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Opera Browser Beta Adds Voice, More
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, the first public beta of Opera 8 is available for free download. It adds voice input/output and a host of other niceties. Key new features include improved RSS handling, fit to window or paper width, a start-bar for easy access to the most commonly used functions, and automatic update checks. The beta release supports Windows only, but a general release is scheduled for early 2005. Opera and IBM have partnered on XHTML+Voice (X+V) technology for several years, co-announcing a Multimodal Browser and Toolkit early in 2003."
So now we can hear the fat lady sing?
T minus 3 posts until Firefox is mentioned. T minus 5 posts until Opera not being free is mentioned T minus 10 posts until someone calls Opera bloated. Anyone want in on a pool?
I think everyone here that likes firefox should give the Opera beta a try. I've used it since yesterday and it's a top quality piece of software in my opinion.
Firefox might be better than IE, but Opera is much nicer, faster than firefox.
Start Opera, and start saying:
"double-u, double-u, double-u, dot, slashdot, no.. wait... backspace, backspace, slashDOT, nooo, backspace, backspace, SLASHDOT!! NOOO, ARGHHH"
I only upgraded from the end of major version six to seven a week or so ago, and they're getting ready for version eight already. I guess I'm destined to be one major version behind everyone else forever.
I get a bit tired of paying again just to get a browser that crashes less. Really, they should roll back bugfixes (but not new features) into older versions; I don't use any of the new features of Opera 7, and only upgraded because of several crashing bugs in Opera 6 that were driving me mad. (both the image loader and the XML parser seemed to have serious problems with large documents, and I'm suspicious that there is a buffer overflow there somewhere.)
Programmer.no
ZDNet
News.com.com.com.com
Original Opera press release
Changelog
Linked page says Opera 7.54u1.
3 2enen800b1.exe 3 2enen800b1.exe
Opera 8.00 Beta 1 - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow
Opera 8.00 Beta 1 w/o Java - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow
Who cares about the voice thing ?? How many of the readers will care to actually speak to their browser, imagine a office full of people all talking to their browsers.. that's simply stupid.
I think that Opera people should care most about fixing things in it's browser instead of adding features that nobody (95%) will use.
Like M2, it simply sucks with IMAP, i was using it till i tried Thunderbird, did the switch about 5 minutes of starting it up for the first time.
The opera forums are full with complaints, why don't Opera listen to them, i'd do so before my userbase flies right into the open (and free) arms of Firefox.
Since Opera is a strong competitor to Firefox in the "power user"-niche, this new release will probably spur competition in the features-arena again. Now both browsers have good RSS-support, and so on. This will in turn further broaden the feature- gap between Firefox and Internet Explorer. The MSIE will have a hard time catching up. I believe 2005 will be an pretty interesting browser year :-)
http://www.mralert.com/ - Free web site monitoring
It adds voice input/output
I can't let you go to that URL, Dave.
I know you and Frank were planning to change to Firefox, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Et Cetera...
Opera is the most innovative browser on the market, bar none. This is fact, whether people like it or not. Firefox would be not where it is today without Opera. Why I like Opera better: - Gestures are implemented better, more customizable, and can be used across the WHOLE browser app and not just the browser window. - Tabbed browsing is better, more natural. - Rewind and fast forward - The way Opera handles cache on windows, by cache'ing the GDI objects instead of just the page data. - The start bar - Better and easier customization - Smooth image zoom - Simply faster - Sessions and reloading all my pages after a crash. - MSR/Fit to width/SSR - The option to have the progress bar pop up at the bottom of the window and hide when it's done. - Wand, it's simply better. - Author/user modes - All images/cached images/no images toggle - Native windows skin. With OpusOS, it's great. - Paste and Go - That a page is actually a window and I can break it off from the main window if I want. - Trashcan that keeps track of closed pages. - Reload every - Hotclick And all the little details that aren't features. Firefox simply can't provide all this, even with extensions. And if there were an extension for each thing.. it would use a lot of resources, be slower, and they would not work as well together.
