Opera 9.0 Released

Nurgled writes "After teasing us for months with betas and snapshots, Opera Software have finally released version 9.0 of their web browser. The new version features correct ACID2 rendering, native support for the SVG Basic profile, a built-in BitTorrent client, support for Microsoft's designmode and contenteditable extensions, per-site configuration, Atom support, Web Forms 2.0 support, Canvas support (and some Opera-specific extensions), NTLM authentication, some support of parts of CSS3 and lots more. The full changelog is available." p14nd4 adds "And for you *nix users, it hasn't hit their .deb repository quite yet, but there are regular installers available for the major players, including a fixed Ubuntu installer and an x86 Solaris version."

Comments

Good,

[SpokeBot]

but still closed-source though.

Re:Good,

[ceeam]

So fucking what? If a limited set of developers kept in a single company or scattered around the globe - what difference does it make? Have you submitted any patches to Firefox? Didn't think so.

(Ok, ok - maybe I troll a bit, but seriously? It's a good and free to use browser. They even have FreeBSD binaries... Closed source or not - some appreciation is due methinks... What would _you_ do with the source if it were available?)

BT Client sucks

[iamdrscience]

I love Opera, but their integrated bit torrent client sucks. It doesn't show transfer rates, you can't limit your upstream, you can't see how many people you're connected too, you can't see if there are any seeds and it doesn't keep track of your share ratio.

Nice try Opera, but for now I'm sticking with my old BT client.

Re:How about an API

[NanoGator]

"The people who pay for the site are the small fraction who actually go and buy whatever it is being shown. Without that fraction, advertisers see no return on their investment in ads, and would stop funding sites anyhow."

What you're saying isn't false, but it isn't strictly true, either. The customer in this case is not the people clicking on banners and buying something, it's the company with an ad they want people to see. Ultimately, yes, they want to get people to buy it. You're right in that they'd no longer purchase ad space if they spent money and didn't make money back. It's more complicated than that, though. A lot of companies simply throw up ads that are intended to be seen, but not necessarily clicked on. These are simply branding sort of ads, designed to raise awareness. They'll put these ads up, wait a year, and see how their sales have increased. (ThinkGeek or Newegg come to mind...) If they've gone up, more ads. Which leads me to this point:

"So a logical extension is that we all must buy junk we see advertised to support our favorite sites?"

No. If it only worked this way, web-based advertising would have died 5 years ago. Instead, you need only for the users who visit the site to be able to see an ad. In Slashdot's case, the Think Geek banner is always there. They're getting their money's worth because sooner or later, somebody's going to want something, and they'll realize that ThinkGeek's the place to check out. Slashdot, however, cannot possibly guarantee any sort of click-through-sales. (just like Television commercials...) So it's up to the advertiser to make their products worth buying. There'll ALWAYS be companies releasing products they want to advertise. So long as the ads aren't being blocked, they'll want to advertise on web-sites. It's the same with e-mail spam. It isn't necessary for millions of dollars to be spent on Viagara, it's only necessary that email be recieved.

So, no, supporting a site doesn't rely on gullible people buying stuff. It only relies on advertisers with products to sell. For that reason, your plan wouldn't likely work. Slashdot's probably making a lot more money off of advertising than they are from subscribers. That's downright hilarious considering that Microsoft is one of the advertisers. Heh.