Slashdot Mirror
Opera Facing Losses While Firefox Usage Grows
An anonymous reader submits "Opera, the sometimes forgotten #3 web browser, reported a third quarter loss that tripled that of last year's third quarter despite a seven-fold increase in revenue. Opera is blaming a weaker dollar for the losses, and say they're spending money on marketing and new ventures like teaming with IBM to use their ViaVoice technology. Opera's future seems uncertain as Firefox's growing popularity may hurt Opera by stealing potential customers. With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free, is there room for a non-free browser in the market?"
According to the article, company officials said operating expenses, like adding new employees and spending more on marketing efforts, are partly to blame for the quarterly loss (of $267,000 compared to a net profit of $9.62 million in the first nine months of this year = maybe $3mil difference).
It seems Opera is growing, and they are doing it by aggressively promoting their products, even goes as far as teaming up with IBM's ViaVoice to allow users execute commands by talking to their computers. These are licensed-features that free browsers will find it hard to justify paying for.
So maybe Opera is just investing 25% of its yearly profit into marketing, and hopes a better year. Even FireFox wants to advertise on NYTimes.
We shall be alarmed if they moved to a penthouse office and every employee drives a Ferrari.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
...but apparently I'm not up to snuff on my html... this page loads great in IE and firefox, but in opera, it looks horrible (misses tables and stuff). Can anyone tell me why? (if it loads fine for you in Opera try going to Calcgames.org and on the first news item press "Discuss"... it seems to work less often when it's in its proper frame)
"a seven-fold increase in revenue"
- because of microsoft?
Check this out http://www.google.com/firefox
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
All they have to do is get slightly better than IE, and them MS will buy them out.
Table-ized A.I.
I have been a computer technician for years, and I have never ever seen a computer with the opera browser myself. Most people still use internet explorer, the more security aware windows user will tend to use firefox, but opera is nearly unknown.
I don't think anybody has any reason to pay for some unknown web browser, unless it has some amazing features.
The Mozilla Foundation isn't spending their own money for the ad. Users contributed to the ad campaign by their own choice and with no more incentive than having their name listed in the ad.
That's hardly the bio of a company losing market share. It seems what THEY ARE failing to do is keep their operating costs under control. Even though that rate of revenue growth cannot be maintained in the long run, seems to me like what's really dead is their management for not being able to turn a profit with such revenue numbers.
A blog like any other.
I remember when I used to actualy use Opera. I think the only reason I used it at the time was because it supported tabs. Gradualy my intrest in it dwindled. It didn't support CSS properly, plugins were a hassle. I tried it again a year or two ago, and immediately deleted it. Nothing turns me off from a piece of software like a damned banner ad in the main window.
stuff
No.
+5 troll!
I must say that although I am still an Opera user now (it still wins in the customization department), if Firefox added in the massive ammounts of neat extra features Opera has (someone make an extension! please?), I would switch. Firefox seems to be just as fast, plus I love the security of open source. So Opera better change their buisness model, and fast, because Firefox is bound to have all their features eventually.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Yes. There is. As long as the others are not suitable for embedded applications Opera shall live. Mozilla has a project to do this, but it is still way off...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
And it so happens that the fittest is currently also free :)
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
If the price is low and the browser is top notch there's hope. IE has security problems galore, and Safari and Firefox still seem to have trouble displaying a certain group of web sites. If Opera can overcome these problems, and incorporate viavoice in a cool way, and people find out about it, they'll throw a few bucks at it. Or ask for it for their birthday.
This is the second story in a row containing the term "seven-fold" in the blurb. Can we get a trifecta?
There's room but only as a value-add or niche market.
There's room in the "small embedded" market, such as cell-phones and PDAs, and some vendors that bundle software may prefer a commercial vendor with paid support, especially for things like home-entertainment boxes.
I don't see your typical computer maker shipping a paid-for browser unless they get a REALLY GOOD DEAL, but I do see them shipping a mozilla-based browser.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free, is there room for a non-free browser in the market
Rivers, lakes and rain are all free. Bottled water is a $5 billion industry.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
This has been covered quite extensively in the tradepress due to the possible financial benefits to Firefox.
Help fight continental drift.
i used to swear by opera, with it's faster page load times and mouse gestures - i didn't need no stinkin' mozilla. firefox got faster and faster at page rendering and when i discovered the mouse gestures plugin, i dropped opera altogether.
Check this out http://www.google.com/ie
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
a seven-fold increase in revenue
is there room for a non-free browser in the market?
If not, what are they selling? Office furniture on eBay?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
There's a similar page for MSIE. Are you going to say that that means Google embraces MSIE too?
It's not like Google favours one browser over another. And, even if it did, so what? I don't know about you, but I don't pick what weh browser I use based on the recommendations of one website or another, I pick what web browser I used based upon more tangible and relevant criteria, such as its feature set, speed, user interface, ease of use, etc.
For me that means Opera 7.54 (although I'll soon be installing the second beta of version 7.60). And, yes, I have tried all the alternatives, including Firefox.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
If you would've said to me that the mozilla/firefox would've been the prime browser choice over Opera a couple years ago, I would've laughed and said how great Opera is and how fast and snappy it is on my pitiful machine.
:P
Now, I can't imagine browsing with anything BESIDES firefox (well, there are a FEW sites I use IE on, but who's to say if that's FF's problem or if the site was "optimized for IE")
Despite that, I would hate for Opera to be "forgotten", so I'm taking the stance of Open Source pundit and hope they can open source their browser...maybe I'm living in a dream world now
Join the TWIT army now!
I started using Opera about four years ago and quickly became hooked. Gestures, fast rendering, etc., made me an instant fan. The single (non-flashing) ad in the corner didn't really bother me.
At some point I'd used it enough that I figured it was worth paying some back, so I registered it (ironically, it looked wierd at first without the single ad block). Best $40 I've spent on software.
I haven't had to pay for an upgrade since then, and I've installed it on my computer at work, my laptop, and my new desktop. At some point I may have to kick down again and I'll probably do it, just like I bought Doom I after playing the hell out of it.
I've used Mozilla a little bit, but it was back when it was way more kludgy than I hear firefox is. I know that I could get a gesture patch and all, but I guess I'm happy with the way Opera handles just about everything (though I still have to load ol' IE to get at my bank's web page and my work's exchange server).
I appreciate the benefits of open source, and at some point I'll probably migrate to Firefox (at the very least it's good to know that if Opera goes under I have a great alternative). But for now, that's one for-profit organization that is building a very good piece of software and has brought some serious innovation to the browser world - I, for one, hope they are able to stick around...
The Slashdot rendering issue is related to some sort of page rendering timing issue, so two computers can and do render it differently. I've got two computers at the same resolution, and the faster computer has the bug, while the slower version does not. Until it makes it into the code (1.1 probably), there's a Firefox extension to fix it.
Firefox is very good and, best of all, it's free. And...it's arguably the best.
Say what you want, but Internet Explorer - with bugs and all - is still free, and it comes already packaged with the Windows O/S.
On the other hand, Opera charges money.
Hmmm.....let's see how this business model goes...
1. Write Code others are giving away for free...
2. ?????????
3. Profit!
Yes...I see it all now.
I can't speak for 1.0, but I ran some tests on some large, simple-layout web sites comparing FF 0.92-or-so and Mozilla 1.7-or-so to Opera 7.53-or-4 a few weeks back.
Opera was several times faster than Mozilla. Firefox was about the same as Mozilla. A page that took 10 in Mozilla and Firefox.
All tests were done with local files.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As an Opera user, I must say that there is room for a non-free browser. For one, FF doesn't quite have all of the features of Opera (it's getting there, though), and the tabs work slightly differently in Opera that, for me at least, make browsing far faster.
Once FF has extensions for it all, then, yeah, Opera is probably toast. However, until then, as another user pointed out, Opera will be like bottled water to the lakes, rivers, etc of IE, FF, et al.
I used opera a couple times. My faviorite was the "bork bork" version wich translated msn.com into sweedish chef in response to msn.com perposly making itself look broken to the opera browser. Link here to the slashdot story on it: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/14/1256231.shtm l
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
It 's following the trend set up by Linux. Just as Linux hurt the sales of commercial Unix systems while barely impacting windows strongholds (desktop computing).
Similarly, Firefox targetted the group who wanted multiple featuters (tabbled browsing, low mem usage, mouse gestures etc.) The common man (surfer) stll hasn't heared of firefox - all he wants is the ease of use. He is getting all this with the pre-packaged IE. He doesn't know about the IE securuity risk as security for him is the realm of anti-virus companies and not the browser.
So, firefox impacted Opera's market - no one liked to pay for anything which he can get for free.
I downloaded FireFox and I really hate the Interface, too much like Internet Explorer. I liked a lot of other things about it, and it made me want to switch except I use so many of Opera's features I don't want to. I do use a friend's copy of Opera that he didn't want, so I have no ad banners.
the Political Inquirer
As long as opera is the only available browser for some of the more expensive Nokia and Sony-Ericsson mobile phones (and just about every other Symbian phone out there btw), I don't see why they shouldn't be able to keep going.
Somebody gave me a keygen.
Plus I get "Opera" Appended to my title bar. In fact, the Slashdot headline has become the rather contradictory: "Opera Facing Losses While Firefox Usage Grows - Opera."
In one word: No. For god's sake, this is how Netscape got crushed. IE came free on every PC starting with Win95, and you had to buy Netscape separately. Yes, I am well aware that Mozilla/Firefox is built on Netscape; so at least it's still serving a purpose. This is like asking if people would buy AOL cd's.
worst sig ever. . .
Perhaps a better title for this article would have been "Opera Facing Losses While Opera Usage Grows".
In the current market firefox is the end all solution for most people. Not only does opera not stand a chance, but I'd say IE is getting a run for its money as well.
This may sound somewhat cruel, but this rule is applyable to the whole O.S. society and has been dictated by conditions of its time.
P.S. This message has been posted with the Opera v7.54 browser under GNU/Linux.
PC and Macs are not the only places that browsers live.
Opera browsers are perfect for cellphones, set top boxs and thin clients. One quarter of losses does not mean a whole lot.