Well, this is a good idea for the blind. Though, I wonder if images will be rendered into soundwaves? For the rest of us, I much rather just type on a keyboard and read text on the screen, then having my computer screaming every word on a particular page.
I just wonder how well the voice recognition software has become, to actually have a voice-to-website a viable solution. Considering the last time I tried using voice recognition was back '96 on an old Acer I had. Basically, you had to program every command that you wanted the computer to recognize. On top of that, you basically had to scream into the mic for the computer to pick up the sound.
User: Take me to www.slashdot.org!
* Opera acknowledges the request and types www.goatse.cx *
From the Changelog
:)
Support for XMLHttpRequest; Gmail Web mail is fully supported.
Now that should get the attention of slashdotters
Ummm. Do they plan to have voice output in that thing?
If so I think I'm terribly afraid. Just imagine what happens if your browser gets hijacked by less savoury sites.
HOT XXX PRETEEN SLUTS is bad enough as a pop-up.
And the cavernous echoes that come with the goatse guy. Shudder.
20 minutes into the future
Dirty bastard ;)
It is slow as hell.
I really couldn't care less about all the fancy-schmancy extensions, I just want to be able to view web pages without waiting two minutes just to be able to type in the address.
It amazes me that, after so many years, Opera continues to lead in browser innovation. Sure, Mozilla has copied tabbed browsing, popup blocking, mouse gestures, and a few more, but Opera has so much more. Small screen rendering, WML support, slideshows, keyboard shortcuts everywhere, ... And it's a lot faster and smaller, even with mail and IRC client built in.
And now they bring voice recognition. If they get that to work on Linux, I'll be happy to buy a couple more licenses from them.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Guys Firefox is heaps better beacuse Opera is not free and is bloated.
Have you metaroderated recently?
What also needs to be mentioned is that the Licence has changed for paid customers. Quoting:
http://virtuelvis.com/
Double click the firefox icon first, and double click Internet explorer icon, you'll see IE load faster.
Quit bitching about paying the 40 dollars for opera, at least their programmers get paid, unlike firefox programmers.
Quit bitching about Opera being closed-source as well. How many of you firefox users have actually looked at all of the source???
Just mention all those things. ^N^N^N^N^N^N^N^N^N^N
Yeah. Let's start a pool.
I think Opera Software should care about staying in business before it thinks about what most people will or won't use. In all fairness, Opera doesn't have 95% of the browser market to begin with. It never has, and it's extremely unlikely that it ever will.
Opera (the desktop browser, at least), has primarily been a browser of choice for niche groups of users. 5% is a niche market, and much less than 5% can easily be a niche market. If Opera happens to be the only browser that satisfactorily offers what those 5% or less happen to require, it'll be succesful enough to keep the business going.
Opera is now competing with Firefox, Konqueror (although not in Windows), and a host of others. Many of these new alternatives provide the satisfactory alternative to MSIE that Opera used to dominate in providing. Consequently, that market is diminishing, and it's probably not as viable any more because so many potential users can use something besides Opera. If Opera is to compete and survive, it's a sensible business decision to look for more points of difference to open new niche markets that aren't yet well catered for.
You might not personally like the way Opera's going, but chances are that you have plenty of alternative options anyway. Meanwhile, if you have a need for effective voice operation of a web browser as a particular group of people do, Opera might well be your first choice if they can pull it off.
Sadly I already moderated on this discussion - AC
Don't mind the guy who is so drunk he posted his comment in the wrong topic.
Hi all,
I'm the IBM program director over this product, working in partnership w/ Opera. Some quick comments: The X+V spec unifies HTML & VoiceXML and is currently undergoing the W3C process for standardization. We wrote it together w/ Motorola & Opera and have made it open. We also have an Eclipse-based SDK available at http://www.ibm.com/pvc/multimodal and a prototype one at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/mmtplus that allows you to visually build these multimodal apps.
