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A Talk With Opera CEO
With several new areas of expansion for Opera The Register took a few minutes to talk to Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. The interview addresses several of the most recent news items on the Opera front including, the adoption to Nintendo's Wii console, several advocates switching to Firefox, and others. "We just try to focus on our side. We've always focused on a somewhat richer interface. We've had a lot of negative comments ourselves over the years; for example, when we introduced tabbed browsing a lot of people said it doesn't make sense. We've introduced things like zooming, mouse gestures and the like - and we find they find their way into other browsers; tabs found their way into IE7. We are being copied, but we would like to focus on features and giving users a good experience."
Thees veek ve-a cooght up veet Oopera fuoonder und CEO Jun fun Tetzchner tu deescooss thees, und sume-a ooff zee thurneeer chellenges feceeng zee cumpuny. Bork bork bork!
[rinkworks.com]
Su ve-a sterted veet a beeggie-a - ves zee veb leefeeng Oopera beheend?
Isn't it joost getteeng herder tu keep up veet zee veb, ispeceeelly oon mubeele-a?
Sufftvere-a ingeeneers veell elveys feend veys tu meke-a a defeece-a seem sloo. I'm a sufftvere-a ingeeneer - I knoo I deed. Bork bork bork! Veet Oopera Meeni zeere-a ere-a sume-a theengs thet mey nut vurk, boot must theengs vurk fery qooeeckly. Bork bork bork! Ve-a deed feesooel cumpereesuns ooff Oopera Meeni in zee lebs, useeng zee seme-a vebseetes Stefe-a Jubs used et zee loonch ooff zee iPhune-a demunstreteeng hoo qooeeckly it roons oon GPRS egeeens zee iPhune-a oon Vee-Fee. Oon GPRS, Meeni is fester. Hurty flurty schnipp schnipp! Ve-a deed it fur foon. Bork bork bork!
Oopera Meeni is nut zee seme-a es zee brooser yuoo hefe-a oon iPhune-a, oor desktup Oopera - zeere-a ere-a theengs Oopera cun du thet Meeni cun't du, boot fur must generel uses Meeni dues zee jub.
Undroo Broon, a beeg fun ooff Oopera, vrute-a thet he-a chuse-a tu mufe-a tu FureFux [rinkworks.com] (http://vvv.gooerdeeun.cu.uk/technulugy/2007/mer/2 2/medeea.cumment) becoose-a it ves mure-a cumpeteeble-a veet noo vebseetes, pertly ceeting Fleeckr cumpeteebility. Bork bork bork! Du yuoo feel yuoo're-a felleeng beheend?
Ve'fe-a elveys beee mufeeng in a spece-a vhere-a peuple-a cume-a up veet zeeur oovn idees ell zee teeme-a. Noo Netscepe-a 4 is oooot ooff zee merket, su cumpeteebility veet thet isn't su impurtunt; IE6 is fedeeng, vheele-a IE7 hes mure-a cumpeteebility - dues thet meun prublem hes gune-a? Es peuple-a meke-a mure-a und mure-a eppleeceshuns ve-a see-a mure-a und mure-a stunderds. Um gesh dee bork, bork! IE in perteecooler hes its oovn stooffff, boot thet's pert ooff zee reesun us, Epple-a, und Muzeella vurk oon soobmeetting noo stunderds tu zee V3C, und getteeng zeem edupted. Bork bork bork! Su ve're-a qooeete-a oopteemistic.
Oopera CEO Jun Fun Tetzchner
It's a cheeckee und igg seetooeshun, vheech meuns ve-a need tu get mure-a users. Um gesh dee bork, bork! Und ve-a ere-a. Ve-a hefe-a by fer zee must used mubeele-a veb brooser. Hurty flurty schnipp schnipp! Net Eppleeceshuns' soorfey is shooeeng Meeni es zee feefft must used brooser in zee vurld und in sume-a cuoontreees it's beeteeng Sefferee, und oozeers it's beeteeng Muzeella. Zee Neentendu Veei is elsu helpeeng und ve're-a vurkeeng oon noo ferseeun cumeeng oooot. Um de hur de hur de hur.
Ve're-a elsu spendeeng teeme-a veet zee serfeeces, veet Guugle-a und Yehuu! deescoossing cumpeteebility. Bork bork bork!
Tu be-a frunk, it's nut deefffficoolt fur zeem tu meke-a thees vurk. Zeere's oone-a gooy vhu feexed boogs in Guugle-a und he-a used a JefeScreept theeng fur Oopera vheech feexed Meps und Meeel. Ve-a ere-a elsu ecteefely dueeng vhet ve-a cun - chungeeng hoo Oopera identeeffies itselff is oofftee inuoogh tu feex
The above URL links to page 3 of the article. Here's the fist page http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/18/opera_ceo_in terview/
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything. - Oscar Wilde
Translation: We did tabs, damnit! Not Firefox! I repeat: Firefox did not do tabs first! It was us!!
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
In Russia, Ukraine and in Northern and East European countries we have between five per cent and 10 per cent, and some above 10 per cent share; Japan similar.
Trouble is, in America most people think that going to the opera is for losers. Maybe they should call it "Rock 'n Roll Browser" in the US.
