Opera 7.10 Released (First Opera 7.x For Linux)

joshieck writes "The much awaited (at least I know I've been waiting for it) Opera 7.10 has been released. This marks the first release of Opera 7.x for linux, and is a cause for rejoicing. Even if it is a 'beta,' it's opera, so you know it's gonna be good. Go get it at Opera.com, or go right to the download page. From the Press Release: 'Opera Software today released Opera 7.10 for Windows and Opera 7.10 for Linux Beta with features that are not only new to Opera, but also completely new to the world of browsing. Right from the beginning, users can see the two new buttons FastForward and Rewind in the toolbar, accelerating Opera users' Web navigation. Users can also speed up researching with the completely new Notes features or view photo files with SlideShow.'"

Comments

This is a lie

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

This is an illusion by the Zionist American forces. Opera 7.10 was not released, we valiantly fought them and killed all of the invaders.

Re:This is a lie

[k-0s]

Wow that didn't someone long to register that name. Seriously Though, I give this current obsession with Mohammed Al-Sahaf 2 weeks tops before people say "Who?"

Re:This is a lie

[evilquaker]

Dude, you should add a link to your fan group's homepage:

http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/

Re:This is a lie

[villain170]

I don't know. I still hear people talking about the whistles going whooooooooo!

Also see:

1. Bubb Rubb: WooWoo!
2. Bubb Rubb Info Center
3. Yahoo Discussion Group

If you've already seen it -- I'm sorry for the redundancy. Shouldn't be readin slashdot so early in da mawnin'!

Re:This is a lie

[AKnightCowboy]

I give this current obsession with Mohammed Al-Sahaf 2 weeks tops before people say "Who?"

No problem, just say "You know, Comical Ali... Baghdad Bob..."

"OOOOHHH that Mohammed Al-Sahaf. What an asshat."

Re:This is a lie

[k-0s]

True enough, but the fasination with him will be gone. Plus, I love the rerm "asshat". Thanks for eminding me about it, I left my vocabulary for a while and now is going to return, LOL.

Re:This is a lie

[Troll_Kamikaze]

Those traitors who would still attempt to download it are committing suicide against the firewalls of our server farm. We will lure the imperialist dogs into our honey pots and decimate them with unconventional DDOS attacks. Allahu Akhbar!

Re:This is a lie

[jacoplane]

The site is actually here :)

Re:This is a lie

[Fishstick]

sure to be modded OT, but what the hell, it's only karma:

Damn, the page was taken down.

Due to overwhelming support for welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com. We will be bringing it back on a brand new web server that will be dedicated to the task of serving this comical view of history's funniest straight man. This should be up in 24 hours from now.

The site was so popular that 4000 visitors per second showed up from around the world and overwhelmed this shared server for over 8 hours until we turned it off in self defense. It basically put a 100 other businesses out of business for a day. If we had known it was going to be this popular we would have put it on it's own server from the beginning.

Google's cache

Called on the United States to "surrender or be burned in their tanks." We assume he means the tanks sitting in the presidential palaces, but his office could not be reached for clarification.

Re:This is a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

"Listen, this explosion does not frighten us any langer. The cruise missiles do not frighten anyone. We are catchign them like fish in a river. I mean here that over the past two days we managed to shoot down 196 missiles before they hit their target."

Wonder what he's doing right now?

Re:This is a lie

[Spunk]

I think Enron might have an accounting position open.

Re:This is a lie

[Iguanaphobic]

Rummy hired him to write the copy for the Syria operation.

Re:This is a lie

[layne]

Just like to point out that I remember you, Mr. al-Sahaf, and can recollect that you are personally responsible for ordering the torture and execution of my cousin in Dimaniyah.

I know your new personality cult is a rich, rich vein for jokes---winning smile, somewhat nerdy, "going down with style"...charming affect overall. Similar to a famous Reich's Minister.

And I can take a joke. Really.

'Completely new' web notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, NCSA Mosaic had an 'annotate' function.

'Completely new' my ass.

Re:'Completely new' web notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

kinda like "snapback" from safari versus "rewind" eh?

Re:'Completely new' web notes?

[croddy]

yeah, a while ago they had a blurb on their front page claiming they'd invented the multiple document interface. ha.

opera looks nice. personally, though, I prefer for my web pages to render correctly. I also like it when my browser is free OSS, instead of $40 secret binaries.

opera users will be here for a while. the good news, though, is that we can fight them with compliant HTML.

Re:'Completely new' web notes?

[haavard]

"yeah, a while ago they had a blurb on their front page claiming they'd invented the multiple document interface. ha."

When did we claim to do that? I don't think we've ever claimed to invent MDI. After all, MDI has been around in other kinds of applications for a long time. We didn't invent mouse gestures either, but one could claim that it was Opera which brought mouse gestures to the browser. I think it was the first browser with gestures anyway.

As for Notes, it is completely new to Opera. Whether or not it has been "invented" before is hardly relevant, is it? As long as it is a useful feature which makes browsing more convenient, everyone should be happy. All browsers borrow features from each other. Mozilla has borrowed plenty from Opera too.

Notes Feature

[manly_15]

I've installed Opera 7.1 for both Windows and Linux, and am very impressed. Does anyone know how to create a note? I see the Copy to Note and Paste To Note options, but they don't do anything :-(

Also, Opera still doesn't display my ISP's homepage properly. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next release :-).

Re:Notes Feature

[zxSpectrum]

The notes are available in the "Notes" panel in the sidebar, which is toggled on/off with F4.

Re:Notes Feature

[akorvemaker]

Also, Opera still doesn't display my ISP's homepage properly. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next release :-).

Why is this assumed to be Opera's fault? Have you tried encouraging your ISP to use cleaner HTML? I had a quick look; it could be stand to be Tidied.

Re:Notes Feature

[johny_qst]

I'm using Opera 7 on win2k and can see your ISP's homepage fine. Are you reporting that you are using opera? Is it a problem using some page other than the homepage like your webmail? I'd say hit Ctrl+Alt+O and try hitting your ISP again.

Re:Notes Feature

[Arctic Dragon]

I agree. Websites coded to W3C standards generally render well with Opera. However, how many sites actually validate? There aren't very many (check out the source code of microsoft.com, yahoo.com, and other large sites... lots of coding errors). Until more web developers adopt the standards, I want to use a browser that doesn't choke on messy HTML and CSS.

Re:Notes Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this assumed to be Opera's fault? Have you tried encouraging your ISP to use cleaner HTML? I had a quick look; it could be stand to be Tidied [sourceforge.net]. Face it, opera has loads of bugs specially with CSS. I use clean HTML (valid XHTML 1.1 strict) for my site, and opera 7 still display column incorrectly if you have text with spaces as the content of that column. That and lots more CSS bugs. I can't be bothered listing those bugs one by one. The HTML of that ISP is fine enough, if IE, Netscape can display that site properly, is it really that hard for Opera to fix their "various display" problems?

Re:Notes Feature

[djoham]

is it really that hard for Opera to fix their "various display" problems?

It is when the display problem is the web page's fault. I took a look at the page in Konq 3.1. By default, it rendered wrong. Then, I told Konq to lie to the web server and report that it was IE. Behold, a perfectly rendered page!

As an ISP, they should know better...

David

Re:Notes Feature

[GigsVT]

FWIW, the page looks fine on Opera 6.11 when you Identify as MSIE 5

Re:Notes Feature

[devilspgd]

They're actually spitting out cleaner code to IE then other browsers?

Re:Notes Feature

[Anime_Fan]

It is when the display problem is the web page's fault. I took a look at the page in Konq 3.1. By default, it rendered wrong. Then, I told Konq to lie to the web server and report that it was IE. Behold, a perfectly rendered page!

Actually, did you try changing the mode Opera identifies as? IIRC, if you identify as Internet Explorer, Opera will use some hacks to emulate it.

Also, rendering mode in Opera is dependant on the correct doctype being specified at the very top of a document.

Also note that a web browser may render a page in any way they like as long as a page is not standards compliant (like msn.com in Bork edition Opera).

You do however have to admit it's a very fast browser, with (for me) loading and rendering times of less than half a second for the slashdot main page...

Re:Notes Feature

[numark]

That's mostly due to the fact that Microsoft's CSS style detects whether a person is using IE, Mozilla, and Opera, and gives a really odd style sheet to Opera that causes elements to be shifted off to the side. The theory has been that it was done to discredit Opera by making it look as though it was Opera's fault that the page didn't display, even though Opera was just showing the page the way Microsoft's CSS style told them to do it. If you tell Opera to report that it's MSIE, then the CSS code you get is the IE version, which doesn't have the corrupt formatting in it.

Re:Notes Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has done moderately complex DOM or CSS work knows that Opera has a long ways to go. If I had to support it, I'd probably have to let out a loud grrrrraaaahhhh not heard since the days of Netscape 4.x. (no, I don't support Netscape 4.x in development anymore).

horribly misleading headline

[mrscorpio]

"Opera 7.10" was not released. "Opera 7.10 Beta 1" was released. It does mention further down in the paragraph that this is a beta, but it still gives the impression that this is a release.

This is why I go to pclinuxonline.com for my Linux news.

Chris

Re:horribly misleading headline

[fobbman]

Straight from the posting:

"From the Press Release: 'Opera Software today released Opera 7.10 for Windows and Opera 7.10 for Linux Beta [emphasis mine]...'"

I can forgive you for not following the links in the posting (it's vogue around here), but try to at least read the posting ITSELF...

Re:horribly misleading headline

[sc00p18]

hmm, it sure looks like you come here, too ;-)

Re:horribly misleading headline

[Anonymous Coward]

.. you're an idiot.

Re:horribly misleading headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Names can't hurt me

Re:horribly misleading headline

[NeuroKoan]

Well, technically "Opera 7.10" for windows is a non-beta release. It is only the Linux version that is a beta release.

Notes and SlideShow

[Alan Holman]

The notes feature, and the slideshow feature, sound good. If I had that browser, I'd no longer need to open notepad in a separate window for note-taking. And I'd no longer need to download pics and use them in IrfanView for slideshow. Keep up the good work, browser makers! Call me old fashoned, but I still like LYNX.

Re:Notes and SlideShow

[Anonymous Coward]

At least use a real text mode browser, like eLinks. Lynx is a dinosaur. I can't think of any valid reason to use it anymore.

Re:Notes and SlideShow

[InfiniteWisdom]

You, sir, are old fashioned

Re:Notes and SlideShow

[Alan Holman]

There are many valid reasons for using LYNX. I dial-into LYNX with a 286, and that's MY valid reason. I'm sure there's more valid reasons :)

Re:Notes and SlideShow

[Durendal]

Hear Hear! I know exactly what you mean. I do exactly what you do with IE, Notepad, and Irfanview. I have not used LYNX since college in the mid 90s however. But hey if it works use it. Too many folks think just because things are newer they are better. Comsumer software is just getting mature enough to finnaly start debunking this techie urban folktale. Software in the UNIX and mainframe world has its feet way in the past and it works fine.

Works Great

[xtremex]

on Suse 8.0!
Have more testing to do however.

Nicely polished

[akorvemaker]

They've added a few features since the 7.0x releases (for Windows), which is really nice, but I find that the biggest difference is the quality. They've really taken the time to polish their product a lot. Sure, some bug remain. Overall, though, I find that it's just very enjoyable to use.

Re:Nicely polished

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm downloading it as we speak.

I tried the earlier 7.0x versions and didn't like them. They screwed up the default skin, it's horrible. there are a few other little nitpickety things i don't like about it, but really the only thing stopping me from upgrading is the "show/load pictures" button.

When you click it in 6.xx it changes to denote whih "mode" you are in (pics off, show cached, load all). 7.0x didn't do that.

Maybe they fixed it though...

Re:Nicely polished

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's me again. have to say they did a lot of improving. first time you start you can pick your default skin. which is good. Still haven't fixed the images button though.... oh well.

Can't wait till my favorite features get incorporated into mozilla or phoenix... til then i'll stick with Opera 6.05

Re:Nicely polished

[akorvemaker]

Odd. For me it does change. I click on it, it gets an through the camera. I click again, see half a camera. I click again, it's back to normal (a full camera). (On Windows)

Re:Nicely polished

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's all find and dandy you have Images on your buttons. I prefer all text buttons, and in 6.05 the text changes depending on your current mode of operation. The text doesn't change in 7.xx only the little camera.

Re:Nicely polished

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap look at all of those errors.

that first part should have read "Well that's all fine and dany if you have Images on your buttons"....

Re:Nicely polished

[Anonvmous Coward]

"They've added a few features since the 7.0x releases (for Windows), which is really nice, but I find that the biggest difference is the quality. They've really taken the time to polish their product a lot. Sure, some bug remain. Overall, though, I find that it's just very enjoyable to use."

I've been using Opera 7 since it came out, and it's a damn fine end-user experience. These guys really thought about how to make browsing a pleasure, and man it shows.

Here's a few examples:

- Tabbed browsing? It's got it, and you can even drag it out to a seperate window.

- Want the website you're on as a link top? Just drag it over!

- You can magnify web pages.

- The toolbar on the left is customizable, you can have CNN show up there or call up a web page etc.

- You can have Opera automatically reload a page every x minutes. That's neat for keeping an eye on Slashdot for updates.

- Skinning, etc...

- The transfer window is pretty cool. Your transfers come down and it retains the transfer information so you can have it re-xfer. Etc

There's lots of other stuff. It's the type of thing where you use it and it feels like it's trying to be helpful, vs. some browsers that like to fight with you along the way.

I'm sure a lot of these (if not all) are part of Mozilla. I'm not claiming it's better or worse than Mo. (I haven't really used it a lot so I wouldn't comment on it.) I'm just saying that it's a joy to use.

Why does it have to be good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 7.0 has so many problems regarding display and usability I don't even know where to begin; how about the inability to change from the "in system window display" like you could with opera 6.0.

I like the fact that there are indy folks still out tehre in the browser world, but I'm not going to give opera free props just cuz they aren't MS. 7.0 has too many problems, and many of teh changes that were made from 6.0 were just plain wrong.

-rt

Re:Why does it have to be good?

[Repugnant_Shit]

The only gripe I have with 7.0 is the inability to have the transfer window be separate from the rest of the hotlist. Other than that 7 is much, much better than 6.0. If you have lots of problems with it please file a bug report so the developers know.

Re:Why does it have to be good?

[The_Spide]

Window -> Special -> Transfers (CTRL+ALT+T) will popup the transfer window.

My gripe is that the cut behaviour has changed in windows, SHIFT+DELETE is no longer works as cut, but the CRTL+INSERT (copy) and the SHIFT+INSERT (paste) still work ?

Re:Why does it have to be good?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had that problem before Opera 7.10 as well; it was assigned to something else.

If you're still having the problem in 7.10, you can edit it in Preferences>>Mouse and Keyboard>>Keyboard setup. Otherwise I think it's in the input.ini file in older versions.

As an aside, don't you think it's funny that in windows explorer, ctrl+ins is a keystroke to copy selected files, but shift+del permanently deletes selected files?

Re:Why does it have to be good?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As an aside, don't you think it's funny that in windows explorer, ctrl+ins is a keystroke to copy selected files, but shift+del permanently deletes selected files?"

No what I find funny is that they used ctrl+c to copy (the c is for copy), ctrl+x (kinda looks like scissors) to cut and ctrl+v to paste (looks like an inverted glue bottle). Then again I have a strange sense of humour like yourself.

Re:Why does it have to be good?

[Compact Dick]

how about the inability to change from the "in system window display" like you could with opera 6.0.

Press ALT+P, go to WINDOWS, check "Open pages in new window".

Re:Why does it have to be good?