Some of you may wonder why you should voice enable your Web content. First of all, one of my lead researchers is blind, and it's quite amazing to see how much he can accomplish today. Given that, in the future, I'm hoping a lot more content will be open to people with various disabilities.
Secondly, how useful is your cellphone for accessing the Web? It has a small screen & limited input. Now imagine just speaking into a multimodal portal: "weather forecast", "my portfolio", "eBay bids", "any high priority mail?", "am I free tomorrow at noon?", etc. The portal understands your input & fetches relevant info, which may also be tied into location based services. 50% of you will use multimodal services by 2010; this is intended as the replacement to WAP.
Warm regards!
Igor Jablokov
They changed the licence conditions too for version 8. Instead of having to buy Opera for Windows and Linux, you now buy one licence for "Opera for desktop", which allows you to install it on as many computers as you like within your own home.
with opera and firefox available, there is simply no reason to use IE on Windows. Switched to Opera 3 years ago and haven't looked back since.
Opera is many things. Before the bashing continues, however, I'd like to make a few things clear:
- it is NOT bloated; it's a 3.5 MB download
- it is NOT crashy
- it is NOT bad because of flashy ads because you can look at tiny, non-flashing google ads
- it is NOT unable to display pages propperly; it handles every webpage I'ver ever been to just fine
- it has a much nicer, more customizable UI than Firefox
- it is considerably faster than Firefox
- it has everything you'd ever want in a browser suite without needing any additional downloads or plugins
- you don't EVER have to use anything in it you don't want to, and even with email and chat turned on, it's still not bloated, and still has less of a footprint than Firefox
- if you turn off everything except web browsing, you'll never hear from it and Opera will have even less of a foot print
- it was well worth the $20 student price I paid for it. I rarely ever register software, and it was one of the few programs I did register without any regrets.
Opera is a magnificent piece of software. Who cares if it's not open source? Not every god damn thing in the world needs to be open. Who cares if it costs money? They're running a business, and selling a product, and a damn good one at that. You get what you pay for. Firefox is good too, but you also get what you pay for with Firefox.
for Windows!
now could you please please make it look pleasant on Linux? Thanks!
This user has dual licenses.
This user encourages people to get Opera for Windows.
Flame this user - but he hates Mozilla Firefox - period.
Opera - Closed Source
Firefox - Open Source
Firefox: 1 Opera: 0
Opera - $$$
Firefox - Free beer, Free speech
Firefox: 2 Opera: 0
Opera - Fast
Firefox - Not as fast
Firefox: 2 Opera: 1
Opera - Very large initial footprint
Firefox - Tiny footprint
Firefox: 3 Opera: 1
Opera - Very long time between updates and releases
Firefox - Fixed and updated with the speed of the open source communities non-sleeping programming hordes
Firefox: 4 Opera: 1
Opera - Little setup required on first install
Firefox - Plugins and configuration needs to be done before you get all the functionality you want
Firefox: 4 Opera: 2
Opera - Blocks popups
Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see
Firefox: 5 Opera: 2
Opera - Rendering problems on some pages
Firefox - Fewer rendering problems than Opera but more than IE (bad microsoft)
Firefox: 6 Opera: 2
Anyone think of any other important criteria I'm missing?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Yes! The fat lady has sung and OPERA kicks all the other browsers ass!
As usual other browsers are just playing catch up!
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
...is yet to come. But I'm simply glad that the fight is between firefox and opera, the two best browsers available.
I love opera for it's instant redraw of history-browsing. Opera is also almost perfect single-instance-browser (tabbed, almost never opening that other window).
But the firefox seems to show more sites as they should.
I call it a tie.
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
"Where would you like to go today?" "HOME!" pwnage!
Have you metaroderated recently?
And at this moment I'm download the Java-free version of the new 8 beta. It's 3.6MB. Firefox is about 4.5MB, BTW. Not that the size matters to most people that much these days.
I LOVE how in a webpage you can right click and send and email with a link of the page to a friend. Also you can right click on a link on the page and send that link in an email to a friend as well.
Secondly, the right click is very useful for opening a link in a background page. For example I can read a webpage with ten links that look interesting, and QUICKLY right click on them and have them open in pages in the background while you are still reading the first page.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
To achieve with Firefox the functionality that Opera offers out of the box I have to download a dozen plugins. When that is done, Firefox is very slugish and the features don't feel tightly integrated. (I am using a slow computer)
:-).
Every feature in Opera feels very natural and intuitive, it doesn't feel bolted on. It is a beautifully refined browser and works great both on Linux and Windows. Of course, a pluggable Opera would be heaven
I still always recommend Firefox as an IE replacement, but for power users I will recommend Opera.
Cheers,
Adolfo
About the ads. The google ads take half the screen real estate that the graphical ones take and, to be honest, I have found them to be usefull more than once.
Information costs money to create and gather. I guess people should what, donate their time making it so you don't have to pay?
What do YOU do for a living?
the more browsers in the market the better, and the quicker bills monopoly will be reduced to something healthy, like 2% ;-)
Hear hear! I was going to write a similar post but you wrote it first.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Hmm, I'm gonna try the 8 beta in cxoffice...
*fires up cxsetup*
Hmm the installer works.... Installing ...
*drums fingers*
Hmm, it's installed. Now to see if it runs...
Damn. Guess it's back to firefox for me. I thought for a second I had it, I saw the nice pretty startup wizard for opera as well as the initial user interface. Oh well
Nope. I was just going to mention that it's not GPL yet, so I'm not interested yet :)
Clever signature text goes here.
Opera 8.0 doesn't offer Java anyway, since it's installed only when needed.
Your FUD and lies are typical of certain Firefox zealots, and that is why I am more and more hesitant to use Firefox. I simply can't stand many of the users that keep trying to shove Firefox down people's throats with misleading statements, FUD and lies.Rendering problems - Firefox can't even render Slashdot correctly. How's that for "rendering problems"?
Clever signature text goes here.
...now even my browser can tell me to fuck off.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I find it amusing that Slashdot readers ask for Firefox torrents even when mozilla.org's primary mirrors are doing fine, but don't ask for Opera torrents when half of Opera's primary mirrors either don't have the file or give strange FTP error messages. Is this because more Slashdot readers use Firefox, or because Slashdot readers care more about helping the Mozilla Foundation save money than they care about helping Opera ASA save money?
The shareholder is always right.
Firefox: 31,140K
Opera: 21,584K
This is with the same four tabs open in both windows, and a few extensions enabled on Firefox in an attempt to give it the functionality of Opera (gestures, the nice "Add Bookmark Here..." thing Opera gives you, et cetera), although I'm still not seeing:
- a chat application (I know there's an extension available, but that would have really shot up the memory footprint)
- a mail application
- voice support (again, gigantic memory footprint for the extension)
- a good implementation of keeping ALL browser windows in the current window (in other words, a true MDI browser rather than an SDI one with tabs)
- that nice, incredibly visually appealing interface that Opera gives you with no more memory usage than the Windows Native theme
Don't get me wrong, Firefox is a fantastic browser, and on Linux, I'll admit I prefer it. But well, Opera is just nicer, and much more user-friendly. And Opera is free as in Free Beer, albiet with an ad for the beer on the cup.
To be honest, if it weren't for the ads, Opera would be a much better choice for converting people away from MSIE. My mom, who is less knowledgeable than those who call IE "the internet," loved Opera the first time I got her to try it out, after years of experience with MSIE. But when I tried to introduce her to Firefox, she hated it. Despite all its polish, it's got a long way to go before it has that nice, friendly interface. Opera for Windows is probably the closest thing to the nice interface of Safari on Mac OSX.
"Egads! Change your colors!"
0 434223
And then it modifies the URL for me:
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/24/
And then I wake up.
If Opera had a cock you'd probably suck it too. Wouldn't you?
"Computer! : Porn : Jenna Jameson : Naked"
Don't Tread on Me
Wow, just wow. I've never used Opera until now, but after only a couple hours with it I'm ready to buy a copy. The best part is that I now have three quality browsers to choose to use, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Like quite a few /.'s, I very much like the OS/FS philosophies, but I'm in no way against paying for quality software,be OS/FS or something else. A good product is a good product, and Opera is a damn good product!
Can I tell the opera embedded ads to fsck off now?
To initiate a voice command, click the "Voice" button on the View toolbar, or press the Scroll Lock key. Then say the command, for example, "Opera reload". After issuing the command, let go of the button.
... does any voice recognition software really work? I've not gotten one to recognize me yet.
Me: Opera reload
Opera: Sorry, i did not understand
*tries over and over, trying to be even more clear each time, with same results*
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Since my SL6000 came with Opera I wonder if they'll make a mobile version.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
The beta isn't available for any of my machines yet. Can someone who can try it check to see if it supports transparency in SWF (a.k.a. Flash) files yet?
Thanks.
The only way to block ads is via a third party application which blocks servers/ads via filters, but the space taken up by the ads still blank. In Firefox, the space is removed.
Here is the changelog that list all the new features.
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
I've using Opera for over 5 years now and never ever installed Java...
And you forget that Firefox updates breaks extensions:
Opera: its updates never break stuff.
Firefox: updates breaks extensions most of the time.
Opera: great gestures, tabs, sessions
Firefox: their extensions are not up to their hype, tabs lack functionality, and so on...
Opera: has nice users
Firefox: has slashdot trolls
Opera +3 Firefox +0
as long as its not the war games computer voice, maybe the voice of ( insert your favorite actress )... or maybe porky pig, now that would be a good voice output for a computer !!!
I'm now using fedora x86_64. opera 7 won't even startup. I couldn't find any linux beta download, only windows. Is there some magic url? Any x86_64 version?
This is somewhat offtopic, but I can't seem to find this information anywhere, so I was hoping that an Opera user might know - when did Opera add tabbed browsing?
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
I use IE, Firefox and d/l'ed the Opera beta (after dumping an earlier version of Opera). There's some stuff in both Firefox and Opera that I like. That said, I can't wait to see MS's next effort since it's still my favorite....
Sigh. I'm just lucky that my laptop is hyperthreaded or I would have to uninstall Opera and switch to Firefox as my primary browers (I like Firefox and it's currently my secondary browser--I like Opera much more).
And i'm not joking this time. The voice output is mostly aimed at the visually handicapped, not the zit-faced geeks like you.
If you haven't tried it, do so - it's my favorite piece of non-OSS software, and well worth the price. Try it, it's free (the first one always is
dude,send that as a mail to firefox.May be that will help them.
Why does yahoo do this
Oh, you meant completely free, without ads? Is there an Opera version which is free and without ads? News to me.
Oh, I get it! You think anything else can compare? Like Firefox? Sorry, Firefox doesn't cut it. It's a bigger download with far less functionality. To get more functionality, you have to wade through buggy and untested extensions, and it takes forever to even remotely resemble Opera functionality. I'll gladly play money for the convenience of a tiny download with smooth integration between everything, in a well tested package, rather than a basic browser which is tested well, and then a bunch of hobbyist extensions that break every time I upgrade.
And the Mozilla suite? Please. It's slow and bloated, and isn't even half as elegant as Opera. Sorry, it simply can't compare.
So the bottom line is that you can't get the equivalent of Opera for free. Opera is a unique product. Remember, Firefox is a stripped down browser, while Opera is a full Internet suite, with mail and all that. And Opera offers everything fine-tuned and smoothly integrated, and that is very convenient.
