Opera Offers Free Licenses For Educational Use

Opera Watch writes "Opera Software today announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions. This is a change from the previous cost of $1000 (US) for unlimited licenses. It remains to be seen, however, whether Opera will allow schools to give standard Opera licenses to students to use on personal computers/laptops within campus at no additional cost, that came with the $1000 license fee. This comes after a respected university advised its students not to use Internet Explorer, for its lack of security. Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet."

Comments

Free as in beer

[slashnutt]

Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

GNU defines free software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this

The only sticky part is the licensing of free software - total freedom would allow me to fork the source for profit yet that would then restrict the freedom of others in using said free software thus making the software not free anymore. So to remain free I cant do certain things to software restricting my own freedom.

As for Opera thanks but no thanks I have the desire to keep using as much really free software as possible promoting further development.

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh sheesh would you just get over yourself, eh? It is a commercial company, no one blames them for not opening its source code... instead of bitching about no source code, puh-lease, be a little happy about this ...

Re:Free as in beer

[target]

Ah, a prototypical /. reaction. Some company does something nice, like offers free licenses to schools, and what's the first post? Criticism for not going far enough.

It would sure be nice if everything were free, source were available, nothing had bugs, and everyone got woken up by a blowjob, but the world just doesn't work that way.

We should be congratulating those companies that look beyond their immediate bottom line to try and make the world a better place, even if it is a loss-leading marketing expense like giving browsers to students.

Anyone else think this is clever, btw? Students like free things, so they'll take Opera up on this, and some of them will like it. Then, when they go to the real world, they'll ber ready to convince their company to drop IE and switch to... well, probably Firefox since it's free.

Re:Free as in beer

[Coneasfast]

The definition of free was used 'as in beer' well before 'as in speech'. Just because RMS uses 'free' in such a sense doesn't mean everyone must. Actually it was a mistake of RMS by using the same word (he could have used 'liberal' instead).

As a suggestion, please don't preach such a lecture onto slashdot.

Re:Free as in beer

[aichpvee]

No one said they were making Opera "Free". It says they are offering "free" licenses to universities and such. It seems pretty obvious to me that "free" in this instance is referring to the pre-existing license that they usually charge for, that being the license to USE the software. This isn't even related to GPL as it's an end-user license to use the software. If you don't like it, by all means go ahead and don't use it. I don't think you qualify anyway since you aren't a university or higher eduction institution.

Re:Free as in beer

[JamesD_UK]

Where does it mention the software being free? The article clearly states that it's license which is free and we can safely presume that in this context, (even on /.) it means free as in beer. Please drink your free coffee before posting.

Re:Free as in beer

[MaynardJanKeymeulen]

I'd like the blowjob part though

Re:Free as in beer

[slashnutt]

Why should RMS have to redefine what free means to him and what a lot of people of recognized by the meaning free? Wouldn't it make more sense for people touting that their software is free to put the actual meaning in to it by saying it may be free but you have give up your soul.

Re:Free as in beer

[snorklewacker]

I've started imagining all these little Free Software micro-dissertations as being read in the voice of the Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons.

It really puts things in perspective.

Re:Free as in beer

[geoffrobinson]

As a beer person, I can tell you that many a brewery won't give away their house yeast strain nor will they give you exact details on the recipe. But you still get a beer.

Re:Free as in beer

[SpartacusJones]

Perhaps you should consider The GIMP vs. Photoshop. The GIMP is free and works well, but the comercial version of the software is better because they have greater funding for R&D. All the makers of the GIMP can do is try and copy and keep up. Firefox and Opera are similar. Opera creates innovations and Firefox copies them through extensions. If you want Joe Average to switch browsers AND use all these nifty new features he has never even considered from using IE, you can't expect him to go out and research several different extensions which do the same thing in diffrent ways, and possibly won't work version to version. Opera does almost everything Firefox can do with extensions right out of the box, and it's still smaller. I can tell my mom over the phone how to do mouse gestures in Opera, but I can't tell her where to get extensions to do the same thing, how to install them and how to keep them current nearly as easily. If you have not tried Opera recently, go try Opera 8 beta. www.opera.com Customize it to get rid of the clutter, skin it how you like, use the awesome mail client, even get it to read web pages to you...just give it a fair shot. As far as the whole free beer thing....why can't anyone sell software? I don't understand the position many of you on this board take that all software should be free. Why do you think people make software? Most do it expecting to be paid for their work. If a company like Opera ASA makes a really good product (which they do) and they use open data standards, why does it hurt your feelings so much if the source is closed? There has to be a model for commercial software for innovation to continue.

Re:Free as in beer

[DigitumDei]

My god those must be powerful drugs you're taking.

They are offering "free site licenses". And even if they just called it free, we english speakers have been using the term free, for things you don't have to pay for, for quite some time now.

And then the soul giving... Well you're a fucking nutcase! If willing paying for something that someone has created is selling your soul, then we all did it a long time ago. They are not forcing anyone to buy it, they are not bundling it with some essential part of a computer system, anyone who pays for it (or doesn't if they are a student) can use firefox any other free(dom) browser if they want to.

Re:Free as in beer

[killmenow]

Geesh, I was just going to do some moderating; but, I have to respond.

There are several replies to this post with the "wah! typical /. wah! why are you so critical wah! they're a commercial company wah! get over yourself ... WAH! WAH! WAH!"

Look, nowhere in this post did he bitch about Opera. He said he desires to keep using as much "really free" software as possible... and simply, "thanks but no thanks" and frankly never did he say Opera sucks or FSCK Opera! He never even suggested they should open source their product.

Listen, I loved the Opera browser. I'm sure it's still wonderful. But it is precisely this reason that I no longer use it.

I bought and paid for Opera. I even asked my wife for a new license for Christmas a few years back...and she got it for me. I was a huge Opera fanboy. Whenever some story about browsers came up on /. I'd be one of the first saying, "Hey, you should use Opera. It's sweet!" and such.

But, at some point I realized that as cool as Opera is, and as much as I think the company is a fine company, it's still not software that is terribly concerned with freedom. And there are two perfectly acceptable (if not arguably better in some ways) browsers that are. Opera wants to give gratis licenses to schools, good on them. But any school that takes that gift should look at it for what it is and weigh carefully their options. Firefox is a damn fine browser on par with Opera in most ways that the majority of their users would need...and it's not just gratis, it's free. If Opera goes under, what then?

To me, Opera and Mozilla/Firefox...it's like six of one, half-a-dozen of another. And functionality (for my concern) being equal, I choose to use Mozilla/Firefox now. Because they're free, not because they're gratis. And I want to support this.

I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it.

Anomaly...does not compute.

Re:Free as in beer

[koreaman]

The problem with your logic is the fact that RMS and the FSF didn't write the dictionary. Their definition of "Free" is not canon law. Don't try to say that a common use of the word is wrong just because RMS says it is.

Re:Free as in beer

[Mr_Silver]

Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

Definitions of words can and do change over time, but in the current world a "free" product still means "doesn't cost money" for the vast majority of the population (and by those, I mean people who don't read slashdot, don't know how to code and don't have any desire to learn how to do so either).

Maybe in the future when people describe a product as being "free" it will be more synonymous with the freedom to modify and release the code, but at present anyone who criticises a product for being free when they don't have a GPL-like licence is un-necessary splitting hairs and likely to do more harm than good.

Re:Free as in beer

[killmenow]

Ok, look...I defended your original post as I am pretty much of the same opinion. But there are many words in english (as I'm sure there are in most languages) that have more than one meaning depending on context.

Free can very legitimately mean zero cost or gratis. There's no reason Opera (and other companies) shouldn't be able to say, we're giving away FREE foobars...meaning gratis, at no cost.

Similarly, there's no reason RMS should have to use another word because free software can mean exactly what RMS intends: software that has been set free...or that was created that way to begin with...free as in freedom.

And...giving up your soul?! A little hyperbole maybe? It doesn't serve to make your point. It serves to make you look extreme...which I doubt you are.

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

If Opera had tits, I would suck on it.

Re:Free as in beer

[idontgno]

Ah, GNUTrolling at its finest. Your id oughta be slashGNUtt.

As for Opera thanks but no thanks I have the desire to keep using as much really free software as possible promoting further development.

At least you make a token effort get back ontopic. That's commendable.

The zero-cost (i.e., "free") license for Opera doesn't affect me personally, since I haven't been a college student for years, but it seems to be a good move to me. And as a business decision, it has potential because all those students will be used to Opera; some of those may like it enough to pay for it after they leave school.

Re:Free as in beer

[Alomex]

Ah, a GNU groupie confusing the terms free (beer) and free (freedom). Opera is free/gratis, but not free/freedom.

By the by this move by Opera reeks of desperation in their losing the battle against Firefox. Wouldn't it be ironic if Firefox only slightly dented IE but killed Opera and Safari?

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you posting this from the land of the liberal and the home of the especially courageous?

Re:Free as in beer

[Jugalator]

Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

They obviously meant in the meaning of beer, you know what you typed in the title.
We don't need yet another rambling post about the GPL.
It's not the law, and free as in beer is a perfectly valid usage of the word, even when speaking of software.

Re:Free as in beer

[bfizzle]

There is a browser I can think of that is free and the source is available. The team who develops it is relatively quick about fixing bugs.

I'll see what i can do about the getting woken up to a blowjob, it might cost me a pretty penny or two though.

Opera is struggling in their business model and this is evidence. They can't keep a steady stream of revenue going from ads so they are gonna get students using Opera so their friends and family will use it. I doubt it will work but we'll see i guess.

Re:Free as in beer

[timster]

RMS isn't saying that one of the common uses of the word is "wrong", he's just saying that the meaning he's using is the other one (free as in freedom).

Anyway, according to the dictionary that was the original meaning and the "free from payment" one came later. Obviously both are in common use.

The problem is that we think of software as a product. Consider "free speech" vs. "free books" and you get the idea. Probably RMS should have called it "free code" instead of "free software".

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, GNU (or FSF...) defines it like that. GNU is just an organization/licensing model, and they have right to define "free" as they want. And others can freely define "free" as "does not cost a dime".

About 0.1% of the world population thinks that free means GNU GPL, rest of the world thinks, "gee, it doesn't cost anything"

Re:Free as in beer

[slashnutt]

Choose any of the definitions and you will see that the context of free is subjective. The first five definitions put into context of what free is and until you get to sub-definition 10 you get the wording of costing nothing. However, there is a license agreement you must abided by; the agreement any number of provision they wanted. Say right of attorney, release of any damages against the company and even that you can't say bad things publicly about the software (I haven't read the license but I have seen other software licenses with these stipulations). So the free definition has to be taken into context as the license may be actually transferring value from you to the license holder.

Merriam-Webster free:
1 a : having the legal and political rights of a citizen b : enjoying civil and political liberty (free citizens) c : enjoying political independence or freedom from outside domination d : enjoying personal freedom : not subject to the control or domination of another

2 a : not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself b : determined by the choice of the actor or performer (free actions) c : made, done, or given voluntarily or spontaneously

3 a : relieved from or lacking something unpleasant or burdensome (free from pain) (a speech free of political rhetoric) b : not bound, confined, or detained by force

4 a : having no trade restrictions b : not subject to government regulation c of foreign exchange : not subject to restriction or official control
...
10 : not costing or charging anything

Re:Free as in beer

[MrLint]

Man I almost gagged when I read this post.

This guy is the ideological opposite of 'The defenders of IP' (RIAA,MPAA,BSA, Bill Gates)

You are forgetting the main thing the GPL, like any other license is the choice of the developer. By whining that all software isnt 'free', you are in essence advocating the removal of the choice of the developer.

I also really wish people would stop using 'free' in this manner. In the realm of dealing with a product most people equate 'free' to mean 'without monetary cost'. In the realm of a SW license, as compared to other licenses, its not so much 'free' as less restricted. Technically speaking (ifi understand this point of the GPL correctly) its not 'free' as you cannot do anything you want with it, mainly being take the code and use it in a program without disclosure (and so on). So in some sense the only 'free' stuff is that which is in the public domain.

"There are more things in heaven and earth Heratio, than dreamt of in your philosophy"

Re:Free as in beer

[sepluv]

Beautiful copying and pasting, but I think you'll find that GNU is an operating system and I would advise you consult the services of a psychiatrist (or the GNU Emacs doctor) ASAP.

Re:Free as in beer

[Jugalator]

I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it.

I think the moderation was done not because of his software preference, not because of which software development model he supported, but because of the (in my opinion as well) completely redundant rambling on about the GPL, what it implies, and how Opera shouldn't be called free software. I quote:

Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

While I think many here believe the word "free" can have multiple meanings, one of them being "gratis".
That's why I think he was modded down, since some saw that statement as a flamebait.

Re:Free as in beer

[quantaman]

The definition of free was used 'as in beer' well before 'as in speech'. Just because RMS uses 'free' in such a sense doesn't mean everyone must. Actually it was a mistake of RMS by using the same word (he could have used 'liberal' instead).

Sure if he wanted it referred to as "*BLEEP* software" everytime it was mentioned in the American media!!

Re: Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use free software, how do you support it? Preaching about it does indeed get the word out, but unless you are actively donating to a project or have ads flashing at you that pay the organization, you aren't really "supporting" the browser.

Re:Free as in beer

[Taladar]

I am a Student and I use Opera for years (and paid for it a few months ago to get rid of the ads)simply because I have yet to find a better Browser.

And No, Mozilla/Firefox does not qualify as a better Browser. Everytime I try it there are still literally dozens of things (when I say try I mean try for several days, switching back to Opera before would be biased because of infamiliarity with the new Browser) that are better in Opera. I won't make a list here because as soon as I would name specific things some Firefox Zealot would claim that it can be done with this or that extension but perhaps you might want to look at http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/01/.

Integrated Support for certain Features and Extensions are two totally different things (especially if they break at every update) and the Performance with Mozilla/Firefox could be better too.

I use Free Software for almost everything else but at the current point in time there is no Open Source or Free Software Browser that is good enough (or near) to get me to switch Browsers.

Re:Free as in beer

[Taladar]

I agree with you about Opera. However I want to try to answer your question:

I don't understand the position many of you on this board take that all software should be free.

Most people on this board think Microsoft or Oracle or Adobe when they read about selling software. These take unreasonably high prices and/or reduce software quality to a point where it is almost impossible to use the software. Opera is the exception and not the rule. They produce high quality for a reasonable price for a daily used program. Free Software Advocates (or call them zealots if you like) prefer Free Software because the motives of the typical writers of Free Software are different then the Motives of the typical Writers/Decision Makers of Closed Source Software.

Re:Free as in beer

[Taladar]

It is also a good thing because more people might discover Opera Show which is a viable alternative to Powerpoint (if you don't use Animations) and uses HTML/CSS (Open Standards) as a format.
More info here: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/operashow/

Re:Free as in beer

[Taladar]

I don't think Firefox has the Potential to do that (kill Opera, I don't know about Safari). It is still too much Patchwork compared to the highly integrated (and faster) Opera. Opera also has additional income from the embedded devices market (Opera on phones,...).

Re:Free as in beer

[Taladar]

If there were another word for Free as in Speech in the English language it would be so much easier to find this kind of software in Google instead of having things like "Free Porn" (for members, membership only $29.95/month) all over your search results.

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

He got moderated down because of the absolutely stupid assertion that Opera isn't free. Does that clear things up for you?

Re:Free as in beer

[Mr.Ned]

"The only sticky part is the licensing of free software - total freedom would allow me to fork the source for profit yet that would then restrict the freedom of others in using said free software thus making the software not free anymore. So to remain free I cant do certain things to software restricting my own freedom."

Read a 3-clause BSD license some time, or one of the Apache licenses. You've said it yourself - GNU's "free" isn't "free as in do whatever you want with it".

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said!

If I bothered to have an account, you would be my friend!

Re:Free as in beer

[maxpublic]

Second that. I'm a supporter of open source (NOT free software, I'm no zealot) and yet I find Opera to be the best of the bunch of all the browsers I've tried. Despite all the whining done by the FireFox fanboys I'll stick with what works best regardless of whether it meets some illusory 'ethical' criterion put out by a bunch of pseudo-religious yahoos.

You want me to use FireFox, it's real simple: make the browser better than Opera. Until then I'll pass, thanks.

Max

Re:Free as in beer

[maxpublic]

By the by this move by Opera reeks of desperation in their losing the battle against Firefox.

That would explain why their market share continues to climb. In any other world this would be a good thing where a for-profit entity was concerned...in any other world but Slashdot....

Max

Re:Free as in beer

[hkmwbz]

"But, at some point I realized that as cool as Opera is, and as much as I think the company is a fine company, it's still not software that is terribly concerned with freedom."

I'd say that it is, actually. But to me, actions speak louder than words. Mozilla is behaving more and more like a monopolistic corporation, spreading lies about their competition.

I mean, how can the Mozilla spokesperson claim that Opera is not as portable as Mozilla? It's pure FUD.

"I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it."

He gets modded down because he's talking nonsense. Preferring Firefox just because it's FOSS is one thing. Claiming that Opera isn't free is rubbish.

Re:Free as in beer

[hkmwbz]

"Opera is struggling in their business model and this is evidence."

Oh please. Opera has millions in the bank, it is expanding rapidly to cover demand... In the mobile market!

Mobile phones is where Opera makes most if its money. It is a good move to make students aware of Opera, so they can get more mindshare.

This does not show a struggling company, but a company with a clear strategy.

Re:Free as in beer

[runderwo]

Opera is an excellent piece of proprietary software.

• It follows open standards.
• There is no file format lock-in; configuration files, bookmarks, etc are plaintext.
• It is available for multiple hardware platforms and operating systems.
• It is well-supported with newsgroups and a bug tracker.
• It is reasonably priced proportional to the competition.
• With each upgrade comes significant new features.

Put that all together with a company which is clearly committed to producing a quality product instead of megalomania, and it's really hard to build a case against Opera, aside from it being under a proprietary license with no source code available.

Re:Free as in beer

[Taladar]

I found another Link listing the Advantages of Opera in the Opera7 Wiki:
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WhyOpera

Re:Free as in beer

[phats garage]

I don't use Opera on Linux although when I did it was cool having a polished and speedy browser on an old potato install running enlightenment. I use it on windows though.

The Opera folks are simply good engineers and have a nag free product (ok the version I use has ads but thats ok). I'd hate to see them go because competition in the browser market is good. IE is not good enough to keep Firefox developers on their toes so having Opera around is a good thing.

Re:Free as in beer

[Lancaibheal]

It's a very silly attitude that he has. Open-source software has its place, of course, but so does closed-source commercial products.

Look at Firefox for instance. Fine piece of software (although I still prefer Opera), but would it have half of the innovations and features and advantages over IE that it has, if it weren't for the fact that Opera did them first?

Open Source software is a fine concept and a fine idea, but a piece of software is not useless simply because it's not under one of the various GNU-styled licences. Only trolls and anti-microsoft zealots with a tenuous grip on reality really think that.

Re:Free as in beer

[TheoMurpse]

Two things to hopefully shut you up:

free - having no obligations or duties (well that isn't the GPL now is it?

free - having no cost

The only true Free with a capital F is to put your work into the Public Domain.

Re:Free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to dissapoint you, but not the whole world cares about what GNU may say. Free is defined in the dictionary as something you don't have to pay for. So Opera _is_ giving free software.

hm

[JaffaKREE]

Desperation ?

They must feel the pressure of Firefox...

Re:hm

[Coneasfast]

They must feel the pressure of Firefox...

They should have made the program free for everyone and look elsewhere for sources of income. Firefox is gaining market share at a steady pace and if Opera doesn't act now, they'll be out of the game.

Re:hm

[miu]

Why on earth should they do that? Opera costs them money to make and distribute, and I'm sure the investors would like to see some sort of return. If they were going to get out of the browser business it seems more likely they would try to sell to Apple, MS or AOL.

Re:hm

[anum]

A little bit desperate maybe but a good move overall. Opera is a good browser but I'm not likely to pay money for it on my desktop. On my handheld however, I would be lost without it. Opera really shines in the embedded market and I suspect they make most of their money from this, if they don't now I'm sure that is the direction they are going. I wish them luck.
I plan to stick with firefox on my desktop for now but I bet my next phone/palm has Opera on it.

Re:hm

[aichpvee]

Actually, Opera's primary market is in mobile devices. Their desktop revenues are just a tiny fraction of their yearly income. Even those who do use Opera on the desktop are usually using the ad-supported one anyway.

You are also forgetting that Opera has been around for years in an IE-dominated environment, so I don't see how a switch to a Firefox-dominated environment would by itself do any harm to their business.

Re:hm

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is gaining market share at a steady pace and if Opera doesn't act now, they'll be out of the game.

Opera's game is PDAs, mobile phones and other small devices. A game where Firefox doesn't even have a real presence (Minimo's memory and storage footprint is huge compared to the embedded version of Opera).

Don't be sad though. You're not any more clueless about business than most slashdot users.

Re:hm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's another sign of Opera's desktop browser shifting from being a flagship product to being a testbed for the mobile version. All the features that make the mobile version a great embedded browser were first trialled in the desktop version, from small screen rendering mode to smooth image zooming.

As another example, the Opera 8.0 Beta includes voice command and will read out sections of text for you - another technology that will be of much more use on a handheld device than in a desktop browser.

Re:hm

[NexusTw1n]

Firefox is taking IE share. Opera is doing very nicely amongst those of us who don't mind paying for top quality products - Opera just works, and works well, Firefox works after various extensions are added. All the cool features in the 'fox were copied from Opera including tabbed browsing and mouse gestures.

They also are doing very well in the PDA/mobile phone browser market. They really don't need to look for new sources of income.

Opera is also easier to deploy in a corporate enviroment. What is easy on one machine, isn't quite so much fun when publishing to 1000...

Re:hm

[Anonymous Coward]

They make more money from mobile devices, true, but I'd hardly say that the desktop revenues only accounted for "a tiny fraction". From their latest financial statement:

Income from Internet devices was MNOK 15.1 in 3Q04, up from MNOK 9.4 in 2Q03. Income from desktop products was MNOK 9.4, up from MNOK 8.7 last year.

So, the desktop browser still accounts for ~40% of their income (that's the total income from the desktop browser, ad revenue plus licence fees). The whole report can be found here.

Re:hm

[jp10558]

Actually, desktop revenues are about 1/3 of Opera's income. Also, people do buy software.

Re:hm

[aichpvee]

I stand corrected. But I think you're still full of shit on that peopling buying software thing. That's just crazy talk!

Re:hm

[maxpublic]

Firefox is gaining market share at a steady pace

So is Opera - faster than ever before. And do try to remember that they were gaining market share when there was no Firefox, and MS was trying to put them out of business with mangled code.

Opera is doing just fine. There's no reason it has to be free, unless you're just mouthing some socialist RMS jingoism.

Max

Re:hm

[UpnAtom]

What cost do you put on having to use an inferior browser for a year?

great

[jthayden]

Great, now I won't have to pay for FireFox. Oh wait, nevermind....

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the exact same thought...

People still pay for internet browsers??? Wha...? o_0

Re:great

[spac3manspiff]

On the same token, people still pay for OS's, and the war in iraq. Lots of people like stupidity

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, now I won't have to pay for FireFox. Oh wait, nevermind....

Have you ever considered that millions of dollars were spent by people on Netscape and by Netscape in R&D to give you the base for your "free" Firefox? Where do you think Mozilla originally came from? Had it not been for all the people who PAID for Netscape and Netscape's later desire to live on as a thorn in Microsoft's side you'd be using Internet Explorer. So don't get so cocky, twit, it was just a twist of fate.

Beat M$ AT THEIR OWN GAME?

[ZWarrior]

I think it's funny that the developers are now going to beat IE with the same tactic that MS used to get market share for IE... free browser.

Of course this one it a bit more secure. ;)

Re:Beat M$ AT THEIR OWN GAME?

[wannabgeek]

There is a significant difference. M$ could afford to make IE free because it is not their main source of revenue. Opera is offering its source of revenue for free. Of course, it is arguable how many, if any, universities would have paid and obtained these licenses anyway. I agree with the other posts that said it is basically an act of desperation. Firefox surely is big threat to Opera.

Re:Beat M$ AT THEIR OWN GAME?

[lukewarmfusion]

Opera won't get rich by giving it away for free... MS had something to gain by giving away a free browser.

As for security, it's worth noting that many of the security risks from IE come from the features they toss in - ActiveX, specialized (read: non-compliant) JScript - that you won't find in other, more secure browsers. It's not excusable, it's just part of the game. They shouldn't have released the browser at all without more thorough testing and review.

Like they say, you can't make a system secure unless you unplug it; by adding features, you're increasing the likelihood that you'll encounter problems.

Re:Beat M$ AT THEIR OWN GAME?

[bhtooefr]

However, your po-dunk community college and your big honking MITs of the world paid the same amount for an UNLIMITED license - $1000. Every computer on the campus, INCLUDING STUDENT PCs, could use it.

Yeah, big deal for the little colleges, but not so much for the big colleges.

Re:Beat M$ AT THEIR OWN GAME?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape was free, it just sucked.

Good move from Opera

[Boeboe]

not a bad idea. A lot of people will learn the value of a safe browser AND will realise there are more (better?) alternatives than just firefox/mozilla

Re:Good move from Opera

[Nosf3ratu]

Too bad Opera isn't as fast, nor as standards-compliant as Mozilla/Firefox.

Re:Good move from Opera

[BrokenHalo]

OK, I'll bite (since I'm curious). Last time I tried out the adware version (yeugh...) I was not particularly impressed.

...So, just what is so special about Opera that makes it so superior to Firefox or Mozilla that we should all fork out our hard-earned shekels for it?

Re:Good move from Opera

[The Cydonian]

nor as standards-compliant as Mozilla/Firefox

You are aware, aren't you, that Opera's CTO is the guy who actually came up with the CSS recommendation?

Re:Good move from Opera

[Zen Punk]

Wow. This is flamebait? Who knew? Why doesn't Malda just admit that handing out moderation privileges to everyone who bothers to register a nickname was a poorly thought out idea and doesn't encourage rational discussion. It's more of a burden, really.

