bugtraq today, and the 2 holes it referenced are fixed by 6.02.
Here's the description (taken from the advisory):
Opera allows the location of a frame to be overwritten by an url
containing the javascript protocoll. The javascript code will be operating
in the same domain as the url that was overwritten. Thus we can read
cookies from other domains, local file structure and private information
from the cache (history of links visited).
When I first started comparing browsers Mozilla was slow as dirt and really buggy (fixed since then) and IE was/is insecure so I looked into Opera.
At first I thought that the required ads were going to get annoying, but in truth, they weren't that bad at all. Plus, if I hated them that much I could pay a small fee and get rid of them.
But the best part about Opera is it is the fastest html renderer there is out on the market as far as I am concerned. A second high point to Opera, is that it is completely standard compliant. Unlike some browsers... which one you ask? Um... IE maybe, but that could just be me.
The winner in the pack now has to be Mozilla, but a close second right now is Opera.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Which part of "Buy Opera today - For the best internet experience Ad Free" do you not understand?
Except it could be argued, How are we to level the playing field (removing IE-only sites), if we browse pretending to be IE?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
You can already see the results of the competition between mozilla and opera with Mozilla introducing Tabbed windows, following Opera's lead. The real 'competive' barrier Opera faces is the fact that it isn't free. 20$ (education) isn't a lot, and I paid it, but so many people are used to free browsers that i don't know if Opera can gain more than a foothold because it costs money. And since it's a small company and not finaced by a huge corporation it can't really afford to make it's browser free, although with the advertising market what it is I can't believe they are making much.
Among the linux browsers I would have to say I prefer Opera better, mostly because of it's speed - better even than IE. Although the super-small d/l size and it's availability across a wide range of platforms is nice also.
The irony of you complaining about the "bloat" of opera, and then state that you're using Mozilla hasn't been lost. That's a pretty funny joke, really.
Having said that, Opera has finally achieved a level of functionality (err, "bloat". Of course a browser that fits on a floppy wouldn't offer the features that customers needed, and wouldn't have any market presence) that makes it a very worthy replacement for IE on the Windows platform, at least: In my day to day use, 95% of my browsing is with Opera 6, and pretty much the only time that I don't use it is when visiting msdn.microsoft.com : Apart from that I've seldom had the slightest problems, and it offers fetures (such as multiple-windows in one host: I love this) like being able to accept/reject pop-ups (or prompt), among a whole slew of "quick preferences". Mouse gestures rock and I find myself trying to use them in IE all the time.
Opera is a fantastic browser, and if anything its time is just beginning. The advertising banner is unfortunate, but for people willing to pay the small price it is tremendous and well worth every penny.
Yes, competition is good, but there is a point where there are just too many browsers. As a maker of all things web, it is very difficult to work around all the quirks of these browsers (and yes, *all* browsers have quirks) I have Opera users tell me they are MSIE in their user agents, I have Galeon users thinking they are running Mozilla, and bizarre rendering bugs across the board.
Making things even more difficult, I have to contend with varying and often non-existant toolbar API's which make things like the superb Google Toolbar and (in my mind) the also superb StumbleUpon Toolbar impossible to develop for browsers that are not Mozilla or IE.
I think its time to go for a little Darwinian Selection. Survival of the fittest browser. And I think that browser is Mozilla. Its the most full featured browser out there, it's free, it's open source. I had a couple problems with it, I filed bugs, and they were both fixed within the week! I'm having a hard time finding any flaws with RC2, it's brilliant. For all those who are using alternate browsers because Mozilla is "bloated" and "buggy", check again.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
I have been working with javascript, DOM, CSS2 for fun in the evenings, and so far Opera doesn't do enough of what I want it to do. Mozilla seems to be the only browser that supports the DOM as outlined by the W3C, and for that reason, I won't be using it, regardless of how fast it is.
See an example of what I've been doing with Mozilla here. It's a card game that I enjoy on my Handspring Visor and "ported". Works great in Mozilla, but dies in every other browser I've tried.
Ah well. Go Moz!
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
As long as Windows has 95% of the desktop OS market and IE is the preferred browser on that platform, all of the the browser competition on the Linux front is somewhat meaningless.
Not to Linux users.
In another post, someone is bemoaning how Opera, which previously shipped on a single floppy, has added too much bloat.
Bloat? BLOAT? PuhLEEZE.
Try this on Windoze: from a fresh log-in launch Opera, Mozilla, Internet Exploder and Outlook Express. Then press ALT-CTL-DEL, and click Task Manager, then click the Processes tab. Then take a look at how much RAM each is eating up.
I did this at home, so I don't have the exact numbers handy, but as I recall Mozilla ate about 24MB, IE 7MB, OE 13MB (yikes!), and Opera 6 about 7MB.That's with no sites loaded. Now open up some good, large, complex pages; I tried Slashdot, Salon, CNN, and a few others, the same sites in each browser. In OE, Opera and Mozilla, go sign onto my IMAP email server, just for good measure. Now Mozilla uses 30+MB, IE is up over 20MB, OE is still eating 13MB or so, and Opera is using... about 12MB. Not too shabby.
Now close all the browser windows and log off email. Guess what? Moz is back to 24MB, Opera's back to 7MB, OE still hasnt' changed much, but IE is still sucking down 24MB. Nice garbage collection there, Microsoft.
When you consider that A) Opera provides the functionality of IE *and* OE, and B) some of IE/OE's resource usage is hidden in assorted other "OS" DLLs, Which one is bloated again?
Oh, one last little test... open up a loooong site in each (nice fat thread on Slashdot at Score:0 will do it), then press and hold the down arrow key and see how long it takes to scroll to the bottom. Opera is about twice as fast as Mozilla, and about half again as fast as IE. Add in Opera's industry-best standards compliance and rendering speed, what's not to like?
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Ya, I guess considering that there are only 3 popular desktop OS's and Opera supports 7+ OS's that it's not available on a "wide range" of reasonable platforms. Oh well, someday they'll make Opera for my TI/86.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips