Opera 7 to be Released for Mac OS X

hoist2k writes "CNET is reporting that Opera 7 is going to be released for Mac OS X. I might have to take advantage of their discount for buying the Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all at once!" Opera 6.02 is slated for release on Thursday (the download page currently has Opera 6.0 for Mac OS and Mac OS X, though it erroneously says it is only for Mac OS). Opera 7 is expected "soon," with no word given in the CNET articles for whether it will be for Mac OS X only.

Comments

Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would pay for Opera on Mac OS X when they can use IE (free beer bundled with Mac OS X), Safari (free beer download for Apple fan boys), or Mozilla (free speech download)?

Re:Opera

[numpins]

The only thing missing from Camino and Safari (or any browser, for that matter) is the filtering power of iCab.

Cookie management?
Identification options?
URL Filtering?
Privacy options?
All with a "relatively easy to use graphical interface?"

Have you tried OmniWeb yet?

OmniWeb has all these great features and more. The Omni Group is a cool company; I recommend you check out all their cool applications. You can get a one-day trial license at the store. They update OmniWeb much more frequently than the iCab developers. They're working on a WebCore-enabled (Safari's core) browser now. I liked iCab a long time ago (four years or more), but it was too stagnant and buggy for me to stick with it.

Re:Opera

[singularity]

OmniWeb has all these great features and more.

On your advice, I downloaded OmniWeb and gave it a try for about ten minutes. From what I can tell, OmniWeb cannot do half of what I listed in my original post.

These comments are what I was able to find after playing around for ten minutes. I migh tbe wrong on some of these, but I was not able to figure out where to change some of these.

Want to identify to your bank as Netscape 7.0 and all other sites as iCab 2.9? Done.

OmniWeb only seems capable of changing the value globally. You are not able to set it on a domain by domain basis.

Want to always save cookies from Slashdot, refuse cookies from Doubleclick.net, and expire others at the end of the session? Done.

Am I only able to do this when the server tries to save a cookie? I would rather be able to set these up (and edit the filters) in a seperate window. OmniWeb seems to allow me to edit and delete cookies, but not work with the cookie filters themselves.

Want to filter out images coming from a server named *.ads.*, or images that link to *.sponsor.*? Done.

OmniWeb does seem to be able to do this. I do like iCab's ability to filter an image from the contextual menu, though. Right click "Image:Filter..." and set it up right there. OmniWeb also apparently only has default ad image sizes, where iCab will filter based on any size you want.

In addition, OmniWeb seems to only be able to filter based on the server the image is coming from, and not the server the image is pointing at.

Want to allow your favorite anime site to open new windows on opening, allow a pictures site to open pictures in new windows on clicking, and refuse pop-ups from everyone else? Done.

Once again, this only seems to be a global setting, and not changable based on the site you are looking at.

OmniWeb also does not seem to support tabs.

In all, OmniWeb's filtering power is pretty weak compared to iCab's. I suggest you download a copy of iCab and see aht I am talking about.

[Note to everyone else who is responding to my original post - I am not saying everyone should use iCab. It is slow, and not compatible. I mention these two problems in my original post. Instead, I was writing to suggest that other browsers would come a long way if they were to copy some of the features found in iCab.]

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but OmniWeb cannot even come close to matching the control power that iCab provides.

iCab is a control freak's dream. iCab is the benchmark that all others must follow when it come to features.

I personally love it for its comprehensive contextual menu options and its compressed web archives but there is so much more in the thing.

There is still a fair way to go but for a one man show, it's a miracle it got this far in such great shape.

I happen to be a registered user and as such have access to the Betas, and believe me they come thick and fast. There may be a perceived delay on the Preview releases but that doesn't mean development is not forging ahead at a rapid pace.

The latest betas have some much wanted ('trendy') features in them. Version 3 promises a lot more on the compliance front but I don't know when that is planned for release.

If your requirements put features over near100% compliance then iCab may be what some people are looking for. I'm perfectly happy to see some wonky sites (because of iCab's CSS shortcomings) in return for its productivity boosting features.

That of course is if the sites you visit regularly work well enough in iCab (around 95% of mine do).

Opera 6.0.2 for Mac is Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Download it from here: ftp://ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/opera/mac/602/en/Opera_6 .02_en.smi.sit

Re:Opera is the odd man out

[kalidasa]

There are actually only five other native graphical browser rendering engines for OS X in wide use, even if there are many browsers. There is the Mozilla family: Camino/Chimera, Mozilla, Phoenix/Firebird - lots of different UIs, but the same rendering engine, Gecko. Next there's IE, based on Tasman - a giant load of crap that is only better than the Windows version if you prefer eyecandy to standards (the OS X version can only handle a few text encodings, for instance). Safari, another promising browser, based on KHTML/WebCore. And there is OmniWeb (and there's talk that OmniWeb might switch to WebCore, which would bring us down to three other rendering engines). Finally, there's iCab, which is dropping behind it seems.