Re:Good move from Opera

[m50d]

The UI. It feels like something that was designed by someone who knows you and really thought about what you would want to be able to do and where you would look for it, rather than just thinking "a browser needs these buttons". At least it feels that way to me. If you don't like it, by all means don't use it.

Opera sucks.

[chrome]

Well, someone had to say it. I mean, Firefox kicks it all ver, and I don't have any ads to deal with, though this isn't an issue with the 'free licenses for educational use'. Bah. I'm no student, why do I care?

Its just an opinion, but why bother with opera when you have firefox?

Move along, nothing to see here, no news here.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

firefox is good and great and being free etc. Opera is still _much_ faster at browsing, remembers tab positions (when closing tabs it goes back to the previously clicked tab) unlike firefox.

I browse with both opera and ff.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Cassius105]

Opera does everything i want without me having to find extensions

Firefox doesnt

though im probably in the small minority that doesnt even notice the add in the top right at all unless i specificaly look at it

Re:Opera sucks.

[jthayden]

Actully, what does Firefox do better than Opera? Yeah, ads or paying for software is not as nice as free, speech or beer, but what makes you think Firefox is better? As far as I can tell, all Firefox does is implement the good ideas that Opera develops. So why not reward the guys for their good work?

Re:Opera sucks.

[boohiss]

Its just an opinion, but why bother with opera when you have firefox? So you are suggesting that FireFox should have a monopoly instead of IE? Opera is a fine browser, and there are many other good browsers as well. Why does it matter what browser someone uses? (as long as it isn't IE)

Re:Opera sucks.

[coolfrood]

I hate Opera for the zillion configuration menus. However, I use it for image-heavy (read: pr0n) pages that Firefox chokes on.

Re:Opera sucks.

[leonmergen]

There is an extension for that.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Perl-Pusher]

I tend to agree, I never liked the way it rendered pages. Many pages that even Konqueror get's right look horrible in Opera. Their javascript compatibilty needs work too. I used to test pages using several browsers available to me on Mac, Linux and Windows. I stopped testing against opera because it always seemed to be the odd one. So I decided if the page renders correctly in FireFox,Safari, Konqueror,Camino and IE it gets published.

Re:Opera sucks.

[lazybeam]

I've been using Opera since version 3.21 on my 486 with 4MB RAM. It was the best browser then, and still is! (IMHO, of course) Having all the windows within one window was a good idea, sicne it made it easier to group similar activities. The switchbar (ie the "tabs") appeared in v5 (IIRC) as a standard feature, but was available earlier as a plugin, Or simply in the "window" menu.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Methuseus]

I agree, however I don't want anyone forcing me to use Opera on my own system. If I have to use Opera or IE because that's what someone has and they don't want me installing Firefox, that's what I'll use.

Re:Opera sucks.

[big-giant-head]

I have downloaded and tried opera off and on over the last 4 years. The version I tried about 6 weeks ago was noticeably slower than firefox and have never had any tab issues with FF. Usually I don't have more than 2 or 3 tabs going at once. Thats probably why I have never had problems with it.

Also Opera will do some strange things with stretching graphics and page layouts, over all it does a better job of displaying a site more closely to what IE does.

I like Fire Fox better based on it's speed and size. Also being open source I've noticed secruity updates get posted faster, however I think that Opera is defintely good. Either is a good alternative to IE. It's kinda of like arguing Linux and BSD (EXECPT opera isn't opensource, just free with adds)...

BTW after the first 60-80 seconds I just tune the adds out. If FF started sell a small add window to fund development it would'nt bother me.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

why thank you, thats the sorta thing i was looking for althou ctrl+tab doesnt scroll through the tabs in the order that you browsed/opened them.

Re:Opera sucks.

[gl4ss]

it's not a troll entirely.

in the university where i'm at.. i'm seeing more and more of the desktops have firefox on them, maybe even all.

previously if you wanted even half secure browsing on them you would use the ad-version of opera that seemed to be installed everywhere..

previously if i wanted a light browser that wouldn't get all the spyware in and that 'normal' people could use .. i would have installed opera, now it's firefox.

Re:Opera sucks.

[aichpvee]

The two reasons I switched from Opera to Firefox after 3 years exclusively using Opera are 1) lack of customisable menu colours, which renders the menus unreadable in nearly any colour scheme in KDE, and 2) extensions. Opera definitely has better tab support (even after extension in FF) and their gestures are just so much smoother for being integrated (though I miss the little trail that I have in FF), but there are a number of extensions that I use regularly that there are no equivolent features for in Opera.

I'd really like to see them get together with the Mozilla kids and either wholey integrate FF extensions into Opera or work out some system that would be cross-platform compatible. Firefox also has a much easier to use custom search engine setup than Opera.

Re:Opera sucks.

[m50d]

Nonsense. Opera is far more useful than firefox. It's faster to load, much smaller binary, manages to have much more functionality in the chrome and yet still have it take up less space, and it looks a lot nicer. It feels far more responsive, thanks in no small part to the status bar at the bottom which unlike other browsers is actually very useful (shows how much you have really downloaded, in kb, along with real status). The tabs are better integrated and can be separated so you have two pages in the same window, the sidebar down the left is very useful yet doesn't get in the way, and the whole UI oozes polished design.

For personal preference I use Konqueror, but I have yet to see an opera-beating browser on windows, even with the ads.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Opera for the zillion configuration menus.


Yes, Firefox is muuuuuch beter! (limit configuration that can be done in the browser to a few brain dead options and make the user edit a .js file for any real configuration)

No thank you.

Re:Opera sucks.

[TheGavster]

One feature: Firefox tabs suck. Many sites use windows that are designed to be a differenet size than your mazimized browser, or sometimes you want to tile two or three pages to cross reference. Oh, and when popups get past firefox's blockers (Opera just has a 'no popups, period' setting) they don't just go to a tab, they start another instance of the application, cluttering the taskbar.

I'll think I'll take the google ads in the corner over having to deal with bad tabs and crappy gestures.

Re:Opera sucks.

[bhtooefr]

Firefox is 4.1MB, IIRC (NOT INCLUDING EXTENSIONS). Opera is 3.5-3.6 (depending on version) MB. Oh, and it's a suite, more like Seamonkey. No extensions needed, FWIW (now, I've pushed for an extension framework, but Opera doesn't NEED extensions to be powerful).

Re:Opera sucks.

[popeyethesailor]

Well, I'll leave it to the Opera zealots to post lists of features, but i'll give only one reason.

It has the most responsive UI I have seen in a graphical program. It's the vi of browsers; tremendously powerful, yet small and nimble. And its a class apart on under-specced machines - Firefox doesnt even compare.

I have used the latest versions of firefox, Maxthon etc.. I'm not switching from Opera.

Re:Opera sucks.

[neko9]

amen to that. Firefox without shitload of extensions (btw that gets broken now and then after Firefox gets updated) doesnt even stand close to Opera. with extensions its closer but not even :-P

Opera is very powerful browser for power users. iLoveIt :-)

Re:Opera sucks.

[Dan Ost]

I use Opera as my main browser, but resort to Firefox a couple of times a
day when Opera can't handle something (it's either java or java-script...haven't
figured out which, but Opera can't handle it as well as Firefox).

The reason I use Opera is because I prefer the way Opera handles tabs and
mouse gestures (especially in combination). I've futzed around with Firefox
several times, but never got it to feel as comfortable as Opera does by
default.

In summary, I'm content to use a less technically capable browser because
the UI provides a better experience to me.

Re:Opera sucks.

[WIAKywbfatw]

Because, frankly, Opera is better. If both Firefox and Opera were open source (or both closed source) then we wouldn't even be having this debate. 95 percent of Firefox's appeal over Opera is open source.

Well, gee, call me a fascist for using the better closed source product over the open source one.

Oh, and you don't have to look at the unobtrusive Google ads that Opera runs if you don't want to: all you have to do is shell out $20 to buy the thing. Yes, $20, which is less than the price of an average meal out.

Re:Opera sucks.

[prjames]

Count me in on this one. Works perfectly for vast majority of things. What ad? :)

Re:Opera sucks.

[crs3210]

Yes, $20, which is less than the price of an average meal out.

Not if you're a college student (I get discounts ;-)).

Anyway, as iterated before, "it doesn't matter what browser you use as long as it isn't IE." I use Firefox. That's my choice. If we all work together and use different browsers, we will stop the monopoly on the browser market and(heard this somewhere before...) there will not be a browser that the majority of people use...so the likelihood of one browser being hijacked will be less.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Jugalator]

While I'm not sure it's a good idea to fuel a browser war ( I rarely see someone coming out victorious anyway ;-) ), I *do* believe Opera should have a lot of respect for innovating tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, and several more features that have later been adopted in other browses. It's technologically an extremely nice browser with DOM caching for almost instant back/forward navigation that still is in the state of an unfixed Bugzilla bug for Firefox' part. The memory management is also nice and to the level that although it's like a extension-packed Firefox, it usually consumes less resources than Firefox in its stock configuration.

On the other hand, Firefox has a previously unseen extension system to bring it up to Opera's feature set in many cases, and in some cases surpass it. It's also open source, which appeals to those preferring that model. And even if you don't care, the lack of cost is of course appealing.

I for one really enjoy both browsers and is always on the lookout for the latest beta versions of Opera. There's a lot of happening in that camp, much like Firefox have an interesting future in Firefox 1.1 and onwards.

I prefer to look at it as a fight against IE, not a free-for-all. ;-)

Opera has a very loyal fan base that isn't going away soon, so I'm hoping to see coming years of browser development. It would be sad to lose the creative minds on Opera Software and their interesting browser, and I'm pretty sure some members of the Mozilla Foundation agree. Respect to everyone trying to give the software behemoth a fight. :-)

Re:Opera sucks.

[hkmwbz]

Try Opera 8.

Re:Opera sucks.

[hkmwbz]

"I like Fire Fox better based on it's speed and size."

Actually, Opera is a far smaller download, and much faster than Firefox.

"Also being open source I've noticed secruity updates get posted faster"

Wrong. The last cross-browser security issue was fixed by Opera within a couple of days. I don't think there is a fix available for Firefox yet.

Re:Opera sucks.

[coolfrood]

Actually Firefox has a pretty decent about:config page that lets you modify configuration. It could use a description field too though.

Re:Opera sucks.

[big-giant-head]

Granted Opera is about 1 meg larger download my bad.
3.6 vs 4.7.

Based on my personal experience, timing on my home machine. Firefox was noticably faster at displaying a page.

Re:Opera sucks.

[big-giant-head]

meant 1 meg smaller

Re:Opera sucks.

[gl4ss]

for one, opera doesn't block it's own adverts.

their mobile browser for s60 is pretty good though.

you can't deny that firefox has been invading the opera's region, when some would have earlier dl'd opera they dl firefox instead.

plus: opera has crash protection/recovery for a reason, it crashes fucking often.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was using Opera for free for 6 months, then I realised that it has the adbar and I bought it :)

happy Opera user

Re:Opera sucks.

[jthayden]

for one, opera doesn't block it's own adverts. Of course it does, you just have to pay for it. Which I feel is worth it, but I'll respect those that don't. their mobile browser for s60 is pretty good though. Yeah, my understanding is that is the market where most of their money comes from now. you can't deny that firefox has been invading the opera's region, when some would have earlier dl'd opera they dl firefox instead. One, I don't think Opera's usage stats really have gone down much, they just haven't skyrocketed like Firefox because of the large amounts of press. I could be wrong, I'm too lazy to look it up, and most sites are biased one way or another anyway. Besides, just because most people use one thing, doesn't make it better. Otherwise M$ makes the best shit in the world. Finally, I love the fact that I can quit opera and open it back up with all of my sites open and ready to go again. The applications of this are great, you can save sessions for all different types of browsing. I have them saved for hardware pricing, news, sports and such. You can have everything you're interested in open up with one click.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Lancaibheal]

No, I'm in that minority too.

In my experience, it's mainly the extremist open-source loonies who froth at the mouth at the mere suggestion of an advertisment who actually notice that thing after about five seconds of using the browser. All the people I've introduced to Opera tune it out quite readily and quickly.

Re:Opera sucks.

[Eternauta3k]

EXACTLY!
The only problem (although it is my PC's fault) is that it takes 30-40 seconds to load on my 1.8Ghz P4 512MB ram windows 2000!!!
Gotta start cleaning up... However, it worked incredibly on linux.

Smart move...

[leonmergen]

... since all the competitor's products are free anyway. Besides, even Microsoft is offering free licenses for students just to get them hooked at Microsoft products because they know those students wouldn't pay anyway...

And ofcourse, this is great publicity... :)

Re:Smart move...

[tomstdenis]

If you're talking about the "Microsoft Academic Alliance" that's certainly not free.

One semester after my college rolled it out [fortunately that was my last semester] they raised tuition by $300.

They didn't hire new profs, or build a new wing or anything. Cost of living hasn't gone up that much and the government hasn't announced funding cutbacks [though maybe they're just not public].

So likely the $300 is to cover the extra super bonus MSFT AA crap.

Free or not Windows is crap. The sooner people realize that the better. I almost cried at hearing the "2600 fans" in my networking class cheer at "hey I got a free copy of WinXP"...

Tom

Re:Smart move...

