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Opera 8 Released
bonch writes "After a series of beta releases, Opera 8 final has now been released. Read the announcement complete with download links. The new Opera sports a streamlined interface and several rendering improvements."
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The question every firefox user is asking: Does it render slashdot correctly?
release date on the dmg download for the Mac is April 18.
Two comments:
1. It is very fast.
2. Keychain integration, so all the web site passwords from your other keychain-enabled browsers (firefox, safari, etc.) on your Mac will be remembered.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Here are the links to the Opera web site and downloads.
screen shots here
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
In all honesty, for the past 3-4 weeks firefox has been rendering slash properly for me.
v1.0.2
Anyone else out there, or am I just lucky?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Opera 8 works really well. I haven't had any issues so far. The speed seems on par with Firefox.
One impressive point is that Opera stays up on their security patches. Version 7.0 only had 35 issues since 2002 and they were all patched relatively quickly.
The linky got me a proxy error, so here are some others.
...and what is up with OperaMan?
Product page with download links etc.
The Register
The Google
This Like That - fun with words!
I know that Firefox is all the rage these days, but Opera has a pretty faithful user base....or did I miss a slash-think programming update, the one where we're supposed to badmouth and laugh at Opera?
News for nerds, editors opinions that don't matter
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Once you get used to the mouse gestures, you end up trying to use them everywhere (file explorer for exemple).
;-)
Other features I use all the time are the "disable CSS", "disable Java", "disable plug-ins" and "disable Javascript" options in the quick-access menu (F12). Stupid websites java menus (when simple CSS could do the job), or Flash all over the place, or javascript that messes with the status line (or, god forbid, have crap following my cursor) almost force me to use Opera.
Give me the same features that Opera has in the F12 menu and the same mouse gestures in Firefox, and then *MAYBE* I'd switch.
As for the ads, well... The browser HAS to get them somewhere... If you follow my drift.
And Opera changed a LOT since version 5. You comment about "the last time you tried Opera" is akin to me telling your that "Linux still doesn't have a GUI"...
After all the bluster from the leader at Opera about making the next generation of IE do the last standards correctly. I would think that his next product would pass the test? Yes/NO...anyone who owns Opera 8 please report if ACID2 passes on Opera8.
http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Only thing I miss from Opera in Firefox is the zoom. The Opera zoom is really nice.. it's like zooming a PDF (or.. well.. just about anything else with a proper zoom, really) - everything scales up together. Firefox just changes the font size.
Does anyone know of a Firefox extension that can do this? I've tried Imagezoom, but it doesn't really work too well (particularly scrolling on large images), and anyways, it only zooms up the images seperately
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Having tried Firefox, and having used Opera for a long time, I can honestly say that yes, it is worth it to pay for a nice bundled browser package, even if you could jerry-rig a free browser to have most of the same functionality. I'm willing to bet that a few years from now, Opera will still be around. I have my doubts about Firefox.
Last I checked, Opera had about 1/23rd of FF's users. I dunno, maybe that's off... but I think Firefox has passed the flash-in-the-pan stage.
As for the rest, I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but what does Opera have that I would really want in my Firefox? I mean, from your experience, what does Firefox really lack that makes a browser worth paying cash for?
(This is a partial repost from my own blog entry on Opera 8
Opera is giving away free licenses to people who help spread Opera. That's right, you can get a free license for an ad-free Opera, provided you do the following:
[1] It's actually getting them to visit my.opera.com, but: People should really, really try Opera 8. It's quite brilliant, and in many ways sets the standard for what a web browser should and should not do.
http://virtuelvis.com/
... in fact I was an Opera fanboy. There are still features i like in it that i'm not sure have been emulated using firefox extentions, such as the zoom, fastforward and changing styles on the fly. Even the mousegestures, to me, seem more polished. But... They've taken a pretty firm stance against including an adblock feature (nevermind that they were the first browser with popup blocking, i believe). There is filter.ini, but it's not the same. It's hidden, and you can't block an image with a simple rightclick. It accepts wildcards, but i don't think it accepts regular expressions. For me blocking ads is more important than the rest of those nice features. I don't care if that makes me a "thief" or whatever. I understand them taking the stance they do, afterall, they DO serve their own ads. But, as long as they don't have a good blocker, i won't be using their browser.
Can't you do all of that with firefox? I have the deverloper toolbar and the first dropdown menu is "disable" on it is "cache, cookies, image animations, images, java, javascript, page colors, popup blockers, referral logging, and styles (which is another submenu consisting of all styles, embedded styles, inline styles, linked style sheets, and an individual style sheet selector).e nsions/morei nfo.php?application=firefox&category=Developer%20T ools&numpg=10&id=60
e nsions/morei nfo.php?application=firefox&version=1.0&os=Windows &category=Navigation&numpg=10&id=39
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/ext
you can also use mouse gestures with a FF extension:
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/ext
and finally, I don't get your drift on the broswer has to get the ads somewhere. What do you mean?