[Repugnant_Shit]

Thanks for the tip, I never even looked for it under Window -> Special, because I saw it on the hotlist :)

Excellent

[www.andycheung.com]

Great news - I sure hope Opera make some money out of their browser. years ago, it was well worth paying the license fee considering that IE4 and Netscape 4 were the competition. Now that Mozilla, Konqueror et al have gotten so good, I wonder if it's so compelling anymore.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is.

Opera is still faster than IE, Moz, or Phoenix. At least on Windows.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

For people that want a modern browser on a something around a P200 or less? There really isn't else to choose from.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

And it has better features.

There I said it.

Mouse gestures (builtin)
and tabbed browsing (smaller tabs... IMHO, mozilla's are too big)

neato little "Disable Images" button for those of us who are bandwidth challenged.

Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Add these lines to your hosts file if you want to block Opera from downloading the Cydoor ad banners in the free version. I've also renamed /usr/share/opera/images/operabanner.png to get rid of the default image.

0.0.0.0 ins1.opera.com
0.0.0.0 ins2.opera.com
0.0.0.0 rgs1.opera.com
0.0.0.0 rgs2.opera.com
0.0.0.0 rps1.opera.com
0.0.0.0 rps2.opera.com
0.0.0.0 www.cms1.net
0.0.0.0 www.cms2.net
0.0.0.0 www.rgs1.net
0.0.0.0 www.rgs2.net
0.0.0.0 www.bns1.net
0.0.0.0 www.bns2.net

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[fobbman]

If you like the product, why don't you just PAY for the thing, instead of defeating their ad banners? Really.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Because its superior to any open-source offerings, Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror, etc. And its the FSF way - just as we grew tired of pirating windows and moved to Linux, we will one day grow tired of cheating shareware and switch to an inferior, Free (as in ankle tracking device) product.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this doesn't cost any money.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like Opera and I rarely use it. I have Phoenix with Xft support compiled in and I consider it far superior.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[iamdrscience]

I like Opera, but I really can't afford to donate (or buy, whatever you want to say) for the non-ad version. When I can I probably will, but right now I can't and I see no reason why I should feel bad about modifying the version I have now. The fact that I'm using it and recommend it to almost everybody I know alone is a more valuable (although less evident and tangible) to them than my paying would be.

I'll give them money when I can.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[fobbman]

That's great that you will give them money when you can, but we aren't talking about a donation thing here. We're talking about a product which gives you two options of use: buy it, or use the free version with ad banners. If you choose the free version and disable the ads, then you are stealing.

I haven't downloaded the product, so I haven't verified the license agreement, but I'd imagine that they have wording in there regarding disabling the ad banners.

Just because you use a freely downloadable operating system doesn't mean that you have the right to take a commercial product and disable their ad banners from within the product. If you don't like the banners, go use one of the other alternatives.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[slaker]

1.) I've had horrible past experiences with Opera as a browser (not the good kind of opera, with the singing and the main-character-dead-by-the-final-curtain, which I enjoy very much, thank you.).
2.) It occasionally deserves another try.
3.) I don't tolerate ads in any other browser (that pretty much means not using IE at all, but thems the breaks).
4.) It's taking me too long to grab the warez version off fasttrack - and I can safely say that I wouldn't leave this version installed, either.
5.) I continue to find Opera slightly less vanilla than IE, with somewhat better feedback options (e.g. IE's progress bar that doesn't indicate progress), but not able to do all the cool stuff Mozilla/Phoenix can.
6.) I also find that operasoft's continued insistence on charging for a browser that doesn't download pr0n for me somewhat silly.
7.) Why should I have to warez to get a non-broken trial copy? I can /etc/hosts the ads, of course, but I'm still losing screen real estate to whatever would be there. What's wrong with the 7-day-full-feature evaluation?
8.) I installed it. Managed to crash it 20 minutes later. Evidently 70 or 80 different subwindows are a few too many.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[arose]

And you're stealing if you don't but the products and services displayed.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[mackstann]

Who cares, you're not gonna change the guy's mind. People pirate shit because they don't care, and someone nagging them on slashdot is not going to change that. Move on please!

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[gl4ss]

well, actually, he is saving opera money by not retrieving the ads he can't afford to buy anything from.. ;)

and besides this is slashot, where i would guess most people think it is okay to circumvent such things.

is using mozilla stealing from internet sites because it has an popup ad blocker built in? i don't think so. is using opera offline stealing? in private network? 'stealing' from kazaa by disabling their spyware and blocking ads is ok but not from opera?

some people here think that they can do whatever they want with the data they got on their computer somehow, believing that it is _THEIR_ computer and the bits on their hd should be modified as _THEY_ see fit, silly them. some might be even paranoid about what opera sends home and block it for that, believing it again is _THEIR_ system and their network connection.

opera is a nice company and their browser rocks on low end machines, but really, the pay version should have something MORE, not something LESS, than the ad-version, now getting the pay version doesn't sport much difference, the benefit being losing just a small ad, so you pay for the program to do less.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[incrustwetrust]

while i am all for sending people to alternatives as i rather dislike opera....

looking at my dictionary, it says that to "steal," you have to deprive someone of something they would have otherwise. this would imply two possible scenario's in my mind:

1)like stealing a a frozen pizza from a supermarket, thus denying a person who might get that frozen pizza a little later their right to that pizza and the supermarket of their money for that pizza... money they would've gotten from the person that would've come along a little later.
2)a granny has a walker. you steal the walker while she's in bed... thus, she doesn't have the walker.

if the person is like me, they wouldn't buy opera in the first place... thus opera wouldn't end up recieving any funds in the first place from me. if i didn't download the free version and get rid of the ads... i'd just download an alternative.

thus, getting rid of the ads is not STEALING. while it may be questionable behaviour, it is not theft.

then again, the person seemed rather happy with opera. eh?

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[antiMStroll]

Not worth the effort. Over the period I ran Opera only two ads appeared, the University of Phoenix and Opera. It wasn't close to being intrusive or distracting, and a small price to pay for a really nice piece of essentially free software.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[emarkp]

I did buy version 6. When 7 came out with no cheaper upgrade option, I decided not to pay the registration fee. (The fact that people who registered ver 6 during the 7 beta got 7 free only added insult to injury.)

Also the decision by Opera to never release a WinCE version of the browser means I'll never be their customer again--I'm no MS fan, but I have a WinCE device. They don't want me as a customer apparently.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, c'mon.

I'm sure you can afford it, considering your savings from downloading all those Pink CDs off Kazaa instead of buying them.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

opera is a nice company and their browser rocks on low end machines, but really, the pay version should have something MORE, not something LESS, than the ad-version, now getting the pay version doesn't sport much difference, the benefit being losing just a small ad, so you pay for the program to do less.

Actually, you pay so that those working on Opera get compensation, and thus increase the chances of better future versions to be released.

There are tons of rationalizations for pirating/modifying software, and half of them have good points, but it doesn't change the fact that it is wrong. You're taking someone else's work and using it in a way that they did not give you permission to.

Admittedly, I have pirated/modified software too. But I'm not so deluded as to rationalize it with technicalities.

I'm using Opera 7 with the banner ads. They don't bother me at all. Banner ads never did (Unless they're the flashy annoying type, which I don't think Opera uses. And if Opera does, then I guess they don't bother me either. =P At least I haven't noticed them).

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bollocks. You may be able to justify modifying your own copy of Opera in this way with this reasoning, but in NO WAY can you justify telling other people how to do it with this reasoning.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[damiam]

to "steal," you have to deprive someone of something they would have otherwise

You're depriving Opera of the revenue it makes from selling ads. Q.E.D.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Blkdeath]

That's great that you will give them money when you can, but we aren't talking about a donation thing here. We're talking about a product which gives you two options of use: buy it, or use the free version with ad banners. If you choose the free version and disable the ads, then you are stealing.

I'd like to echo many of the sentiments I've heard here already;

1. I disable ads in the other products I use; including running AdZapper with Squid to sanitize my browsing experience. So do many others.
2. Further to point #1, I don't make purchasing decisions based on advertising. Therefore, disabling ads for products I won't buy is stealing nothing from the advertiser, including the myth of "potential revenue".
3. Opera gives people the option of a "FREE Download". It's up to Opera to offer a limited version - which they have; it has screen real-estate taken up by the banner space. Whether there's a banner in that space or not is beside the point.

The notion of "stealing" from a company because you don't pay attention to their ads is mis-guided corporate brainwashing. A corporate television executive indicated that the viewers entered into an agreement with all TV networks to watch their commercials in return for watching their shows. That logic is just as flawed as distributing an otherwise fully functional product and hoping that people will decide to purchase it merely to rid themselves of the ads.

Long story short, the guy's using the version that he downloaded from the web. He is not using, nor is he advocating the use of the pirated version of the browser, so cut him a little slack huh?

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[SuperFrink]

some might be even paranoid about what opera sends home and block it for that, believing it again is _THEIR_ system and their network connection.

A valid concern. Opera has a doc that explains what is sent and how it's sent (assuming you trust them of course). http://www.opera.com/docs/ads/ Oh and their privacy policy mentions the ads too.

They also give out a description of file formats that they use.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[iamdrscience]

First of all, I would like to say that I don't block the ads because they don't bother me, but really I don't see anything wrong with people who DO block the ads.

I think I have the right to modify any program or file on my computer the same way I have the right to modify anything else I buy -- if I buy a painting I can change the painting however I want, if I buy a car I can modify it however I want, if I buy a videogame system I can modify it anyway I want, if I buy a CD I am allowed to modify the music contained on it any way I want.

For stuff like a CD you might be able to question whether I have the right to redistribute it after I've modified it, but certainly I can modify it and not distribute it.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

3.) I don't tolerate ads in any other browser (that pretty much means not using IE at all, but thems the breaks).

what are you smoking? The only ads in IE are the ones on the page you happen to be looking at.

5.) I continue to find Opera slightly less vanilla than IE, with somewhat better feedback options (e.g. IE's progress bar that doesn't indicate progress), but not able to do all the cool stuff Mozilla/Phoenix can.

Which features? I'm seriously asking. IMHO mozilla is the browser lacking in features.

7.) Why should I have to warez to get a non-broken trial copy? I can /etc/hosts the ads, of course, but I'm still losing screen real estate to whatever would be there. What's wrong with the 7-day-full-feature evaluation?

They offer an unlimied full feature evaluation. Unless you somehow think that a banner ad can magically suck away features.

8.) I installed it. Managed to crash it 20 minutes later. Evidently 70 or 80 different subwindows are a few too many.

do you want a small fast browser that crashes, or a slow bloated browser that crashes?

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[DarkZero]

We're talking about a product which gives you two options of use: buy it, or use the free version with ad banners. If you choose the free version and disable the ads, then you are stealing.

And you've never, ever taped a TV show and fast forwarded through the commercials, right? Or gotten up to go to the bathroom when what you really should be doing is sitting on the couch and watching the commercials intently like a good little non-thief? Feh. I think not. I think that you, thief that you are, even throw out the supermarket advertisement flyers that are sent to you in the mail as a vital part of the Special Supersavers Checkout Card plan that you use to save yourself money at Shoprite. You make me sick, thief.

But seriously, all melodramatic sarcasm aside, I am almost positive that you are bypassing 90% of the ads that make up the business models of the free or discounted products that you enjoy. We all are. If bypassing ads is stealing, then let he who bypasses no ads cast the first stone. If he's not busy trying to watch the commercials on every network broadcast channel at the same time to make sure that he isn't stealing any channels, that is.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[davmoo]

If he is running the Linux version, there is one slight problem with paying Opera for it...version 7.10 is beta only and is not available for sale. Thus paying to remove the ads for that version is not an option.

I *LOVE* Opera 7. It is my browser of choice. I paid for a copy of the Windows version to get rid of the ads...not because I find the ads annoying or anything, but because I'd rather see that chunk of window real estate get used for something useful, like part of a tool bar. I am now also running the Linux version of Opera 7, and as soon as its available for sale, I will also gladly pay for a copy for Linux.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

god damn, opera users are lame. it blows me away every time.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Ilgaz]

"I did buy version 6. When 7 came out with no cheaper upgrade option, I decided not to pay the registration fee. "

I bought version 6, than for version 7, I paid just $15. You should check better

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[WegianWarrior]

6.) I also find that operasoft's continued insistence on charging for a browser that doesn't download pr0n for me somewhat silly.

Oprasoft - which happens to be a norwegian softwarecompany - has one major product they earn money on; their browser. The next thing you'll say is that you think it's silly that Ford continues to demand that you pay for your car even if it don't drive by itself... If they gave away their products, neither Operasoft nor Ford would be around for more than the wink of an eye.

No, Opera is neither free nor free, but it is still, IMNSHO, a damn good browser well worth having - and if you don't want to pay, there is the ad-supported version to play around with.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[fyonn]

yeah but my aunt does that by not owning a computer

dave

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[eyeye]

You are recommending it to people WHO WONT PAY because you are also recommending they bypass the ads.
Use mozilla if you are determined to be a cheap bastard, its good and no annoying ads.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[eyeye]

Has it bothered you that MS doesnt apparently want lots of customers since they haven't released IE except for their blessed platforms?
I trust you will never be their customer again either since you have such a strong moral imperative.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[haavard]

I have to point out a few serious errors:

- The upgrade from Opera 6 to Opera 7 is USD 15.

- If you registered Opera 6 just before, or during the 7.0 beta period, you either got it for USD 20, or you got a free upgrade.

- We've never said that Opera will never be available for Windows CE, but it is not planned at the moment. It seems someone misquoted us on that.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[stevejsmith]

Where on earth did you get that idea? Sure, they don't make any money if you don't click on them, but Opera let's you click on what you want. You're only stealing if you're going against their wishes...they don't care whether you click or not.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[slaker]

3. The default links on IE's link bar all redirect through microsoft's site, and the whole thing is a giant ad for MSN services ("Windows Media", "Hotmail", msn as default homepage).

5. Mozilla has image permissions, something that I find invaluable. Both mozilla and opera can block pop-ups, but I find Moz's fine-grained control over javascript more useful. Moz is also extensible and customizable, and a quick trip to mozdev.org gets me a lot of tiny extensions to the browser, including one that has the handy feature of more-or-less downloading pr0n for me. Opera does have mouse gestures - something I haven't found useful, but Moz has those, too.

7. The wasted screen real-estate, combined with my no-broadband options and shitty phone lines,leave me with the opinion that something that downloads extra ads is broken. Would you want to download a bunch of extra crap on a 19.2k connection to the internet?
My stated preference would be a time-limited evaluation that doesn't include ads. I wanted to evaluate the new version of Opera. I didn't want ads. I have the choice of either un-breaking their broken, ad downloading software or downloading an illegal copy. I did both. I'm marginally less annoyed at the warez copy, but I still can't see why people think Opera is worth $30 when Mozilla does all the same stuff and more, and doesn't cost a dime.

8. Mozilla doesn't crash. I don't think I've had a Mozilla crash since the milestone releases. Sometimes xfree or some part of windows crashes and takes Mozilla with it, maybe. I leave Mozilla open for weeks and months at a time. I'll keep 50+ tabs open in two or three windows. I'm pretty hard on web browsers. Mozilla stands up to punishment very well.
Also - bloated? I use Moz for mail (best IMAP client around) and on the machine I'm using, and neither Opera nor Moz seems to take longer to start.

Simply put, behavior that is normal and acceptable with Mozilla seems to lead to crashes with Opera. Opera has a neat little "crash recovery" window that comes up after an "oops". Why have I seen that neat little window three times in two days?