[Stevyn]

I don't know about that. My school got into that. My professor said the total cost for the whole program was only a couple hundred dollars. It gives students in the computer science department and computer engineers in the engineering department (yes, they are two very different majors!) access to this program.

You basically get a login to a website that allows you to download free ISOs to Windows XP Pro, Office, VS.NET, and some other programs. It's not a bad program for students, but I think it is just to get them used to Microsoft development tools. The computer science department at my school is big on java and C++ using gcc so I don't know how much it's actually used in the classes.

I suspect the $300 increase was just the typical increase in education. My school (small state college) has a low tuition that they advertise and publish, but they jack up the "general service fees" whenever they seem to need more money. I think it's a sly tactic since they could have just increased the tuition since that number is generally what's published. I don't think any school would pay an extra $300 per student to Microsoft just for this program.

Re:Smart move...

[tomstdenis]

"You basically get a login to a website that allows you to download free ISOs to Windows XP Pro,..."

Typical serf-think. It's not "free". It factors into the cost of your tuition and in the cost of Microsoft software.

There is a reason why a retail copy of WinXP Pro costs 400 dollars [cdn]... And it ain't because of windows "advanced technology"

Tom

If it's free

[Anonymous Coward]

"If it's free, but not open source, you've got a reason to be suspicious"

Re:If it's free

[koreaman]

You can install Opera as non-root on *nix or Limited Account on Windows, so what is the big fear all about?

stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really thought Firefox was perfect after switching from IE sometime ago around the mid-Firebird stage. Loved it and with addons such as Gmail Inbox in the taskbar and Adblock it's obviously great, but it still has some major stability issues. Regardless of OS or computer I've used it on sometimes it'll just crash for no reason (kinda like gaim) and it's simply annoying when you have 10 tabs open and have to go to each again.

At very least it should remember the tabs you had opened (is there an extension for this?) while they get their shit together, I'm thinking of giving Opera another serious go, as long as it's more stable then it can easily win me over, I don't mind seeing the ad and if it's good I'll pay for it, I just want a browser I can *trust*.

Re:stability?

[Boeboe]

I payed for it, never regretted it. As far as crashes go...it has been a few versions ago since I saw my last crash in opera. However, I use firefox at work. The whole plugin system feels like everything is poorly pasted together. Also it tends to freeze on a lot of sites :(

Re:stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox crashses occasionally on me, for saving openend tabs check out the session saver plugin: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/sess ionsaver/

Re:stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Error 404 :/

Re:stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops sorry http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/sess ionsaver
take away the '/' at the end of the url.

Re:stability?

[xy]

Yes, there is an extention that does this, I use it all the time. It's called SessionSaver. For some reason it's hard to track down the version that works with firefox 1.0, but I've gotten it from:
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =166

Re:stability?

[delus10n0]

I've been using FireFox quite a bit since it's way initial releases, and the only time it's randomly crashed is when it tries to load Windows Media Player on a webpage. This is annoying, but I don't fault FireFox for it. I think there's either something wrong with my codecs, or the way WMP is integrating into FireFox. Maybe I just need to reinstall WMP; who knows.

Re:stability?

[bhtooefr]

Keep the number of tabs down, and you should be fine. Opera's main problem is that over time it starts freezing, but then unfreezes. Close it out, and restart, and you should be fine.

Now, as for 8.0b1, it has NASTY memory leaks, especially if you install over a 7.6 Preview. However, GMail only works with 7.6 previews and 8.0b1.

Re:stability?

[zarr]

Now, as for 8.0b1, it has NASTY memory leaks

I've been using 8.0b1 (linux) for a while now, usually with 5 - 15 tabs open, email, rss, news, various skins, running for days without shutting down. No crashes, no (notizable) leaks, no freezes, lots of happines. :)

Re:stability?

[bhtooefr]

Granted, I haven't had the old Linux box booted in a while. I've been using the Win32 version.

That said, it is not NEARLY as bad if you don't install over the 7.6 previews. Also, freezes were cut down a LOT in 7.6 and 8.

Re:stability?

[Taladar]

I never had this problem (freezing) although I often keep the same Opera open for several days (neither in Windows nor in Linux). Is this a new problem with the Beta or did you have this before? Perhaps you should go to the Forum on their Website and look for a solution there.

Re:stability?

[bhtooefr]

I had it with Opera 7.x 7.6xPx, Win32 AND Linux. Now, the 7.6 previews and 8.0b1 aren't NEARLY as bad on that front.

Re:stability?

[Shaiken]

In my experience Opera is more stable. But even if it wasn't you'd want it :) If Opera crashes it will restore the windows you had open. Yes, Firefox has an extension to do this, but it often fails, and so far Opera NEVER lost an open tab when it eventually crashed (Opera tends to stay open 100% of the time here. My main complaint is that it gets sluggish after about a week :)).

Re:stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a problem unique to your system.

Re:stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only does Firefox 1.0 have stability problems"It has crashed on me a few times, and it's a fresh install, not an upgrade", but it's also a memory hog, I have seen it use up to roughly 160 MB of memory. Firefox is good, but, the problems need to be resolved.

A new user to Firefox will want to switch back to IE if it's crashing on them and if it has the same security problems as Internet Explorer.

Re:stability?

[bhtooefr]

Interesting, as this was on about three different systems.

Pentium 233 MMX, 96MB RAM, Mandrake 9.2 and 10.0 Community (Opera 7.23 through 7.54 showed the bug)
Pentium 4 2.2GHz, 256MB, Windows XP Pro SP1 and 2 (7.54 showed the bug), Windows 2000 SP4 (7.11 through 7.20 showed the bug), SuSE 8.2 (7.20 through 7.23 showed the bug) (no, I don't triple boot - I used to dual boot 2K and SuSE, but the 2K install screwed up, and I then put XP on, and wiped both 2K and SuSE out)
Celeron 2.0GHz, 256MB, WinXP Home SP1 (7.10 through 7.54 show the bug)

Sorry.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as a net admin for several elementary schools in my area.....thanks for the bone, but we'll be sticking with firefox.

Too little too late. Oh yea, and Opera isn't that great anyways.

Why use Opera...

[Trolling4Columbine]

...when there is a superior and free (beer AND speech!) browser available?

Re:Why use Opera...

[Ninjy]

I'll take the beer, please. ... oh, wait. you mean they weren't offering? Damn.

Only higher education?

[naelurec]

Why not all education? I looked on their site, but it appears that educational sites, while getting a discount, do not qualify for a free, no-adware version?

Guess it doesn't matter much.. the sites I admin are using Firefox and will continue to do so.

Re:Only higher education?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Are you looking at the old prices that are still on the site? The very ones linked to in the story summary as "previous cost"?

Re:Only higher education?

[bhtooefr]

You are probably looking for http://distribute.opera.com/donations/, the Opera Donations page. Here's who is eligible:

Who can apply for donations?
Schools, primary through secondary (K-12). Web designer schools, organizations, or companies, as well as Internet cafes. Organizations for the physically and mentally challenged.

<offtopic>FWIW, I found something very interesting and scary about Opera Software (it's a rather old press release, from 2000. The ad system in Opera 5.x through today is powered by Cydoor shit. Cydoor is one of those companies we love to hate, as they make spyware. Defeat the system by turning on Google ads in 7.20 or higher. http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2000/12/2000 1206_2.dml

DISCLAIMER: I don't think Opera actually contains spyware, but using the graphical ads benefits a spyware developer. I've used the AdWords-based ads since 7.20 came out.</offtopic>

Re:Only higher education?

[zxSpectrum]

While Opera used Cydoor as an advertising delivery partner, Opera never contained any spyware, or any Cydoor technology at all: Opera simply fetched the Ads from the cydoor servers.

Not only that, Opera provided a full description of the protocol for ad delivery in Opera versions that had Cydoor as ad partner: Additional Content Protocol 1.0.

I remember, because I whined about Cydoor and ads in the Opera newsgroups the day it became known that Opera was to have ads.

Sell me.

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way does firefox kick opera?
I've used both, have both installed (ff1, opera 5) and vastly prefer opera.

So sell me on firefox. What features does it have that I need? What do I need to change in order to make it faster than opera?

Serious question - I'd like to know what I can do to improve on Opera. Which, whilst a wonderful browser, does cost money and is beginning to show its age. (I don't have the upgrade to version 6 and I don't like the interface of 7)

Re:Sell me.

[bhtooefr]

Go to V6 anyway. Also, why don't you like 7's interface, and why haven't you tried to customize it to be more like 5.x?

Have you tried 7.5 or 8.0b1?

The other reason...

[Gerv]

Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet.

...and to try and compete with Firefox, which is spreading like, er, wildfire in educational institutions, who have low IT budgets, a traditionally open-source-friendly culture, lots of fairly clueless users and a lack of desire to spend their time cleaning up spyware.

Gerv

Re:The other reason...

[dbacher]

Total cost of ownership comes into play here, too.

You have a lab assistant getting paid, say, $6/hour. If Opera provides support for the browser, then the lab assistant has less work that they have to do to support Opera, and can devote more time to helping people with other problems.

Depending on the situation, number of browsers, etc. this might be able to reduce the number of lab assistants you need, or it might be able to improve the level of support for individual users who need help.

Note that I'm not saying "FireFox sucks" or anythign else here, what I'm saying is that from an economic standpoint, if you have to have two people doing full time FireFox support, it's more expensive than if the vendor provides the support for their product.

This is what motivates corporations, too. If I have to "fix it myself" in Open Source, then ever hour I spend "fixing it myself" is billed to the company at $30/hour. If the software worked, I could be doing productive tasks instead, which long term is better for the company.

Note that this is, of course, all a matter of perspective.

This is one reason why I hold both open and closed source software have their purposes.

A history, drama or music major is unlikely to be able to build from source, and almost certainly is going to be unable to take over maintenence of a program. They are buying the closed source program because they can install it and it just works. They don't have to think (it hurts them to think), they put the CD in the drive, they click install, and the software just works.

When something goes wrong, they have someone they can call for help. They aren't capable of maintaining the code themselves, and they don't have to be. They don't have to post to a newsgroup or mailing list and have the first hundred replies be from the "its open source, fix it yourself" troll gang.

In business, I get $30/hour to develop software, most of which these days being web pages. I can use open source tools for some of it, and for some of it I use closed source tools. I use whatever tool gets the job done. However, I'm unlikely to "fix it myself" unless I cannot work around a problem, even in open source -- because it will impact another schedule to do so, and the page "has" to be up on xyz date.

This is what needs to be understood -- there are two viewpoints here. One viewpoint is of a "do it yourselfer." This viewpoint is I want source code, so I can "do it myself" when there's a problem.

The other viewpoint is that "if it fails, I want to be able to call someone and have them have the responsibility to fix it."

If you look at MySQL, for example, they understand this distinction. You can use their GPL database, or you can obtain a commercial license. If you obtain a commercial license and something breaks, you can get them to fix it. :)

Re:The other reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

not all unis are open-source-friendly. remember that it's still management who make major decisions, and they often can't grasp that free doesn't mean 'will be abandonware next week'.

Opera missed it's chance

[winkydink]

as a desktop browser. It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

Now they have made some inroads in the embedded market, but it looks like the Mozilla team has their sites set on this as well. My prediction is the same will apply (why pay when you can get it for free), except the gap between Opera and Mozilla has closed significantly.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[geoffrobinson]

Many a girlfriend has learned this lesson as well. Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free. Or browser. Whatever works for you.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[The Cydonian]

It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

Ummm, there has been a per-gratis edition ever since Version 5?

Now they have made some inroads in the embedded market, but it looks like the Mozilla team has their sites [sic] set on this as well.

I don't know if you know this, but before discovering the Symbian market (and discoverin g Google), Opera was actually making a loss. Look at it this way:- there has never been a better time for Opera than the current.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get cool brower features for free until Mozilla copies them from Opera.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[nels_tomlinson]

It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

Better late than never, better free than expensive, I suppose.

I think you're right, Opera blew an opportunity for market share by not doing this, and more, much earlier. Is market share a big deal to them, though?

Opera has set their sights on making money by selling software or ad-ware. Libre software doesn't make much sense with that business model. I suppose they could have gone the route Ghostscript did, with a current for-pay version,and an older libre version.

As long as they've making the payroll, though, what reason do they have to throw that away chasing market share?

It's unfortunate, really, because this probably means that Opera is going to fade away, like so many other proprietary projects have over the years. If they had made it libre, the world would be left with a nice browser at the end of it. It's their decision.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[Anonymous Coward]

most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

i myself have no problem getting "great" for free when "sorta good but buggy and crashes a lot and doesn't render some pages at all" is not free.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[m50d]

Sights, not sites. And I think Mozilla has a long way to go before it can stand up to Opera in the embedded market. Just try running both on a pentium 1 if you have one knocking around, to get an idea of how good they are for embedded performance.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[bhtooefr]

Eh... Mozilla isn't close. Opera's targetting all the way down to cell phones, Moz is targetting high-end PDAs, and is having trouble getting that low (primarily RAM usage).

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it this way:- there has never been a better time for Opera than the current.

So in other words, there's never been a "good" time for Opera, and they're still doomed.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[Taladar]

1. I don't think they will fade away
2. Who says that they won't open up the source in case the company would cease to exist?