0wn3d
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Many years, people were willing to pay for browsers. Now, after free(as in beer) browsers available, people are willing no more. Some might even think the idea is just absurd.
Who knows, many years from now, people might laugh when someone says "I paid 200 bucks for Windows XP". (I know some people who would laugh right now, but thats beside the point)
39 dollars for Opera web browser that will most likely be obsolete in 6 months, i can see why nobody wants it...
Firefox & mozilla for free is a much better deal, and just as good in quality and even better if you ask my humble opinion...
I've been an Opera user since verison 3 and it's still my favorite browser.
I recently tried Firefox 1.0 and I still like Opera better. Firefox has tabs, but I couldn't put them at the bottom of the screen. And with Opera I can have two sites open -- one with pictures on and one with pictures off -- at the same time.
And there's a buttom on every window (or "tab") that lets me switch between "author" mode and "user" mode. That means if I come across a website that has say yellow text on a white background I can press this button and it'll change to black text on a white background.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I always test my web projects in Opera, usually last but I at least make sure the pages work. I grab the free version, never test for older releases ( I figure people using alternative browsers know how to upgrade, if not, they should ), and try to make things work for people using Opera. That's it, I will never pay for something that is not as good as Firefox.
Sure there is room. In hand held devices such as phones.
On PC's and Mac's? Forget it.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
no there is no room sorry
Currently we have a near monoculture in web browsers. If you're not using IE, you're pretty damn weird and you can expect many web pages to not work.
As firefox gains in popularity, web developers will have to start writing compatable HTML/JS/etc. and as a result life will become easier for the opera users out there.
I have been using Opera for about 4 years now.
Opera is the slickest browser out there. The interface is great and the features have lots of little subtle twists that make them much better than plugins in Firefox.
Opera also has killer caching that provides instant forward/back ( I mean INSTANT ) through recently visted pages.
But I recently switched to Firefox. So my bet is Opera is toast.
Why did I switch? Compatability. More pages take Mox/FF into account. Like my Bank and Gmail for 2 that are important to me.
Talk to an Opera Zealot or Opera developer and the answer has always been the same. The site is serving bad pages to Opera. And this is generally true. Using a proxy tool to spoof firefox in Opera many of the pages did indeed work, but this is a clumsy solution. Unfortunately the Opera line remains the same. Users should fight to change the bad pages.
Where in my view a true firefox emulation/spoofing mode would go a long way to making Opera more workable.
But I have finally conluded that this is not going to happen. And that Firefox is finally there with the features and compatability intersection that makes it my current browser choice. It is compatible enough, and has features enough.
Opera is now Toast for me.
RIP Opera. I really wish they could have made more effort to handle errant pages than simply telling users to change the world. I will miss the Opera way.
"Opera Facing Losses While Firefox Usage Grows"
... but Opera has key markets outside that of the desktop browser.
While there is a correlation to be made of Opera and Fire/zilla both being "alternative" browsers, I'm not exactly sure the headline here is applicable. Opera can experience a Q3 loss while opera usage grows, Firefox really isn't applicable to the story.
On one level, Opera and Fire/zilla are primarily taking users from IE
I actually prefer Opera over Firefox and IE, but that's really a different topic. If you haven't tried it lately, give it a shot.
Firefox doesn't run on mobile phones yet, so I figure Opera has a niche there.
Alternatively, I will buy the first phone to ship with the Gecko rendering engine in its web browser.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Opera still blows other browsers out of the water on Windows (yes, that includes Firefox). It's the fastest graphical browser with the best CSS support I've seen. And even with mail, news, IRC and address book included, it's a smaller download than Firefox.
And let's not forget that Opera pioneered many of the features we've come to love, and apparently continues to do so.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Please. Gecko blows Opera away in the CSS department. Have you seen what you can do with CSS3 in Gecko? I don't believe Opera supports it at all yet. I've had to work around more quirks in CSS in Opera than I've ever had to in a Gecko based browser.
IMO, Opera is an OK browser. My biggest complaint is the ad boxes on the free version. I could just pay for it, but why would I when firefox is at least equally good?
If opera ever wants to get any real market share, they are going to have to release their browser free and without ads.
I don't think they need to open source it. It'd be nice, but its realy too much to ask. And besides, how many mozilla or firefox users here compiled from source?
Opera is like the BeOS. It's great, but unknown and unloved. If it goes under, it will take the rest of the world years to achieve the same level of excellence. Unless, of course, they open-source the whole thing.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I really think it's Opera's own fault. No other browser has such a lowsy interface as they do. It's like every decision they made for the interface has been wrong, while the back-end is great. Odd.
Their bookmark system is insane, organized very strangely. Their menus are cluttered and disorganized to a degree that would make the original pre-1.0 Mozilla browser jelous. Closing a tab throws you to the last open one (which is stupid). Also, their bookmarks and other files can't be exported to another format... That attempt to lock-in customers, also works to lock themselves out.
The strangest thing, though, is that their interface on embedded devices is actually pretty dammed good. It seems like the Opera developers NEED restrictions, to prevent them from throwing every weird feature, menu, and kitchen-sink into their browser for no good reason.
If they just had a bit of a better interface, I would personally have bought a good dozen licenses back in the Netscape 4.x days, when there wasn't anything good like Mozilla/Firefox around, let alone the dozens of other small browser projects.
I also could have gotten my company, around that time, to buy several hundred licenses, because they used hundreds of out-dated computers, where the browser was the only one of the installed apps that was CPU/Memory intensive.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
zoom pages in and out with the images keeping size with the text.
How could you say Internet Explorer is free..... It is not at all.. You must purchase Windows in order to install Internet Explorer as far as I know.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Ah but sign up with operamail and get a whopping 3MB of storage space. Not enough ladies and gentlemen? Then for a mere USD29.99 per year you can upgrade to an eye popping 25MB.
slashdot away folks: http://operamail.com/
Microsoft effectively put the browser market out of play when they released theirs for free, why should anyone pay for a product when an acceptable alternative is free, to download porn 100 times faster?
Browsers have been free for too long, and the fact is, people don't use browsers because of features...they use them because of compatibility.
That's probably the #1 obstacle to wide acceptance of Firefox right now: if it doesn't display all IE pages correctly (regardless of compliance to W3C standards), it won't be adopted.
Right now, my company has a lot of internal apps that are built to run only on IE. Would I love to switch to Firefox? Sure. Can we do that without spending millions rewriting existing apps? Nope.
So Opera is an alternative browser that is not only more expensive that Firefox, it might not totally support all IE functionality. NO chance that would catch on in the enterprise. At least Firefox has a shot at catching on as the next 3-5 years' worth of apps get written...you can be sure I'll encourage management to write cross-browser apps, or Firefox-only apps, because Firefox is a safer/"better" browser to use.
That's a compromise: "Hey, this new browser might not run all our legacy apps 100%, but the software is free, it doesn't have all of IE's security holes, and we're gonna have to rewrite those legacy apps anyway."
With Opera, the cost of the browser negates the savings on security. Sorry guys, but selling web browsers is like selling shareware: it's fine for a hobby, but not for a business model.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
I think Opera's biggest problem is that it's hard to compete with free! When I finally decided to dump IE, I looked at Mozilla, Firefox and Opera. Although Opera was nice, I found that Firefox could do everything that I need it to do and it was free to boot. Sure you can run the free version of Opera, but those ads are annoying. In the end, it's just hard to compete with free unless your product has some kind of killer feature that the free alternatives lack. In Opera's case, I just didn't see any features that warranted shelling out the cash.
I've used Opera since 2000, so it took a fair amount to change. But it came down to names...Firefox just sounds way more badass than Opera. I hear it's the browser used by Frank Jaeger in Zanzibar. Snaaaaaaaaake!
I don't think anybody has any reason to pay for some unknown web browser, unless it has some amazing features.
Tabbed browsing, popup blocking, mouse gestures, JavaScript disable, etc. etc. all started in Opera first. The Mozilla project then assimilated them in the pre 1.0 days.
Opera is the fastest browser out there. Firefox can't even come close to its memory footprint and speed. Oh, and Opera has always rendered Slashdot correctly too!
There's room in the "small embedded" market, such as cell-phones and PDAs, and some vendors that bundle software may prefer a commercial vendor with paid support, especially for things like home-entertainment boxes.
Opera is definitely the only browser currently acceptable for general browsing use on cellphones and pda's. However, with mozilla's efforts to make mobile and embedded editions, opera could soon see competition there too.
It's kind of sad if opera were to go, but if there is only room enough on the market for either firefox or opera, I'll pick firefox any day of the week. Not for its features, but for how it is developed. I like mozilla.org's structure, as a non-profit spreading gpl'd code, because it guarantees that nobody's going to pull the rug out from under firefox, like what happened with IE or netscape.
Seems like words straight from the mouth of the BSA.
How can Firefox, 'steal' customers? Surely people have the right to choose whichever product meets their needs without words like 'stealing' and 'theft' being used.
- New versions are no-cost downloads for supported versions of Windows.
- IE is also a no-cost download for MacOS
- All browsers are affected by various security issues. Need I remind you that the current version of Mozilla is 1.7. 3 ? This is solely due to security issues.
- The money-delta between using Mozilla on Windows and IE on Windows is $0.00. It's free enough for the purposes of this discussion.
Stop karma whoring.I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
#1: IE #2: Firefox #3: Netscape #4: Safari #5: Opera
It's included in the cost of the Windows operating system. Saying it's free is like saying you're purchasing a hamburger and getting the patty and pickles for free.
Being able to download it for the MacOS basically means that it's being subsidized by Windows users.
I use Opera, and I find it's UI much better than Firefox. The only problem I find with Opera is *the* compatibility with some websites. Not that it doesn't work per say, but that they check the browser's name and say "It's not supported" (Yes, I know you can make it claim to be IE or whatever, but that doesn't always work)
A lot of people claim Opera's problem is they can't complete with Free. Well, I use Opera's free version. Whats the problem? Opera's customizable interface blows Firefox away. In UI, Firefox is no competition to Opera. Speed? Nope, Opera is still far better.
Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox too, but Opera in my opinion has a far superior usability. Firefox just renders more websites. Every product has it's pluses and minuses. I use both, but if it renders in Opera, then I use Opera.
The actual loss last quarter is minimal. With the amount of money Opera has in the bank, they could go on with losses for years and years. But this is a strategic move to increase the staff, and thereby being able to deliver more products, thus making more money next year.
The management would be really silly if it didn't expand when the market is screaming for it. This company has been around for nearly ten years, remember, and easily survived the dot.com bubble.
Recently, Opera has been announced for Casio mobiles, and for the Windows Mobile platform. So it is rapidly expanding to new markets. That requires more development resources, obviously. In addition, it was recently announced that Opera is the default browser on a new smartphone Symbian OS, and the second biggest mobile operator in Japan is betting its money on Opera to get more customers.
The bottom line is that Opera has no debt, the revenues are rapidly increasing, and they look set to grow even further in the next few years because of all the major deals they are getting. They needed to hire people to keep up with all these new deals.
What's the problem here?
Clever signature text goes here.
I know that you're trying to be funny, but Opera has been significantly better than IE for years. It's like comparing a Ferrari to a Yugo.
I got so fed up with the limitations of IE at my (very large multinational) employer that I finally violated their IT policy and installed (non-approved) Opera. If and when I get challenged over this, I'm willing to go to battle over it and make the case that Opera is much more secure and infinitely more useful and flexible and that it makes me a far more productive employee, thereby saving the company money.
Sigs are bad for your health.
http://www.google.com/microsoft
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
Using a proxy tool to spoof firefox in Opera many of the pages did indeed work, but this is a clumsy solution.
Who needs a proxy tool? Hit F12 and pick one of the alternative user-agent strings.
I really wish they could have made more effort to handle errant pages than simply telling users to change the world.
With all due respect, you really haven't got a clue how hard this is until you try and do it yourself. It's not a case of handling HTML appropriately, it's a case of emulating every single IE behaviour while still trying to handle HTML as it is supposed to be. Even IE breaks things from release to release; it's damn near impossible for an outside organisation to do any better.
An anonymous reader contends that
Isn't this (1) outcompeting to get more (2) users? I doubt most Firefox users are Mozilla Foundation customers because I doubt most Firefox users paid for their copy of Firefox (which is okay by me, sharing at whatever price we choose is fundamental to software freedom). As for the first point, isn't it possible people are choosing Firefox because it works well for what most web users want most of the time?
And speaking of software freedom: MSIE, Safari, and Firefox are not free in the same way. You pay for MSIE and Safari when you buy the Microsoft Windows and MacOS X operating systems (if not in other ways by buying other Microsoft and Apple products), and if you pay you still don't get software freedom with either browser (although, to be fair, the Mozilla Foundation endorses the open source movement). Firefox is free in both the sense of software freedom and the side-effect that freedom grants us: free to share for zero price.
Digital Citizen
Yes, have adds, yes, have some compatibility problems, dont have the extensions that Firefox/Mozilla have, yes, is not open source (to differenciate with "free", as you can get it without spending money).
In the other hand, is pretty stable (well, using 7.6 beta 2, i can leave some room for problems), it displays slashdot pretty well (with firefox, sometimes the content move to the black area on the right, a problem that had also Tikiwiki as explained here), it loads FAST and is pretty compact, the ads are text based (bit dependant on content like gmail ones, and i could re-register if want them off), have a good mail client, it have even a good rss reader integrated, and surely have some other nice features that i dont explored yet. Uh, and of course, gmail works with it pretty well.
Why that last switch? Installed firefox 1.0 RPM from SuSE and started to have problems (well, the right col bug problem was there from some time), firefox sometimes dont load (have to kill the task to retry), sometimes load, but don't display anything on browser's window (seems to work, just not show) and sometimes works. Of course, had to reinstall most themes/extensions, and somewhat between 1.0rc and 1.0 decided to disable the open of new windows from web pages.
I could had try to install another/newer rpm or from other format, clean configurations and try without extensions/themes, and so on... but too i can play a bit more with Opera and leave that test for later.
About opera's "market share", well, that seem to run well in the embedded market. Being small, with low requirements, fast and multiplataform enough are good advantages there and where hardware is not at the top. And for normal desktops still is a good alternative.
Opera's main income is from the embedded market, and Firefox is nowhere to be seen there. Besides, Opera's losses are due to hiring more people to keep up with demand. They recently started porting Opera to Windows Mobile.
In conclusion, Opera's losses are expected since they have to hire to keep up with demand, and Firefox is largely irrelevant since it is not available for mobile phones.
Clever signature text goes here.
I know that any replies this gets will be like "Well, you just have to do this, this this, this, this this, and this."
But I don't have time or the desire to dick around for hours on end trying to get FireFox to behave as Opera does out-of-the-box. It's free, sure, and it makes you happy, good. But, please don't discount the qualities of Opera just because FireFox is the geekyworld buzzword of the day.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
note: if you do not have a valid eula for any "os product" (including, without limitation, microsoft windows 98, microsoft windows nt 4.0, microsoft windows 2000, microsoft millennium edition, microsoft windows xp, or any other microsoft operating system that is a successor to any of the foregoing operating systems) you are not authorized to install, copy, or otherwise use the os components and you have no rights under this supplemental eula.
Minimo is Mozilla's answer to the PDA & embedded device market. Now that Firefox 1.0 is out, I hope the developers allot more time and effort to it.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
As a happy Omniweb user, I disagree.
Many people still believe that you have to buy good software. Many are scared of Linux just for that reason, aka, why is it so cheap and come with all these programs?
-m
http://www.invisik.com
If anyone is interested, Adblock can be downloaded from the Adblock homepage or from update.mozilla.org
The -IMHO- best filter to use:
Get it here. Scroll down the page to get the latest version. You can save the textfile and import it from the Adblock dialog (Menu: Tools / Adblock / Preferences ).
Way better than IE or Opera or a HOSTS file! Believe me!
I think there's a market for payware browsers. I myself paid for Omniweb, which is by far the best OS X browser. It uses the same core as Safari, Apple's Webcore, but has a much richer interface and a lot more options. I think developers will have to look for advanced users who will want more features and more control than the default "Free" browsers, but don't want to download numerous extensions.
"Who needs a proxy tool? Hit F12 and pick one of the alternative user-agent strings."
Almost all browser sniffing ignores Operas spoof light and queries to find out it is in fact Opera.
"With all due respect, you really haven't got a clue how hard this is until you try and do it yourself. It's not a case of handling HTML"
If clues were shoes... Well shoeless Joe. I never said this was a solution to every page. But for my browsing I never use IE. Firefox now handles every page I visit. Opera doesn't.
Here is an example where real spoofing would work, but Opera doesn't do real spoofing. The server code can easily check that it is Opera.
www.dpreview.com
Works great in Firefox. The cascading menus on the side work, as well as other features work.
Menus don't cascade and features dont work in Opera, no matter which user agaent you spoof with F12.
Now use a proxy spoofer with Opera and all the features work again.
Please verify what people say before you start your rants...
If the page had sent Opera the same as Firefox gets, it would have worked perfectly.
It's got nothing to do with zealotry. It's an explanation. You are rather rude to call people zealots just for pointing out this simple fact.
You don't seem to understand the problem. Opera has an entire rendering mode for badly coded pages. Does that tell you something?The problem isn't that Opera can't handle badly coded pages. The problem is that many sites seem to block Opera on purpose for some reason. Even Yahoo Mail did this a while ago! It's explained in the Opera forums. You could change a single line of JavaScript which detected Opera to prevent it from detecting it, and everything would work fine!
Clever signature text goes here.
People still buy pop-up blockers. Firefox would do the job, but they haven't heard about it.
Some buy commercial packages to deal with adware when the best are free.
Enough also buy spammed merchandise to make some people millions.
So why the hell wouldn't people buy a browser?
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e114938418-d0143ab b39-aeb89a77af
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e114938418-8c4f96a 055-8fb693851b
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e114938418-fba7417 7c9-af511d982b
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e114938418-068b307 341-1de53a6020
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e114938418-51a870c a2d-ea75c7ffe1
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-e114938418-8e3dda3 9f7-918c15b704
Opera is very convenient, and I'll gladly pay for that. It makes me a lot more productive.
Clever signature text goes here.
I'm an Opera user a vast majority of the time and for good reason. I find that Opera's interface is much better than Firefox's, mainly the keyboard shortcuts.
I'm one of those people that will use any keyboard shortcut at any time.. atl-tab, window-d, alt-f4, all the copy/paste stuff. So when I learned some easy combos for doing things in Opera, I was hooked.
For instance, to bring up your home page in Opera all you do is hit CTRL-Space. You can do it with one hand, left or right. Know what the key combo in FF is for the same function? ALT-Home. Kind of bothersome. I could use one hand to hit that combo, but I could only use my right and it would be a little awkward.
Same thing goes for browsing back one page. In Opera it's Z. In FF it's ALT-back arrow. New tab in Opera is CTRL-N. New tab in FF is CTRL-T. I could go on and on about Opera having easier/more efficient shortcuts.
The thing about FF's keyboard shortcuts is not that I can use them with one hand, but rather they aren't terribly efficient. It seems like a lot of the combos take your fingers away from the home row, which is where I typically position my hands at.
If there could be some kind of extension to allow changing of keyboard shortcuts, I would switch to FF in a second, but for now I'll stick to Opera.
It's fascinating to see how people seem to confuse ad-financed free (but proprietary) software where you can either chose an ad method (semi-spyware sleek or no-spyware bloated) or pay if you want to remove the ads, with software you have to pay $39 for. You don't have to pay one quid for it, unless you feel the quite non-intrusive Google advertisements are too irritating.
Also, you seldom see a mention of the mobile and embedded platforms. With minimo Mozilla might have a competitor, but Opera has a fair (and growing) marketshare on the fastest growing internet platform.
As for their economy, I don't see why an investment strategy that puts them temporarily in the reds, while they manage to increase their revenue, would be an indication of anything other than a company which is expanding.
GMail is working fine for me under the latest beta version.
NatWest Bank took more effort, but worked completely with Proxomitron spoofing IE6.0 exactly through the SSL extension. There was a menu CSS glitch as it was being served IE CSS though.
Opera is growing in the desktop market too, you know. And these losses aren't related to Firefox anyway.