I'll admit that as a browser Opera is acceptable (there's some UI weirdness too, buttons that aren't where every other graphical browser EVER has put them. I imagine there are probably skins or something to fix that). If there wasn't such a thing as Mozilla, I'd probably prefer it to IE or Konq. But still, I don't see how it justifies being commercial software. For $30, it should at least not crash.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[muzthe42nd]

7. The wasted screen real-estate, combined with my no-broadband options and shitty phone lines,leave me with the opinion that something that downloads extra ads is broken. Would you want to download a bunch of extra crap on a 19.2k connection to the internet? My stated preference would be a time-limited evaluation that doesn't include ads. I wanted to evaluate the new version of Opera. I didn't want ads. I have the choice of either un-breaking their broken, ad downloading software or downloading an illegal copy. I did both. I'm marginally less annoyed at the warez copy, but I still can't see why people think Opera is worth $30 when Mozilla does all the same stuff and more, and doesn't cost a dime.

Ahh, but if you download it you get a 30 day ad free trial....

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Durendal]

I block any incomming traffic I can single out from addsites, porn, etc.. on my network. So me and everyone who uses my network is a thief? Do you think business planners worry much about wrong or right when they come up with these popups, spyware, and god knows what other intrusive ideas?

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Opera and use it full-screen (F11), which suppresses banners. Once they ran an ad that had a yokle talking about credit card schemes... it was horrible. Cuz I open like ten Opera windows at a time... So this yokle was screaming (at extremely high volume) about credit schemes... I wrote to Opera that I had to stop using their product... even though I hadn't paid money. They stopped running this horrible ad. And I characterize their ads as "no big invasive deal".

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[AvitarX]

Funny, I am capable of paying them now with no money at all.

Because I let them borrow a small piece of my screen to put up adds.

Are you incapable of that?

I don't intend to ever pay cash for Opera persoanly, but I will continue to live up to my end of the bargain for the free neer version instead of trying to cheat them.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[emarkp]

I could have sworn when 7 came out there was no upgrade path. I really did check. It appears that I was wrong however--maybe it's too late, but someone could mod down my earlier post.

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[eugene ts wong]

It's always good to take stands on issues. Just because you may not see a possibility in changing a person's opinion, doesn't mean that there aren't various incentives to speaking up.

Speaking of speaking up, that's kind of what you did, even though many of us will keep telling them to stop pirating. :^)

Re:Blocking the banner ads

[Dave2 Wickham]

Hehehe... University of Phoenix in Opera...

Completely new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right from the beginning, users can see the two new buttons FastForward and Rewind in the toolbar

You mean like Safari Snapback?

Re:Completely new?

[hkmwbz]

No, even more powerful. It doesn't "snap back". It rewinds. Hence the name.

This is not 1990!

[vivek7006]

Why the hell would I pay for a browser? Or why should I settle for an ad-supported browser? This is not 1990!! And especially since I have so many free and open source choices. Why would I not use Phoenix, Mozilla or Konqueror?

Re:This is not 1990!

[gilesjuk]

The web didn't exist in 1990.

Re:This is not 1990!

[LPetrazickis]

Why the hell would I pay for a browser?

Because Opera is worth the money.

Or why should I settle for an ad-supported browser?

Because the ad does not report your surfing habits and is generally innocuous.

And especially since I have so many free and open source choices.

It's a free planet. If you prefer them, use them.;)

Why would I not use Phoenix, Mozilla or Konqueror?

I use the Windows version of 7.10 and it is simply amazing. The interface is extremely smooth and has loads of little touches that are simply missing from Phoenix 0.5 and Mozilla 1.4.

I'll paste in a pro-Opera 7.10 rant that I posted in elsewhere:

http://www.opera.com/windows/changelogs/710/ http://www.opera.com/download/

I am really impressed with this release.

0. Mouse gestures (you know, the things that Mozilla and Phoenix ripped off from Opera) are now customizable. In other words, there will be no more accidental window closures.

1. There is now a good interface for saving toolbar layouts so that you will not have to recustomize after every upgrade.

2. The Notes feature is a multiple item clipboard (independent of the usual thing) done right. The storage is permanent, it doesn't throw itself at you, and you can misuse it for something goofy like a personal quotation database.

3. The nature of 7.0 MDI/SDI is even more obvious now. Context menus allow you to open links in the current child window, in a new child window, in a background child window, in a new parent window, and in a new background parent window.

4. Fast Forward has become even better. To quote the changelog, "FastForward can now be used as a "slide show" on galleries, like http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asi a/".

5. All dialogue boxes are now skinned. You won't believe how much skinned javascript prompts imrove the user experience.

6. All the great features from 7.0x are back. I can go through those if anyone wants. The include universal interface dragndrop, Links sidebar/CTRL+ALT+J, pervasiveness of text files, etc.


Unfortunately, the Active Bookmark Folder concept from 5.x/6.x is still not back, but I am managing without it. It's likely to reappear in 7.20, no one in the Mozilla/Phoenix crowd has used Opera enough to learn the full splendour Insane Greatness, and Microsoft has stopped shovelling features into MSIE after it killed off Netscape 4.x.

P.S. Do remember to set Opera to Always Check Documents in the History and Cache preferences panel.

P.P.S. I've just discovered skin scaling. Wow. Not quite as cool as skin colour schemes, but still very wow.

To illustrate the customizable interface, check out this pic of my personalized Opera.

I hope that helped.;)

Re:This is not 1990!

[Anonymous Coward]

0. Mouse gestures (you know, the things that Mozilla and Phoenix ripped off from Opera) are now customizable.

Because Opera never copied anything from Mozilla? Oh, and I was using mouse gestures in Black & White before Opera had them.

Re:This is not 1990!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell would I pay for a browser?
Because Opera is worth the money.

I know its hard to write software, but Opera cant even display a form correctly; try using 7.10 on Blogger; you get a one character high slit instead of a form.

It just isnt good enough fo $40 I wouldnt use it, even if it was free.

Whats the point of all that speed if its not rendering even the most popular sites on the net incorectly?

Re:This is not 1990!

[mackstann]

0. Mouse gestures (you know, the things that Mozilla and Phoenix ripped off from Opera) are now customizable. In other words, there will be no more accidental window closures.

Careful with the flamebait there, buddy. Mozilla and Phoenix have a hard time "ripping" anyone "off". Their users saw a feature that they liked and enough developers agreed so they wrote it. Welcome to open source. Don't be so abrasive.

Re:This is not 1990!

[arose]

Mouse geastures, big deal... Opera ripped of the ability to display HTML from Mosaic.

Re:This is not 1990!

[drunk_as_in_beer]

Why the hell would I pay for a browser? Or why should I settle for an ad-supported browser? This is not 1990!! And especially since I have so many free and open source choices. Why would I not use Phoenix, Mozilla or Konqueror?

One feature: fast-forward

Re:This is not 1990!

[villain170]

To illustrate the customizable interface, check out this pic of my personalized Opera.

Better watch out for the RIAA and DMCA freaks clicking on that link and seeing Kazaa running. . .

Re:This is not 1990!

[Vann_v2]

Wow, well, I was going to read why I should be using Opera, but your first (or zeroeth...) point was pure flamebait. Great wait to start off a list of arguments!

Re:This is not 1990!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Moz is ripping Opera off when they use mouse gestures, eventhough that's a common theme among many programs. People have been using mouse gestures for ages. But when Opera has tabbed browsing like mozilla, its just Opera being great and not ripping off. Give credit where credit is due. The Browser landscape is so filled, there's no ripping one thing off from a competitor, its all minor changes.

Re:This is not 1990!

[theflea]

I agree with you completely. Opera must have taken the idea that the web browser is so central to the computing expeience that they would test the limits of what a browser could do.

A co-worker of mine asked me why I would use this thing over IE. I showed him a few features like opening all bookmarks in a selected folder, in paned windows

I explained that to exploit these features, there was a definite need for the user to read the tutorials, and that it was well worth it. He agreed.

Not that there aren't other good/great browsers out there, but Opera is my favorite. BTW Opera even displays my online banking website properly now...it didn't before.

Re:This is not 1990!

[russellh]

I want to know if you were even using computers in 1990.

Re:This is not 1990!

[Anenga]

In other words, they ripped it off.

Re:This is not 1990!

[invisibastard]

Great post, but I cannot be silent on how lousy the fonts look in your screenshot. I don't recognize the OS. You should try Mandrake or RedHat, the fonts are beautiful right out of the box.

Re:This is not 1990!

[JJahn]

Don't pay for a browser then. Go to here and download a nightly build of phoenix. Its a very nice browser, I tried the 0.5 version which needs some work, and then tried the nightly build which is not only stable but fast and with good features.

Re:This is not 1990!

[d2003xx]

Because none of them can provide session and mouse-gesture and fast performance and skinnable UI and mail/news reader and note keeper and image zooming and tabbed-window.

Re:This is not 1990!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you could just write it as a pluggable extension in mozilla.

Opera is not wor4h $40 when the competition is giving away superior, free extensible products.

Re:This is not 1990!

[zzyp]

Because the ad does not report your surfing habits and is generally innocuous.

Bullshit, Opera directs me to ad.doubleclick.net and some shit ad servers, phoenix/Mozilla/IE doesn't do it. IE of course uploads your index.dat's to M$.

I ripped out IE by using this utility
http://www.litepc.com/ier_lic.html

But I am now moving to FreeBSD 5.0, and Konqueror.

Re:This is not 1990!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well why in the fuck would you click the ad?

No, seriously, why click it?

Re:This is not 1990!

[croddy]

Because none of them can provide session and mouse-gesture and fast performance and skinnable UI and mail/news reader and note keeper and image zooming and tabbed-window.

I like mozilla. it renders html properly.

Re:This is not 1990!

[drunk_as_in_beer]

I bet you could just write it as a pluggable extension in mozilla.

I'm currently a Phoenix user and I would love to see it (Opera's fast-forward) added. Also, I'd like to see a feature which saves all your open web pages when you exit the browser, like Opera has done for ages. When I have some time, I might have to sit down and write some of these features, but I have no experience writing Mozilla extensions yet.

Opera is not wor4h $40 when the competition is giving away superior, free extensible products

"Superior" is debatable. I like and use Phoenix, but after using Opera 7 (for Windows) for a few days, I really felt it blew away the competition. It is to the level that it is worth the money because it is a quality product. I'm trying out the Linux version as I write this.

It's the sheer speed that really sets it above the rest, in addition to the features and well thought-out user interface. If you don't agree that Opera 7 is faster, you haven't used Opera 7. For example, browsing Slashdot can be very slow in Phoenix. I find myself waiting for pages to load. At first I thought this was Slashdot's fault and blamed slow servers. But when Slashdot starts getting slow in Phoenix, I run Opera and its still blazing fast (and yes I'm logged in when I try it). Maybe it's something I need to tweak in Phoenix (pipelining or something?), but I don't know exactly why it behaves like this.

I'd love to see Mozilla improve to the point where it can compete with Opera 7 in terms of performance, but I don't think this will happen any time soon. Maybe KHTML-based browsers have some promise. But in any case, when Opera 7 for Linux is released, I may just throw down $40 for it.

RH9/M1.3

[kajoob]

I just installed RH9 and Mozilla 1.3, finally the fonts are beautiful, it renders fast, and tabbed browsing is heaven. I am loving life. Can someone give me some good reasons why I should use Opera over Mozilla (or at least, why i should use Opera in certain situations)? I'm generally looking for insight into the whole browser landscape.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs super-duper-fast on my p1-200. Beat that with Mozilla.

Plus a zillion features for a very small download and memory use (Take that IE!).

Re:RH9/M1.3

[EpsilonFour]

I'm my experience of using both Mozilla and Opera, I have found Mozilla the best place to be. Opera has too many errors displaying pages, and overall wasn't very smooth for me. Mozilla, on the other hand, worked exrememly well after I set it up. The only problem I have is that the site www.worth1000.com somehow changes to www.worthl000.com (with an L). Strangely enough, it's only been in 1.3 final and only for that site (vh1.com works, not that you'd want to go there. I just did a Google search on '1' for a url...). Both, however, are superior to IE. The tabbed browsing is really the reason that they are better. Both Opera and Mozilla are pretty equal though, excluding the display errors on Opera. But if you can live with those, it's a toss up.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[zxSpectrum]

Choosing one browser over another is a matter of personal needs, and some need-to-have features.

I regularily use both, Opera for it's speed, nice keyboard navigation, tabs implementation,standards compliance and wonderful mail client. I use Mozilla for testing purposes, and for the pages that will not work in Opera because some web-"master" have decided that Opera isn't a V4+-browser, no matter which version of Opera I'm using

And only when both these have failed, and I need to access something, will I use MSIE.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[akorvemaker]

Can someone give me some good reasons why I should use Opera over Mozilla (or at least, why i should use Opera in certain situations)?

Sure. Speed is one thing. On my (old) computer, Mozilla is really sluggish. It takes over 30 seconds to load. Opera is quite snappy, and loads in about 15.

Opera's keyboard support is superb (and now easily cusomizable). Surfing on a laptop, my hands are always near the keyboard, and Opera's use of hotkeys really speeds up browsing. Everything is easily accesible with the keyboard (at least everything I've tried to do...)

Opera makes it incredibly easy to switch on/off plugins/java/cookies/popups/etc (F12). It's really handy if a site needs a plugin but I usually keep it off.

In general, I just find it really usable.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[onosendai]

Surfing on a laptop, my hands are always near the keyboard, and Opera's use of hotkeys really speeds up browsing.
Everything is easily accesible with the keyboard (at least everything I've tried to do...)

So, this makes opera the anti-pr0n browser ?

Re:RH9/M1.3

[antiMStroll]

Opera is much faster than Mozilla and has a smaller memory footprint. Neither is really important on newer hardware, run what better suits your style.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a trojaned version. The pristine one doesn't do that.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[Anime_Fan]

So, this makes opera the anti-pr0n browser ?

No, this dude forgot some of its main features:
Mouse gestures. Just hold the right mouse button down, move the mouse down and to the right: No more page, for critical times when your boss approaches your room. Right button followed by left lets you navigate backwards in history (^^). New porn features in 7.10 is centered jpeg's when they don't come in a web page (á la picture gallery)...

Opera is very much navigatable with only one hand (and the easiest to use if you have none, using screenreader/etc, some says) irregardsless if you're navigation using keyboard or mouse....

Re:RH9/M1.3

[The Cydonian]

One under-reported feature in Opera that's been there since version 5:- OperaShow. Granted, works only in pages specifically written for that, but still, a compelling feature for me.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[Lord Ender]

I should expand. It really is the fastest browser as far as using the back and forward buttons go. It stores the RENDERED page in memory, so pressing back instantly shows the page. IE and Moz store the source to the page in memory, so every time you go back, they have to read it from the disk and then render it. Waiting on the 'back' button to work is my biggest gripe with IE and Moz. Opera has some very good ideas in their browser.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a screen shot of OperaShow in action handy?

Re:RH9/M1.3

[addaon]

Do people really wait 30 seconds for mozilla to load, or even 10? I'm on a 600MHz machine here with 128MB of RAM, and Safari loads in about three seconds (two bounces, for mac folk), and even so I tend to leave it open rather than waiting for it to start up. The idea of waiting that long to get to something as basic as a web browser seems as bizarre as waiting for a bash prompt.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[wheany]

Here's one.

Those are the same document. And apparently the same position. CSS2 magic...

Re:RH9/M1.3

[An Audience of One]

Opera has too many errors displaying pages,

Actually, if you haven't tried it since version 5 or 6, you'll find the rendering engine is as good as mozilla, and occasionally better. Its now a case of specific site- variation, rather than one being obviously better. The main re-write in this version has been the CSS engine - which is superb now, and renders anything I throw at it.

The main thing I like about Opera though is the mouse gestures - now customisable. (I know, Mozilla has them too, but I still find Opera a lot more responsive, and nicer to use.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[eyeye]

I agree, that is really something that speeds up the whole surfing experience. Its something that mozilla would do very well to take on board.

