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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."
Great idea Opera - I wonder if other companies would consider doing this - i.e. get free Windows Vista registration on Bill Gates 50th birthday? BTW, here's a direct link to the Free Registration Page and I see chat, photos, and some podcasting/MP3's are available ... but no live webcam feed of
their party - I'm sure that
would be more exciting that the
concrete cam ... ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Didn't work for me, took a few hours for others. This link gives you a reg code immediately.
I'll feed the troll...
Most of the features in question existed in Opera long before somebody made an extension for FF. In fact, there's quite a few FF extensions whose name or description refers to Opera.
My FF has 93 extensions, at least half of which are features that are standard in Opera. I won't bother to discuss startup and page load speeds.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
If you use Opera, FireFox or Mozilla you can do no wrong.
Use IE, and you are a troll.
Go figure.
Candles work great for me too, but I still like electric lights. Built-in mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, BitTorrent client, mail client, irc client, RSS reader, completely customizable interface, screen reader ... cross platform ... ability to (easily) shut off images, flash, animated gifs, cookies, doesn't take 4 minutes to clear its cache ... And its all of 3MBs.
You might not know what you are missing.
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
I'm running out of ideas for fake names to sign up with.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
That's what I love about it...who else has a real zoom? That and the lack of multiple document interfaces that all of the other browsers I've tried are lacking. Most are SDI with a tab hack.
IE works fine for me. No viruses, no pop-ups, and it works great for everything I need it to do.
Apparently, you don't browse.
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.
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.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
We've crashed your server! Happy Birthday!
Because I find Opera much more stable and reliable, much faster and just a lot easier to work with. To give a random example of something I consider really essential that Firefox does not have, where is the unified keybinding interface? Some (very few) keys you can change, sure, but at least 50% of them are hardcoded into the core files and basically impossible to edit meaningfully. To me this is just ridiculous.
Another hint: keep hitting reload, and you can get unlimited reg codes.
What's the point? You only need one set, and the more you get the more you deprive others from getting a set too.
Your post makes out as if Mozilla is the Be All End All of browsers and that it's the final evolution of said program. Many people prefer Opera; it's an excellent browser in my opinion and feature for feature is more useful and reliable than Mozilla. (And I use both extensively.) Obviously I can see why paying $40 (The same cost as a night of pizza and coke with friends?) might put some people off, but I still would highly reccomend people try at least the ad-free version, or just snap up a registration code for free today. (Nobody is forcing you to use it.)
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
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 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
OK, here's what I believe is about the second half of the party chat on IRC:
;))
ROBOd asks: how you like the "all-new, brand-new and polished" Internet Explorer 7?
Haakon: They have made some improvements in the UI, it took them 4 years or so. I was very disappointed that they didn't fix any rendering bugs. They have promised some fixes, but will not support Acid2 fully. That's a mistake.
ROBOd asks: can you express your feelings about William Henry Gates the 3rd?
Haakon: I've never met him. I had lunch with one of his men, Ballmer, though. I believe they are hardworking successful man that, unfortunately, not have accepted the responsiilities that comes with their size and power.
Jazmo__ asks: So what is typical workday for you? Do you code or is it more like sending mails and speaking on phone?
Haakon: I don't read or write Opera source code. I code in HTML, CSS and other web languages, but email takes most of my days. Sometimes meetings, although I try to cut back. Phone confereces are also common. I like lounging on a couch, bean bag or bed while working....
Haakon: Where I'm most productive though, is in the shower. It'a great place for thinking.
Haakon: I shower a lot.
PowerUser asks: You all use emacs I assume?
Haakon: Absolutely, I've been using gnu-emacs since 1987 and have found no reason to quit.
eps asks: working in a company that actively tests compatibility of our software with firefox and opera (most of our programs are webbased now, activex/java/js horrid mixtures) and is interested in linux, what efforts are you making to support (I hate the idea too, but it would be handy for bussiness) activex webbased apps under windows (and possibly linux as we are moving to FOSS in as many areas as possible)
Haakon: Active-X is a security threat and a windows-only solution. I don't think it would do us much good to support it, although I have sympathy with your position.
Jakub81 asks: Did you (or: will you) implement support for CSS3 selectors in the new (Opera 9?) core?
Haakon: I should know the answer to that one, I'm afraid the deatails are slipping me at the moment. CSS3 Selectors is one of the most mature CSS3 modules and I think we should support it.
ROBOd asks: Will Opera ever have something like iCab browser which shows a crying smiley face when a page contains invalid code? That would let users know about which sites are better and would also give the devs an impulse to follow the standards.
Haakon: Actually, I implemented that feature in the Arena browser (now historical) in 1994. I think it's great and have been suggesting it internally. However, there are thousands of good ideas, but only that many developers....
Danimal82 asks: I am wondering, what do you think the world would be like without microsoft?
Haakon: a better place, I believe. Although windows, word, powerpoint and other applications have made computers easier to use for many, I consider the PC -- as MS developed it in the 80/90s to be a dead end. Only the internet saved it, and we didn't need MS for that.
Moderator: (To answer some questions about women at Opera: yes, we have women at Opera. Yes, some are coding
RedPing asks: freedom of choice in the mainline. Is that round now in the level of smart devices (smartphones, tablet pcs, handhelds, and so on)? Is this the new battlefield?
Haakon: Yes, I think so
Haakon: MS won the desktop, but the mobile market is much more open. I hope we can build it on standards -- so that we don't battle unnecessarily.
Joshtek asks: What do you feel is special about software development?
Haakon: It's so easy to get started -- all you need is a computer. In other areas -- math, physics, music -- you often need years of training to make a difference.
Haakon: This is also why I'm against software patents -- it's so easy to have good ideas in this field.
keny asks: What do you think of firefo
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
There are quiet a few reasons I use Opera. Without needing extensions, I get all the following:
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
You get a browser! You get a browser! You get a browser!
Now the person who runs the email.com domain is going to get swamped with emails from Opera. Good work.
.invalid TLD for use in situations like this.
Read RFC 2606. It explicitly reserves the
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You should teach them a lesson by boycoting their free registration.
Opera is simply the best porn browser ever.
It blocks pop-ups.
It doesn't get infected with ActiveX crap.
It notifies you of phishing attempts.
It can zoom the images.
Best of all: one handed browsing - you have a page with a lot of image links, you click the first and then just press space to go to the next link. Also works with pages where the next link is marked with Next or with >. Quite handy when you have only one hand to spare.
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.
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
Linux is not Windows
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)
d e-objects
m ove-transparent-flash
The webpage http://userjs.org/ has a lot of them listed.
NukeExtension and Flashblock:
http://userjs.org/scripts/general/enhancements/hi
http://userjs.org/scripts/general/enhancements/re
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.
Nicolas Mendoza
Prepare for MSIE 7
Opera inc are actually a nice bunch of folks:
1. Unobstrusive ads (google text ads), commercial != bad, google makes money from ads and your pizza ain't free.
2. These people are pioneers of key browser features. Tabbed browsing, standards support, integrated mail/news/RSS/IRC/BT client, mail labels (what Gmail did later), etc etc
3. Opera folks are in staunch opposition to software patents. Inspite of fact that they did all those features waaay before anybody else, they haven't patented anything. Their CEO said in an statement that Opera is opposed to the concept of software patents.
Folks, the product is worth the money. They are good people(TM) and that is reason enough these days to support them.
- mritunjai
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!
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Maybe they don't like you.
I really hate Dan Patrick.