Firefox is actually irrelevant here, because Opera's main source of income is the mobile market, and Firefox does not exist for mobiles. The reason for the losses is that Opera has hired like mad to keep up with demand. And they have no debt and so much money in the bank they could go on with losses for many years.
"0wn3d" indeed... Sigh.
Clever signature text goes here.
I really like Firefox. If it were my primary browser I would be happy. But I discovered Opera several months ago when I was searching for a new mail client. Had been using "The Bat" and it was getting very dodgy with a large mail archive. Crashing, using lots of system resources, etc. I'd used earlier versions of Opera (prior to 7.5) and thought they were interested, but didn't feel compelled to use them. But then I discovered Opera's new email client, M2. I love the way it treats e-mail as a database. Rather than a bunch of static boxes where you create rules to move your messages, you create "filters" which are basically db queries. Because filters act on the db in realtime, they are much more powerful than static rules. Filters allow for cross-indexing (a message can fall under multiple filters) and very fast multi-dimensional searching. All very valuable when your e-mail archive has tens of thousands of messages spanning many years. M2 still needs work -- the philosophy is fantastic (and much like Google's Gmail on the server side) -- but the implementation is still maturing. Using M2, I only have to keep one program running for both web and e-mail. And, don't get me wrong, Opera's web browser *is* very good. If it sucked eggs that would be another story. And as I said, I think Firefox is wonderful also, particularly the web developer extensions. There's no law that says I can't use both, and I do. For those bothered by the banner ads in the free version of Opera, this is a silly objection, because they can be easily blocked with some of the same tools you might use to block other kinds of ads, if that's your thing. I'm application agnostic. If someone can point me to another e-mail client that is db-based like M2 I would happily check it out. Until then, I'm sticking with M2. -Aaron
Once in a while, an animated one slips through. When they become aware of it, they will get it stopped (AFIK, the ads are served by advertising.com). I've seen animated ads on maybe 3 occasions in the last 12 months (I average 4 hours on line each day). They never last more than a day and even then the ads get changed out several times an hour. If an ad is distracting, I just create a little window with notepad, and place it over the ad - problem solved.
Given the wealth of features and remarkable flexibility that Opera provides, getting it for "free" in exchange for an occasional animated ad is a negligible nuisance to me.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Years ago, when I was a student web worker, I installed an early Moz version, an alpha, on my work Linux box, and it quickly took over from Netscape as my prime browser. A friend stopped by the cube and pimped Opera, so I tried that. It became clear, very quickly, that there was a clear difference in the quality of code between Moz and Opera. "Do you mean it's beta, like in the Mozilla Alpha release", I would ask, "or do you mean alpha, like the Opera Beta?" I usually download Opera when I get a new work machine, to keep up on progress and to use when I want to test compatability, but I've never seriously used it as a prime browser.
Company is European. (Nordic if I remember correctly). Typically European businesses, in particular German companies (I studied International Business and German in collge) tend to have an out look of 15 years. If there are a couple off quaters or even off years finicailly because of marketing or R&D expenses, then typically that is expected and over the long term one should come out ahead. Classic example: European Steel industry putting in efficent plants and equipement. Hell of an up front cost, but here 30 years later when energy prices have increased, put a hurt on the inneffecient US steel industry.
Boeing usually goes to Japan to finace projects like the 777 because Japan has almost a life time "Where do we want to be in 50 years" approach.
Not to say all good/bad/indeffierent, but too often US companies slash marketing and R&D to improve quarterly or yearly numbers and find themselves out of business 5 or 10 years down the road because someone else with forsight developed the better mouse trap or marketing trap.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"The problem is that many sites seem to block Opera on purpose for some reason. "
Block for some reason? Put on your tin foil hat folks, it's a conspiracy.
Duh, Generally they serve code that was probably written before Opera had support for the features. You probably know that as well, so why don't you just be honest and say that they are serving pages coded for older versions of Opera.
With that out of the way. You miss the point. It is pretty much irrelevant to potential users why the page fails in Opera. The fact remains it fails in Opera. Hence why I switched.
Now since it works in Firefox, worked in Opera spoofing Firefox (via Proxomitron) it follows that if Opera spent a small amount of time building a Firefox spoof/emulation mode it could handle more pages.
This is what I refer to when I stated spending more time on handling incompatible pages.
But it is too late now IMO. Everyone I convinced to give Opera a try has gone Firefox, including myself.
There is less and less reason to use Opera over a free/open fully featured firefox that handles more pages.
It is the one piece of software which I consider to be worth every last penny of the asking price, probably even more.
I do not grudge paying for it. However I do think that Opera's market share, so to speak, would dramatically increase were they to open-source it. But I don't see that happening at all, to be honest.
> With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free, is there room for a non-free browser in the market?
I beg to differ.
Opera is just above a price-point where cost would be irrelevant (at least, in wealthier places).
It all boils down to whether it gives more value than its eventually little cost.
Compare that with a free IE that has _tons_ of holes and which ties you to Microsoft more than bubblegum to a fool's shoe. *That* might be very costly!
Besides, when I had lame computers (Pentium 100MHz class), Opera was the only one to work on them -- Firefox/Phoenix didn't exist at that time on Linux. I still have them, though I got me more powerful ones, but poor people still need lean programs.
As a matter of fact, I prefer freedom-free programs, but I like lean programs a lot...
When I bought my pc, all I had on it was Internet Explorer! I've used it ever since. I don't know why everyone gripes about it. My pc twitch shooter skills have also improved due to my practice at closing pop-ups with the mouse.
Besides why would I pay for a browers when I can just download it off Suprnova.org?
One advantage that Windows browsers will have is managed code. If you want to get rid of buffer overrun problems that managed code is the way to go. I don't know home much of Opera compiles against .net/mono, but that would be something I would look at. Unfortunately, there are no Java browsers available anymore.
Has anyone thought about porting the Gecko engine to java yet? Relying on Mono does not seem to be the way to go, unless you want to support Microsoft indirectly. There is already a lot of support for XML and HTTP/SSL in Java. The biggest tasks would be the layout of web pages. Maybe the SWT framework can be a bit of help in that respect as well.
C++ and C will very fast become extinct for desktop applications, but all the web-browsers and mail clients still seem to rely on this old technology, which is easy to attack (or, difficult to get right).
At least better than Firefox -- at least, out of the box.
It seems M$ software default configuration deems Firefox a "downlevel" browser... someone pls correct me if I'm wrong.
It passes the URL on to Google so it can send back relevant ads, that's it. It is not used to track surfing or create a user profile or anything like that. Read the privacy policy.
Some will obviously argue that "Google could be doing this anyway!". Well, so could your ISP in that case. But you aren't being as paranoid about your ISP as you are with Google, are you?
Clever signature text goes here.
...using that BUGGY OSS engine from Mosaic. The speed is just too good for the others to match. Why MS still keeps hitching their wagon to Mosaic's insecure code is a mystery.
Let MS code an engine from scratch, and this will be the death knell for Firebird/fox and Opera.
Long live IE.
And remember, NCSA coded Mosaic, not MS. NCSA is responsible for the insecurities, not MS.
The speed at which Firefox tries to render a page can be increased -- see here and here.
Everybody here used Opera: me, my wife and my daughter.
;-P
I started to use Firefox (I think it's better for bank usage), my my wife and daughter stayed with Opera.
From the top of my head, I could cite two things which Opera does better:
a) Bookmarking: you just drag a tab to the bookmarks panel on the left (my daughter calls it "addressbook"... you cannot overestimate how such ease is important to a little girl) and
b) Linked windows: Opera not only has tabs, but one can open two windows side-by-side. Click on one and the link is rendered in the other. That's one step further in the ease-of-use road and makes Google incredibly easier to use.
Of course, FF will match all this (if not already), but I guess those Opera guys are being faster at innovation. In the end, that's probably why I like them: because they are everything Microsoft is not... more action and less talk.
If only they had a Hägar theme...
A third of that is PC revenue. The rest, and the fastest growing market is the mobile market.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but Firefox is very, very irrelevant to Opera's losses in the last quarter. The losses are not due to competition, but the insane demand for Opera mobile browsers! They've gotten so many deals lately, and have expanded to the Windows Mobile platform, started delivering to Casio, a major deal with the second biggest mobile operator in Japan, and so on.
The losses are because they had to hire enough people to keep up with long term demand. So they took a short term loss. And all this was in the mobile market. Little has changed on the PC - Opera is still making lots of money there too.
So Firefox is irrelevant to Opera's losses last Q.
Clever signature text goes here.
The fact that Opera's revenues are up 700 per cent speaks for itself.
Clever signature text goes here.
Then I used Opera
Now I use Firefox
Opera is uglier and quirkier than Firefox. IE just plain sucks because of popup hell. Why would anybody use anything other than Firefox these days?
Meh.
Firefox was written as a lightweight browser-only edition and Opera is more like the Internet suite-style edition. You can only really compare Opera to Netscape Communicator of yore or more aptly can be compared to Mozilla.
I vote for Firefox because it's pretty intuitive for me.
Clever signature text goes here.
What on my mobile phone, or pda?
Well, I get IE, but then it's utter shit (lynx runs nicer on a bbc micro in mode 3), firefox isn't available, safari only runs on mac (well it's khtml so it runs in kde too). and I'm left with the only browser to support mobile devices, opera.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Nothing wrong with organisation of the items per se, but there is just a whole load of them.
The File menu of the Safari browser has 9 items. I'm not using Opera now, but I think it's in the region of at least 15 to 20.
Plenty of Mac users - if you remember some of the Mac-related Opera articles on Slashdot - don't like Opera at all. And the interface is not too different from that of Windows -in fact, it has *less* features.
Of course, a lot of people would love to talk about how KDE is muddled with too many options, but considering how popular KDE is with the Slashdot crowd, an opinion like that would be somewhat hard to explain.
Hey Yeah. Gmail is working now. A step in the right direction.
Couldn't the statistic on Opera usage be largely scewed by the fact that it makes it very easy to identify as Internet Explorer? I think more and more people are discovering that just leaving the identification as IE gives them much less of a hassle. Personally I've started identifying as GoogleBot, since it makes a lot of sites behave much more nicely.