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[audiomama]

Like many small, progressive sw companies, Opera may just be overestimating our capacity for logic. Yes, most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free, because most people lack the most basic grasp of logic when it comes to valuing their own time. People refuse to pay for a highly efficient and configurable (i.e., highly time-saving) browser for the same reason that people waste countless human-hours fighting with their virus-infested, crash-prone Windows machines and still persist in believing Macs are "more expensive" than PCs.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[hkmwbz]

"I don't know if you know this, but before discovering the Symbian market (and discoverin g Google), Opera was actually making a loss."

Actually, no. The company was profitable the first few years, until they started expanding into the mobile market. So the losses were because of their move into new markets, but on the other hand, the money is flowing in now exactly because they did this. And they have several years of experience with real mobile web browsers, unlike anyone else.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[hkmwbz]

"as a desktop browser. It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while"

It most certainly did not. Opera has never had more users and a higher market share than it does right now. Quality wise, it did have a clear lead, and this is still the case. Just look at how Minimo requires ten times the amount of memory to run compared to Opera-embedded. But market wise, Opera has never been in a better position.

"Now they have made some inroads in the embedded market, but it looks like the Mozilla team has their sites set on this as well."

Yeah, except Opera has many years of experience, and Minimo has problems since it's too big and requires too much memory. And Minimo's best features were invented by Opera.

Re:Opera missed it's chance

[hkmwbz]

"It's unfortunate, really, because this probably means that Opera is going to fade away, like so many other proprietary projects have over the years."

Like Apple has "faded away"?

Just because a company is small doesn't mean that it is dying. Opera is actually growing rapidly.

Netscape did something like this in the mid 90s

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope they don't end up with a similar fate....

Re:Netscape did something like this in the mid 90s

[bhtooefr]

I almost hope Opera DOES end up with a similar fate - look what happened to Netscape. Netscape became Mozilla, which became Firefox, which is now top of the alternate browser field, and rapidly approaching 10%.

Can someone answer me...

[gustgr]

Are this free licenses available for any higher institution in the world?

Re:Can someone answer me...

[lordsilence]

IDG.se (Swedish IT e-zine) appearently made a report about this, so it seems to be available in sweden aswell.

Since the topic of their article made it seem this way. However, they might just have taken the news from another big site.. so it's not for certain.

Open beer

[amightywind]

Couldn't have said it better myself brother. I would have expected the Opera folks to use the muzzy description "open" for their offering instead of the more controvercial (on this forum anyway) term "free". In Opera all I see is the whip hand of proprietary software. No thanks.

Re:Open beer

[wheelbarrow]

I'm curious. Do you RMS fans out there envision a world where the weight of law is used to implement your vision? Or are you content to battle it out in the voluntary marketplace of free expression?

Re:Open beer

[WIAKywbfatw]

As a long-time Opera user, I'll just point out that half the features that people rave about in Firefox were Opera innovations.

Like it or not, Opera is a great piece of software and it's helped to make Firefox a great piece of software. Had Opera the company been litiguous in nature, they could easily have stamped down on some of those borrowed features, but Opera is one of the good guys and, if I remember correctly, opposed to software patents, etc.

Yet you still choose to paint a picture of Opera that's negative with your talk of whip hands, etc. Well, newsflash for you buddy: they good people at Opera still have to put food on their own tables and roofs above their heads so I and others will continue to appreciate the hard work they put into what many people regard as the best browser (with in-built mail client, RSS reader, etc) available by putting our money where our mouths are.

Re:Open beer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure RMS doesn't advocate forcing anyone to release their own original creations in any particular way.

Re:Open beer

[amightywind]

The GPL cleverly uses existing US copyright law to insure users rights. The weight of law applies now. All that is required is cooperation by the community of software users. I would hope US patent law weakens over time so that free software less vulnerable to harmful lawsuits brought by rapacious corporations than it is now.

Re:Open beer

[Dashing Leech]

Like it or not, Opera is a great piece of software...

Yup, and I still prefer Opera over Firefox, which I've found to be much harder to use and less elegant. The cost issue, and the lack of support at some sites (particularly Gmail) are the only downsides I see.

Re:Open beer

[WIAKywbfatw]

Gmail isn't an issue: fixed in Opera 8, which has a very stable beta available right now.

Also, Opera 8 has a raft of other features, including an RSS reader, voice command support, etc. Some aspects of the UI have undergone minor changes but it's pretty much more cool features under the same roof - and it's still a smaller download than Firefox.

Re:Open beer

[Just Some Guy]

they good people at Opera still have to put food on their own tables and roofs above their heads so I and others will continue to appreciate the hard work they put into what many people regard as the best browser (with in-built mail client, RSS reader, etc) available by putting our money where our mouths are.

Meanwhile, the good people at the Mozilla project live in happy-magic land where they don't have to eat or live somewhere. Oh, wait - they still have to do that stuff, but have managed to make a browser that many people regard as the best ever written and give it away to whoever wants a copy.

I have no problem with Opera selling a browser or people buying it. I do have a problem with your lame "but they have to eat!" justification for charging for a product that the competition is giving away. Just come out and say that they're selling and you're buying and you're both happy, but don't pretend that they're the underdog slaving away under conditions noone else is subject to.

Re:Open beer

[WIAKywbfatw]

As other people have pointed out elsewhere in the broader discussion, major contibutions from for-profit software companies have bankrolled the Mozilla/Firefox development teams.

It's not like the full-time coders who worked on those open source projects weren't being paid, it's just that the people paying them weren't the people who most visibly benefited from their work (ie, the end-users).

As for conditions that nobody else is subject to, well, just about every other browser out there is funded or subsidised by other products (it's true for MSIE, Mozilla/Firefox, Netscape, Safari), so Opera are playing a slightly different ballgame because their success and failure is totally dependent on creating a great product, whereas their competitors could put out a complete wreck (or do nothing at all) and still be no worse off.

Anyway, the post that you objected to was aimed at those people who insist that anything not open source is somehow evil. Talk of whip hands and whatever else are entirely inappropriate when you're talking about one of the most ethically run closed source software companies around. Like I pointed out earlier, if Opera were one of the bad guys then they would have software patented everything up to the hilt and Firefox would look like nothing more than a MSIE clone with a fraction of the feature set.

Re:Open beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly..

Put down Opera for being "not free", and you're basically saying "Firefox should not have mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, pop up blocking etc.".

Putting those features in a browser was all pioneerd by Opera. Before the Mozilla project started copying from Opera they were copying from Microsoft. We can all remember were it was heading; some heavy, sluggish, "not a browser but a *platform*" product.

Maybe Opera's software is not "Free", because of their policies (no patents, etc.) their *ideas*, their *innovations* were still free. And those ideas Opera had about the way we can interact with the www, have contributed MORE to the internet community than all of the lines of the mozilla project combined.

Re:Open beer

[Dashing Leech]

Coolio. I was waiting for the next full release to see what it had, but now I may just have to go grab the beta. Muchos gratious.

Homeschools? Although FF is better

[solafide]

As a homeschooler, I hate Operas ads, for Opera is a good persistant modem-unfreezer, and I get to see the speed. But ah, well, I like FF a lot more. Billy

If they're smart, they'll allow students copies

[Maestro4k]

It's be best for Opera to allow schools to distribute it to their students. It's very possible that Universities may start forbidding IE usage, and if Opera's available to the students too, they may just get lifelong users. After all you get used to a program after 4+ years of use.

Blind Firefox Zealotry

[boohiss]

Now I'm not saying Firefox isn't a terrific browser (because it is), but when someone suggests a browser that isn't IE or Firefox, why is there an uproar? You may think Honda (Firefox) makes the best vehicle, but does that mean Toyota (Opera) vehicles shouldn't be on the road?

Keeping with that analogy, the oil burning, cloud spewing, Gremlin with brakes that don't work (IE), *should* be off the road.

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[RailGunner]

Another point - how bad would Honda start to suck if it didn't have competition from Toyota? I'll tell you - as bad as GM cars were in the early 80's.

Competition produces innovation, lack of competition only produces stagnation. Certainly there is room for IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Galeon, Edgar-ware Surfer (coded in Mom's basement! for Lappy 486's), etc.

Personally, I *love* Opera. I got hooked on it when I got sick of IE vulnerabilities, and when I switched Firefox was still a gleam in a developer's eye named "Firebird", and Mozilla was so new and buggy it was unusable. I carried Opera with me when I dumped Windows altogether - even though I have Firefox, I still prefer Opera. I like the mouse gestures, I like the zoom feature, I like the configuration options. Yes I know Firefox can do it too with extensions, but for me, Opera is familiar, I've got it set up just how I want it, it works, it renders pages fast, so I don't want to mess with it.

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[delus10n0]

Opera just needs to ditch the "pay us for our browser" mindset. Sorry, the days of paying for a web browser died long ago, with the IE and Netscape wars.

Besides, I'd much rather have an "open-source" browser leading the market (or second in market, right now) than a closed source/comercialized one.

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[Xugumad]

In particular, I'd rather have more competition in the browser market place. While Firefox being the most widely used browser is better than IE, IMHO (mostly because I'm fed up working around IE bugs), having a good spread of web browsers means:

1. Browser developers are more motivated to think of nifty new features.
2. Security holes in one are unlikely (but I'm aware there are exceptions) to turn up in a different browser. This reduces the impact of such security holes.
3. Web developers are more inclined to work to the standards, rather than "It works on my browser". This in turn means that browser developers are more likely to work to the standards, rather than "Works with my favourite websites". This all helps keep those of us who like the standards, sane.

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[jp10558]

I have to ask, what sort of business strategy do you see for them to be able to pay the 200 employees they have?

Or do you think they should just close up shop, give away what they currently have done?

I mean, as crazy as it sounds, people need to get paid for their work somehow, or they cannot do it.

I'm not terribly happy with the current IP landscape, or payment methods, but I still cannot come up with any way to get midsize to big projects done with any relialibity without paying developers.

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[jp10558]

Ok, replying to myself - bad form, but /. doesn't let me edit, and I had some good ideas I think.

So, as I said, I don't like how IP works now, but can't see how it would work under OSS for most stuff either.

Here goes, - assuming that copyright died as it is today, or everyone went with GPL style licenses or CC ones

Musicians can still make money for live performances, and for the cover art etc...

Movies still can sell the theater experiance, DVD quality and cover art etc...

Writers still have nicely bound books to sell, high quality printing etc...

Artists still have the original piece of art they can sell or make on comission or whatever...

But software? Software isn't like the rest, it has to be updated for bugs, features, or security vulenerabilities. Most software doesn't have any relevent cover art etc... you might sell.

Selling support? Doesn't that imply that it benefits you to make the software buggy and hard to use so you make money? (maybe that explains MS)

So what will get people high quality software then, if not companies making and selling it?

The further I get into the OSS scene, the more I see software that is incomplete, ugly, undocumented, or abandoned.

So we all could pay developers to fix it up right?

Well, with Opera, I pay $40 and get a polished product, support, and documentation that is up to date and properly edited.

With Eudora, it's similar.

Can I get the same from many OSS products? There are the darlings like FF, Mozilla and Apache (but I have to pay for the last in a commercial setting right?)

There's SuSE Linux ... but really, 90 days installation support is pretty weak. The documentation is decent though.

What about any of a hundred things though? I can't get someone for an equivelent amount of money (say under $500) to either update a piece of software like Opera does between versions (or MS Office even) or write documentation for it...

So how does the average user get a similar experiance with most of the OSS software vs most of the Commercial software?

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[Taladar]

I think Opera has a very good strategy that should be copied by more proprietary software vendors:
Make High Quality Software, give away an unlimited (no time limit, no features deativated) trial version and charge a reasonable price from those who want to pay. Less than 40 Euros isn't that much for a piece of Software you use daily (often for several hours per day).

Re:Blind Firefox Zealotry

[maxpublic]

Sorry, the days of paying for a web browser died long ago

Which is undoubtedly why so many of us are willing to pay the fine folks that make Opera. Your statement has little to do with reality.

Besides, I'd much rather have an "open-source" browser leading the market

And your personal preference should matter how?

Max

20$ student discount requires student ID ????

[jeoin]

Yeah sure here is my social security number and my bank account number. Have fun.

This is a much smarter way to get personal information than spy-ware.

Re:20$ student discount requires student ID ????

[AKnightCowboy]

Yeah sure here is my social security number and my bank account number. Have fun.

Your student ID number is your social security number?

Different Holes

[Flamesplash]

So 'we' say Opera, FF etc are all secure and IE isn't. How true is this? I'm seriously asking, not trying to flame.

It seems to me that some are defining 'secure' as 'doesn't have the same security issues as IE'. IE is the biggest browser and obviously should be the target of a hackers energy, but is there anyway of putting a finger on the exploits that will come when Opera, FF etc are big enough to warrent hacker time?

Is there a way to evaluate this? It seems like simply something you have to wait and see. That the security is only available to the minority, by partial fact that it is the minority.

Re:Different Holes

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of exploits for Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror.

Firefox is still installing a susceptable version of Java runtime by default. Of course, it's all Sun's fault, even though there's a newer (fixed) version out, Firefox still grabs the old one.

Zealots just live in a fantasy land where only MSFT software has vulnerabilities.