My favorite feature of Opera is the preview in a mobile device option. Now that is handy (to me as a web developer).
I can't get to the page, but I think this is the first browswer with a svg (Scalable vector graphics) renderer. If so, this could be quite the interesting release...
Believe it or not, there are some people who like the idea of using non-MS products, and also like to pay a set amount of money up front, to establish a market.
Opera needs an ad campaign featuring a giant viking woman in a horned helm and bullet-proof brassiere, surfing that internet cloud from slide #17 on a winged horse.
The mist parts. Below, a large herd of "e" creatures on a hillside.
She swoops down, and waves her axe. A large black rectangle appears on the ground adjacent the herd of "e"s. The upper left corner of the box has a grey "c:\welcome\to\troll\tuesday" printed. She waves the axe in a sweeping backhand, and the "e" creatures are flung into the black abyss. She hurls the axe at the X in the upper right corner of the grey rectangle. She smiles.
(can anyone identify the powdery residue at the bottom of my coffee cup?)
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
All the good features in Firefox (gestures, tabbed browsing) were around for a long time in Opera. Likewise, if you've ever used GMail, you have used an imitation of Opera's M2 mail client. Opera still does many things far better than Firefox (zoom, quick-change with the F12 menu) and you don't have to download a zillion extensions to match Opera's sub-10MB download.
Opera is an innovative company that puts out an outstanding and lightweight product. Google and the Firefox team have a lot to thank Opera for.
For more information, click here.
You're referring to developers who are working on the Firefox user interface. Most of Firefox is the Gecko core that's shared with Thunderbird, the Suite, Camino, etc. There are more than ten full-time active developers who work on various parts of Firefox (several of whom work at other companies such as Red Hat), plus hundreds of part-time volunteer developers.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Apparently being pro-Firefox involves being anti-everything else. There's no need for all the antagonism and martyrdom.
The main thing about Firefox that bugs me is the plugins. Features such as tabbed browsing, and mouse gestures come standard with Opera, where with Firefox (at least when I tried it), you're required to track down and choose what plugin you want. These appear to be third-party plugins. God knows what code's in them, or if they'll break if you update Firefox.
My second main complaint with Firefox is the horrendously huge Thunderbird. Again, Opera has it's own built-in mail client.
The things that keep me using Opera are:
That's about all I can think of right now. These things, to me anyway, make it worth the purchase price.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
http://virtuelvis.com/
Actually, Opera has SVG Tiny profile support. It's ported from their cell phone browser and it's a long way the SVG complete profile that Mozilla is shooting for. Also, Firefox 1.1 will ship with SVG support in June, though most of the animation features are not yet available.
As for Opera having functionality built-in, it's really just a difference of approach. Opera gives you everything and you can shut off what you don't want. Firefox gives you the basics and a simple extension system to add any extras. I prefer the Firefox approach because I already spend enough time minimizing systems. I can easily see how one could prefer the Opera approach, however.
I read a lot of comments here about comparisons between firefox and opera, and why one is better than the other and so on. Some of the comments then discuss the sizes of the businesses ,and how viable they are, and so on.
Please, don't forget that the desktop user experience is only _one_ dimension to the problem - remember that Opera aims its business at the embedded/mobile market by producing a light and fast browser. Don't forget that supporting embedded and mobile devices is more than just "porting to a new platform", so if Opera is well engineered from the bottom up to support this area, then it's leagues ahead of Firefox in that game.
There are many, many, many other markets for webbrowsers other than your desktop - phones, kiosks, consumer products, set top boxes, etc, etc, etc. This is a pretty big market, and probably has a greater revenue stream. Sure, firefox may quote user/download statistics: but just how many of them have resulted in cash back into the business? In addition, remember that someone like Opera may not be able to quote (or even know) its total user base because of commercial confidentiality issues.
If you're a business looking to integrate web browser, I think the nit-picky user issues may be traded off against cost and technical issues, and that's where Opera may have an advantage over Firefox (and over IE/CE).
Opera's press release. Google cache.
Features such as tabbed browsing, and mouse gestures come standard with Opera, where with Firefox (at least when I tried it), you're required to track down and choose what plugin you want.
Just a minor correction. Firefox comes out of the box with tabbed browsing. The plugin is just for more options in controlling the behaivor of it.
I think the thing that Opera is better than Firefox in is speed and polish. It's very fast and the UI has been well thought out. Things in the browser work in ways you didn't even know you wanted them to...
As I mentioned above though the lack of decent adblock utility with it is holding a lot of people back. I know there is an adblock.css to use and there is the filter thing but installing and using them are an eyesore compared to how nicely polished the rest of the program is and they in no way compare to the ease of adblock for firefox. I can't wait until one shows up for Opera. I'd use it and not look back.
The license key you recieve when you do that is not valid for Opera 8 .