Obviously the open source movement is disrupting the status quo... Because some people began doing something as a legacy to the world (Linux, Mozilla...)
So where will the revenues come from, if people choose everything for free?
Companies need to realize they must stop charging for products that people already use for free. It's not like if the big companies can improve a browser and make an infomercial about it.
Maybe this is like the Industrial Revolution in reverse. Before, workers lost their jobs because their services were replaced by products (machinery). And now companies are seeing their profits going away with open source. So the only way they can make profit is training people who will use or improve the open source products. And that would mean depending on people again, and not products *cough* windows *cough*.
Maybe it's time companies start focusing on services again. i.e. tailor-made software. Or setting up a website (the tools are free (OSS), the configuration and customization are not.
What I'm seeing here is another one of those movements Marx told about... the lower classes fighting against the upper ones, and succeeding.
And yes, all the problem you described are not really problems... you just have to know about "about:config".
Firefox is mean and lean, so things like interfaces for every modifiable setting were left out.
So, yeah, I guess if you don't want to put 5 minutes of effort to tweak Firefox to your liking, go ahead and use Opera.
Meh.
I've tried eight times in the last four years to be an Opera user, giving it (and other browsers) tryouts twice a year.
I'm sorry to say that Opera, for me at least, has felt like the Edsel of browsers. I'm not trying to start an "if browsers were cars..." thread, but it's the only thing I can relate it to.
The feature set to a new user is completely overwhelming. It's like they took every suggestion from a user survey and that's how the feature set was derived. I've always given them props for having the balls to continue selling a browser when the other choices are free, it's just too clunky for me.
The embedded ad bit never bothered me, I guess I got used to that with Eudora a few years back (work), but the layout to me was just too much. Before you counter in response, I know you can change/add/remove the panels, but I guess my thought is that all the features shouldn't need to be spread out before you. If the UI is intuitive, discovery is easy. If not, well, then you get an interface like this.
I don't think they're the worlds fastest browser as they claim either, in my experience Firefox whomps ass over all comers in speed.
R(k)
So I gave it a try. Spoke to soon. It works with gmail, but when I went to http://news.google.com/ it screwed up repeatedly.
I give up... Again...
I even bought a license-key (and got one additional for free).
It's also the only browser on my main FreeBSD-system because it doesn't need hours to recompile like firefox or mozilla and is a 6 MB download compared to the 30 MB sources of mozilla.
It's faster than all the other (Konqueror, Firefox, Mozilla) browsers, too. Especially on older hardware.
The only thing that bugs me about it is its handling of cookies and cookie-acceptance/denying.
I cannot access ebay with it...
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Opera's web standards support is flawed. Period. DOM-compliant Javascript that works PERFECTLY with IE or Mozilla, blows on Opera.
Also, Try to open an XML page with XSLT stylesheet on Opera. Heck! It doesn't work. Wanna know why? Check their STUPID logic for rejecting XSLT. Apparently they confused XML+XSLT (great) with XSL-FO (horrible), and provided neither.
XSLT *was* the future. No more fighting for table rendering etc. You just displayed an xml webpage, and the browser would add ALL the necessary markup. *Instant* templating. Client side.
Just think about HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH could've been saved by using XSLT.
But Nobody will ever DARE to use xslt on their website, guess why. Because Opera doesn't support it and NEVER WILL.
Thanks a lot, Opera. Your stupidity contributed to stalling the web for another 10 years.
i'm really not trying to insult anyone, but i have two good reasons why i use opera for porn surfing.
1) opera has this cool feature called "next". if you go to a gallery with a bunch of photos, you can just hit space bar or click "next" to automagically go to the next hot pic. this avoids the complexity of maneuvering the mouse, hitting the "back" button, and clicking on the next thumbnail. when you spend time looking at a whole lot of porn, this really speeds things up.
2) no-one ever looks at your opera cache/history for porn.
A while ago, when mozilla was first released in source I used to use it as a benchmark for burning in new machines (it took a long time to cook one).
Oh boy. twenty different object orientated frameworks and and and. About 1 million lines of code. (I know that's an underestimate).
Never thought anybody would be crazy enough to actually pick up that stuff and run with it.
Too much of a coward myself.
It's a *lot* harder to tear down something and keep it sane than to rewrite. But the firefox crew
(much to my great admiration) managed to do just that. We know it's tough guys. You did a great job. Hope you manage to resurrect composer too...
It's nice to know that great software engineering is alive and well. (Guess what browser I'm using).
Sorry to the Opera people, but the honest truth is that when you insisted on advertising in your browser we all instinctively thought spyware, malware other stuff. You should have reacted to how the world has changed if you wanted to stay in the running...
I mean, doesn't Opera satisfy everything that a proprietary software company should do (Quality, Price, Support, interoperability/no lock-in)? What more could they possibly offer besides open sourcing it?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Back when Opera was the only other alternative browser other than Nutscrape and since it actually supported tabbed browsing, I attempted to use it many times. Most of the web sites I went to were rendered properly under Opera, but there were a significant number that just wouldn't render properly at all. I shied away from Firebird/Firefox for the longest time until I started using my new Gmail account. Since Opera wouldn't log into Gmail at all, I dropped that bloated piece of shit faster than a hot potato. Firefox was at some 0.9.x version at that point, and I fell in love with it. I was unsatisfied though until 1.0 Final came out where they added 2 very much needed features. (Basically, Firefox needed to force both web sites and outside applications to open new web pages into new tabs instead of new windows. Why bother using a tabbed browser if it won't enforce the use of tabs?)
Now when you take into consideration that Firefox is free and absolutely better in both quality and quantity of features without being forced to use a big bloated app just as a browser replacement, it makes no sense to even use Opera for free let alone pay for the damn piece of shit Swedish web browser.
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
I've been using Opera on my home desktop, my phone, and my workstation for about a year now. As Firefox progressed, I stopped using Opera at work as it had many problems with our corporate Intranet. However, it's stayed on my home computer, even though Firefox is a technically superior and more extensible browser. The reason is M2, Opera's mail client.
M2 might have been written by aliens. I have seven years worth of old emails in mbox format, and Opera's M2 client easily and readily accepted them. What happened next took me three days to get used to.
I've organized email into folders for years now. Opera broke the model of copying and pasting messages, or moving them into other folders. All my email is in one physical folder, but it appears in a whole bunch of different views. Some of these views, like family, are the result of filters I've created (takes two clicks).
Other views, like "documents" or "archives" help me to find really old files. And then there's the "Active threads" view, which keeps track of the current events in my email. With seven years of old email, the automatically updated full-text index across all messages and contacts is very, very powerful.
M2, though it took a bit of mental re-wiring, is the reason I'm still using Opera on my desktop. I'll switch from Opera the day that some other mail program can produce these features. Because after having used M2 for a year, I can't think of a better mail client.
As for my phone, a Sony Ericsson P800, nothing works better than Opera. I'm not paying for their proxy service as I have my own ad-removing proxy, but it's a good idea. Opera has the phone niche down cold on Symbian devices.
Angry, angry young man.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
What? You are blaming a browser that NO ONE takes into account when designing sites for stalling evolution in site design?
Also, if BANDWIDTH is what you want to save, you should be using broken HTML with CSS. XML and XSLT(especially) are both quite verbose compared to properly broken HTML and CSS.
That when running Windows
Opera on Linux is pretty shitty.
On Linux I prefer Konqueror
Opera on Windows is just too nice.
However if I'm forced to pay for every critical ancillary peice of software in my OS of choice then computing becomes prohibitively expensive. I have 5 seperate machines in the house so paying for 5 copies of Opera for all those machines would get expensive. I'm also considering replacing both me and the wife's machines with Mac's vs PC's and delegate the largest machine to a glorified Xbox until Linux gaming comes around. I appreciate Apple's family license which would fit perfectly within my budget and comes with everything we need for day to day use of the internet. Firefox or Safari works just fine for what I need it for. Opera while a great browser, is hard to swallow when there's free competition. They would be better served supplying browsers for CE devices like cell phones and PDA's. Of course you also have to worry about those devices turning to Linux in the future also in which case you probably will see FireFox being used there also.
Will Eugenia Loli-Queru now start comparing all other browsers to Opera and find them lacking? :-)
Firefox:
Pro: Open source, free as in beer and speech, highly extensible, configurable, secure, best standards compliance.
Con: Clunky user interface, not polished, slow loading, fast rendering, does not work on very few sites.
Opera:
Pro: About the best user interface of any software I've ever used. Somewhat extensible, highly configurable, secure, decent standards compliance, very fast loading and rendering.
Con: Not open, not free (or ad-supported), does not work on a few sites.
IE:
Pro: It's already there, extremely fast loading, works on almost all sites.
Con: Not open, not free, not very configurable or extensible, insecure, poor standards compliance, crude user iterface, slow rendering.
I use all three. IE only for testing. I prefer Opera and like it so much I've paid for it. The attention to detail in the user-interface is astounding. Firefox is very good but it's very much a work in progress.
Ironically enough, Firefox supporters will say the same about incompatable websites: "bug those people until they change!" The developers on the other hand, seem to be a bit more middle-of-the-road.
..as far as I'm concerned is neither one will use the freaking RAM cache properly. I have a 2000 mhtz computer, ultrafast memory, a gillion gig hard drive, but with all browsers but Opera it takes a full second to go back to the page I was just looking at. With Opera it's the blink of an eye. I have no doubt that they are doing it "properly" somehow. Perhaps the page has code to tell the browser to check for updates. But guess what--I don't give a damn! I'll hit reload if I want to check for updates. I like a browser that has my interests first, not those of some webmaster or anyone else. In short, Opera still feels MUCH MUCH FASTER than Firefox or IE, and I'll stick with it until that changes. Lee
expandfairuse.org
Get Opera 7.6 Preview 3. GMail works great.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
 .
LOL...I've used Opera for several years and I can assure you that virtually nobody out there gives a flying shit whether their website works with Opera. And you can bitch about XSLT support all day long, but from a user's perspective Opera is the best of the lot. Period, end of story.