Re:Different Holes

[m50d]

Well, we can be pretty confident that Mozilla is more secure than IE because Netscape was in the same market position as IE is now for a long time, and yet didn't see the same problems we now have with IE. As for opera etc., we can just compare them to Mozilla and see that they don't seem to have many more vulnerabilities than it.

Re:Different Holes

[Flamesplash]

By definition of the monopoly ruling hasn't Netscape been out of the picture for a long time as far as the net is considered?

As for opera etc., we can just compare them to Mozilla and see that they don't seem to have many more vulnerabilities than it.

Compare how though, if no one is actively targetting it with hacks et al. then how do you know?

Re:Different Holes

[Anonymous Coward]

well at least those browsers arent that thightly integrated into the OS...
i mean, hell if IE wasn't fucked through the whole OS it wouldn't be half as dangerous...

Re:Different Holes

[jp10558]

Well, so far I cannot remember a vuneralbility in Opera that allows attackers write access to your drive, or allow arbitrary code execution.

The recent vunerabilities have been Java issues(really Sun's issue, and affects all browsers) and phishing issues. AFAIK fixed now.

Also, unlike IE, Opera doesn't integrate into the file system - file:// links fail from websites.

Furthermore, Opera doesn't run ActiveX, and javascript is very sandboxed.

Opera also goes beyond firefox in not allowing third party extensions. This is two edged, one the one side, it limits somewhat what the browser possibly could do, but it also prevents many spyware browser toolbars etc... that are prevelant in IE, and starting to show up for FF.

It also only leaves one point of trust, that of Opera software - so you don't have to worry about malicious extension writers, or the security of their sites...

Re:Different Holes

[Anonymous Coward]

Zealots just live in a fantasy land where MSFT software only has vulnerabilities because they're the victim, targeted because they're popular.

Re:Different Holes

[sverrehu]

No software with the complexity of modern browsers is secure. What is more interesting than counting the number of vulnerabilities, is watching how seriously the vendors treat the vulnerabilities in their products. IIRC, Opera has been very quick in fixing the wholes that have been found in their browser. Compare that to the many months Microsoft have spent NOT fixing critical stuff in IE, and you will understand which one of those products I would use if Mozilla/Firefox wasn't around.

Re:Different Holes

[Jugalator]

Well, we can be pretty confident that Mozilla is more secure than IE because Netscape was in the same market position as IE is now for a long time, and yet didn't see the same problems we now have with IE.

Back then, Netscape didn't use the same HTML rendering engine. It was rewritten so you can't make this assumption with the "modern" Netscape 7.

Re:Different Holes

[Jugalator]

So 'we' say Opera, FF etc are all secure and IE isn't.

"Secure" is relative ;-)

So far, it seems like Opera and Firefox is more secure than IE, but neither have been without their quirks.

Neither of those support ActiveX objects like IE does, and neither are integrated in the OS. So a bunch of problems are fixed already on a software design level. But that's basically all we can say about it. All your mentioned browsers have had their shares of severe security exploits, some more than others.

Is there a way to evaluate this? It seems like simply something you have to wait and see.

Yes, you can use for example the software design as indications of where it could be in security. You can also look at their respective exploit histories on sites like e.g. Secunia: Opera 7, Firefox 1.x, IE 6.

There you can find exactly how severe their exploits are, how many there have been, how many are still unpatched, what kind of exploits are most common in the products, etc. I'm not sure how much research is done for IE in comparison to e.g. Firefox though. Since IE is by far the most used browser, it seems logical to think it has most reported bugs simply because most are checking for bugs in that browser. I could be wrong though :-)

Re:Different Holes

[m50d]

Compare them to mozilla in a period when it had similar (low) popularity.

Re:Different Holes

[Taladar]

With Opera it is file://localhost/ but AFAIK it only works when used in the address bar, not as links from arbitary web pages.

Re:Different Holes

[RAMMS EIN]

``So 'we' say Opera, FF etc are all secure and IE isn't. How true is this? I'm seriously asking, not trying to flame.''

I can't recall anybody actually saying that FF is secure. What I have heard is that it's faster and more secure [than MSIE].

Personally, I find FF bloated and slow. This is why I use Opera (or Konqueror, on systems that have KDE installed).

As far as security is concerned, I think we're in very bad shape. MSIE is about as low as you can go, even after years of fixes. FF and Moz are so vast that I am afraid they are full of holes. Konqueror integrates browser and file manager, which makes me very afraid. Opera has not had many vulnerabilities reported against it, but I am doubtful about the time to fix for any closed-source product.

``Is there a way to evaluate this?''

There are various ways, but none will give you a valid and objective assessment of the relative security of the tested products. There are simply too many factors you cannot control.

New?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that they charged in the first place. Haven't they always offered free licenses to educational instititutes? I seem to remember that I got free licenses for website testing under the same programme.

Whatever.

[glrotate]

If GM gave me the title to Corvette, it's free.

Just because I don't get the CAD files doesn't make it unfree.

I really don't care squat about what GNU says.

Re:Whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

If GM gave you a Corvette than you probably don't have what you think you would have as Chevrolet makes the Corvette. Anyway to get the Corvette you would probably have to sign a waiver relasing any future damages between you and the company - which may or maynot extend only the the car but any future transaction.

Re:Whatever.

[glrotate]

Chevrolet isn't a company it's just a marketing brand.

Anyway to get the Corvette you would probably have to sign a waiver relasing any future damages between you and the company - which may or maynot extend only the the car but any future transaction.

Huh? I've never heard of such conditions when a free a free car is given away. Usually they just sign the title over.

Well better than nothing....

[ajaf]

... but why anyone will choose Opera over Internet Explorer or Firefox?
If I don't want to use IE, I use Firefox, I don't see the point of a paid browser anymore.

Re:Well better than nothing....

[jp10558]

Well, I see it as the difference between a chevy and a BMW. Sure I can accomplish basically the same thing getting to work in the chevy, but many people prefer the BMW for all sorts of reasons.

Of course, it is really a personal preference. I just dislike the way FireFox looks (and the idea of extensions) - how stupid is that?

It's not logical, but it sure has sold a lot of cars.

Re:Well better than nothing....

[Taladar]

The idea of extensions is good (see e.g. Fvwm or Emacs-implementations of that idea) but Firefox's implementation of it sucks. They should use an API that almost never changes (due to being feature-complete in the beginning) or even better some kind of integrated scripting language (preferably an existing one like python, ruby,...) that implements all features except the core.

Re:Well better than nothing....

[jp10558]

Well, isn't that what XUL is? I'm not really against scripting in the client (assuming it is sandboxed).

I like the way Opera lets you make your own buttons or menu items or whatever to do complex tasks like copy a link address, open a new page, paste that into the address bar of the new page and go there in that page...

What I don't like is the plug in stuff IE and firefox allow. I have had far too many browser ad ons fubar the browser itself such that you can't remove/fix it. That's bad. Allowing third party integration is just asking for problems, from the above issues to security problems, spyware etc...

I love Opera.

[lythander]

I like Firefox, too. Firefox is an easier transition for IE users, since the interface is very similar, and on the whole it plays nicer with sites which are very IE-specific. Opera is very standards compliant, but doesn't try as hard to play nice with those who aren't.

Opera's multiple document interface is better, IMHO. It's also more featureful out of the box (I know firefox has a gazillion extensions available, many of them damn fine, but you have to go get them).

Opera has also (allegedly, I don't use it this way) taken substantial time to make it customizeable and manageable in an enterprise sense. I think it would be easier to roll out Opera to 150 machines than to roll out Firefox with the same capabilities (i.e. lots of extensions) to the same machines.

Firefox is truly FREE, Opera just doesn't have a cost for use, but for most users (the unwashed masses who care not at all about F/OSS) it doesn't matter.

Now, if Sunbird works out...

Re:I love Opera.

[brownpau]

Opera's wonderfully functional immediately on install. I'm a very keyboard-centric CSS designer on home dialup:

• Just press G, and images are toggled on/off/cached for slow connections.
• Ctrl-G, and styles are toggled on/off to see page structure on CSS layouts. (Also great for unreadable white-on-black 9px Verdana websites)
• Ctrl-Alt-J, and IRC is there to distract me from design.
• 1 and 2, and I can switch between tabs.

I love this browser's functionality via keyboard alone (I don't even use mouse gestures). You don't get all that from Firefox right out of the box.

Re:I love Opera.

[TheRaven64]

Opera is very standards compliant, but doesn't try as hard to play nice with those who aren't.

I seem to recall that Opera has two rendering modes, which are selected based on the user agent string selected. If you set it to Opera then it uses a standards compliant rendering engine. If you set it to IE it uses a broken-in-the-IE-way layout and JavaScript engine. I found a few sites that looked wrong (or had broken JavaScript) when the UA was set to Opera, but worked fine when it was set to IE.

Re:I love Opera.

[John Courtland]

I think that's more the source site sending different style information based on user-agent strings than Opera having multiple rendering engines. The "Bork!" browser that Opera released was a play on this; MSN was specifically targeting Opera browsers and feeding them mangled CSS.

Re:I love Opera.

[Anonymous Coward]

dont forget the lovely z & x for back/forwards.

(and not a big gestures person, i do love the middle click to open new tab / close tab)

This just in:

[shoolz]

Another bunch of nuts are offering free licences to higher education institutions!

Whoa! :P

Serously though, do browsers that one has to pay for have any real relevance in this day... or for that matter, do they have much of a future? I sincerely doubt it.

Re:This just in:

[Taladar]

You should try Opera for a week or two and have a look at http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/01/. That might change your opinion about the relative quality of Firefox and Opera.

Re:This just in:

[shoolz]

Considering that was written in August 2003, it _cannot_ have anything relevant to say about either browser. 18 months is a loooong time ago as far as technology goes. Got any fresher links for me?

Re:This just in:

[Taladar]

It just lists some Advantages of Opera 7 which is still the current version (which doesn't mean no features have been added in between; 7.5 was almost a major version)

You might be interested to read this: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WhyOpera

Opera vs Firefox

[ceeam]

I used to be heavy Opera user. Now I'm exclusively FF user. Not 100% happy with both. You've heard about their selling points, here's what pisses _me_ off (BTW - I use either a dialup line or traffic limited b/b line. If you have a fat free pipe you may not care about this):

Opera:
1) No option to ban loading images from third party sites. (In FF it's "Load Images.. for originating sites only").
2) No option to "Block images from this site".
3) Some versions are more buggy than others. A bit of a checkered pattern.
4) I miss history for forms. I like when I can type a couple of letters on Google search and search again for that stuff in FF.
5) I dunno, v8 kinda fixes it but I can't help feeling that the rendered page feels somewhat watered down or something. Can't explain it better.

FF:
1) Image-less browsing is rudimentary and is a PITA. Please - can I have a button on taskbar to toggle - "show all images / show cached images / no images" like in Opera! Also - when I right click on an image to show it - feel free to show it inline. Also - don't ignore the (known) image size for image placeholders.
2) Since 1.0pr(?) this "You need a plugin" popup bar SO pisses me off! NO! I won't fucking install Flash!!! Shove your ads....
3) Back button is slow sometimes.
4) Tabbed browsing / MDI does not hold a candle to Opera. I tried TabBrowser Extensions but they help only so-so. And they are buggy.
5) It loses a cache all too often. With "modern" pages having hundreds of kb's of images it's an annoyance sometimes. Not to say that offline browsing suffers.

Both:
1) I _SO_ crave for an option to disable iframes "from other sites". Combined with image blocking it would've killed stupid ads dead.
2) Option to save a web page with images and CSS to a single MIME file is a killer feature (in MSIE, gah) when you need to have something after doing your web research. A matter of convenience of course but imagine that Linux kernel would've been distributed as a set of *.c.bz2 files.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[stratjakt]

It would also be nice if Firefox rendered /. properly.

No, increasing then decreasing the font size to have it re-render the screen properly is not an acceptable workaround.

We all liked cracking wise when NT wasn't up to the task of running MS Hotmail, yet our leading OSS browser can't properly display an OSS zealot fansite.

It's pretty funny trying to read how great FF is when the text is overlapping the menu, or not on the screen at all, or it's not wordwrapping..

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[ceeam]

Oh! While we are talking about it... Have you ever tried holding "Ctrl-Minus" key for a while in FF on Windows. The font gets tiny and then BANG! it gets huge again. Yes, it's a WinAPI quirk but still... Opera does not suffer of it.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

1) I _SO_ crave for an option to disable iframes "from other sites". Combined with image blocking it would've killed stupid ads dead.

Use adblock. It allows you to do that (and more), you can block anything that is not part of the page, using shell-like completion (http://*doubleclick.net/*)

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[koreaman]

I totally agree, but I think it's partly Slashdot's fault. Mainly Firefox, but don't discount Slashdot from all blame. The HTML is horrible pre 3.2 rubbish, and the validator reports hundreds of errors. But IMHO Firefox should get off it's Standards Compliance high horse and find a way to deal with sites designed for IE.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an extension called MAF ( Mozilla Archive Format?) that saves pages with images in a single file. Works great with FF.