Re:RH9/M1.3

[Anonymous Coward]

Takes 4 seconds to load Mozilla from a cold start on my Gentoo Linux machine :) Actually 3 but the default page takes about a second to render.

The *headline* is still misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I can forgive you for not reading a user's comment before replying... oh wait, no I can't. The headline says "Opera 7.10 Released (First Opera 7.x For Linux)." It says nothing about beta, and saying released without beta implies a final release. As a result, the headline is misleading. Would "First Opera 7.x Beta For Linux" been so hard to write?

Re:The *headline* is still misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when someone complains about someone else being wrong and THEY are wrong, they should be told.

Opera Icon

[LPetrazickis]

Isn't it time for Slashdot to get an Opera icon? It has a Mozilla icon, a Netscape icon, and even an AOL icon.

Opera happens to be my favourite browser and I want to see it's giant O at my favourite tech news site.

/me sulks:)

Re:Opera Icon

[Anonymous Coward]

why would slashdot want to advertise for a closed cource commercial product that costs $$$ when there are better open source products available for free?

It is obvious that they PAY slashdot for these posts.

Notice how they are always submitted by some person without a slashdot account.

"joshieck" == Opera Marketing Department.

Re:Opera Icon

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw Opera, what /. really needs is a Safari icon. ;)

Re:Opera Icon

[Sentry21]

AOL is part of a large multinational conglomerate who, until losing more money in a year than actually existed at the time, were the largest whatever it was they were (I'm not too clear on what all they do).

Netscape is a corporation that created the first mass-market browser, the first (usable, but dumb) WYSIWYG editor, and completely beat Microsoft to the punch, before dying with a fizzle after coughing up the Mozilla project while AOL was tearing NS's throat out.

Mozilla was a flagship open-source application that the media started paying attention to as soon as it was announced. It took several years, but it now has what some would argue to be the rendering engine that has both the largest standards compliance support and the largest open-sourceness. Apple is working very hard to change this with their WebCore (KHTML) mods, but Mozilla's still the standard.

Opera made a decent browser and charged money for it. Until version 7, it didn't even properly support the CSS width: attribute on table cells, and was astonishingly broken in a myriad of other ways. Opera 7 works, it's fast, and it's reliable, and it looks good, but it's still one browser, and that's all it is. It's not a media conglomerate, it's not an internet pioneer, and it's not an open-source product that has given anything to the people. It's just a company that makes a browser that people use. Not very exciting to me personally, and a waste of a topic, since the only real content would be releases, which you can get at their website.

--Dan

But Opera is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is proprietary non-free closed source. Please tell me why I or anyone else should give a rats fucking ass about this when there are vastly superior free (libre and cost) open source solutions like Mozilla and its variants?

Re:But Opera is...

[SugarKing]

Actually, in my opinion Opera is superior to Mozilla. That's why you would buy something, because it is better product. Just because Mozilla is open source does not mean it is the best. I, including many others, would be happy to pay Opera for their excellent product.

Bork bork!

[KikassAssassin]

Yeah, but does this version have the Swedish Chef? I refuse to use a browser that doesn't have a bork feature.

Re:Bork bork!

[c_oflynn]

Vhet? Joost use-a zee incheffereezer. Bork Bork Bork!

Zee Svedeesh Cheff!

Just downloaded it...

[TWX]

...and it's fairly pretty. I've been using Mozilla for quite a long time, mainly due to cross-platform compatibility, but this is definitely going to be worth looking into.

Though I can already see a couple of things that will cause problems. I'm running triple-head xinerama and gnome/sawfish, and when maximizing Opera, it fills one screen, but thinks that it has the realestate of all three, so stuff ends up being rendered off of the viewable area. I don't know if this is an Opera problem, a Gnome problem, or a Sawfish problem, but I won't be able to do much to fix it until I get around to installing a newer version of Gnome anyway. Hopefully this'll correct at that point.

Definitely pretty though.

Re:Just downloaded it...

[Repugnant_Shit]

This is the kind of bug the developers would like to know about. Either file a bug report at opera.com or go to the opera.linux group on news.opera.no.

Re:Just downloaded it...

[Erwos]

This is _probably_ a Sawfish problem. I'm running GNOME/Metacity with RH8, and Opera works fine on my dualhead Xinerama setup.

-Erwos

It's nice

[skatteola]

I downloaded this and have been playing with it for a few hours... it's very nice, except for the "close all" option in the tab-menu... I mean, why on earth should anyone want that? Probably to annoly people. :)

Re:It's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit.

You're complaining that is has TOO MANY features??

My complaints are about the e-mail program it has. Opera 6.0x's wasn't all that great either, but they really screwed it up (IMO) this time around.

And they got rid of the little X (close widget) in the corner of the hotlist..... I mean come on, some of us liked that thing!

Re:It's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently using Opera 6, and though that feature is only in the menu, it still comes in handy when I get lazy, don't close any tabs for hours, and have 4 rows of tabs in my face. ;)

Re:It's nice

[akozakie]

Wrong. I use it quite often. Get used to opening everything in tabs and using the wheel to move between them, then go search for something on Google, or anywhere else. Once you find it, you realize that you have twenty-something tabs open and you don't need any of them. What do you do? Click the "close" button until your finger breaks, or do the "close window" gesture until your wrist gets stiff? I just close all tabs.

BTW: I installed Opera 7.10 at home, used it a few times during the weekend, and right now I'm downloading 6.12. I can't wait. I _hate_ 7.10. Skins that can't be turned off, default skin so white, that my eyes hurt, it takes over a minute to download a new one over dialup and I couldn't find a good one anyway, everything's just shiny, ugly and weird. Why, o why must every skin be striped, "metal" or otherwise spotty? Yeah, I know, I'm dull, but I like that. Besides, my interface used to be consistent between applications (KDE2 Platinum, with WindowMaker on slower machines - less consistent but good enough), now I can't make that work. No obvious way to enlarge the font in the interface, the default is too small. Slow. Yes, it opens pages very fast, but it takes too long to load and just _feels_ slow. Buggy. Tabs switch without a reason, even without moving the mouse - with JavaScript turned off, mind you. Crashes too often, but it's a beta afterall. No "Identify as" switch, you have to search the menus for that. M2 doesn't work correctly with secure connections, perhaps I just misconfigured something, but I don't think so. AND it makes my speakers noisy - I know it's actually a hardware issue, I used to have Windows on this machine about two years ago and sometimes heard this then, but never in Linux.

The question is how long will Opera 6 be supported. I've been waiting for the beta to see which I like enough to buy. If there will be bugfixes and security updates for at least a year, I'll buy version 6, it deserves it. Unfortunately it looks like this will be the last Opera I ever use. Sorry guys, I'll have to have a look at Phoenix, etc. It's been nice using your product, but you're obviously targetting someone else.

BTW: I'll better go report the bugs I found so far. I owe it to Opera - 6.x was amazing.

Free as in beer?

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it free?

As a CD-carrying FSF'ist, I don't appreciate this coverage of software that isn't Free (as in ankle tracking device).

You should only discuss software that is Free, so that I can live my life blissfully unaware of the superior products available.

I'm NOT downloading this ...

[YetAnotherName]

... until the fat lady sings!

Yes, I know, too obvious. Mod me down, see what I care [whimper].

Re:I'm NOT downloading this ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kathleen Fent doesn't sing for *every* new software release; news at eleven.

Re:I'm NOT downloading this ...

[Anonymous Coward]

see what I care [whimper]

I've been reading too much slashdot.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize why your link to whimper wasn't underlined and green.

Google doesn't have an icon

[Anonymous Coward]

And they run many Google stories every month.

It's good, but

[DrMrLordX]

. . . it killed all my bookmarks. I upgraded from Opera 6.04. I guess I should have expected that. Oh well! I like it otherwise *)

Re:It's good, but

[Thyrhaug]

i guess your bookmarks still are present, only opera7 uses a different bookmark-file then opera6 (~/.opera/opera6.adr and opera7.adr). you might find them there in your old file..

Previews have been out for awhile

[Repugnant_Shit]

If you hang around on opera.linux, the guys at opera have been posting about preview releases for awhile now. They're really nice about people's input and critcism (thanks Espen!)

YOU ARE OLD FASHIONED

[Anonymous Coward]

Love,
- The Goatse Man

Adware ...?

[frodo from middle ea]

Is that the correct model ?
I am scared of putting any adware on my PC. I don't care if Opera is THE browser. I still refuse to even give it a shot.
And for those of you who will say "Why not pay the odd 40$ and buy the ad free version.". I would say "Why should i dish out 40 $ when i can do with perfectly competetive products like mozilla or phoenix or god-forbidden even IE ?"

Re:Adware ...?

[AlexMax2742]

You are sadly misinformed. The 'adware' in Opera doesn't track your viewing habits, and if you try hard enough you can actually disable the banner.

And you pay money because you like the product. Sure there are free alternatives, but they aren't Opera. I personally have both Opera and Phoenix on my computer, but Opera runs faster for me, so I just use Phoenix when a page won't display correctly (pretty rare for me nowadays)

Re:Adware ...?

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't use it and shut up while you're at it.

Re:Adware ...?

[LastToKnow]

Opera doesn't bring with it all the things 'adware' usually entails. I'd say its probably the best-behaved adware I've ever seen. No spyware. No monitering. Just that one ad in the corner. Thats all.

Re:Adware ...?

[DeathPenguin]

It seems that other applications have soured your view of adware. Opera's banner ad is just that, a banner ad. No tracking of viewing habits, no pop-ups, just a banner ad like what you might see on any webpage you surf, including Slashdot. I don't think they even allow flashing ads that distract from a web-viewing experience, either.

Let's not forget that ads help fund the internet and not all are inherently evil. It's like Butt-Head once said to Beavis: "You see it's like, you need stuff that sucks to have stuff that's cool."

Re:Adware ...?

[cliveholloway]

The easiest way to avoid the ads?

In KDE anyway:

• Open opera
• hold down ALT
• click the opera window and move it up so the ad is hidden
• stretch browser to full screen (if needed)

(you may need to move the status bar - if that's an issue for you...)

As to spyware - not an issue with Opera - they know their market :)

One day I'll learn how to script this (yeah, right).

.02

cLive ;-)

Re:Adware ...?

[KjetilK]

Having options, that's why you might want to give it a try. It is good to have the option of Opera.

I think the folks at Opera know that adware is not sustainable in the long run, and that they will figure out something when sales decline.

Wheee

[DrMrLordX]

Whaddya know, all I had to do was import from my old Opera directory. Bookmarks restored, wh00t. Carry on then.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

extremely cool

Opera IS revolutionary

[ogewo]

I've been using Opera since 7.0 came out for windows. Though yes the occasional web page has minor compatibility issues with Opera, i will never go back to IE. The main reason that EVERYONE should switch to Opera is Mouse Gestures. A quick flick of the wrist now gives me features like back, forward, close page, new page, minimize, refresh, and more. Until you get used to it you'll never know just how much sense mouse gestures make. Pr0n browsing productivity is through the roof! Just Like netscape and Mozilla, Opera has tabbed browsing. I thought I wouldn't like that at first but it keep my desktop really organized. Will never go back to multiple windows, but Opera has the option if I wanted to. Another nifty little feature is when you start, you have the option of opening all the pages that were open when you last closed Opera. This is always handy, but especially so after your browser freezes while you had 10 pages open...annoying to go back to them one by one. No longer an issue. I've also switched to Opera's brand new mail client, M2. Not as mature as Outlook but I would still say it's nicer overall. Try it out. Factor in the Skinning feature, 3D effects on buttons, and the truely useful fast forward, fast back features, and you've got to wonder how long until either MS steals these features or Opera becomes the new standard.

Re:Opera IS revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has mouse gestures, head on over to mozdev

Opera doesn't add anything new or exciting to the menu. It's a total fish out of water in the land of free browsers. The free browser work better, offer greater range of choices and (with the exception of netscape) don't attempt to spam you with ads.

<sarcasm>Yeah, the reasons for using opera sure are compelling! </sarcasm>

Re:Opera IS revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has mouse gestures, head on over to mozdev [mozdev.org]

Have the built the gestures into mozilla yet? Opera's are builtin.

Opera doesn't add anything new or exciting to the menu.

What planet do you live on? They must have great browsers where you come from, but here on earth we have to deal with mediocre ones.

Opera had tabs and gestures before Mozilla. And now that both have them, I still have to say that Opera's are better.

I'm not an Opera fan-boy. I'm waiting for mozilla or phoenix to add the features I want so I can switch. (I hate the new 7.xx versoins of Opera)

It's a total fish out of water in the land of free browsers. The free browser work better, offer greater range of choices and (with the exception of netscape) don't attempt to spam you with ads.

One ad. And it's smaller than the ones on slashdot.

Does mozilla/phoenix have a easy way (preferrably builtin.... and note I said easy.) to dis/enable javascript/flash/popups?

I usually browse with JS/flash/pop-ups turned off, but if I need them, Opera has a "quick preferences" menu (f12, it's also in the file menu) that lets me quickly enable them if I need to.

Opera also lets me disable image loading so I don't have to wait for ads and thumbnails to load. But it also has a button right on the toolbar you can click to show or load all the images on the page. I love this feature and it's probably the one thing stopping me from switching to mozilla/phoenix.

Re:Opera IS revolutionary

[toriver]

The main reason that EVERYONE should switch to Opera is Mouse Gestures.

On the contrary, the main reason is the powerful keyboard navigation which means you never need to move your hand over to that horrible RSI-device.

Re:Opera IS revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Mouse Gestures for Mozilla, Phoenix and Netscape: http://optimoz.mozdev.org/

They broke something...

[Dixie_Flatline]

I bank with TD Canada Trust, and have always been able to use most of the features of the site through Opera. Now, it just refuses to log me in. The page never updates, nothing. This is a real shame, since the fast forward button labels itself 'log in', which is exactly what I want. If this one thing worked, it would be just about the perfect browser.

Oh, well. I'll use Phoenix for banking and Opera for everything else until they fix it. (I DID submit a bug report.)

Re:They broke something...

[The Cydonian]

That's the biggest dice with Opera really, most bank websites don't render properly.

That, and oh, MSN.com of course.

Re:They broke something...

[Clived]

Hi

Like you I am a TDCanadatrust customer. I had that problem a while back, but it was not just limited to Opera, was having the same prob with Netscape. I spoke to the tech support people at the TD who treated me like I was from Mars or something. Anyway a few months ago, one of the guys here gave me a few pointers, I had to redo my X-Window setup. Opera and Netscape now work fine depsite thos erroneous messages regarding cookies not being enabled on Opera. I am running Opera 6.0.3 because for some weird reason, all the newer versions crash on my Slackware 7.1 box.

Good luck with Opera, and I think I'll take a look at Phoenix

Opera feature may limit its use

[marlingrando]

One of the really nice features with Opera is you can set a preference so that it identifies itself as IE of Mozilla. This makes browsing the web very easy as you get no errors being thrown about not having a supported browser. This does lead to inaccurate statistics from web servers. Whatever about not getting errors, I cannot set my default browser to Opera yet as there are still some sites which dont work in it e.g. www.ifilm.com. If administrators never see Opera showing up on their logs they are not going to design for it either.

Re:Opera feature may limit its use

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, now if only we can find a way to actually download the movies on ifilm.com instead of streaming them.

Apple version?

[lux55]

Anyone know if an OSX version of 7.x is ever coming? Couldn't find anything on their site about it. Weren't they mad about Safari or something (can't remember who it was, maybe it was them...)?

Re:Apple version?

