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Opera Reaches 1 Million Downloads Thanks To Google
auckland writes "More than one million people have downloaded the Opera browser in the days since Opera announced it was dropping the ad banner and going completely free. All made possible because Opera signed a search referral deal with Google." From the article: "'The current most important deal now is with Google,' the spokesperson said to Mr. Malik. That deal, and similar ones with Amazon and eBay, give those companies prime placement in the Opera search box. Mozilla has a similar arrangement with Google, with its search box and its default right-click menu search option on highlighted text sending queries straight to Mountain View."
Opera free? Without ads? But Microsoft says companies can't survive like that!
A search for "internet browser" brings opera back at #1.
People should pay to see the Opera! after all, when you download it you miss all the fantastic costumes and corpulant players!
when will the RIAA do something about this!?
Why would anyone search for an 'internet browser' via their internet browser?
Oh, AOL users.
When Microsoft do this though, they are cross-subsidising, as it doesn't cost them anything to include MSN search with IE.
Google are paying Opera for this, so it becomes a business transaction. Also, Opera is a low market share browser, so it can't be considered anti-competitive. People can choose not to use/install it.
There is no browser out there with full CSS 2.1 support. Not one. Certaintly not Trident (IE's engine). Not Gecko (Firefox's engine). Not KTML (Konqueror's engine). Not Webcore (Safari's fork of the KHTML engine). And not Presto (Opera's engine).
People talk about designing to the standards, but without a single web browser actually following said standards, web designers on the front lines have to work around different browser's quirks.
For example, a number of browsers support bits and pieces of CSS 3.0. Gecko and Webcore have support for opacity (translucent elements on a web page); Trident can do the same thing with the non-standard "Filter:" tag. However, Presto in Opera 8 has no support for this.
The workaround for Opera users is to use a translucent PNG instead. However, a translucent PNG used in mouseovers triggers a Firefox/Windows 1.0.x bug (probably fixed in Deer Park) where the mouseover image will not be loaded unless visible somewhere else on the page (I can mostly eliminate this bug by making the PNG in question visible on the page as a single 90% transparent pixel in the upper right hand corner. Which mostly, but not completely, works around the bug.)
Basically, with yet another CSS rendering browser out there gaining market share, while only implementing a subset of the CSS standard, web designers now have to work around the quirks of yet another browser. I like this kind of work, but a lot of designers hate this stuff and just throw their hands in the air and make their web page a 100% flash web page or what not.
The summary of this article is very unclear about the point. To be clear: people didn't download Opera because it uses Google. Rather, they were *able* to get Opera for free because Opera had an alternative revenue stream with Google.
..start??
-First to have true tab support, reaaally fast tabs not chunky pieces of flab. Hit Ctrl+N one minute, you end up with a bazillion tabs. Yeah you can fill all those up and use them. Try clicking (shift+clicking) to open new links everywhere.. And then use the smart Ctrl+Tab to browse the last viewed pages, or all of them easily. You can easily figure out which page is what (from the titles) in a list of 500. How more pages would you want to fit in a browser?? Aside for that, really cool cascading or even tiling (right click on the tab for more options)
-Actually, if you're new and learning right click everywhere and pay close attention to the options revealed. The true power of the Opera is under the hood. And that is the OPTIONS everywhere. The older Opera versions had the options more out front, but that seemed to scare a lot of "lazy/zombie" users away, thus the new slick interface with more options as you go was created.
-Just think about this, compare the flab of FF or anything else to the slickness and tightness of Opera. So tiny, yet so many features well integrated. Thats one thing that adds to security, WITHOUT limiting any plugin possibilities. The set features are good, they have a reason of existance. If you need anything extra, all you have to do is know java, and you can stick it right in the interface WHEREVER you want it. For example, I have a bunch of applets here and there, one as a dictionary to pick up German words and give me English/Greek equivs. You could make anything, its up to you.
-If you're more of a seeker, once examining of all the interfaced options, go ahead and dig in the O dir, view all the ini files and see what you can do there. Opera's options are everywhere, left and right. But the idiot, even if he stared, would see nothing but pixels.
-I read a lot of silly comments like, oh, why can't opera have X behavior, X keys, X mouse gestures X whatever... Geez folks, are you that dumb? I was expecting to find nerds on here, not a bunch of hillbillies :P
All the above and a lot more can
be changed and defined in the said
options/prefences, just look around!
Getting to know Opera will only benefit you,
your surfing speed, and yields from the web.
-E-mail, and irc client also included. The e-mail client is more than I could ask for as far as e-mail goes. I read something about Active-X, and was like WTF??? E-mail was supposed to be, and SHOULD be text, and just text, no stupid html, with active x and active S and whatever else could bloat it more and make it a whole lot buggier. Opera's mail client is really powerful, smart and above all tiny and integrated. All in one sort of thing. The irc client is basic, but what else do you expect from a browser? Opera is basically your working swiss army knife, but don't expect a generous spoon for irc, why bload the code? Its pretty good for when you only have 5 mins, and want to use e-mail, irc and browse on someone else's comp.
-As mentioned somewhere above, opera can still run on my old crappy 333 laptop, FAST and efficiently. I barely notice the difference between my AMD 64 3400 and that piece of shit. (Except for screen size, and well, you can't overtab it.)
-But thats not all, I have been following and watching the behavior of those behind opera. And their stance on things. For example, the whole of Opera as a team are strong believers that all the options/prefences should be in the hands of the users. After reading the really dumb comments above, I must say, that if you don't like that overmentioned placed google search box. GO AHEAD AND REMOVE IT. I don't see why you would, since it IS USEFUL, but if you really want to... You have to dissasemble Opera, then find string x.... NO All you have to effing do is right click on the said box, and do.. remove from toolbar. TADA. Now you can go ahead and replace that with Yahoo, Xoo, Kaboo, kazavooo Whatever the heck you use. (I personally use fravia's set)
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