I don't know how it handles css, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also included in the archive.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I keep seeing this "Firefox doesn't render /. properly" thing, but I've only seen it happen on my browsing maybe a couple of times in all the time I've been using FF. I just hit F5 on those occasions and it rendered fine on the refresh. All the rest of the time /. renders A-OK.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

2) No option to "Block images from this site".

Not exactly an elegant solution, but you can insert wildcards into the filter.ini file. So you could block http://*.examplesite.com/*.gif if you so desired.

If you're only after the ads, you can just use the same file to block the entirety of various advertising sites. A good guide to the filter.ini file is available here.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[jp10558]

I don't know how much you like installing other software (or whether you are on windows), however I think some of either can be fixed with external proxies.

I personally find the best solution for me is Allegrosurf(caching proxy - non free, but I would figure squid would work here as well, I just found this first years ago, still using ancient 4.4 lol) chained to proxomitron for uber site specific settings (I can do ANYTHING to a site with this). Now, proximodo is on sourceforge... OSS clone of proxomitron, compiles natively on linux so... - 0.2 right now, new update pending within the month.

Hey, if you're a coder who liked proxomitron, go over and look into helping out with proximodo!

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[TheRaven64]

3) Some versions are more buggy than others. A bit of a checkered pattern.

I used a beta of Opera for a while (nice, since it was ad-free), and found I really didn't mind the crashing. When Opera loads a page, it saves the browser state. This means after it crashes and I restart it the only thing I've lost is about 10 seconds of time. I don't believe FireFox does this. The same thing happened with {Star,Open}Office - when it crashes it restores the document when you restart it.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[Fancia]

That's fixed, but wasn't merged into the 1.0 branch because of a few problems it caused with other things. The full fix should be in 1.1.

Re:Opera vs Firefox

[Yer Mom]

IMHO MS should fix IE so that it breaks non-standards compliant sites as well. Having approx 90% of their visitors complaining that the site's unreadable is about the only thing that will get web developers (everywhere, not just at Slashdot) to do their job properly and fix their crappy code.

(And that way, those of us that do write good code might get paid a bit more, rather than getting told "don't worry about that, just make it work in IE" :)

Stereotypical not Prototypical

[glrotate]

Stereotypical-A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.

Prototypical-An original type, form, or instance serving as a basis or standard for later stages.

Maybe you're different from the rest of the world.

[Kjella]

As for Opera thanks but no thanks I have the desire to keep using as much really free software as possible promoting further development.

...but I use GNU/free software when it empowers me. Having GIMP empowers me to make a choice about buying Photoshop. But if you can't use software because it's not GNU/free, then you're not freed - you're enslaved to only use the software people are willing to give away for GNU/free.

I'm not going to force myself to use inferior software (not claiming that this is the case here) for no reason. To me, Opera delivers a better product. So other products are OSS. But if that can't deliver, does it matter? No. If you want to preach to anyone but the fanatics, you have to show that this leads to better qualities. Faster. More stable. More secure. More standards-compliant. Great extensions. More flexible.

If the can't argue price (or TCO), you can't argue features, if you can't argue quality, if all you have is that it is GNU/free, noone cares. RMS can preach all he wants. People don't use OSS software because it is OSS, they use it because it is better. Perhaps that's the OSS process, perhaps it's just a bunch of brillant people who could have done the same with a commercial product. But if you can't deliver, it's a dud either way.

Kjella

Maybe you need a new dictionary.

[Anonymous Coward]

They said free, not GNU/Free. RMS doesn't get to arbitrarily change the definitions of words, and buying into that bullshit doesn't help anyone.

That's odd.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have opera and gaim open constantly. They have both been running for over 4 months straight now, without a single crash ever. And I use them every single day, for a significant amount of the day. Maybe the fact that I am running a reliable OS has something to do with it though.

Re:That's odd.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running debian you fool.

You picked the wrong guy to try troll, idiot.

Insightful?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, opera isn't as fast a ff, its much faster. But they are pretty much on par standards wise, with both having small issues here and there, being fixed/introduced all the time in minor version updates.

Is Too

[LPetrazickis]

Is too. For example, Opera 7+ supports CSS3 Media Queries. Firefox doesn't. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.^-^

Re:Open beer: Mod Parent UP!

[popeyethesailor]

Mod Parent Up and Win an "Open" IPod !!!!!!!!!1111

You are doing something very wrong then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single developer here uses opera for development, then tests in IE and NS and works around any of the bugs in those browsers, then publishes. We don't even bother to test mozilla because it changes so often, and so many people are on so many different versions, you can have a site behave 5 different ways on 5 different mozilla versions. It sounds like you are writing code that takes advantage of an incorrect assumption in other browsers, and then complaining because opera did it right.

Re:You are doing something very wrong then.

[TheRaven64]

Last Christmas I wrote a PHP Scrabble game. I didn't have an Internet connection over Christmas (visiting parents), so I just wrote against the XHTML/CSS specs and tested in Safari. When I'd finished, I tried it in other browsers. IE just gave up, Mozilla missed half of the CSS, and Opera rendered it more or less correctly (well, correctly according to the specs, but it looked less nice than the Safari version, particularly the bevelled borders on tiles).

Has everyone here lost all perspective?

[cgenman]

Has everybody on Slashdot lost all perspective on how much of the software out there gets made? Some guy in a basement somewhere, usually Norway or Denmark, starts coding up something. Other people respond to the idea, and encourage them. They polish it and release it as shareware, which people decry as buggy junk. They then get more people, polish it up as much as they can, and the public starts to respond. They get more funding, hire more people, and repeat until you have a nice little independent company owned by a coder with an idea and lots of work ethic.

The people work on the software full-time because they don't have to have a primary job. Working on the software is their job. And isn't that what most people want to do?

I see a ton posts here about "F*ck them, they should have made it Open Source and looked for other ways to make money." What would be the point of that? That's saying they should have given up on the browser and done something else. They're doing something nobody thought possible: Surviving selling an independent browser in a hotly contested market. They're an independent company taking on a behemoth on their terms and shaking things up in the process. Give up on the fanboyisms and get a little perspective on what they've done.

I hate to break your illusions, but a lot of the development effort (and all of the full-time coders) for the Mozilla / Firefox rendering effort has been funded by large non-free software corporations. GASP Oh the horrors!

I'm not saying that free software is good or bad or dead. But I am saying that the software ecosystem is a lot more complicated than the pundits here are making it out to be. Stop taking such a simplistic view of things, it makes it harder for me to convince people that the OSS movement isn't a bunch of raving loonies. I had to live with an Access database for several months last time that happened.

Re:Has everyone here lost all perspective?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some guy in a basement somewhere, usually Norway or Denmark, starts coding up something. Other people respond to the idea, and encourage them. They polish it and release it as shareware, which people decry as buggy junk. They then get more people, polish it up as much as they can, and the public starts to respond. They get more funding, hire more people, and repeat until you have a nice little independent company owned by a coder with an idea and lots of work ethic.

The 80's called; they want their software development model back.

Seriously, with today's market consolidation combined with IP encumbrance, the majority of significant software development has shifted to massive corporations.

Re:Has everyone here lost all perspective?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Just tell the business people that the "open source" movement is different than the "free software" movement. One is about more useful software, and the other is political. If you disagree with the politics of "free software" or think they are lunatics, you can still support "open source". The licenses may be the same, but the attitudes and emphasises are not.

Re:Has everyone here lost all perspective?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for Opera, which started in a basement. And instant messengers. And bittorrent. P2P. Anti adware software. Hmm... maybe there is some life left in this model.

Not all software happens that way, but definitely a statistically significant percentage.

Re:Has everyone here lost all perspective?

[WindowsWasher]

"Has everyone here lost all perspective?"

Thank you for your post. I am glad someone is able to look at the bigger picture.

I would like to add, as someone who has used both of the aforementioned browsers extensively, that comparing Opera to FireFox is akin to comparing apples to oranges.

FireFox is a good browser and that is what it is designed to be. Opera, on the other hand, has a sophisticated set of features that allows a browser to become a tool that serves to enhance the browsing experience. For research purposes, Opera is unparalleled. Opera is very well suited for the Academic environment, and I applaud the decision to make Opera available to the academic community.

I dont get it

[nrgy]

I dont get what people mean when a browser is FASTER. Ive been a Opera user for 2 years now and unless my conception of time is off its surely not slow. Ive used just about most browsers out their being at different friends houses and the one thing Ive noticed with them all is a page loads up at just about the same speed regardless. Either its your connection, computer or the webpage most of the time, not the webbrowser. Now saying you wont pay for a browser is ones choice but I look at it like most good software I use. Ive paid for mIRC, All Seeing Eye, Opera and a few others, its just like when people donate to free software projects. If you like the app whats the gripe for supporting the people? Just in this case its a company but still the same principle. I just dont get the main complaints everyone always talks about when they mention webbrowsers, because out of all my years surfing the web a browser is a browser.

Re:I dont get it

[jp10558]

Well, it has a lot to do with how the rendering engines work. Maybe you have been blessed with broadband, but at home on dial up, IE will sit there with a blank screen for 40 seconds... whereas Opera, because it gives more precedence to text, will often have the text part of the page on screen in 5 or 6 seconds...

That's a big difference in getting things done, maybe not technically faster, but seems that way.

does this one support xmlhttprequest or SOAP

[cyfer2000]

If not...I won't try.

Re:Maybe you're different from the rest of the wor

[jp10558]

I don't currently have mod points so let me just say +1.

I don't get the whole FLOSS thing, to me the only benefit I see from it is that it is free. If a commercial company or hell, anyone gave me something for free that is similar in capibilities, I see it the same.

I even know some C++, but I certainly couldn't get into the code to do anything. Both are black boxes to me.

I agree with the idea that you are needlessly limiting yourself (severley as I see it) if you will only use FLOSS.

I call bullshit.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

BULLSHIT!

I love open source, use it, enjoy it, support it (take time out of busy day to report firefox bugs, and donated money) and I cheer RMS on and on....

But your little quote is bullshit. I think what they are doing is great. Free = don't pay $ so yes, it IS free.

If Mercedes gave you a car for free, but said "don't open the engine hood at all, otherwise drive the car as much as you want" would you turn the car down and say the car isn't free?

Free software does NOT have to come with enough rights that you can do what you want with the code. Is that ideal? Yes. Is that a better thing? Yes. But don't bash companies for giving things away for free like this, that's crazy.

You probrably also think IBM allowing open source programmers use 500+ patents is a bad thing, since it's less than %1 of their patent portfolio. WTF?!?! It's a start, and a great one, and when MS wants to patent FAT to lock everyone out, the IBM move is nothing short of fantastic.

Don't take pictures of RMS playing his flute in front of a butterfly picture too literal. The world does not work that way. There are levels of free, levels of good or bad, not everything is black and white. I see the move Opera is making as nothing short of fantastic.

What a Karmawhore

[bit trollent]

Thanks for explaining what "free" (GNU/free) software is to us slashdotters. We would not have known had you not given such an insightful definition. Certainly we have not seen the same content over 1000 times on this site. Congratulations on your newfound karma, your preformatted first post with a little addendum tacked on to not be seen obviously offtopic sure has earned it.

-1 redunent
-1 offtopic
-1 karmawhore
-1 redunent
= +4 informative

Sometimes I wonder why I bother

Number of tabs open...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep the number of tabs down, and you should be fine.

Yep, I never run more than 3 tabs open, and when I want more, I'll use multiple instances of Firefox instead. It never has crashed for me that way, and I've had a half-dozen or more instances going with two or three tabs open each, without nary a crash yet.

Re:I love Opera.(too)

[raphman]

I love Opera, too. I even paid for it.

To those people who ask why to use this browser instead of Firefox:

A friend of mine, a hardcore linux fanatic, recently switched to Mac OS X for his office work. He realized, that he has too much work to do to fiddle with cryptic config files and bad usability. And on a Mac he gets his stuff done, that's what counts.

The same thing with Opera: It works out of the box, without the need to install extensions (unfortunately even without the possibility to do so). Opera to Firefox is quite like vi to kwrite.

And, as a side note, Opera Inc. seems to be a really nice company, giving away stuff for free, doing great support and making innovative software.

Nearly every cool feature Opera invented was later incorporated into other browsers. Unlike Apple Opera never sued anyone over implementing tabbed browsing or mouse gestures.

I'm definitely no closed source supporter but it would be sad for me, if a great browser and many creative developers (with families to feed) got crushed by this Firefox avalanche.

I'd really like Opera to be Open Source (because there are some behaviours I would really like to change) but sometimes you have to pay for a great product (as for a great newspaper, a great book, a great LP, a great painting).

What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[geoffrobinson]

Honestly asking. Is there anything they offer which is noticeably superior to Firefox?

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[slapout]

• Tabbed Browsing Built in
  
  
• Different settings for each open window. For instance, you can have one website open with pictures turned on and another with them turned off.
  
  
• If it/computer crashes, you can have it open with the websites you were viewing when it crashed.
  
  
• Google search bar built in.
  
  
• Has a toggle switch to make viewing ugly websites easier. Like if you find a site with yellow text on a white background it can render it with black text.
  
  
• Mouse gestures
  
  
• Mouse clicks: Holding right button and clicking left is like hitting back button. Holding left button and clicking right button is like hitting forward button.
  