Oh, and none of these website designers give a flying fuck about bandwidth. The fact that 95% of all websites are built with either Dreamweaver or Frontpage proves that.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
IE vs Firefox
Why is firefox's interface bigger than IE?!?!
are they trying to say firefox's wang is bigger?
"If I have a Windows computer without IE on it, I have to pay money to get the latest version of IE. That is, IE is not free."
The latest version of IE supports all versions of Windows from 98 on. It is a free download in all cases. Therefore, what you are saying is inaccurate.
IE6 SP1 system requirements
Note: I use Mozilla on OpenBSD and Linux, I use Camino on MacOS. I don't use Windows or IE at all.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I use Firefox for all my browsing, but when it comes to "work related" image gallery viewing, I use Opera because it has a seperate cache/history and is easy to clear.
I've now been using Opera and Firefox for quite a long time, and although I might agree that Opera beats Firefox out-of-the-box, but a properly configured Firefox beats the pants off a properly configured Opera.
However, I hope that Opera stay around so I can continue to browse my ascii pr0n in peace.
O.K I'm probably too late for the mods to take ths up, and as such nobody will notice this, but I'll try anyway.
Everyone has been mentioning the superior featureset of Opera, saying its innovative, listing things like good CSS support, the instant back/forward caching, but they forgot one!
Auto-refresh! This is the best feature EVER you can set a page to refresh every N seconds, do you know how useful that is for forum whores and the like?
--
The last digit of pi is four.
So you're comparing it to embedded browsers then? That's fine. Obviously we're not talking about the same level of rendering, though. Gecko completely supports DOM, and IE comes close. Opera does not. I gave up trying to get anything I wrote in javascript to work on Opera because so little does. If you don't need to worry about DOM, you can do nice little tricks to speed up and simplify rendering, making things fast. I bet I could make an even smaller browser if I just ignore everything within the tags. It's just not worth it comparing Opera to the other two. It isn't in the same league.
As far as embedded browsers go, personally, I prefer Plucker to Opera: it's free, it's fast, and you can gz compress any files you send to it. Oh, and it runs on my PDA, whereas Opera doesn't.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I used opera for a while when I first switched from IE some time ago. It was really nice, I enjoyed the mouse gestures and different page styles to choose from, however there was one glitch that I couldn't live with for very long. Whenever a web page was called from an external application, opera would open up a window with the homepage, and then another new window with the page requested. This happened enough times to force me to switch to firefox. Many hours on the fourms turned up nothing so don't say I didn't try either.
Has anyone here used opera? It's terrible! Just look at information about standards complience. Check out it's page location tracking functions for JS. If I'm paying for a browser I want it to at least be able to use semi-standard functions to track my location on the page when I use the keyboard or scroll wheel to scroll, not just by clicking directly on the side scroll bar. See when I pay for something I actually want a product that is worth paying for.
Could it be that all this Firefox talk actually benefits Opera too, since it makes people aware that there are alternatives, and many research beyond Firefox, only to find that Opera perhaps suits their tastes better? Every time I see a discussion about Firefox, someone will mention Opera too.
I think Firefox's marketing campaign could be a good thing for Opera, as demonstrated by the growing download numbers from Opera.
This is not true. You can download it from all over the place. Anyone can distribute the free version.Clever signature text goes here.
Safari is ahead of Opera, so I would not say #3 by a long shot. I see Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, Netscape, even Netscape 4 ahead of Opera. In fact - I have about 40 rss bots ahead of Opera in my logs. So to be honest, it's not #3. At least from my myopic American POV.
That said, it's kind of cruel how Firefox nabbed all of Opera's best bits and gave them away for free no less. Oh well, at this point: trying to make money selling a web browser is about as smart as a telco trying to sell POTS long distance service and stay alive. Not smart at all. I know, I work for AT&Titanic.
I had used Opera a number of times, and was quite interested in making it available for SkyOS. I initiated discussions with Opera representatives, trying to see if we could get them to port it to SkyOS. They said (abbreviated version) no, that they weren't interested at this time, had other priorities, etc.
In the meantime, Firefox started picking up steam. I had tried Firefox a long time ago, and was not very happy with it. However, we needed a real browser, so I gave it a shot. Wow. Things had really changed (this was about...maybe version .7). I was splitting my time between Firefox and Internet Explorer. I found myself more and more relying on Firefox. I started putting bookmarks there instead of Internet Explorer. I changed my shortcut for the web browser to point to Firefox instead of Windows. Pretty soon, all that was left of Internet Explorer was a link buried in the Start Menu, for access on the rare occasion (once a week, maybe) that a site refused to render with Firefox.
We decided that since Firefox was now so robust, and Opera was not interested in working with us, that we would start the long process of porting Firefox to SkyOS. After weeks of work, Firefox has successfully been ported. You're welcome to our website for screenshots.
As for Opera? I made the prediction to others on our team that they had very little direction, and that within two years, they would just be remembered as an "also-ran" in the browser world. Call it sour-grapes, but either way, I still think I'm right, and we were right for stopping any further pursuit of Opera and going full-speed for Firefox.
Opera has dragged, and dragged and dragged for some time now. While browsers like Firefox and Netscape all implimented a quirks mode to deal with badly crafted pages, Opera did nothing, prefering to ignore the fact that much of the world does not follow the HTML specs to the letter.
As a result, MANY pages rendered horribly in Opera until about version 7. I remember looking at pre-version 7 browsers and then thinking of the Opera slogan: "Simply the best Internet Experience". Yeah, right. Even mozilla in it's very early stages was a better browsing experience.
Today, there is nothing Opera does that can't be found in other browsers, for free.
Opera's actual market share is so miniscule that they're not really even worth designing for, and if it vanishes tomorrow, most people won't miss it, assuming they knew what it was in the first place.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
95%, huh. Must be in those 80% of statistics that are made up on the spot.
Is there a good place on the Internet to view historical data of browser usage among web surfers? I'd like to see how Firefox is doing on a global scale since their 1.0 launch, and how it might impact Opera, IE, etc.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Call me nuts, but the title is suggestive; there's no proven correlation between these 2 numbers.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
Don't worry - he / she / it will not respond to your very straight forward question, since the answer is obviously there is no site to purchase IE, because IE, despite the misleading claims of the Anti-Microsoft lobby which perpetuates lies on Slashdot, is FREE.
It always was and is free, and until that changes, they're going to have to face the fact that IE is just better than FIREFOX is so many ways.
There's no Opera browser for Windows Mobile 2003. It's only available for smart phones (which is an oxymoron) and those are about useless for anything internet-ish.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
I've tried many web browsers and this one seems to be the most configurable. Somethings that stick out are being able to setup mouse gestures like Opera, you can move the favorites sidebar to the right side, and you can have multiple homepages load up at startup.
I still use Opera tho, because the pages feel like they load faster. I use Sleipnir as my backup browser, when some pages don't load on Opera. Also, I use Sleipnir when I want to surf anonymously, it allows you to input unlimied number of proxies that you can switch between during surfing.
There are some other unique features in Sleipnir, but I havent gotten around to investigating them yet.
gmail.google.com still won't work with Opera. It just hangs there. :)) on several different machines... however a quick refresh always fixes it.
On a funny note, I've noticed the same behaviour from IE 6SP1 (yes, I was just testing
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
...and there will be, until the free browsers smarten the hell up and get the same kind of power-features that Opera has--and more.
The key layout can't be matched, the insta-re-rendering with/without images, with/without a user-defined style sheet, auto-reloading, the instant-on/off Java/javascript, the "save with images," the superior speed.. basically everything available from the F12 menu, the better tabbed browsing capabilities, and mouse gestures.. all these features will keep Opera as my browser of choice for quite some time.
Did I mention it's faster for its featureset than anything else out there?
Heck yeah there's room. I use this browser, and have had 3 different customers purchase licenses for all computers on their facilities. These have been upgraded since version 3 (Opera is past version 7.5 now). It is a good browser, once you get rid of the extra toolbars and unnecessary menu options. It can be customized to any extent, and then you can simply copy those setup files over to another installation to get the look you want. It is an excellent browser.
I am surprised nobody has mentioned the biggest advantage of Opera - the memory footprint; not the download size, though that's small too but the run time memory usage. On Linux try running FireFox and Opera for a while and you'll notice that Firefox uses up a lot more memory.
Opera's "massive growth" is mostly in the embedded market. Buying a cell phone that happen to include an embedded browser based on Opera is *entirely* *different* from buying a desktop PC web browser because it has more features than the free ones.
Actually, XSLT is a hidden, disguised Prolog. It is a declarative type language.
You have to have a lot of expertise and/or great brains to code XSLT really good.
Opera has too little market share to be the reason why developers don't use XSLT. People author websites that don't work in opera all the time, YOUR example of DOM show's this!!!!!!
People are just too set in their ways...
For me to poop on!
fish and pipes
The problem is that this phrase is completely ambiguous. Without limitation means that it may include others not listed or defined here, but the problem is that it is the courts who will ultimately determine whether Linux and the GPL constitute a "EULA to a valid OS product."
IANAL, and this is what I *hate* about contract law: there is this attitude that one should create this very large no man's land between compliance and non-compliance so that both sides will try to play it safe. A Microsoft lawyer will probably figure that it is not worth the risk to try to enforce the contract as per your interpretation and my lawyer will encourage me to follow your interpretation to be on the safe side.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Safari is KHTML. Which is free.
Safari just adds some extra features that provide integration into OSX and promote a consistent iLook-and-iFeel... it sort of doesn't mean much unless you _already_ have OSX.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The plugins/extensions architecture in gecko is really wicked, you must admit. ^o^
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
"Opera was several times faster than Mozilla. Firefox was about the same as Mozilla. A page that took 10 in Mozilla and Firefox."
Should read
"Opera was several times faster than Mozilla. Firefox was about the same as Mozilla. A page that took 3 seconds in Opera took 10 in Mozilla and Firefox."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The moz/firefox guys didn't encourage this too much because I think the general feeling is that the browser should behave like the OS, or IE and Netscape w.r.t. prevailing navigation keys on each particular platform.
So you have a platform-dependant configuration for each target.
Not many apps _period_ let you map keys outside of some system-wide configuration, for consistancies sake.
Although I think it's overlooked, because people are spending much more time using web-browser than other apps on their system.