[snuffdiddy23]

they are usually pretty slow about getting mac support, and they were somewhat piss-ed about apple not using their engine. why would they? why pay opera money when they have perfectly good programmers that can do the work? i think apple was right in not using opera, especially considering that opera has always run poorly on os x, and i am a hardcore opera fan. beos, linux or windows are great places to run opera, but macs are not the place for it, whether it be their fault or not.
also opera for mac has no gestures, whereas any of the cocoa browsers can with cocoa gestures (www.bitart.com). so opera can keep their mac browser, it will never have a place on my machine unless it supplies the women and the beer.

Re:Apple version?

[apdt]

but how would mouse gestures work with only one mouse button?

Succinct Information

[villain170]

More info here.

Bunch of morons

[Sophrosyne]

I don't understand this company... they are a bunch of cry babies!
When Apple released Safari these fools cried a bloody river
Now after they complained about the cost of producing a Mac version of Opera... they release a linux version.
For some reason I don't expect this company to be around for much longer... just my opinion.

Re:Bunch of morons

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, they've concluded that their Mac program was helplessly screwed up --the reviews have been absolutely poisonous.

Re:Bunch of morons

[Anenga]

Exactly. And all those silly fools who cried a bloody river about Microsoft releasing their "free" alternative included within Windows.

Yea, what cry babies!

Re:Bunch of morons

[glitch23]

When Apple released Safari these fools cried a bloody river [com.com] Now after they complained about the cost of producing a Mac version of Opera... they release a linux version.

They have been making Linux versions since late 4.x series I believe. I know I had Opera 5.02 for Linux so it's not just the 7.x series that has had a Linux port available for it.

Re:Bunch of morons

[MidnightBrewer]

There was some serious sour grapes going on in that article. Part of it I understand, from a business standpoint; it's hard to develop for such a small market in the first place with all of the free competition. The other part sounded suspiciously like, "Hold on, wait a second, why don't you dump that open source KHTML core that you've already built into your application and were planning on offering to your developers, and instead pay to license our proprietary, closed-source core?"

The part that really gets me is that it sounds like they were using the release of Safari to have an excuse to abandon the Mac platform. It's not like IE, Mozilla, Netscape, and Camino weren't already competing with them for free. Safari is great and all, but it still isn't all the way there yet; I prefer Camino and Mozilla first. Opera is just there for cranky, IE-oriented pages, as a last-ditch effort before I have to open IE. ;)

Why?

[kardis]

Why pay for Opera? Opera is like Mozilla on speed (and maybe crack). That's why. $40, or whatever it may seem like a bit much, but its well worth the pay if you enjoy your web surfing. But I guess the cheap folks will settle for their mozilla or ie. Point being.. Opera is much better then the other browsers, be it on Linux or on a Windows machine. I must say though, I do like Mozilla, but it seriously lacked in one department--speed. It took forever to load up. IE had that beat. It was either go with IE, Mozilla's sluggish bloat, or bad ass quick web surfin Opera. Also, I've enjoyed the mouse gesture quite a lot. Hold down left-button, and click right-button to go forward, and hold down right-button, and click left button to go back. There are others too. Opera actually have some USEFUL features, and not just bloat. See it beyond the price tag.

Re:Why?

[InfiniteWisdom]

the cheap folks will settle for their mozilla or ie
<p>

Dunno about rest of us cheap folks, but I just bought decent hardware, so Mozilla loads in about 3 seconds, and renders even huge pages instantly.

On older hardware, sure Opera's the way to go. But modern hardware really nullifies all of Opera's advantages.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

On older hardware, sure Opera's the way to go. But modern hardware really nullifies all of Opera's advantages.

And Linux's for that matter.

Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is for fat woman.

Mozilla is still better -- and free

[rudy_wayne]

I used some the 5.x and 6.x versions of Opera for a while but eventually got tired of constantly running into web sites that don't display properly. I tried Opera 7 briefly, and although it looks really cool and seems to be really fast, Opera's programmers are, unfortunatley, still stuck in their mindset of "we're going to strictly adhere to a set of web standards, despite the fact that 95% of the web sites in the world don't follow those standards."

Too many creators of "alternative" browsers are hung up on the idea that making a browser that can handle crappy designed-for-MSIE web pages somehows equals selling your soul to the devil.

Mozilla made the same mistake early on, but they finally woke up to the fact that MSIE, not W3C, is the standard, and you *CAN* make a browser that handles most of the crappy designed-for-MSIE web pages out there *AND* still has lots of innovative features -- the two are not mutually exlusive.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[avalys]

I've been using Opera for over 8 months, and to be honest I can't think of any sites I've visited that haven't rendered properly on Opera. It works great. Even microsoft.com functions properly.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[xutopia]

well I build DHTML instenive web applications and I say Mozilla is better than Opera for anything DHTML or Javascript.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many creators of "alternative" browsers are hung up on the idea that making a browser that can handle crappy designed-for-MSIE web pages somehows equals selling your soul to the devil.

Well I wouldn't go that far, but yes, it is a bad thing. The more browsers out there that emulate Microsoft's undocumented, unstable* perversion of HTML, the easier it is for web authors to ignore the standards and easier for Microsoft to release a browser that ignores the standards.

Reverse engineering IE's quirks is a big deal. It's time and energy that could be better used to create a better browser, not cope with other people's shortcomings. It's something that is incredibly difficult to do 100% correctly, and so there will always be cases where the author used IE to check his work, and other browsers fail to render it how he expects. It doesn't help the author, and it doesn't help the alternative browser vendors because their products are percieved as buggy. It's also a damn pain in the neck if you are developing other kinds of HTML user-agents.

* and before you start on about "websites crashing", I'm specifically talking about the fact that "MSHTML" is liable to change with every release of their browser.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[sharkey]

I can't think of any sites I've visited that haven't rendered properly on Opera.

Global Computer comes to mind.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I hate dynamic content and anything name "web applications" I especially despise javascript and I say that Opera is better because I can disable all of that crap. And if your website won't work, that's a good indicator that I should have avoided it from the get-go.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[josephpate]

Oh really? Then what do you call these?

http://home.earthlink.net/~josephpate/_images/Glob al_Comp_Opera.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~josephpate/_images/Glob al_Comp_IE.jpg

Warning, both of these pictures are 210 kilobytes.

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[Viqsi]

This is absolutely the wrong perspective to take on web standards, because it essentially assumes that MSIE is forever. The equivalent in the OS world would be to dump POSIX in favor of Win32 because Win32 is more common (and I'm hoping that sounds as ridiculous to the rest of you as it does to me :) ).

The idea behind having decent standards-compliant-only browsers is that it's supposed to tune people in to the fact that some websites aren't doing what they should, and that they should start complaining to the site designers themselves. "Your website is broken!" ought to be pretty motivational. (Whether or not this tactic has any chance of success is another matter, but I still support it.)

(And beside from all that, being a web developer myself, I normally have this holy fanatical hatred of anything suggesting that MSIE is the One True Standard; its lack of adherence to standards that Microsoft helped develop causes me more problems than any other browser on the planet. Admittedly, Konqueror is an extremely close second, but that's mostly because of its successful attempts to emulate MSIE.)

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[sharkey]

Interesting. Is that Opera 7? What is your User-Agent set as?

Re:Mozilla is still better -- and free

[josephpate]

It's set as Opera. And no, it's Opera 6.05.

Opera 7 may be different, but I can't fathom why.

Re:Opera IS revolutionary perhaps on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is the best Windows browser, but absolutely, no-holds-barred, the WORST browser on MacOS X. You'll find dispassionate reviewers (I'm too infuriated to be trusted) who'll lay it out for you.

Now, which Opera will this be: the "rocks on Windows" or the "sucks horribly on OS X"?

I'll download it if I read from other Linux users that it doesn't utterly suck. I'm not persuaded by arguments like "pr0n browsing productivity" on Windows is great.

Notes

[simetra]

The new Notes feature seems rather silly. It's like a "drafts" folder in their mail client. If you create a "note" and double-click it, it opens up as an email. It's odd, and seems useless to me.

Otherwise, 7.10 is good. I've purchased Opera and am happy to have done so.

Sophistry laden nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I stealing when I tape a TV show and then fast forward through the ads? The Cable Industry argues that case.

Am I stealing when I ignore the adverts in the trade magazines I get for free?

Nope. To argue theft is sophistry of the most perfect kind: you define your conclusion (i.e., that not watching ads is theft) and then claim "theft" because no one watches the ads.

Try this: sophistry is a crime, because you hijack a discussion for commercial purposes. Get the to a nunnery, sinner.

Re:Sophistry laden nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to look at the Opera banner ads, you just have to put up with them being there taking up screen real estate.

Opera is the superior pr0n-browser

[Anonymous Coward]

A rarely-noticed feature of Opera is the links panel in hotlist. It lists all the links on the current page. So if you want to view a pr0n gallery, you can just select those links and choose "Open in background page" from context menu. No more clicking on every image or wasting time by loading them one-by-one.

Re:Opera is the superior pr0n-browser

[Jason O'Neil]

In Phoenix Page Info->Links This lists all the links on the page, too bad you can't have it as a sidebar or something (yet). For opening all links (Or all picture links, or all pictures, or several other options) phoenix has the Linky Extension, which does what you need. I personally don't think looking at so much Pr0n is a good idea, but I do use those features for other purposes, so I thought I would inform you of their existence

Re:Opera is the superior pr0n-browser

[wheany]

Or, in Opera 7.10, you can just click on the first link (if the links link to images) and fast-forward to the next image.

Tabbed Browsing

[LPetrazickis]

But when Opera has tabbed browsing like mozilla, its just Opera being great and not ripping off. Give credit where credit is due.

Opera has had tabbed browsing since version 4.0 in 2000. I am sorry I was rude about Mozilla-based browsers, but a lot of their design is inspired by that of Opera Software's.

Re:Tabbed Browsing

[Hektor_Troy]

And the difference between tabbed browsing and child windows is? As far as I can tell Opera has always had child-windows (multiple document interface), and the difference between tabbed browsing and MDI is miniscule if not non-existing.

Re:Tabbed Browsing

[LPetrazickis]

An easy way to change between the windows is important.

Unless, of course, they have also always had that. If they have, I apologize. I only started using Opera with version 4.:)

Re:Tabbed Browsing

[Hektor_Troy]

Well, I started on 3.62 (I think) and it had a toolbar like the taskbar in Windows, where each window had its own "button" or what have you.

Sorry

[LPetrazickis]

It was copied word for word from another website where I am on friendly terms with a Mozilla evangelist at whom that line was directed. I should have edited it.:)

Re:Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

just shut up and go use your toy browser somewhere else. wait, what's the MouseGesture(TM) for that? double-drag-backwards-wheeldown?

opera users paid the $40 because they were too stupid to find a good free browser. now we have to listen to them constantly rationalize that wasted money to each other.

Re:Sorry

[wheany]

what's the MouseGesture(TM) for that? double-drag-backwards-wheeldown?

If you want to. They're customizable.

For HTML mail you will pay more: -39 dollars more.

[Futurepower(R)]

Opera still does not have HTML-enabled email. When writing instructions, for example, it is nice to have bold and italic.

Of course, you pay more for an HTML-capable email client. The additional cost for Mozilla is -39.00 dollars U.S. Don't you just love those negative additional amounts?

easier way to block banner adds

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found a simpler why to defeat the banner adds in opera. I just start up an xclock and resize it to fit over the banner add area. Then I set the xclock window to "always on top."

Re:easier way to block banner adds

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could gouge ot the flesh of your eyeballs in just the right spot to block the ad.

Course then you have to keep your head steady and in one position, or the blindspot moves and you get that pesky banner ad again.

Re:Opera Icon-Say cheese.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say you want to see a giant O?

Hmmm...were's that Goat.cx link when you need it?

Without a /. Account?

[LPetrazickis]

Notice how they are always submitted by some person without a slashdot account.

WTF are you talking about? I have a buttload of journal entries and a posting history going back a year or two. Are you drunk?:)

Re:Without a /. Account?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was talking about the "person" who submitted the story, not you moron.

same old issues

[BigBir3d]

Too much wasted screen real estate. Those of us that only have 1024*768 screen resolutions hate that wasted junk at the top. And no, I don't buy web browsers. Too many free alternatives to do that.

Fonts are ugly as hell. Konqueror / Nautilus / Mozilla all look much better. Even on /.

The speed is nice. So is a functional "cnn" takes you to "http://www.cnn.com/" and such.

That being said... I will try it for a week or so (using it now).

Re:same old issues

[Anonymous Coward]

So is a functional "cnn" takes you to "http://www.cnn.com/" and such.

This feature is available in Mozilla as well, in Preferences -> Smart Browsing -> Domain Guessing.

Re:same old issues

[BigBir3d]

doesn't work

plus it only is supposed to add "www" and ".com" which is useless for something like slashdot

Re:same old issues

[bindaaas]

try fullscreen... no ads at all

Re:same old issues

[messiertom]

I'm fairly sure the poster was referring to this, which I find to be one of the best underappreciated features of the whole Mozilla family. Why go to dictionary.com, find the box to put the word in, etc etc when I can just type "define foobar" into the address bar?

Re:same old issues

[messiertom]

Er, oops, please ignore above post.

*goes back to his corner*

I just didn't notice that you were replying to a reply to your original post :)

Re:same old issues

[hawkeye]

Your font issue is more of a settings issue. Just change the font settings in Preferences to point to some nice TT fonts and things will look much better. My Opera looks nearly identical to Galeon/Mozilla or Konq. at this point.

Cheers,

- Hawkeye

Re:same old issues

[alexander m]

Preferences/Network/Server name completion just comma-separate the prefixes/suffixes you want to try, in order of preference. i have "com,co.uk,org,net", for instance. which of course works perfectly with slashdot.

Re:same old issues

[wheany]

Those of us that only have 1024*768 screen resolutions hate that wasted junk at the top.

Then why do you use any other browser than Opera?

Re:same old issues

[Ronin SpoilSpot]

Too much wasted screen real estate.

Opera is highly configurable. Much more than any other browser I know. You can take as little screen real estate as you want.

Fonts are ugly as hell. Konqueror / Nautilus / Mozilla all look much better. Even on /.

This is on Linux? Default fonts can be changed, but if it is the rendering, I guess you might have a problem.

The speed is nice. So is a functional "cnn" takes you to "http://www.cnn.com/" and such.

Yep, works perfectly. The things that really get you addicted are, e.g.,: Type "g foo" in address bar to do a google search on "foo". Mouse gestures (back forward by "rocking" the buttons (hold right, click left for back. Opposite for forward). It's addictive! /RS

Re:same old issues

[Fweeky]

Too much wasted screen real estate. Those of us that only have 1024*768 screen resolutions hate that wasted junk at the top.

It's pretty trivial to drag bits of it around and remove elements you don't need. For example, this Opera setup uses the same amount of space as IE, but has more functionality (I don't use this, it's just an example). You can remove more if you want to use the (fully configurable) keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures instead.

Fonts are ugly as hell. Konqueror / Nautilus / Mozilla all look much better. Even on /.

They look fine here. Maybe you should set it up properly (Preferences -> Fonts and Colors).

Re:same old issues

[BigBir3d]

My point is that I don't want to spend 20 minutes to configure the damn thing to look right. Mandrake 9.0 has ok fonts, not great, but ok. Mozilla 1.3 uses them just fine. But I have to tell Opera to use them because it is to stupid to use nice standard fonts? WTF?? And they wonder why most people use IE or Netscape or Mozilla?

Re:same old issues

[BigBir3d]

They look fine here. Maybe you should set it up properly (Preferences -> Fonts and Colors)

Maybe they should set it up for people that download it, install, and run it for 5 minutes to see if it is any better. Fast forward / rewind was nice. But I am not going to waste time trying to make it look as good as what I already use. It should work "out of the box." It's not like Linux is known for great fonts...

Re:same old issues

[asynchronous13]

I've seen many people complain about real estate usage of Opera. F11 switches to full-screen. It even gets rid of the ads in the free version.

