Opera Turns 10, Gives Away Free Registrations

osvejda writes "Opera Software ASA is celebrating 10-year anniversary of its browser. As a surprise party favor they're giving away free registration codes (for as long as the party lasts). Also see photos from the party, listen to music by employees, play games and more."

Comments

Easy instructions

[dividedsky319]

"For one day only, you can get an ad-free version of Opera. Simply e-mail registerme@opera.com to obtain a registration code. This offer is valid from 12 a.m. Tuesday, August 30 to 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT)."

Re:Easy instructions

[nemexi]

Didn't work for me, took a few hours for others. This link gives you a reg code immediately.

Registration Code

[nemexi]

Get your free registration code here.

Happy Birthday Opera!

[samj]

The form was already running slowly before Slashdot arrived so if it breaks (as it no doubt will), you can get a code by mail per http://www.download.com/Opera/3000-2356_4-10421507 .html?tag=excl

Note: For one day only, you can get an ad-free version of Opera. Simply e-mail registerme@opera.com to obtain a registration code. This offer is valid from 12 a.m. Tuesday, August 30 to 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT).

Re:Codes are for

[Dakisha]

After firefox and safari? :)

I use opera before I'll touch firefox. There is the odd website that prefers firefox, but its pretty rare.

This is nothing more than the usual opera fan pouring his heart out about how wonderful the interface to opera is. I cant stand the tab implimentation in firefox, it's borked!

Tabs in opera work with proper focusing. If you have 5 notepad windows open, click number 1, then 5, then close 5 - you expect number 1 to be below it. If windows were firefox then you'd be presented with number 4. Not to mention the bare minimum of shortcut keys in firefox.

what can I say - I'm an opera fan, it does what I want it to, it does it quickly, it saves me time over the course of a day. And the email client rocks once you learn how to use it. I get ~300 emails a day that need my attention, and operas system of filters and views lets me manage it all with minimal hassle.

I also have some 30,000 emails in opera and it still searches the whole lot in real time. If I had to complain, I'd only ask for one more feature.

Nested tabs. Opera has a session manager ; when you close it, you can have it load excatly where you left off. All the tabs you had open are all waiting for you when you re-open the browser.

While this does do away with the need for bookmarks - it does leave you with 20-30 tabs constantly open sometimes. If I could sort these into catagorys - my torrents/anime go into one nested set of tabs, my tech news into another - all those pages could hide in the space it takes for just one tab until I need them.

I keep meaning to send this in as a feature request.

Thats enough rambling on the joys of opera ; free key, now you've got no excuse :)

Re:The one thing keeping me from using Opera

[KDR_11k]

You can use custom stylesheets but the zoom is meant to zoom everything (great for flash movies or something that takes up only a small part of your window). You can define a minimum font size in the options (advanced->fonts), though.

Re:Swim the World!

[Bluey]

He gave it his best, getting an admirable 30 feet from the dock, but it turned into an all-to-familiar case of blame the PR department when he failed.

10 years of Opera

[brajesh]

The Opera community page also has a slide show about its history. There are some interesting snap shots featured.

Also, Opera version History for the interested.

Quicky review

[Fished]

I have to admit that I had not tried Opera in years. However, I decided to go ahead and try it again since (a) it was free and (b) I've been more or less stuck with IE because of corporate websites that require Microsoft's JVM to work.

Cutting straight to the chase, Opera DOES work with corporate websites that require Microsoft's JVM, and Firefox does not. That's the good news.

Bad news: I think the speed claims may be overblown. I also find the interface a bit klunky. More substantively, the browser would be improved by having it automatically import IE bookmarks. Unfortunately, I had to manually import the bookmarks.

Otherwise, looks pretty good.

Re:About time

[m50d]

I mean, why pay when you gan get a free alternative elsewhere?

Because it's better, and better by enough to be worth the money.

Re:how are they surviving

[smellystudent]

In my case, I was using it before Firefox was available and I happen to like it. I have Firefox installed, but see no reason to go searching for all the plugins and options necessary to replicate the Opera experience.

The killer features which got me hooked way back when were the MDI and gestures. Yes, I know you can do that on FF as well...

As to what attracts new users to Opera over Firefox: I don't know. Personal choice maybe? Being recommended by a friend? Trying both out and (shock! horror!) actually preferring Opera?