I don't want to build my own browser. I just want something that works. Opera works out of the box. Firefox requires hours of tinkering to even approach Opera's level of integration, functionality and polish.
Clever signature text goes here.
By the way, Firefox, too, needs Java to view Java applets, so the added download size isn't part of Opera, but something all browsers using Java needs. So if you install Opera with Java, Firefox can make use of that Java install too.
Opera with Java just has the plain Sun JRE installer, and if you choose to install Java when installing Opera, it runs the Java installer separately.
But Opera 8 doesn't come with Java. It justs asks you if you want to download it, if you open a page that requires Java support.
Clever signature text goes here.
I have a brother that has a problem reading (due to a learning disability). It is great to know that browsers like opera are starting to involve voice recognition into their software. It opens a lot of doors for people like my brother.
no thanks!
Opera comes _fully loaded_ at 3.5M.
FF is 4.7M _without_ add-ons
There.
testing out my trending skills
Well, I consider advertising in software bad. That includes google ads.
I also care about my freedom, and the freedom of others, so it's GPL or useless.
I also need source, since I have relatively obscure but useful hardware that I'd like to keep using.
That's a lot of big missed points.
A opera zealot as myself, find this to be the most intelligent thing said in this discussion.
If I had any income worth mentioning I'd pay too, and no, it's not to get rid of the ad's. It's because it's a great product and I want to support it.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Opera rocks! using it from version 5 on win to 7.54 on mandrake :-) Firefox don't even stand close. mail, notes, links, irc, info... in one small package. and fast. small memory print. while there is REAL concurrency closed source rocks too :-)
I posted the parent so that what I said afterwards wouldn't be tainted either way after trying the beta. To put it bluntly, I've hated Opera with a passion since it came out, because it's consistantly been the worst browser I've ever used, bar none. So, with that said, here's my review.
The configuration is still a pain. A lot of stuff doesn't make any sense (under 'Security' I have the option of turning 'the wand' on or off. I turned it off because if it's relating to security and I don't know what it is, I don't want it doing anything).
The interface is still cluttered. I'd have to close everything that makes it nifty if I wanted to run it less than fullscreen. In the bottom-right corner where there are normally the angled lines at 45 degrees (indicating you can grab and resize the window), there are angled lines at 45 degrees indicating you can grab and resize the window. But you can't. Despite the fact that the cursor changes to the 'resize me!' cursor, you have to drag the actual border of the window. This will probably be fixed in beta.
It's very pretty by default. I like the way it looks better than any Firefox theme I've used so far, and I've got some pretty nice firefox themes.
As an 'internet suite', this actually has a lot of potential. The mail interface is fantastic, just what I've always wanted from a browser with mail built in. It's fast, it works, and it's easy to use.
The browser renders fast as well, it's snappy, it's pretty, and so far, nothing that has screwed up.
If you are willing to run it in fullscreen (or have a large screen), you are willing to use it as your primary browser, mail client, and contact list, and you don't mind ads or paying for a browser, give this a try. If you like Opera already, you'll love this. If you hate Opera like I do, you will be pleasantly surprised (though always waiting for the 'but...'). This is the first version of Opera I will be keeping installed, and it might be pretty hard to stick to Firefox exclusively from now on. We'll see.
I am just getting a bit irked by the Firefox crowd yelling "WE HAVE THIS GREAT FEATURE", like it is something new. Yet Opera has had those features since the last decade and Im not sure, but may have been the ones to create them.
Secondly they say Opera isn't free, which isn't COMPLETELY true. I have been using for like 7 years and haven't paid a dime yet (I bet they don't like that fact). There are free versions you can use indefinitely.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Visiting the Opera beta newsgroup, I saw many old bugs that still have not been fixed. Yet Opera continues to bulk up what once was a sleek browser with gratuitious features. Those who the Gods want to destroy, they give more features.