Re:same old issues

[RosCabezas]

F11... Here you are, no wasted screen estate. At all :)

I'll miss the rhetoric

[Moses Lawn]

You know, you gotta give these guys credit, they give great quote. Their pronouncements are way more fun to listen too than ours. Come on, wouldn't you love to hear Rumsfield say, at a press conference, "We will crush and destroy these criminals like the odious cowards they are. Our glorious war machines will burn the godless heathens in their beds, and in their bunkers, and smite them where they stand. I shall personally remove Saddam's head with my sword and throw it to the mongrel dogs to eat."

Hell, I'd watch Fox News to see that.

Re:I'll miss the rhetoric

[k-0s]

Hahaha Yeah I must give it to the Iraqi's they do get medieval on our asses with language. The battlefield, ehhh, thats another story.

Re:I'll miss the rhetoric

[Anonymous Coward]

I maintain that nothing beats one guys opinion that America will bring them "Democracy, whiskey, sexy."

Re:I'll miss the rhetoric

[The Cydonian]

Oh, don't mis-underestimate Rumsfeld, who apparently gives press releases in modern poetry. Appropriate, I suppose.

On topic, this notes feature sounds promising; any experiences anybody would like to share?

Re:I'll miss the rhetoric

[alofron]

You know, you gotta give these guys credit, they give great quote. Their pronouncements are way more fun to listen too than ours. Come on, wouldn't you love to hear Rumsfield say, at a press conference, "We will crush and destroy these criminals like the odious cowards they are. Our glorious war machines will burn the godless heathens in their beds, and in their bunkers, and smite them where they stand. I shall personally remove Saddam's head with my sword and throw it to the mongrel dogs to eat."

Are you sure that this isn't the way Mr. Rumsfield sounds to the Iraqi's ?

In fact I think that the majority of people on this planet consider Mr. Rumsfield (and quite a few other members of the Bush administration) to be hilarious/insane arseholes or nazist warmongers. Needless to say that the announcements made by the current US goverment make people laugh although the wise just feel like crying. I think it's called the 'Joseph Goebbel Effect'; you see, when educated mature adults with even a minor understanding of world history are subjected to Goebbel-style announcements and press releases ... well ... let me put it this way : the very fact that in the year 2003 the teachings of J. Goebbel's are still applied to foreign policy, international relations and internal affairs of truly democratic states ... like I said, you either feel like laughing or crying.

Anyway, I agree, the Bush administration is fighting a noble cause, the main aim of which is to free the poor Iraqi's from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein. It's just that most people on this planet aren't used to CNN/FOX/SKY style of true and objective journalism(mainly commie bastards, so called intellectuals, anti-freedom/democracy pigs and various other low-lifes who envy the US for being the greatest nation in the history of the world and thus want to destroy it). I hope that one day, FOX will be in every house, of every state, of every continent of this world. Perhaps that should teach them to respect each and every word that comes out of an American official's mouth, regardless the meaning of them. Or perhaps the US should try some of Saddam's techniques to suppress such unethical anti-US propaganda ... now if only we knew who taught Saddam everything he knows ...

As a sidenote, please visit The Presidential Prayer Team and pray for our troops. The President said so, we should all pray ... if you're not praying for US troops then you must be praying for the terrorists.

Seriously though, my Bible of Karma Whoring explicitly prohibits any actions that could result in the violation of my OT virginity, hence the next comment :

Opera ? I tried it, I found it to be slim and fast. Will I use it over my current Gecko-based browser ? I certainly will not. I will never use closed source software; not when there are fine FS/OSS alternatives around. But that's just me.

Would I recommend Opera to non-geeks ? Definately, it IS a very appealing browser. Especially for people with old hardware (eg PII, K6 etc., low memory). Although I do have to say that according to the new Mozilla roadmap, Mozilla is going to be much lighter. I don't particularly like Opera for it's extra features; I couldn't care less. I like Opera because it's light, that's all. And I also like Opera Soft's attitude.

--"No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up." Lily Tomlin

Re:I'll miss the rhetoric

[Jarlsberg]

Ah, longing for the days of Dan Quayle, are we? :)

- Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because] from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time.
-- VP Dan Quayle, 10/2/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

Re:For HTML mail you will pay more: -39 dollars mo

[rco3]

See, I think the lack of html capability is a good thing. That's because I don't like html in email. I actively encourage people who send me html-encoded email to stop.

You could always just cut-and-paste, but then you'd have to know how to insert bold and italic tags in a text editor.

And really - your criterion on the useworthiness of a browser is whether the embedded email client can generate html email? Whatever, dude.

If you want something to smack it around for, try the consistent difficulty with getting Java to work, or the fact that (at least prior to 7.10) getting non-standard webpages to render correctly is a hit-or miss prospect, or the arcane way of getting font anti-aliasing to work, or the serious problems with plugins and removing them after the program is closed, or the fact that closing one tabbed window seems to freeze the browser for 5 seconds or so... ...but html in the mail client? WTF do you need an email client in your browser anyway? Opera, at least, is perfectly happy calling any email client you want to use.

Ah, well. It's your $39, dude. I suggest you keep it.

I have not seen it yet but,

[pair-a-noyd]

I installed Opera 7.xx (I think it was 7.0) on a P1 133 and it sucked.. WAY TOO MUCH graphics for old, slow machines. I dumped it and went back to 6.05 and it was just fine on that slug slow laptop.

I installed 6.xx (I forget) on my Mandrake 9.0 box and I just didn't like it. I actually am one of the few that LIKES Konqueror.

I've gotten used to Konqueror and will stay with it.

On a Winbloz box I LOVE Opera, it whips ass, but beware, eveyrone is pushing new versions of everything (including for Linux) that *assumes* everyone uses they newest, fastest box available.
Not so, some people have old clunkers around.

My MDK 9.1 box is a P4 w/200gigs, 512ddr Gf4-Ti4200, it's really decent..
My laptop sucks, it runs on Flintstone brand batteries. My son uses a K6-2 400mhz and it's pretty klunky but he's a Playstation2 kind of guy and Opera 6.05 works best on his box, I tried 7.x on it and it sucked.

So, you coders out there, lighten up on the graphics PLEASE! There is more to life than eye candy!

Re:I have not seen it yet but,

[toriver]

WAY TOO MUCH graphics for old, slow machines.

Um, you do know you can turn off most of those features via the "view" menu? View, Skin, uncheck Special effects for instance to turn off the button "animation". There are also lots of light-weight skins to choose from.

Re:I have not seen it yet but,

[pair-a-noyd]

Yes, I know. But try to run the latest version on a Pentium 1 133mhz and see what happens, even tweaked. Turn all the goodies off and it still takes 5 minutes to load. It's unbearable.
I *STILL* like and use Opera on the laptop but I went back to 6.05, it works fine, it's fast, I like it fine.

It's just like I said, they write these new apps ASSUMING that everyone has a 50,000gigahertz Pentium 12 with 30,000 terabytes of ddr8000 ram and 120bazillion terabytes of .0000001ms hard drive with a 80,000 terabyte buffer. And let us not forget they also assume we all have 128 OC45 lines tied into our P12 monster box....

and look what happened

[Sophrosyne]

...they got bought out, went open source.... a positive outcome! Perhaps when Opera goes under something good will come from it too!

Re:and look what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Going from 90% -> 2% marketshare is a positive outcome? I think we found the Iraqi Information Minister!

Re:and look what happened

[Sophrosyne]

It's obvious that Netscape had a monopoly- What options did you have pre-ie if you wanted to get 'multi-media content'? The only one I remember is Netscape, It came bundled with my ISP software which came in a box of like 27 diskettes or something insane.
I remember when IE started it's mass advertising campagin for IE with those little 'Free Download' buttons. Not only did IE render pages correctly, if my memory serves me correctly it didn't use a 'times' like font, and in general had a more modern looking interface when compared to Netscape. Also Netscape tended to crash every once in a while, while IE seemed to be a bit more stable from my experience. Yeah I may have liked IE for superficial reasons, but most of them were a breath of fresh air.
I switched to IE in those days, like most everyone else- Netscape was a Yugo, and you had Microsoft handing out brand new Toyota corollas for free...(if that analogy works) Yeah it may have been an ethically wrong move for Microsoft, but thats a whole other story.
Mozilla might not have the same marketshare as Netscape did, but it doesnt need it. The beauty of Mozilla is that it's code. rendering engine etc. can be used anywhere in really anything- while IE (and Opera) are browsers... and if you want to build a solution for something else (with their code) you gotta pay the big bucks.
I personally believe that Mozilla is furthering the open source movement, and that it has given the open source movement a ton of mainstream credibility that didn't exist back in the early '90s

Speed, size

[someguy456]

It is really great. I had been using Phoenix 0.5 for a week now, but I have now fallen in love with Opera. I'm still too poor to dish out $40 for a web browser, but I would if I could. The rendering is great. Pages load very fast. I haven't run into any pages that don't look right (I haven't been to that many sites either). I could also liked that I had a greater choice of page fonts, as opposed to Phoenix (configuration issues?) The eyecandy is fascinating. Smooth effects all over, from forms (buttons, scrollbars) to toolbars and page tabs. Plus, I've got my qt settings really sweet now with transparency, great anti-aliased fonts and such, so the menus also look great. One of the things that took me by surprise was the size, only 4 megs (3986283). This was linked with qt, but nonetheless, this is pretty small for a full fledged browser with e-mail client. I haven't set any custom mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts, but I looked at the interface, and it was pretty simple to do. I think I'm staying with Opera for a while.

warning!!!

[Superfarstucker]

installing opera 7.03 over opera 7.01 resulted in the deletion of all my favorites, which really torqued me. I don't know if this happens with everyone but I back up all my favs everytime I update opera now (this would be the first time since then!).. also opera has a rather annoying problem with persistent cookies ( i think it may be a default setting, too lazy to look) and it seems to bork up every once in a while requiring you to reinput your user info (annoying at the least). Also a slew of rendering errors can be immediately noticed when using opera also, esp when viewing an entirely cached page (incorre ctly stretched images etc).. fixed by a refresh... The only good thing i notice about opera is its fast as hell

Re:warning!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed it over 7.03 and I had no problems with it deleting my favourites.

Re:warning!!!

[Hakubi_Washu]

Installed it over 5.03 on SuSE Linux 8.1 and the only difficulty I encountered was the qt-shared version didn't start (allocation error, possibly due to a corrupted file anyway), so I downloaded the static version and everything went smooth, it even included my old preferences.
One thing bothers me, though: In the Hotlist Bookmarks (which I rarely use) every folder name is prefixed by two(!!) Folder symbols... Anyone else got this?

... But I cannot stand advertisements!

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is a very good product. I really like that when you zoom in on a page, the images scale along with the text. I love the incredibly fast load times, the low CPU usage, among other things. However, I cannot justify using a browser that has ad banners constantly glaring at me, nor can I justify purchasing it to get rid of said banners when Mozilla is both free and has internal ad blocking features (and two ad blocking side projects!) The biggest pain of web browsing these days is the advertising, IMHO, and I'd much rather use a browser that easily allows blocking of them.

Re:... But I cannot stand advertisements!

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is a very good product. I really like that when you zoom in on a page, the images scale along with the text.

Want to hang your machine? (Well this works on mine anyway.)

zoom in on a page witch pictures on it (your favorite porn thumbnail gallery is best for this)
and then try to horizontally scroll by dragging the scrollbar.

Hang my win2k bos everytime. Course I'm still using 6.05.

Can you imagine looking at porn, and having your box hang? (wow... there's a joke there somewhere) I mean just stop dead. Only way to fix it is to restart your machine. Then Imagine frantically trying to shut off the monitor when you hear your mom coming.

Yes, it works

[Compact Dick]

You can also use "G" to cycle through [NO | CACHED | ALL] IMAGES.

Proprietary crap- bwah

[Pope Raymond Lama]

Just tell me...why would I need this stuff,
with Konqueror 3.1 and Phoenix around?

Re:Proprietary crap- bwah

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror: slow, buggy, only works on Linux. Yuck.

Phoenix: filthy big download, slow to load, still buggy. However, it does render pages pretty damned quick.

The close all option

[Compact Dick]

is useful when the new porn site you're trying out starts spewing up pop-ups by the dozen, with gay male voices promising you the blowjob of your life and all - and your mom is about to walk in through the door :-)

Of course, you could block pop-ups [F12,R] and embedded audio [F12,N] in the first place...

Re:Why? (gestures, operamail)

[snuffdiddy23]

the gestures were awesome when they came out, but linux and mac both now have system-wide gestures, making all browsers able to do the same thing (all cocoa browsers in the case of the mac www.bitart.com).
so why pay 40$? you get an operamail pop account. they dropped imap support on operamail and gave up the free pop3 access following suit with yahoo (which irked me having switched all my contact to opera) and changed the mail so it does not function on any of my browsers. operamail sucks, so why would anyone want it if they already have email (wouldn't most people who want a power browser already be hip to the whole Electronic-mail thing by now?). it did not use to cost forty dollars and i will not pay it considering that is half of the cost of my operating system (more for most of you that are not mac users yet) after student discount.
so opera may be better than other browsers on linux or windows, but i scarcely think it can hold a candle to anything on os x that is not iCab. omniweb, safari, mozilla and even the dredded mac ie are better for mac than opera. try them all out, opera will lose on the mac every time.

Pop-up windows

[Compact Dick]

Make sure all these are enabled: cookies [F12,C], pop-up windows [F12,A] and Javascript [F12,J].

If this fails, delete all your private data [FILE->DELETE PRIVATE DATA...], check all except the ones you deem necessary, and try again.

Let us know how you went.

Re:Pop-up windows

[Dixie_Flatline]

Thanks, but no dice. I had tried all of that stuff before (except deleting private data), but that didn't help either. If you'd like to look at the kind of site that it is, go to
easyweb.tdcanadatrust.com.

Reasons for using opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Reasons I use Opera:
Mouse gestures: Many will disagree with me, but mouse gestures are practically a required feature for my browsing needs. Much to my avail, I often find myself trying to use them in nautilus windows.
"Open Requested pop-up windows only" option: It's not nice when your browser won't open a link you click on because it is a popup.
google search from the address bar: Typing "g something" in the address bar does a google search. This is configurable and many other types of searches can be set up.
User defined style-sheets: Override those ugly and unreadable black text on not-quite-black background websites with a keystroke.
These are a few of the reasons I use opera over other browsers.

Re:Reasons for using opera

[mattrix2k]

Mouse Gestures. Custom Keywords.

Re:This is not 1990! (unnecessary mac rant)

[snuffdiddy23]

safari does all of that with a minor amount ingenuity, as can omniweb or ie for mac for that matter.
why would you want email and news mixed in with a web browser? everytime i use a web browser to do email and news i find out just how much i love using a seperate client.

ifilm.com

[Compact Dick]

works fine for me with Opera 7.10, running Windows 2000, with the browser ID set to Opera [CTRL+ALT+O].

running this in fink/x

[Anonymous Coward]

would it be possible to run this under fink with os x? I'm opera-addicted and the v6 opera for mac is falling badly behind...

Opera 7.10 should work

[Compact Dick]

Up to version 6.x, Opera's DOM support was next to non-existent, which meant Javascript and other dynamic stuff wouldn't work properly, if it all. Remember NS 4.x's CSS usability? Yeah...

With 7.x, Opera has finally fixed this wanting need. Every site I visit that uses dynamic HTML etc works very well [as long as there is no proprietary crap code. Even 7.10 has many improvements and bugfixes over 7.

Give it a go and let us know if things have changed for the better. If not, tell us which sites give you troubles.