If you want to be dangerous concerning gecko-browsers:
Open chrome/browser.jar (it's a zip file).
Open browser.xul with a text editor.
You will find a list of HTML-like lines that map actions to keystrokes. It's done with strings that are fairly self-descriptive.
I would _love_ to see an extension that adds an input-config screen like in FPS-s where they have a list of commands down the side, arranged by category, and a place to assign your key/mouse stroke to it. Or maybe "gestures" if that's supported.
Does anyone know how to do this with IE??? Registry edit?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I know a (senior) municipal water quality engineer. His advice about bottled water is to make sure you buy from out of state.
Apparently the Federal rules are strict enough that if it moves in interstate commerce it will be clean. He hinted that without that protection you might be worse off than drinking tap water.
Most people have never heard of it. I remember using it for a while in 97 or 98. It was like BeOS; cute, but not worth my valuable time when better alternatives were available. And that was when it was free and without ads or user tracking!
Listen closely now - Bean counters and PHBs DO NOT CARE IN THE LEAST about Free as in speech. They ONLY care about Free as in beer. That is why Open Source is catching on in some areas. You take the Free beer out of the equation, and you get what we have with Opera: total disinterest.
Its like the Amiga; other than a handlfull of enthusiats and perhaps a few weirdos who spend waaay too much time web browsing, no one cares about it in the least...
Wasn't the problem with gmail that Opera lacked an XMLHttpRequest object?
There were some independent hacks a few months ago to add gmail compatibility to Opera, and the developers said that was the problem.
... that gecko-based browsers are very developer-happy. Opera is a closed-knit deal. Both are good for end-user use. Opera probably has more fit and finish. Moz/Fox will have more specialized features.
And I wouldn't use IE except for windowsupdate.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I'm a long time Opera fan and have paid for all the upgrades along the years. There are still many things I love about Opera that I've yet to see in any other browser, *but* lately I'm seeing more and more pages that just don't work properly in Opera, whereas they (usually) work great in Firefox and Konqueror. Changing the user agent ident doesn't usually help in these cases. Opera claims to have the best adherence to various web standards of any browser, but I really feel they need to add a "compatibility" mode or something to make it work with broken sites (i.e. sites that work fine in all other browsers, but not in Opera, allegedly due to the sites themselves not being standards compliant). The error I see most often relates to javascript variable scope (Opera is stricter about scope than the other browsers, and there seem to be many sites accessing javascript variables out of scope, causing them to break with Opera), and my pleas to Opera developers have fallen on deaf ears. I hope they read /. and wake up a bit. Its all fine and dandy to say "those sites don't work because the sites suck", but in the end if the sites do work with other browsers, I'm slowly going to migrate away from Opera and instead try to convince the Firefox developers to add [insert-favourite-opera-feature-here] to Firefox.
But it provides a lot of other neat stuff that developers like, which should, in theory, provide a rich platform for weird and cool things.
The innovation is the platform API it's built on. NSPR, XUL, the package manager...
The Moz guys weren't saying... look at Opera, let's do that. It's the guys making extensions which eventually get rolled who are saying "we're missing X feature; look at Opera, how cool is that...". And so it's because of that environment you'll get a lot of copycat.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Clearly someone needs to make a firefox extension wherein you can designate a tab/window as the new "default target".
I can see how that would be very useful, especially when a page is poorly laid out.
a) however, has been supported forever. I just tried now in an old Mozilla: if I drag a link over my bookmarks, the folder opens for me and lets me place it where I want (or in a sub-folder inside, etc.). The menu contents are draggable as well.
Also noting that the _link text_, not the TITLE of the page, becomes the bookmark name. Coolness.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Mac OS X is NOT free, and so Safari neither since it needs Mac OS X to run. My 2 cents.
Yes, Firefox has made huge strides but when it really boils down to it: nothing but nothing beats the speed of Opera.
Maybe it's a different of nanoseconds but for some reason, watching other browers render is like watching paint dry. I equate the difference in this one issue of X-Factor where Quicksilver was trying to explain to the therapist how maddening it was that the kid behind the register at Burger King could not comprehend "Whopper, no pickles". The difference may be minute in quanity but when your brain is used to one thing, it is hard trying to get accustom to anything else.
As far as rendering with pre-Opera v.7, Opera has made me a better webdesigner because it made me go back and do my stuff right. Thus, if I visited other sites that did not render correctly in Opera, then I feel like they were not professional enough to correct those mistakes to make it HTML/CSS/etc compliant. Why would I visit a website when the site designers did not give a flying fsck?
Until any other browser catches up, I will be running Opera till the end of time.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Blame Microsoft and to a lesser degree Netscape, not Opera. No, seriously.
The support for Netscape 4.x, which most people refused to give up supporting until very recently, obviously kills all attempts to get XML/XSL going. But even making that go away doesn't fix the other problem: IE's support for XSL is broken.
Sure, both it and Mozilla can process XSLT perfectly. The thing is, the MIME type for XSL should be "text/xml". Pretty simple, right? Except that IE won't display it with that MIME type. No, it requires the pages to be served with "text/xsl" or it won't display 'em. (And, in fact, only Windows IE supports it at all. The Mac version doesn't process XSL.)
So, unless you get your web server to specifically check what browser a client is using and change the MIME type it serves, you have to choose supporting Netscape or WinIE. You can't do both. (I worked at There.com for a while, and I recall people bitching that you could only use IE to log into it. Guess why? Because they were serving XML/XSL pages.)
Having said all this, the idea that bandwidth is dramatically saved by using XML/XSL instead of XHTML/CSS is... dubious. My resume in XHTML is 177 lines, with an embedded style sheet. The XML source is 192 lines, and the XSLT file is 127 lines. The advantage of XML isn't that it's compact, but rather that it's abstract (I have separate XSL files that also generate RTF and plain text). The only reason to push XML/XSL to the browser is to offload the conversion to XHTML/CSS from server to client.
Nobody gives a flying coconut what Opera does and doesn't support, or at least they haven't for several years. You check against IE and Netscape--first 4.7, now 6.0--and, well, that's about it. (Safari and KHTML may get support because there's still a disproportionate number of graphic artist types using Macs.) At its peak usage, I don't think Opera hit 1% of the market. The idea that the entire internet is being held back because Opera is failing to support some technology is giving them way, way too much influence.
Yes, and you have to have a lot of expertise and/or great brains to write English "good", too. Apparently.
Can you read below (I know, AC wrote summary) and tell how it differs from "xxxx is dying, netcraft confirms" regular joke on Slashdot while unfortunately, AC didn't mean to joke? :)
:P
Don't ban me btw
"An anonymous reader submits "Opera, the sometimes forgotten #3 web browser, reported a third quarter loss that tripled that of last year's third quarter despite a seven-fold increase in revenue. Opera is blaming a weaker dollar for the losses, and say they're spending money on marketing and new ventures like teaming with IBM to use their ViaVoice technology. Opera's future seems uncertain as Firefox's growing popularity may hurt Opera by stealing potential customers. With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free, is there room for a non-free browser in the market?""
In one or two years time, you will have as much memory as you needed in any device.
New mobile phones come with 16 MB of memory, no respectable MP# player will come with less than 64MB, PDA device have 16 or 32 nowadays. A 256MB memory card costs 25 GBP.
TO still be trying to desing for future projects with constraints that will dissapear with 100% certainty in the medium term is pretty short sighted.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is bread, Go on, pick one bread roll only, I don't want my generosity to be abused.
Where are you going? Did not you read the sign that clearly specifies that in order to get the free bread roll you must by 10 liters of milk? MS milk.
I hope you get it, if you don't you are beyond redemption.
Such practices are illegal in many countries btw.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Actually, yes, but in niche markets. My wife and I have licensed copies of Opera. She runs it on a Windows XP Pro laptop and I run it on a Mac PowerBook. I don't use it much, but I keep it around to help check out my students' web projects. Diane uses it all the time, both because she doesn't need the operating system crashes she used to get with IE and because it's not as vulnerable to malware.
Computer manufacturers are not harrasing me with legalese if I run Linux in the hardware they sell me.
MS does in regards to how I can use the software. The purpose of that harrasment is to force me to use the software in a product that they commercialize. Only somebody delussional would claim that such software is free of any cost since its conditions are one of the oldest commercial practices (giving something for free only if you buy something else).
The most remarkable achievement of MS is to have convinced so many people that this is free. If a shop would be giving you something for "free" only if you buy something else we all know it is not really free and that its price has already been factored in the cost of the product one buys.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He paid for it.
Your head a splode
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I've been using Opera for more than 3 years now and still think it's the best browser out there.
There are a lot of small features that keep me hooked up on it, which I couldn't find in Firefox. It has it's problems, too, but I can cope with that.
If some sites don't work with Opera, well, I don't visit the sites! I think it's the webmaster's responsibility to make his site work properly with all browsers, if it doesn't, it means the web site was designed by sloppy web developers or their mind and soul is sold to m$.
Unless your site is gmail (which is more a client-side application than a web site), technically, it IS possible to make it work with opera, so when a web site tells me that I should use IE 6, I tell it to go to hell, where it belongs (that's my new definition of hell, btw - being forced to use IE).
I think the only problem with Opera being widely accepted is that it's not free. If the guys at opera gave it away for free (just the browser, without M2, chat and other advanced features for the Pro version), we could see real competition on this market and Opera would quickly start to climb up.
What are you FUDding about anyway? Opera 7 has a quirks mode and proper DOM support.
Clever signature text goes here.
As for "no one cares", tell that to all the mobile users who finally have a full browser which actually works on their mobile.
Clever signature text goes here.
I've been using Opera for 5 years and it is much better and faster then the free alternatives.
less is more
I've not used Opera so I can't say for certain, but it might be the User Agent settings. Do you have it set to report as IE, by any chance?
I ask because I tried the same in Firefox a while back. I got it to report as IE so it could view the IE-only-but-probably-aren't sites out there. And it really messed up on Outlook Web Access.