Happy B-Day Opera! + Another Way To Get Opera Free

[d3bruts1d]

I've been using Opera for probably 4 years now, and couldn't be happier. IMO, Opera has been (and still is) well worth the price. Obviously I'm not alone as many other people also purchase Opera. :P

Though, for those of you who run websites, blogs, or whatever there is another way for you to get Opera for free. And that is simply by sending 250 referrals to Opera. So if you miss out on the birthday party, you want to look into that.

I look forward to Opera's 20th birthday and beyond!

Opera did not use Cydoor code

[:jax:]

Opera never used Cydoor or anyone else's software for the ad banner, and wasn't spyware with version 5 either. We spent a lot of effort to make sure of that. The entire architecture was our own. Cydoor was just an ad provider.

Jonny Axelsson, Opera Software

Re:how are they surviving

[slapout]

There are quiet a few reasons I use Opera. Without needing extensions, I get all the following:

• Tabbed browsing that works better than Firefox's. And I can put the tabs on the bottom where I like them.
• Settings for each window can be controled individually. I can have one site open with graphics turned off and another site open with graphics on, at the same time.
• Mouse Gestures.
• Control-D. This does a "Paste and Go". Instead of taking two steps, pasting in a url and going to it only takes one.
• Built in search bar that supports Google, Amazon, Ebay and others.
• If it crashes, I have the option of opening the same sites I was at the next time I run it.
• Can view a page in "user view". Good if a page is hard to read because of poorly choosen background colors.
• And more! -- See 30 Days to Becoming an Opera7 Lover

Re:how are they surviving

[Pete]

I find the mouse gestures on Opera are just so much better than those available (with an extension) on Firefox or Mozilla. It's like the difference between day and night.

When I tried using mouse gestures on Firefox, they worked... just. But the "feel" wasn't responsive enough for it to be worth using. On Opera (at least on Windows - I haven't used Opera much on Linux) it was incredibly responsive and the overall mouse gesture experience was really really nice.

Useful sites for all the new Opera users

[Taladar]

When you finished /.ing opera.com or still need reasons why to use Opera you might want to have a look at the following sites:

Opera Wiki
Opera Userjavascripts at userjs.org
30 Days to becoming an Opera8 Lover

Re:Codes are for

[rsheridan6]

I prefer Firefox's interface, but Opera is undeniably faster. I use Firefox for normal browsing, but for long documents like manuals, I use Opera, which can search through several hundred KB worth of html without slowing down a bit (unlike Firefox on my machinge).

Re:Codes are for

[nicomen]

Opera has a lot of nifty "extensions" by using User Javascript. That means JavaScript snippets that are appended to web pages (this in addition to being able to have JavaScript in buttons and panels)

The webpage http://userjs.org/ has a lot of them listed.

NukeExtension and Flashblock:

    http://userjs.org/scripts/general/enhancements/hid e-objects

    http://userjs.org/scripts/general/enhancements/rem ove-transparent-flash

Open new tab when typing address:

    Type this in the addressbar:

    javascript:void window.open("http://cnn.com");

    Ok, a but long, but you can add a button that pops up a requester (and open the address in a new tab) in a very simple manner.

    You can also cut'n'paste the address and when middle clicking tell opera to open that url in a new tab.

Re:Codes are for

[fbjon]

Wow, another adblock-troll, here goes the response:

There are more options than that. Notice also that none of these are required to filter anything, the function is already built into Opera. These things just make it more convenient, but you can set up your filters manually in your filter.ini-file.

It's not as convenient as the FFx-extensions though, but I see no ads in Opera now. In both browsers, once it's set up, it's set up anyway.

The interface is clunky in this one, but it's very logical and you can block anything (of course): OperaAdFilter (freeware). You can simply filter all *.swf files if you so desire, or all servers starting with "http://ad.*". Another option for open-source advocates is C++AdBlock . If you want to know how the filtering works, there is a good explanation of it. Lastly, notice that you can block IP-ranges as well.

All of these happen to be the first things in a simple Google search .

I don't know if this was a troll, but so many people say this as "the only reason they don't switch", that it's just idiotic. From now on, anyone who mentions this again, will have their geek license removed , effective immediately!