- CD

one word, operamail

[snuffdiddy23]

i think opera is great and they could potentially justify someone paying for it, but i think the cost has gotten out of hand. you now are buying operamail premium with every copy you buy, and that is just lamo! operamail through a web browser is a nightmare, makes me want to use hotmail. they dropped pop3 to non-premium members and imap entirely. they used to just have badass ad-driven mail with every feature you could come to enjoy, and now it is just garbage.

i would buy opera for 20$ if i still ran intel architechture, but powerpc opera is no good at all, and forty dollars is unacceptable for a browser. omniweb for mac blows opera's doors off and looks nominally better doing so.

You can save screen estate

[Compact Dick]

Simple - upgrade to 7.10, then go to PREFERENCES -> SKINS and select your toolbar magnification scale. I've set mine to a perfectly usable 40%. Additionally, you can use more skins that may suit your needs better.

That's your main complaint solved. Let's optimise things a bit, shall we?

Turn off the navigation bar: VIEW -> NAVIGATION BAR -> OFF.

Right-click on the main toolbar and press "I" [or "Images only".]

Finally, if you've registered Opera you can do this to good effect - remove all the toolbar buttons that you don't use by right-clicking on them and selecting "REMOVE". Then click on the status bar [if it is visible] and drag it on to the main toolbar. Select VIEW -> STATUS BAR -> OFF.

Have fun.

P.S.: To get to www.cnn.com from "cnn" faster, turn off local computer searching by going to PREFERENCES -> NETWORK -> SERVER NAME COMPLETION... and un-check "Look for local network machine".

Re:You can save screen estate

[DeathPenguin]

Thank you for those tips! I have an old laptop that runs in 800x600 and with a few tweaks, particularly zooming on the toolbar, I now have a display that's almost as useful as my desktop running 1280x1024. Now if only I wasn't so lazy, I could curtail the names of all my bookmarks and make my hotlist look real neat :)

That guy was a riot

[The Tyro]

Honestly... he was the comic relief amongst all the death and destruction (well deserved on Saddam's part, I might add).

Quotes like "we will slaughter them all" and "committing suicide by the hundreds at the gates of baghdad"... and who can forget the favorite "there are no coalition troops in baghdad... none at all."

The guy had chutzpah, I'll give him that... American tanks rolling by in the background while he touts the glorious Iraqi victory... I'll bet even Saddam almost peed his pants laughing at some of the stuff that guy whipped out.

Truly and genuinely hilarious... I'm buying a T-shirt.

Re:That guy was a riot

[Anonymous Coward]

Quotes like "we will slaughter them all" and "committing suicide by the hundreds at the gates of baghdad"... and who can forget the favorite "there are no coalition troops in baghdad... none at all."

And so polite of him to make his pronouncements in English...

Re:That guy was a riot

[eyeye]

My favourite bit was him talking about "shock and...whore".

Javascript errors

[Compact Dick]

I went to the website and on loading, I got a "cookies not enabled" error, even though it was. Filled in some dummy info, and on clicking Login another msgbox popped up saying I've double-clicked the login button. Then nothing happens.

Hmmm. Sounds like a DOM bug within Opera, assuming the Javascript is correct.

Works fine for me on the latest Phoenix nightly, btw.

Re:Javascript errors

[Dixie_Flatline]

Regardless of the version of Opera, it's always claimed that there was a problem with cookies. It's the problem with the supposed double clicking and doing nothing that's new.

And Phoenix has been my long-time primary back-up browser. :)

Your old favourites

[Compact Dick]

should be found in [opera install directory]\UNINST\BACKUP. I believe the filename is Opera6.adr.

If you're using NT/2000/XP, you may have enabled multi-user profiles. In that case go to DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\[your username]\APPLICATION DATA\[opera install directory]\UNINST\BACKUP.

I'm guessing the second part, so correct me if I'm wrong.

Good luck.

woopdy do!

[BladeMelbourne]

As a web developer, I will never develop pages for Opera. Just MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix and Netscape 4.x.

How many home, school and business users pay for a web browser that doesn't come with their operating system? Or like valuable screen real estate occupied by a banner image (and using bandwidth to download the banners)?

I thought that the internet is about freedom and free access to information. The idea of paying for a web browser seems ludicrous to me, especially when there are fantastic free browsers out there.

I have heard on many occasions how Opera does not render some pages correctly... and they want to charge people who use this program? Why pay for something that is clearly sub-standard? Or bombard those who wont pay with flashing advertisments (that probably track usage and habbits anyway).

I know why it is only a 3.2 MB download, portions of the code are missing! If I want a small, light weight browser, I will use Phoenix. Although it is double the download size, I am assured of it's rendering ability.

I can't seem to find the page on the Opera website that sells ice to the eskimos. Can someone help me? Thanks.

Re:woopdy do!

[s-orbital]

Opera is totally free to use, and has a small unobtrusive ad, which doesnt bother most rational people. I use it all the time. I am also a web designer.

Re:woopdy do!

[toriver]

As a web developer, I will never develop pages for Opera. Just MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix and Netscape 4.x.

Why on earth do you feel you need to develop for specific browsers? That's just so n00b.

Other than the totally borked horror that is Netscape 4.x, modern web clients - including Opera - generally do things right as long as you do it right.

Or like valuable screen real estate occupied by a banner image (and using bandwidth to download the banners)?

Most already use bandwidth to download the crappy images and plugin data you web DUH-signers throw in the pages themselves. Also, the banner ad is only present if you don't pay - so which are you criticizing, the ad-ware version or the paid version?

(I am sure your web-pages are designed to work with a browser's bandwidth-saving "no images"-mode though - unless you're pushing double standard here.)

I thought that the internet is about freedom and free access to information.

There is no such thing as a free (gratis) lunch. The "free" in "freedom" isn't the "free as in beer" but "free as in speach". Don't mix the two.

The idea of paying for a web browser seems ludicrous to me

Why is it wrong for a company to charge for the only product they make? But hey, if you think software should be subsidized, you're free to use other programs that have a different financing model that lets you use it at someone else's expense.

Why pay for something that is clearly sub-standard?

It's not sub-standard to those of us that use it.

And why do you write web pages for Netscape 4.x (which you mentioned at the start of your trolling) which is clearly sub-standard in every possible way?

Or bombard those who wont pay with flashing advertisments (that probably track usage and habbits anyway).

Lovely unfounded "probably" there. I guess you also turn off cookies in your browser and demand that web sites you visit turn off IP logging...

I know why it is only a 3.2 MB download, portions of the code are missing!

Such as? Is it really that hard to realize that someone actually can write a smaller program that does the same as a bigger one?

Re:woopdy do!

[BladeMelbourne]

Why on earth do you feel you need to develop for specific browsers?
I develop to W3C standards, and test it on NS4, MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix (depending upon requirements).

Other than the totally borked horror that is Netscape 4.x, modern web clients - including Opera - generally do things right as long as you do it right.
'Generally' isn't good enough if browsing is integral to a person's career or to their study. Netscape 4 is a solid browser, even if CSS support is lacking, JavaScript 1.3 is satisfactory.

Most already use bandwidth to download the crappy images and plugin data you web DUH-signers throw in the pages themselves. Also, the banner ad is only present if you don't pay - so which are you criticizing, the ad-ware version or the paid version?
Plugin data? What kind of sites are you visiting? I rarely (like twice a year) use plugins. Images usually serve a purpose... if NCSA had never developed Mosaic, you would be just as happy since you don't like images. What version of Lynx are you using these days?

There is no such thing as a free (gratis) lunch. The "free" in "freedom" isn't the "free as in beer" but "free as in speach". Don't mix the two.
Just because I used 'freedom' and 'free' in the same sentence does not mean I do not understand their meanings. btw it is 'speech'

It's not sub-standard to those of us that use it.
Maybe I should have termed it "not as standards compliant as others"?

And why do you write web pages for Netscape 4.x (which you mentioned at the start of your trolling) which is clearly sub-standard in every possible way?
Trolling? That's right, you don't believe in free speech. Netscape 4 was a very popular browser. The deployment environment dictated by the clients will determine whether I develop for NS4.

Lovely unfounded "probably" there. I guess you also turn off cookies in your browser and demand that web sites you visit turn off IP logging...
HTTP requests are often logged by servers, especially advertisements. I do turn off cookies by default, and allow the 10 or so sites that do require it. Sites who bypass this are added to my hosts file.

Such as? Is it really that hard to realize that someone actually can write a smaller program that does the same as a bigger one?
You got me there... OpenOffice vs. M$ Office is a good example.

Re:woopdy do!

[BladeMelbourne]

(I am sure your web-pages are designed to work with a browser's bandwidth-saving "no images"-mode though - unless you're pushing double standard here.)

I usually do browse with images turned off. As a result, I always use ALT and TITLE attributes whilst developing.

On a dialup modem connection, I easily download more than the 1GB per month than I am allowed. Turning off images helps, but frustrates my fiance. lol

Re:woopdy do!

[Anonymous Coward]

I marked my comments AC for Anonymous Coward completely due to laziness.

Why on earth do you feel you need to develop for specific browsers?
I develop to W3C standards, and test it on NS4, MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix (depending upon requirements).
AC: NS4 is NOT standard compliant - least of the bunch.

Other than the totally borked horror that is Netscape 4.x, modern web clients - including Opera - generally do things right as long as you do it right.
'Generally' isn't good enough if browsing is integral to a person's career or to their study. Netscape 4 is a solid browser, even if CSS support is lacking, JavaScript 1.3 is satisfactory.
AC: completely disagree as a fellow designer. In fact, as of this year we stopped supporting NS4 graphically at all and serve it the text only version. The 'generally' spoken of above is a far tighter range then if you factor in NS4 compliance.

Most already use bandwidth to download the crappy images and plugin data you web DUH-signers throw in the pages themselves. Also, the banner ad is only present if you don't pay - so which are you criticizing, the ad-ware version or the paid version?
Plugin data? What kind of sites are you visiting? I rarely (like twice a year) use plugins. Images usually serve a purpose... if NCSA had never developed Mosaic, you would be just as happy since you don't like images. What version of Lynx are you using these days?
AC: touchy, touchy - this is good criticism of many newbie artsy designers. Nice part of Opera is the ability to single-click toggle images quickly mitigating the Photoshop slice syndrome.

It's not sub-standard to those of us that use it.
Maybe I should have termed it "not as standards compliant as others"?
AC: Not true - it's more compliant. This is its problem however since IE dictates a different standard then WC3.

And why do you write web pages for Netscape 4.x (which you mentioned at the start of your trolling) which is clearly sub-standard in every possible way?
Trolling? That's right, you don't believe in free speech. Netscape 4 was a very popular browser. The deployment environment dictated by the clients will determine whether I develop for NS4.
AC: "very popular"? Less then 3% of the world is not too popular. You sounds like you just woke up from a two year sleep.

Lovely unfounded "probably" there. I guess you also turn off cookies in your browser and demand that web sites you visit turn off IP logging...
HTTP requests are often logged by servers, especially advertisements. I do turn off cookies by default, and allow the 10 or so sites that do require it. Sites who bypass this are added to my hosts file.
AC: Opera has ways (f10) to do this faster for those once-off sites.

Such as? Is it really that hard to realize that someone actually can write a smaller program that does the same as a bigger one?
You got me there... OpenOffice vs. M$ Office is a good example.
AC: yeah! Common ground - group hug!

My verdict is to give Opera a shot, IE and Mozi are still there for the odd broken site but Opera sure makes surfing fun - features you will grow to rely on and miss dearly when visiting friends.

Re:woopdy do!

[Viqsi]

Why on earth do you feel you need to develop for specific browsers?
I develop to W3C standards, and test it on NS4, MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix (depending upon requirements).

Strange; if you're developing to W3C standards, then you shouldn't have to someday develop to Opera, 'cause it's the only browser out there that's strict about these things (including Mozilla and its 'legacy' support). You do validate what you're putting out, right?

And if you've managed to develop fully compliant HTML 4.01 Strict that doesn't look barebones in Netscape 4, please show me how you pulled that trick, because I have found no way to manage it at all. (It is a common misconception that validating as "transitional" means you're fully compliant with the standards. You're not. Transitional is just what the name implies - a transitory step, not a final destination; sometimes necessary for folks who won't move ahead, but NOT the ultimate goal.)

Other than the totally borked horror that is Netscape 4.x, modern web clients - including Opera - generally do things right as long as you do it right.
'Generally' isn't good enough if browsing is integral to a person's career or to their study. Netscape 4 is a solid browser, even if CSS support is lacking, JavaScript 1.3 is satisfactory.

CSS isn't merely "lacking" on Netscape 4 - it's irrerievably broken. Outside of treating it like a verbose alternative to <font>, you simply can't use CSS with any degree of complexity in Netscape 4; it'll come out terrible.

It's not sub-standard to those of us that use it.
Maybe I should have termed it "not as standards compliant as others"?

You could, but this is incorrect (so far as I've experienced) for 7.x. Slamming Opera's scripting support for 6.x and earlier is entirely justified; 7.x is a whole 'nother animal. (Literally - they rewrote it.)

And why do you write web pages for Netscape 4.x (which you mentioned at the start of your trolling) which is clearly sub-standard in every possible way?
Trolling? That's right, you don't believe in free speech. Netscape 4 was a very popular browser. The deployment environment dictated by the clients will determine whether I develop for NS4.

"Was" being the operative term; it's really not prepared for the modern world. Although, yes, if clients insist on it, I'll admit it's necessary. (It's never a job I look forward to, though.)

Lovely unfounded "probably" there. I guess you also turn off cookies in your browser and demand that web sites you visit turn off IP logging...
HTTP requests are often logged by servers, especially advertisements. I do turn off cookies by default, and allow the 10 or so sites that do require it. Sites who bypass this are added to my hosts file.

Opera's got a pretty strictly detailed policy regarding how they collect information for their ads; have you read it? Personally, I've never had a problem with the ads (but admittedly, I'm also not as strict as you apparently are with cookie control).

Re:woopdy do!

[cwsulliv]

"As a web developer, I will never develop pages for Opera. Just MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix and Netscape 4.x."

You of course disclose this up front to your potential clients, don't you? My company won't hire slugs like you, who insist on using non-compliant code and thus alienating any number of potential customers. A class of customers by the way who aren't adverse to spending money for a good product.

"The idea of paying for a web browser seems ludicrous to me, especially when there are fantastic free browsers out there."

Substitute "operating system" for "web browser" in your statement and perhaps I'll agree with you.

"I know why it is only a 3.2 MB download, portions of the code are missing!"

Surely you're not that clueless ... or are you?

Re:woopdy do!

[BladeMelbourne]

Substitute "operating system" for "web browser" in your statement and perhaps I'll agree with you.
There are fantastic free operating systems out there, and fantastic free browsers. I never said otherwise.

You of course disclose this up front to your potential clients, don't you? My company won't hire slugs like you, who insist on using non-compliant code and thus alienating any number of potential customers. A class of customers by the way who aren't adverse to spending money for a good product.
You are making way too many assumptions. I code to W3C standards, and validate my pages. It's not really an issue if NS4 doesn't support the latest standards, the older standards still work.

I was saying that I will code to standards, if it works on Opera - good, if it doesn't, I'm not going to alter my standards compliant code for a browser that can't interpret the standards completely. This is not a crime.

Re:woopdy do!

[cwsulliv]

There are fantastic free operating systems out there, and fantastic free browsers. I never said otherwise.

So then by your logic isn't it just as ludicrous to pay for an operating system when there are fantastic free operating systems out there as it is to pay for a browser? Or might you admit that one could justify paying for a browser as well as paying for an operating system?

You are making way too many assumptions. I code to W3C standards, and validate my pages. It's not really an issue if NS4 doesn't support the latest standards, the older standards still work.