That is a limited offer for Opera 7.x that ran in a german computer magazine.
http://virtuelvis.com/
Opera state on their website that:
"We've cleaned up our front yard. The Opera 8 interface is designed to make the advanced functions easy and effective to use. Menus, toolbars and other elements have undergone our "slim and clean"-routine. The licensed version has the largest browsing area in the industry."
Admittedly I haven't had a chance to try Opera 8 yet (still waiting for the server to settle down), however if they can get the screen real estate you can achieve with the Firefox-based K-Meleon (in which you can have every single item, including menus, on the one line), then I'll be impressed, and probably switch back. I doubt that they'll be able to back the above claim up, however...
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> Besides, I know of very few people who use Opera,
> while almost everyone I know uses Firefox
Hmm. I know of very few people who use X while almost everyone I know uses Y...if this is logically valid, shouldn't we all still be using IE?
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
There are lots of more compelling features. That was just one
I could go on a lot longer, but these are some of the features that Firefox doesn't do properly, even with extensions that attempt to do (some of) the same.
http://virtuelvis.com/
If you want ad/malware-blocking you can install a local web-proxy like Proxomitron to add this to whatever browser you like. To speak in "Firefox language" consider it an ad-blocking extension to Opera, or IE or Mozilla, or Lynx or telnet for that matter. No need to put something as basic & genericly useful as ad-blocking in a browser is there?
Plus, if this isn't enough, you can always install a custom hosts ad-blocking file or a custom ad-blocking user-css file. After all all modern browsers support user-css. I'm using Firefox as we speak, but I've used Opera for a long time and I never had a problem with ads.
As for the rest of your post. Opera comes as big bundle, but noone is forcing you to use anything you dont want. It's not like we are talking Realplayer here!
Incidently I've never had any troubles upgrading Opera either. Why should you have troubles upgrading a browser anyway?
And Opera is faster & more responsive than Firefox has ever been. Using Firefox I still feel impatient every now and then knowing how fast Opera did respond in similar situastions.
So why did I switch from Opera to Firefox? Gmail and my online-banking didn't work in Opera, and I refused to use IE. In the end I got too fed up having to switch browsers. And I needed to get my mail checked and bills paid.
However Im not so narrow-minded I can't see the market for Opera. In fact if there is one thing I hate about Firefox: it's the lousy cache. Loisy crappy only to IE cache. When I press back in Opera, Im back when the mousebutton is released. When I do that in Firefox on my 1GB 2.4GHz P4 I still have to wait several seconds. Which is totally unacceptable.
And for all you Firefox fans out there. Remember all these features like tabed-browsing, popup-stoppers, user-agent switcher, plugin-control and stuff like that which you use to promotote Firefox? Remember how Firefox copied those from Opera? Nothing wrong with reusing a good idea, Im not saying that! But dissing Opera while getting your main attractions from it at the same time... Well, it just smells bad.
Yours sincerely, a less zealous Firefox user.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I used Opera for four years, from 2000-2004, then switched to Firefox for 2 main reasons:
1) Smaller menu bar at the top
2) I felt like a change
To be honest, though, Firefox was a bitch to set up with my three favorite features from Opera:
1)Mouse gestures - the Firefox extension's all-in-one gestures default to different gestures than the opera ones, which was annoying to fix, but not a big deal. Opera's defaults are more intuitive, too.
2) Save session. It took me awhile to find a good working version of this for Firefox, but I loved resuming my session when I closed Opera.
3) Quickly turn on and off pop-ups with F12. Still no good solution in Firefox, as far as I've found.
The fact that Firefox needs an extension for single-window mode is also kind of stupid and annoying. Other people have said this above, but good grief, people, Firefox owes a LOT to Opera. In fact, in a comparison I like Opera more. It's not IE. Firefox is NOT the end all of browsers; it's on par with Opera. Once I get bored with Firefox, I'll probably switch back. And the ad is a small price to pay for promoting a good product. It's a small bar, and if you hate it that much the inevitable crack takes maybe 1 minute of Googling to find.
Other smaller things I also liked, like how link addresses pop up in a tooltip on mouseover. This allowed me to cut out the statusbar without travelling blind. It can still show during page loads, but doesn't take up space during viewing. A nice touch too was the way tab favicons shrink as more tabs open up, allowing more room on the row.
I've been a diehard Firefox fanboy because of the customizability (and full Gmail support), but I'd like to see some of these features in upcoming releases.
http://ftp.tiscali.nl/opera/ -- if you can't download it from www.opera.com... I can't... Only I do know we have a mirror.. ;)
[]
Edward TLS
Proxomitron is not being developed anymore. Sadly, the writer died. No one has the source that I know of.
There is a clone being developed called Proximodo, search sourceforge for more info.
The filtersets are still being developed, as indicated by the date of the filterset.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Neither mouse gestures nor tabbed interface to multiple documents were invented by Opera. They "only" brought it to the browser world in a good way. Software patents would have prohibited that and maybe would have lead to several applications, each with one killer feature, but none with all of them.