OWA seems to use the UA string to decide which version of the page to send out. And the IE-specific version seems to be really IE-specific. I seem to remember it basically throwing out a page full of error messages. This is a shame, as being stuck using it I find that only the IE-specific version of OWA works the way I want it to, so I'm stuck using IE as a mail-client. (I'd rather use Thunderbird, or even OE, but we off-site people are stuck using a damned webmail interface)
But all of this isn't really a problem with Firefox or Opera, more a "feature" of Exchange's webmail.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
I switched to Opera back in 2000 and never looked back at IE. But this year I switched to Firefox, technically, Opera is actually the better browser right now, it feels faster, and more stable, has more built-in features, a nicer interface and is generally just a more mature program. I just saw Firefox as being the way to go though - its getting better and better and people are more likely to jump from IE to Firefox because its really a drop-in replacement - it looks so similar to IE most people won't notice the difference, (apart from the sudden lack of annoying adware).
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I Use v5.12 (registered with a help of a serial site) and IMHO this is the best browser on windows.it Can be change to spoof mozilla/Explorer with options/Browser Identification.
regarding Sites that don't work on opera,I just don't browse them.I have javascript,Inline Frames,and all plugins disabled (permanently).
Yes, lately Firefox has been faster, even with the additional bloat. Just make sure you have a LOT of RAM.
Also, the 7.6 previews feature lighter modes, so that you've got less feature panic, and even 7.54 is lighter looking (Opera decided it was a good tradeoff between overwhelming new users with features and wiping out all of the advanced features from easy access).
Don't discount the "general browser" market. Opera may face a lot of competition there but it is an absolutely enormous space. Even if Opera only ever achieves a few percent of web browsing computers that is still an _enormous_ number of people contributing to their bottom line through either paying for it or through the adverts.
IE/Mozilla may well dominate browser stats, but the percentage numbers don't reflect just how big the market is. I know if I had a revenue generating product that 1% of web users were using I'd be a happy chappy!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
and make the damn thing free, they might gain some ground
Yeah, compatibility is a problem. It's not a big one, though, at least not for me - all of the sites I regularly visit render fine. On those occasions when a site doesn't render properly, I just fire up IE or Firefox to display it. You can actually add a context menu item in Opera to display the same page in IE (or lynx or whatever). That said, if one of my standard websites were disfunctional, that would be more of a problem, but so far my GMail account is more of a placeholder than anything. :P
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
umm... "Small embedded" market. I was under the impression that the small embedded market was shipping like 5 times the units per year than the large PC market.
As the expensive phones get cheaper, wouldn't that make the "small embedded" market a little less small?
It receives little love, but those that do love it for a good reason: best user experience. Firefox is close (after plugins), so I'll give you a list of things it lacks in comparison.
Firefox's:
- fonts are ugly (somehow it's not antialiased when it's set to be in Windows)
- back / forward is not instant like Opera
- you can't drag tabs' placement around
- it doesn't have sessions (remember all tabs and reopen them on relauncing)
- isn't as smooth and not quite right
Anyways, I do use Firefox for web development / testing (good debugging plugins), but for general web browsing, I haven't used anything better than Opera. If there's a commercial software that deserves praise, Opera comes with shiny polish.
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
All browsers are affected by various security issues. Need I remind you that the current version of Mozilla is 1.7. 3 ? This is solely due to security issues.
As of last month (I don't have time to look at current numbers), 44% of all IE security vulnerabilities that have ever been reported to Secunia.org still exist. Over a third of these are rated high to critical. I did a search for Firefox defects, and you know what? They didn't have any open issue reported.
Maybe Microsoft should learn how to do dot-releases, too.
" Get Opera 7.6 Preview 3. GMail works great."
I installed this. It works. Then I tried news.google.com. It is busted in Opera. I love Operas interface and features, but am sick of broken pages.
Big issue with Opera. I still need anohter browser to handle my banking. If I need another browser anyway. I may as well just use Firefox full time.
Well, I kind of like Opera, but without a decent ad-blocker it's worthless for me. I really hate seeing all these ads all over the place. This is why i switched back to Firefox + adblock after trying Opera. I really like the M2 mail software, included with Opera, as it really does everything one can ask.
I still use Opera on my Sony Ericsson P910i though, as it really rocks on that device. The rendering is as perfect as it can get on such small screens.
I have to admit, I'm one of those that actually shelled out for the ad-free version of Opera. I didn't pay for it because the ads were that intrusive, I paid for it because I wanted to support their efforts. I like the fact they don't just make versions for Windows and Macs, they make versions for Linux and FreeBSD (among others). Like it or not, commercial software development is important for *BSD and Linux; if for no other reason than to get more people developing for those platforms.
And when you get right down to it, Opera is just a damn good browser. The fact I can get native versions for Linux and FreeBSD is just gravy. :)
Point about Opera is that you _don't_ need any extensions. It's all working out of the box. And faster/cleaner/smoother, IMO.
Opera is my primary browser. I keep downloading and installing Moz/Firefox on occasion, but for me it just isn't there yet. The mouse gestures aren't as good. Why can't I close the last tab without killing the browser? Opera lets me. Opera lets me double-click on the tab-bar and it opens a new tab. These are things that I am very used to using and am not willing to give up yet. I downloaded Firefox 1.0, and the first page I brought up (Slashdot) rendered oddly. The text from the stories overlapped the frame on the left.
And what is the article submitter smoking? Opera IS free, in the same sense that the others listed are free. It doesn't cost anything to download and use Opera. You also now have the option for text or image based ads, and the text ones take up VERY little space.
Opera still has a few problems, but I can live with them. For me, it is the best browser out there.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, no. I find extensions a mess waiting to happen. I hate managing programs, and extensions add another level of "programs" that need to be managed. They have mostly fixed the two extensions breaking FF, but I still hear about major issues with upgrades breaking current extensions you have.
TO me that means that for each upgrade, I'd have to go out looking for upgrades to extensions that also work with it, and if the author decided to quit for some reason, or is running behind, the upgrade causes me to LOSE functionality for a while or possibly permanently.
No thank you.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
The feature set to a new user is completely overwhelming. It's like they took every suggestion from a user survey and that's how the feature set was derived.
I've been an Opera user for years; since 3.6 or so, before the ads came around. I migrated off of Netscape 3.0, which I had been using since forever (I used it for a while afterwards just for its simple integrated email & news client). I loved Opera. It was fast, it had tabs, the majority of pages I used worked fine, the interface was uncomplicated and streamlined...
My biggest complaint now is the initial install of newer versions results in an awful interface filled with utterly unnecessary clutter, toolbars, and tabs. With version 7, it took me about a half-hour to figure out how to simplify the interface to an Opera 3.6-era style (address & status bar at bottom of tabs, tab bar at bottom of screen, separate Transfers tab).
Opera really needs to change their 'Show the user everything!' default interface to something much simpler. Even IE's just got the Standard Buttons, Links, and Address Bar displayed by default.
I meant the "small-machines" market like telephones, as opposed to the "embedded not-so-small machines" market like home entertainment systems.
"Big" browsers like IE and Mozilla have a fighting chance in the "not so small" market but they are not (yet) a factor in cell-phones and the like. Without that competition, Opera has a better chance in those markets.
You are correct, in dollar terms, the embedded market - be it telelphones or home entertainment - is big and getting bigger.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Opera's future seems uncertain as Firefox's growing popularity may hurt Opera by stealing potential customers.
Raise your hand if you specifically purchased a web browser. IE doesn't count. Looks like anyone who did is too embarassed to admit it.
I tried out Firefox, and at the moment I'm using that. The only problem with Firefox for me is that I frequently have to reload pages multiple times to get them to show correctly (especially Slashdot). Even it writing this reply I had to reload the reply page a few times just to get the text boxes to appear. Also, it was very difficult to get the bookmarks exported out of Opera and into Firefox.
Still, it doesn't crash, and another thing I hated about Opera is always getting asked (regardless of how I set the checkbox) how I want to open Opera back up again (no pages? homepage? where I was before?). Plus, sometimes when Opera would crash, it wouldn't actually close down, so after trying to start it again, I'd have to go into the task manager and find the instance and kill it.
The only problem is that they hope to get it down to a footprint of 64 MB, which is more than fifteen times Opera's footprint. So unless Opera for mobiles starts adding some serious bloat, it'll still be smaller and faster than Minimo.
I call BS. A full-featured browser can only be so small. Either mobile opera cuts useful features for footprint, or your figures are bogus.
I don't think it is GPL, actually. It's a separate Mozilla license thing. So... You might want to rethink that stance of yours.
It's licensed under a MPL/GPL/LGPL trilicense, meaning you can pick your license. If you choose to treat it as GPL, you can.
http://www.numion.com/Stopwatch/
Actual real world rendering from the web is a draw on this site for me.
Does anyone know if it is possible to get this working from local copies to take the internet connection out of the equation.
'Opera also has killer caching that provides instant forward/back ( I mean INSTANT ) through recently visted pages.' You are so right about this. I use Opera when a site doesn't work in Firefox and this is the one feature I really miss when I return.
...TO still be trying to desing for future projects with constraints that will dissapear with 100% certainty in the medium term is pretty short sighted.
Make it bloated and "feature"-packed, because it may be slower than snail shit when it's released, but imagine it on a computer from....the future!
efficiency > features > eye candy
Face it, Gecko is bloated compared to Presto. Even Opera for PC, with a built-in e-mail client, newsreader, chat client and RSS reader, is far smaller than Firefox.
Clever signature text goes here.
How ironic. This is similar to what I've read about Linux's advances doing more to hurt Mac OS popularity than Windows. Personally I like IE 6 and see no reason to change.
I've got 22 sub-windows open in Opera 7.54 (Linux) right now and a UI which I customized via drag-and-drop.
Going back to Mozilla would be like trading in a hot motorcycle to a horse and buggy.
Tech Public Policy stuff
That strategy has been successful for the company against more than just Netscape, though detrimental to the public and the economy and the free market. As others have pointed out, Microsoft can not compete on merits, so they are trying to make it technically and legally imposible for others to do anything.
Anti-competitive behavior is also the core of one of the anti-trust trials in the EU regarding audio/video file formats. This last part is very important because more and more news is being transmitted over the Internet, either via the WWW or via audio streams or video streams. Without information to make and informed decision, it is not possible to have a democracy. Thus, control of the media is the 21st century's hydrogen bomb.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.