Ah, but you didn't say that - you said you coded for MSIE, Mozilla/Phoenix, and NS 4. And MS at least is well known for promoting their own non-compliant extensions to standards.

I was saying that I will code to standards, if it works on Opera - good, if it doesn't, I'm not going to alter my standards compliant code for a browser that can't interpret the standards completely. This is not a crime.

Fair enough, if you adhere to that same rule where MSIE and Mozilla/Phoenix are concerned. Opera's stated mission is to correctly render pages which are fully W3C compliant. If it doesn't, then shame on Opera. But if Opera fulfills its mission, it's unfair to blame it rather than the web developer for failing to render pages that deviate from compliance.

Re:For HTML mail you will pay more: -39 dollars mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually 7.10 does come with HTML enabled email.

Opera the MDI Browser

[mmphosis]

I won't use Opera for Windows because it uses Windows MDI multiple document interface. But some people like this feature of Opera.

Enjoy the opera.

Re:Opera the MDI Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

You can turn off tabbed browsing you know.

Re:Opera the MDI Browser

[mmphosis]

> You can turn off tabbed browsing you know.

I don't know what tabbed browsing is.

> What are you talking about?

I am talking about multiple document interface (MDI) a component of the Windows GUI. And I am saying that when I last looked at Opera it used MDI which turned me off using it. Some people really like MDI, I do not.

Windows applications that use MDI run in a single window with the application's document windows constrained within that single application window. Excel still uses MDI. Internet Explorer does not use MDI.

"Just like Netscape and Mozilla"

[KnightStalker]

... and Konqueror. Actually, Opera *introduced* tabbed browsing with their first public version several years ago. I didn't like it then, but for some reason I really got addicted to it when Multizilla came out.

Because Mozilla doesn't remember the tabs' content

[Quietti]

Do CTRL-Q in Mozilla and, the next time you return, all your tabs are gone; so much for the oh-so-great tabs. Because of dumb oversights like this, Galeon and Mozilla aren't worth a hoot in real life, while Opera had already figured out the right way to do tabs, ages before Mozilla gave their first try at it. That, my friend, is the difference between a well-matured commercial product and an OSS hobbyist's project that gets there 5 years afterwards and still lacks the polish that real-life, non-hacker end-users need.

I will try it now.

[Futurepower(R)]

Great! I will try it now.

But the point is still there. Why buy Opera when Mozilla is free? I have to buy Opera to support customers. But why do others buy Opera?

Re:I will try it now.

[Ronin SpoilSpot]

Why I bought Opera?
Because it was the best browser at the time, and in many ways, it still is.

One should of course always remember that "best" is highly subjective. The things that I value include security, standard compliance, and ease of use. All points where IE fails *badly*. I use Phoenix as a backup browser, and have IE and NS4.8 for testing (and Opera 5 and 6 and Netscape 6).

There is a large amount of habit in my preferences, as there is for everybody else. I want a browser that "does it the way I want it", which is plain habit. And Opera is very habit forming. They were first with mouse gestures and MDI, and they are (in my conditioned opinion) still best. No other browser has come close to meeting my requrements there.

My browser is perhaps the program I use the most, shortly followed by Emacs (which doubles as Usenet client). Compared to a game, the usage/price ratio is much better for a browser which is used hour after hour, day after day. It was a good investment (and upgrades are only $19, I started with Opera 5 for both Unix and Windows). /RS

Why should you select Opera?

[Mr. White]

You can zoom into prOn pictures!

'nuff said.

Love the banner, never saw any ad targetted for me

[Quietti]

I don't mind the banner, honnestly; I really don't. What I mind is a company that obviously lacks the sales skills to attract customers that will give me ads that are actually targetted for ME, in my language!

While I have NOT filled every field in the Advertising section, the fact that I selected "country: Finland" and "birth: 1970-1979" should be enough of a clue that I do NOT want any fucking ads from the American-latino dating agency Migente popping at me continuously!

Anna miulle suomenkielisiä mainoksia tai sitten mee pois, vitun norjalaishölmö!

W3C compliance should be legally enforced

[Quietti]

Really, it should be. If someone claims to be a webmaster, but consistantly checks their work ONLY in IE, they have earned the right to be shot dead. I really, honnestly mean it. Death to all self-proclaimed webmasters who don't know anything else than IE and cannot be bothered with W3C standards!

RPM for Redhat 7 does not seem to work

[theprancinghorse]

I downloaded the rpm package for Redhat 7.x / Mandrake 8 which uses a shared qt library and it did not install.. "Failed dependency libqt.so.3".. I don't know too much about qt library versions but I do know that I have qt installed (the default that came with Redhat 7.2 ) so it should work..

I guess everyone should just download the version with a static qt library to be safe..

Re:RPM for Redhat 7 does not seem to work

[nagora]

I installed with --nodeps and it works fine. Check that you do have the file libqt.so.3 first, though. If not, and you do have QT3 installed (did version 3 come with 7.2?), do a symlink to it and run ldconfig before running Opera.

TWW

Re:RPM for Redhat 7 does not seem to work

[Dave2 Wickham]

I believe 7.2 comes with Qt 2...

7.10 does NOT have HTML enabled email composition.

[Futurepower(R)]

7.10 beta does NOT have HTML enabled email composition. I just tried it. There is an option to use another email client, but it does not work, presumably because this is the beta version.

Opera 7.10 beta is fast, but I don't see any compelling reason to prefer it over Mozilla. Anyone care to give a reason?

The Windows version must be a beta, also.

[Futurepower(R)]

That's how I read the Opera web pages, that 7.10 for Windows has been released. But Opera 7.10 under Windows is very buggy, so it must be a beta, also.

Bork?

[tindur]

Is there a bork function in this one. I would desperately need one.

Re:Opera Icon-Say cheese.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you couldn't find it because you mistyped it, it is http://goatse.cx

beta?

[humming]

"Even if it is a 'beta,' it's opera, so you know it's gonna be good."

Yeah, the last beta I tried from opera SIGSEGVd when I pressed a link. Kind of defeated the purpose of a web browser. ;)

//H

ObNotTroll:
Yeah, it was the first release they made, and yes, I think I remember it was an alpha, not beta, but hey...

Hotmail support?

[WIAKywbfatw]

OK, I realise that asking anything about using a Microsoft product on Slashdot is the online equivalent of putting a "STONE ME TO DEATH" sign around my neck, but does anyone have any idea of how to configure Opera's mail feature to work with Hotmail addresses? Is this at all possible? (I'm guessing that it is, but that I'm just not smart enough to figure how to do it.)

There are some of us out there (myself and my partner included) that were using Hotmail before it was bought by Microsoft/assimilated by the Borg, and still continue to receive email to that address that must be regularly checked.

So, any genius out there know how to do this? Want to share the knowledge please?

Re:Hotmail support?

[base3]

Search sourceforge for "Hotmail"--there are a couple of programs which will fetch your mail using Hotmail's undocumented protocol, then act as a POP server on your local machine. Then you point Opera at localhost: and read your mail as normal. HTH.

User agent header

[jbanana]

Opera doesn't hide its identity that sneakily. Here's the user agent HTTP header from Opera 7.03:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98) Opera 7.03

You can see that user agent headers are a mess, and figuring out which browser sent the request isn't trivial: that's Opera pretending to be Internet Explorer pretending to be Netscape 4.0! However, anyone who reads a web server log correctly can figure it out.

Re:User agent header

[numark]

Not only that, but most web stat programs (Analog, awstats, webalizer) detect Opera even when you've set it to masquerade as another browser. Anyone using one of those programs will clearly see the number of Opera users that come to their web page.

Not the first Opera 7.x for Linux

[TheRaven64]

From the article:

This marks the first release of Opera 7.x for linux

This is not the first Opera 7.x for Linux. Personally I would argue that a beta doesn't count as a release anyway, but this isn't even the first beta for Linux. El Reg linked to a beta of Opera 7.0 for Linux which I've deployed successfully, and had no complaints with (apart from the fact it crawls on a remote X display).

Re:Because Mozilla doesn't remember the tabs' cont

[eyeye]

You want it to remember tabs when you have just closed the application?
Do you always want it to?
I know I dont want it bringing up the 15 pages I was surfing last night when I open it the next day!
If you want to do that you can bookmark a group of tabs and open them at once.
With mozilla there is even an "undo close tab" option in case you accidentally closed a tab. When reopened you can even use the back button on that tab to go back through its history.

ahh well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you won't like the coverage mozilla is getting as it isn't under the gpl

I didn't

[LPetrazickis]

opera users paid the $40 because they were too stupid to find a good free browser.

If you had cared to look at my screenshot, you would have noticed that I am using the "adware" Opera.

Opera is fast....for a price

[SirDaShadow]

I have to admit Opera is really fast...or maybe it's because its Sunday morning...ehhehe...

But I checked the memory allocation with one page open (Win XP SP1)...46MB real memory, 49MB virtual. That's 95MB allocated. What happened to the lean, mean browser?

Also...the checkboxes No karma and Post anonymously show up without their labels...is slashdot non complainant?

So when's the FreeBSD version coming out?

[bsd_usr]

Okay, this is great and all but useless for me as I run FreeBSD and not Linux. I'd like to know when the native FreeBSD version will be out.

Sure I can run the Linux binary in emnulation, but that's like a Ford enthusiast putting a Chevy engine into his Mustang. It's just not right.

Wow, just realized that might start a Ford vs. Chevy flamewar. Then the MOPAR trolls will chime in. Let's not even talk about the Jap scrap rice burners.

Re:So when's the FreeBSD version coming out?

[DeathPenguin]

Version 6.12 is available here. Sorry version 7 has not made it to FreeBSD yet. Keep in mind that the Linux users had to wait a couple months after the Windows version was released, and we're still only in beta. Hopefully a FreeBSD port will be cake for them now that the Linux port is out.

Re:So when's the FreeBSD version coming out?

[bsd_usr]

Oh yeah, I use version 6.12 and it's freakin' fantastic. It's fast even on an old Pentium II 233 with just 128 Megs of RAM on FreeBSD. And I don't just mean fast as in loading pages (which it is fast) but also it just runs fast because it's lean and mean. It weighs in at what...4 Megs or so? I don't remember exactly how big it is, but it's awesome.

Re:So when's the FreeBSD version coming out?

[DeathPenguin]

Version 7.1.0 Beta 1 is a bit sluggish, as are all Opera betas I've tried in the past. If you're picky about speed, stick with 6 for a while.

Opera binary size

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone can explain me, why Mozilla/IE needs over 10MB and opera only under 4MB?. also, opera have more features and is quicker. it's the quality of programmers?.

news.google.com

[koehn]

... has picked up this post. This is the first time I've seen a /. article make it to the news.google.com "front page"!

Nobody should be using mozilla..

[blonde rser]

I'm not trying to flame or dis mozilla here but the mozilla children are so superior that there isn't a reason not to use them. Both Galeon and Pheonix are much faster. Pheonix has some pretty cool UI concepts going on (didn't do it for me but should be tried) and Galeon tab browseing and mouse gestures are way more sophisticated than Mozilla. Opera certainly solves a lot of speed and UI issues that Mozilla has but while using it I always felt drawn back to my moz and his children. Though I will give 7 a shot. Ultimately Mozilla is good but once you get used to using gestures and tabbing properly in other browsers you'll find it very hard to go back. Don't worry about your plugins... they all work in Opera and Galeon and Phoenix.

Re:Why? (gestures, operamail)

[kardis]

buy opera for the browswer, not for its mailing capabilities. even when i used mozilla, i didnt use its mail program. :]

as far as mouse gesture are concern, i may be wrong, and i havnt used mozilla for a while, but it had mouse gesture before it did. (i left mozilla for opera 7.0) and as far the mac is concern, i dun use it ;p

well my computer suck maybe, im running p3 700 256mb ram. it load faster then both mozilla and ie, so its somethin im enjoying.

i hate switching to ie (sometimes u have to switch to ie, cause a javascript doesnt work, or ur on a m$ site), and i subconsciously try to use opera feature, and realize its not working :\

also with the mouse gestures... you can surf other pages, without knowin the link. ie, for a web gallery. or an online tut. as long as it has a common-base name, it will add up incremental. good stuff. good stuff.

but anyways, to each his own. i personally think opera is better then all other browsers, and worth the pay. if you like mozilla or phoenix, heck, even ie, go with it. just giving you my view.

US$39? Egad! Are they insane?

[grolschie]

Firstly, I've got nothing against paying for software if:
a). it's good
b). it's realistically priced for what it is
c). it's realistically priced in relation to price of similar products of similar quality

Ok, let's take for granted that Opera have indeed nailed a) and that the product is smokin'! And yes, they support a heap of OS's and Dists. Wow debs too! This can't be cheap, and I can see someone has to pay for this. But c'mon, the pricing fails common sense economics.

Most browsers are of similar standard and are free eg: Mozilla, IE6, Netscape. Economics 101 would state that Opera should be at least near to these prices. Not free, but not overpriced. Let's say "modestly priced".

I'll go further to say, IMHO if it were say US$10, then a heck of a lot more people would say, "yeah ok I'll shell out for that". Opera might even make more money with a higher turnover.

As it stands, there's no way I'd shell out US$39 for a webbrowser, no matter how good. $20, hmmm maybe, if it's good. $10, well ok, if I like it better than what I am currently using. I bet there are many out there who feel the same.

There is a market of people who are obviously using the Ad-supported version and are enjoying it. With a realistic pricing strategy, Opera could tap into this market if they really wanted to.

Did they fix it yet...?

[SharpFang]

Opera has some really braindead idea of "fastest browser".

I've been recently developing a webpage that was supposed to have quite a few dynamic elements and had to be cross-browser. Moz, NS6+, MSIE5+ were all OK, but Opera was something we just had to negotiate with the employer as something "barely working". Reason?

When in DHTML in a normal browser you change a DOM element, all its contents change accordingly, plus if the change has any influence on neighbor elements, they change too, often modifying whole page layout. In Opera, only the concerned element changes, completely ignoring the rest. So, for example you have a table of width 100%, the first column defined as 40% width, the other will appear as 60%. Now resize the first column to 60%. Any normal browzer will squeeze down the other column to 40%, but Opera will just draw a square that overlaps the neighbour. Contents of the table other than the cell border won't change. :P

That's just one problem - there are others, like very obscure means of counting pixels. (put P{ margin-top: 15px;} in the style sheets, the paragraph will appear several pixels below the place where other browsers locate it, obviously further than 15px from the top), inability to use script src="..." format (all scripts had to be embedded in the webpage!), counting all "absolute" dimensions with the scrollbar etc.

The question is: Is O7.10 DOM fixed yet, or is it as badly broken as in 6.0 and 7.0 ?

Just please note, it's not quite the same as with LYNX etc, where if you just keep basic rules, everything works fine. Often workarounds to get things working on Opera break working solutions for other browsers. In our case, tha /js directory is empty, all scripts appear repeated on as many subpages as they were supposed to be included in the first place. Aligning text to the left of some odd gfx element made it go far right in other browsers because of stupid placement issues, etc, etc. For you, netsurfers, this may be nothing important, but we, web developers, lose money because of that! Before this project I had quite an openminded approach to Opera, thinking "it's not M$, it's not evil". Now, I'm Opera hater, claiming even M$IE is much better.

No MathML in Opera

[ralphpdas]

I was really hoping the new Opera would have
support for MathML. If we want to put math and
science on the web, we have to get over this
awkward idea of making images of equations.

You're welcome [n/t]

[Compact Dick]

This space left intentionally blank.

Or maybe not.

Re:Because Mozilla doesn't remember the tabs' cont

[Quietti]

You want it to remember tabs when you have just closed the application? Do you always want it to?

Yes, I do and Opera does it quite well.

Last Post!

[alpg]

... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been
found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth...
-- John 11:43-44 [version 2.0?]

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...