The more competition there is in the browser market on all platforms, the bigger the win for standards. The further that standards pull ahead of non-standard (i.e., IE) rendering, the bigger the win for developers. The bigger the win for developers, the more time developers can spend on what really makes the net worthwhile, innovative content and presentation, and the bigger the win for consumers.

Let a thousand browsers bloom!

Re:Opera is the odd man out

[Sir Holo]

On the other hand, Opera for Mac is a piece of shit.... The UI is neither intuitive or graphically pleasing.

Looks fine to me in its default. You can also use custom skins and such, I hear.

There are no tabs.

Wrong again. I'm typing this in a tabbed window in Opera 6 for OS X right now.

It renders well most of the time, but fails miserably on some tables in my experience.

It renders most pages just fine. All browsers have trouble with some pages some of the time.

Please don't make stuff up.

Opera rules

[a8f11t18]

I once tried to convert someone by this messy,
lengthy and biased comparison of opera 7
and firebird. Unfortunately, I failed :D, but
still.. Opera rules, and personally I would not
even consider using an apple before opera software
had a good opera browser on there.. which apparantely
they still don't? Sounds stupid, but it's true. OS X
sounds very tempting in some ways, but no way in hell
am i gonna even think about making a switch unless
opera's on.. and the GOOD opera.. :)

Just trying to make the point that for many, the browser
has become more important than the OS itself..

Documentation (Opera 2 - Firebird 1):
Firebird's documentation is good, but getting there is
confusing; the only place help takes you to is the release
notes, and from there you have to browse around till you
find the link for a third party site documentation.
Not good enough. Opera has good, accecible documentation,
and it is also off line: you can pick contents, keyboard
and mouse help directly from menu.

URL accecibility (Opera 2 - Firebird 0):
I don't neccesarily like to have an adress bar up as that
wastes my space at low resolutions. In opera, pressing
f2 brings up a dialog box with dropdown history and
autocomplete. In Firebird, I cannot find anything similar.
A real shame if you ask me, and even IE can do this.
Mozilla has this, though.

GUI customizability (Opera 2 - Firebird 1)
Opera's GUI is very configurable, and a joy at that too.
You can zoom the big set of buttons, customize the text
position, add and remove search fields as well as status
bar fields and a field for clock and zoom. And unlike
Firebird, you can do drag and drop all these elements,
unless you choose to lock them down. Opera also has a
navigation bar, and all bars can be placed in different
places. Not even a contest actually.

Skin (Opera 2 - Firebird 1)
It is more of a hassle to both download and change skins
in Firebird. Also, Opera has the very cool feauture that
you can change the colour scheme of any skin, as well as
turn special effects on and of.

Tab (Opera 2 - Firebird 1)
The tab interface in Opera is simply better. Besides just
looking better, they have better mouse and keyboard
accecibility, and a visual changer as well. Also, it is quite
limiting that in Firebird you cannot choose to open a tab in
foreground. Firebird's reload tab options are a little more
accecible than opera's though, but opera on the other hand
has a handy close all but active tab function.

Status bar (Opera 2 - Firebird 0)
Love this one. Opera's only shows up when a page is loading,
as under normal circumstances, that's the only time you'd need
the status bar! So, this saves space, but if you don't like it's
customizable. Also, opera's can be placed both at top and bottom, and shows lots more information than firebird's. Oh, and many use the status bar for checking out where a link points to and stuff: but in Opera, you can have this information show up in tooltips, so as I said I really love Opera on this one.

Mouse gestures (Opera 2 - Firebird 0)
Well, firebird don't have them by default. Opera's are almost perfect and even customizable. The downloadable gesture plugins for Firebird don't quite do it for me either.

Update notification (Opera 0 - Firebird 2)
Firebird has customizable notification of site updates. Opera has no such functionality.

Context functionality (Opera 2 - Firebird 1)
In Opera, mark something, and by right-clicking it you can search it through a search engine of choice, translate it, or look it up in an encyclopedia or a dictionary. Instead of pasting a link and then pressing enter or clicking go, you can just choose paste and go in the context menu. Double clicking a word also brings up the context menu for easier access. Otherwise the context menu's in Opera are much more filled with options, and at least