  
• FireFox: 4.7 MB (Windows) Opera: 3.5 MB (Windows, non java version). I'm not sure if the FireFox download includes java.
  
  
• FireFox: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Opera: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, OS/2 (older version), QNX (older version) and mobile phones.
  
  

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[TheRaven64]

I haven't used FireFox much, so I don't know how many of these features it misses, but here are a few of the things I liked about Opera:

• The ability to toggle image display with a single button.
• The option to switch to your own/no CSS with a single button press (including some nice options, such as one that shows structural tags). Very nice with sites with ugly CSS.
• Much better IE compatibility than any other browser I've used.
• Mouse gestures. I know they are available as a FireFox extension, but last time I checked this didn't support my favourite one: right-drag down on a link opens the link in a new tab.
• It's tiny. Really. Around 3MB for a full featured browser and mail client.
• Easy to change User Agent string for those sites that work fine in Opera but redirect you to a `You need IE' page anyway.
• Rembers open windows / tabs on exit, so you can restart browsing at exactly the same point.
• Tabs can be re-ordered by dragging them around the tab-bar (I don't know if FireFox does this, but it's a feature I really miss in Safari).

I'm sure there were several others.

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[d3bruts1d]

In addition to the other replies... A much more customizable interface. Tabs that work Notes

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[Taladar]

Not specific to Firefox but here are some of the key advantages of Opera: http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/01/

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[Illissius]

As I've tried multiple times to get off my Opera addiction and couldn't, hopefully I can provide some insight on this :)

I'm comparing the version of Opera I currently use, eg. 8.0 beta1. It smacks a vanilla Firefox around so badly it's not even worth contrasting, so I'll be comparing to the fully-decked-out-with-extensions version of Firefox. In no particular order:
- Lighter and faster. Opera is ~3MB, complete with mail client, IRC, and all the rest; vanilla Firefox is 4-5MB (used to be much more, so they're making progress). Opera is also faster: it runs acceptably on my mom's 200MHz Cyrix, while Firefox feels slower even on my AXP 2400+ -- and that's with Firefox compiled specifically for my processor (Gentoo, and all), and Opera plain i386 (can't exactly compile it myself ;). And while Opera isn't a speed demon in loading the app itself (but not too slow either), it's still a hell of a lot faster than the 20-30 seconds a Firefox fully decked out with extensions sometimes takes.
- Full MDI (windows within windows), not just tabs -- this means popups can be opened in the same window.
- ...which leads to: nothing is *ever* opened outside of the base window except when you specifically request it with 'new window'. Firefox, despite the myriad extensions for it, is still very bad at this.
- Minimize tabs, meaning it won't be activated (after you close the previous tab, etc.) until you unminimize it.
- Incredibly snappy navigation. If it has a page in cache, it displays it *immediately* -- press back, and wham, it's already there, no waiting to load or anything.
- Nicer mouse gestures. I can rightclick on a link and drag downwards to open it in a new tab; ctrl+shift+drag an image to open it in a background tab, and so on. Being able to hold the right mouse button and scroll the wheel to switch between tabs is also very convenient.
- The integrated mail client is nice and simple (very GMail-ish), and convenient because I have Opera open nearly all the time anyways. (I'll be the first to admit, however, that the IRC client is pointless and a waste of time and effort.)
- The integrated notes are likewise pretty nice; right click -> copy to note is a very quick and easy way to store the various funnies you find. It also stores the URL you saved them from though I haven't yet had a use for this.
- Lots of powerful things you can do with the sidepanel. For example, open the 'links' panel, select the ones you want, select 'open in background page'. This is very convenient for pages with a ton a links you all want to download. Or open the windows panel and move pages between toplevel windows, mass-reload/close them, and so on. You can even add webpages to the sidebar as panels, and use Opera's small screen rendering (normally for cellphones) to render them.
- Bookmark nicknames, including folders -- say you have a bookmark to slashdot; you could nickname it '/.' and just type that. That's not much in itself, but you can also give nicknames to folders, so I just type 'technews' and it opens all of my 20-some tech sites at once (after which I just drag my mouse down-right for each once it's sufficiently loaded to determine that nothing's new, and middleclick on things I want to read to open them in the background, etc.).
- Keeps a list of closed pages, providing undo functionality, meaning you can press ctrl+z to reopen the page you last closed (at the same position/etc), and again for the one before it, and so on.
- Widgets in webpages are styled according to Opera's skin.
- Fastforward -- find the 'next' link on the page, follow it. Doubly effective with mouse gestures, as if there isn't a page forwards in the history, it automatically fastforwards instead. And if there's a login form for which you've stored the password, it'll log you in.
- If it crashes, it pops up a dialog asking whether you want to continue from where you left off next time you start it.
And I probably forgot half of them because it's

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better, right click + down + up = open in background. Simple, useful, and something Mozilla / Firefox still doesn't have last I checked.

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[jp10558]

One thing, if you try and make a nickname /. in Opera 7.54 (I just tried, and I would guess this hasn't changed in 8) you get an error that nicknames cannot contain (among other things) slashes, backslashes, colons, or periods.

So /. is right out. Too bad really, that would have been awesome. I ended up with sd, no idea if I'll ever remember that though.

One other thing that *sometimes* works on images in that situation is rightclick, load image. It doesn't always work, and I have no idea why.

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[Illissius]

Well, I'll admit I never actually tried that :). It does accept spaces though, and I have a few with those, which is why I assumed mostly anything will go...

Enough

[siskbc]

Not everything has to be a F/OSS debate, does it? He never said it was FOSS, he said they were giving it away for free, which is different, and oddly enough a supported usage of the word.

As for Opera thanks but no thanks I have the desire to keep using as much really free software as possible promoting further development.

OK. Go for it This has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, however. Troll elsewhere.

Re:Enough

[phats garage]

I'm looking for gpl'ed car, house and food. Hopefully my wife will have a bsd license tho.

Re:Enough

[siskbc]

I'm looking for gpl'ed car, house and food. Hopefully my wife will have a bsd license tho.

I should say. ;)

Exactly

[siskbc]

It's not the number of bugs, it's the fact that a buffer overflow in IE gives a root exploit. Yay!

Opera and Firefox both have good and bad points

[Secrity]

I used to use Opera (I even paid for it) but have went to Firefox. The reason that I dropped Opera and went to Firefox was because Opera's JAVA implementation (with Sun Java) did not work properly with the web site that I administer for work. I really miss being able to automatically open the tabs that I had open when it was last shutdown (or crashed) and I cannot find a Firefox plugin that mimics this behavior.

Re:Opera and Firefox both have good and bad points

[Taladar]

Isn't Sun Java the reference implementation of Java. Shouldn't you fix your Java Code if you administer a site that doesn't work with the Sun JRE?

Re:Opera and Firefox both have good and bad points

[Secrity]

The website was tested to work with most releases of Firefox, Netscape, MSIE, and other browsers under Windows, Solaris, Linux, and OS-X. Some XP users have to install the Sun JRE. I only support the use of the site using Firefox, Netscape, and Camino; I would support Opera if it worked with our site. Opera just won't work with certain parts of our Java code. The servers run Solaris, use Sun Java, and the website code was optimised for use with Netscape.

Free as in free lunch

[adeydas]

Opera is going not going to charge higher education institutions for their browsers. However, this does not mean that it will give them its source code. Its free as in free lunch not freedom of speech.

Don't forget printing in Opera sucks

[gosand]

I am an Opera user, mainly because of a few features that FF hasn't gotten right (for my taste) yet.

Tabbed browsing just feels better to me in Opera

"Continue from last time" rocks

Customizing just feels better to me in Opera

Mouse gestures in Opera are better

Now FF may have these in some form or another, but I like Opera's implementation better. If I close my last tab in Opera (usually via mouse gesture), the browser doesn't close. Last time I checked FF, it did. I can double-click in a blank (no tabs) browser and open a new one. Just little things that I have grown to get used to.

However, printing in Opera sucks. I can print, but things get just cut off. This happens in Windows and Linux. If I need to print something, I open it in FF. Opera crashes or hogs resources on occasion (Linux more often) and I have to kill it. I am not sure why, but it is annoying.

I'll keep trying FF new releases, but so far Opera is my main browser.

Netscape

[Anonymous Coward]

"They should have made the program free for everyone and look elsewhere for sources of income. Firefox is gaining market share at a steady pace and if Opera doesn't act now, they'll be out of the game."

Echoes of Netscape. It was originally sold for money BUT free for educational use. Then under pressure from the 'free' IE it was free of charge for everyone. Then Netscape died and the corpse was bought by AOL.

Yes, it was ressurected in a sense years later, so maybe by 2008 or 2009 there will be an open source child o'opera browser, but will Opera the company still be around?

Support

[killmenow]

There are a number of ways to provide support:

1. Donate money - which I've done
2. Donate time, as in debugging and testing and submitting bug reports - which I've done
3. Donate code - which I haven't done publicly because I am too afraid my code would inspire ridicule
4. Evangelize - which I've done
5. Thank the contributors - which I've done

Preaching or evangelizing about an open source project does indeed support it. Word of mouth is what has taken many itty bitty projects and gained them the momentum to make them hugely successful projects.

Sounds like a good marketing move

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of an interesting article I just read from the Operawatch blog about Opera needing to improve its brand image in light of Firefox's growing popularity. I think the author would agree that making inroads in the academic sector is a smart thing to do.

http://www.cjas.org/~leng/opera.htm

Re:I love Opera.(too)

[Taladar]

You might want to have a look at http://my.opera.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumi d=28. I only recently discovered it myself after having used Opera for years. You can change a lot more in Opera than you might think.

Firefox is irrelevant.

[hkmwbz]

"I agree with the other posts that said it is basically an act of desperation. Firefox surely is big threat to Opera."

Firefox is totally irrelevant, as Opera's main income is from the mobile market. An "act of desperation" would be trying to use patents to kill the competition or lying or otherwise doing stupid things. Offering Opera for free is a clever move, as it creates brand recognition in a new generation of workers.

Now, the good Firefox fan would of course be quick to mention Minimo on mobiles, but the problem is that Minimo requires a lot more memory than Opera, and Opera is well ahead of it already.

Or y'know, not...

[XeRXeS-TCN]

Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet.

Translation: Opera Software are doing so because they are already getting slated by Mozilla Firefox, and they don't have the money and ignorance of Microsoft to sit around doing nothing.

The culprit is English.

[jbn-o]

Then what really needs to be modded down is the English language for placing such disparate concepts under the same word--free. If we were writing in any other language, it's quite likely we'd use different words for these concepts (French's "libre" versus "gratuit", for example). Brad Kuhn introduces this concept early in his talks by saying "The English language has a bug" and he's right.

Slightly offtopic: one entertaining side effect of English's overloading is found in Eben Moglen's speeches where he uses "free" to mean either freedom or zero price (but he never mixes the two up) and he leaves it up to you to recognize the difference.

It covers all students...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It remains to be seen, however, whether Opera will allow schools to give standard Opera licenses to students to use on personal computers/laptops within campus at no additional cost, that came with the $1000 license fee. "

If they are giving the institution a license for all of thier computers, then students using computers owned by the university can use Opera. If you're asking whether or not Opera is going to give students the right to use Opera at home, that's a different issue.

Brooklyn.

Re:I love Opera.(too)

[raphman]

But not the User-Agent-String :( Would be nice to surf as Googlebot.

Or maybe he's not.

[Just Some Guy]

In other words, you value OSS but don't value Free Software. That's your decision - you're free to make up your own mind - but you should realize that Free software (as opposed to OSS) really is that important to many of us.

See, personally, I have zero use for OSS, but I use Free software extensively and contribute to it whenever I can. An OSS or proprietary alternative to Free software would have to be much better before I'd be willing to give up my freedoms by using it. This might sound strange to you, but I guarantee you that the number of people like me is growing constantly.

Don't believe me? OK, try this. Do you really think that Linux 1.0 was better than the DEC, HP, or Sun Unixes available at that time? No - it was pretty lame by comparison in pretty much an metric you'd like to use. Developers flocked to it in droves anyway, though, because it was Free and they could shape it as they saw fit. By the same token, many of us have been using Mozilla for years, even though a gratis version of Opera was available.

Frankly, I have the discretionary income to shell out some $$$ for a good browser. I don't, not because I can't, but because "cheap" or "gratis" has little value to me in this context.

With opera you can use gmail...

[Vacant Mind]

And I'm pretty sure you can't in firefox.

Readable version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/12/1 420246

Slashfix

[Quizo69]

Slashfix is the answer to your woes.

Re:I love Opera.(too)

[cgenman]

I love opera: Opera pioneered a lot in this industry. Mouse Gestures. Freestanding searches as folders in e-mail. MDI browsing. Zooming. CSS switching. Using the address bar as a rudimentary command line. Browser identification string monkeying. The Links Pannel. Undoing closing windows. Remembering open windows between sessions or crashes. Storing text editing fields in history. Saving sessions. Automatic reloads. Pop-up blocking. Cookie management. Mouseless arrow-key navigation. Open-in-the-background.

But they didn't do tabbed browsing first. Sorry. If I'm not mistaken that honor goes to iCab. Mozilla (this predated firefox) followed suit and had it for about six months months before Opera de-emphasized the window menu and added a tab bar.