They're one of the market leader in mobile and embedded browsers. They're also selling copies of browsers on the Nintendo DS and Wii. The desktop is only a small part of their business.
Just a few days ago, I had the existing AT&T DSL service switched over to my name. Although I didn't need new equipment, AT&T said they needed to disconnect the service for four days, after which it would take an additional four days after registration under my name to reconnect the same service. Because they didn't send me any hardware, I never received an installation CD. (Not that I ever intended to defile my system with their awful installer.) When I called up AT&T tech support, the woman was relatively clueless--I pretty much walked myself through the process. But there was one hitch: Using either Firefox or Safari (IE was discontinued for the Mac), I could not register a new DSL username in their system. The hardware and network setup were working perfectly; something about AT&T's (aka Yahoo!/SBC) online registration system, however, required that I use IE. And as a long-time Apple user, I would switch to cable modem before I'd install "malware" on my machine. It then came to me to try Opera. I downloaded a copy on my PowerBook through a nearby free access point (I love that place--best danishes I've ever had). And it worked. Obviously, AT&T is to blame, but am I ever relieved that Opera came through for me. Granted, I've gone back to using Firefox, but just in case, I've kept Opera on my system.
They have multiple income streams. As noted in the interview, Opera, like Firefox, makes money from google and other search engines.
And, as the browser for the Wii and the DS, I'm sure that Nintendo is giving them a nice amount of money.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I've heard opera's javascript interpreter was supposed to be fast. So, I just did a quick, totally non scientific (only one run, other minor activity in the background, etc) of a the slickspeed selector test, which tests various javascript libraries for their speed/accuracy. This was performed on Windows XP:
Opera (9.20/ build 8771)
246 : 3409 : 244 : 413 : 2518 : 329
Safari (3.0.3 / build 522.15.5)
322 : 1966 : 347 : 360 : 2488 : 519
Firefox (2.0.0.6) -- two times, second was with firebug enabled
397 : 10833 : 409 : 2569 : 14535 : 1100
423 : 14059 : 429 : 5188 : 14426 : 3352
ie (6.029)
4695 : 8536 : 3393 : 2379 : 17856 : 1890
Smaller numbers are faster, so opera is faster (in this test) than firefox. The toolkits, btw, are prototype, iQuery, mootools, ext, cssQuery, and dojoQuery).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
it might be because opera needs qt libraries.
:) But, AFAIK, Opera is today the most useable browser out there. I like Firefox a lot, but Opera is still far superior, specially when it comes to user interfase, speed, and memory footprint.
I dunno... i use Opera 9.23 with QT compiled statically (on Linux using XFCE) and it runs quite snappier than Firefox, specially on startup/shutdown.
I'm starting to sound like a broken record on this subject, i know
From my experience using the two, Opera refreshes sooner so you can see the top part of the page sooner, but loads the page slightly slower. Firefox refreshes later so you don't see the page until later, but loads the page slightly faster. The "illusion" is that Opera is faster. The vast majority of the time, the important information is located at or near the top part of the page. The fact that Opera loads the bottom part of the page slower is rendered irrelevent because of that. I'd rather be able to see the top part of the page faster.
Then again, it's down to individual use. For me, Opera is faster because of my surfing habits. For others, Firefox may be preferable.
I always enjoy interviews with Jon Von Tetzchner - he comes across as a very forthright, positive, motivated CEO - and he's pretty good natured to boot. Contrast that with recent interviews with Linus, who's opinion on certain matters everyone respects but comes across a bit too sassy to make an enjoyable read, or major company CEOs, who sound more like company brochures than people.
I used to use Firefox over Opera because I could install Firefox with one command under Linux. Now that Opera is available in the same way, I find that I still choose Firefox, mostly because it's what I'm used to. I feel like Opera is just a tad too late to the party to really take off in a big way - had they made their product as easy to get and as visible as Firefox way back when (what with a website that auto-detects the correct package and provides a big easy-to-click button, prepackaged binaries for Linux, advertising, etc.) the bite marks in IE could be twice as big as they are now. Of course this doesn't mean that Opera has no chance - the world is plenty big enough for three or four major browsers - and they're certainly making a dent in the off-PC market.
Good luck to them, and the next time Firefox fails to download quite as promptly as I like maybe I'll give Opera another go! In the meantime, just keep getting interviews like this one out there and visible and Opera will keep growing.
And then, as soon as Mozilla Suite was discontinued, it promptly replicated the whole kitchen sink mentality, somehow adding everything that's *not* useful in a stand alone browser (e.g., profles) and leaving things out that are (e.g., a reasonably useful download manager).
I hate printers.
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
I don't know what they do differently in Opera, but they do it right - and it's gotten them a number of new users in my company's administrative offices to boot.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Profiles have been in Firefox since as long as I've known about it (around 0.9 or so), certainly before the Mozilla Suite was canned. They're about as visible as about:config; it's not something a regular user would ever notice. Also, it has no significant performance cost, and can be very important for people who are developing and testing Firefox. They don't what their testing version of Firefox to nuke their real profile. It's also nice for extension developers for pretty much the same reason.
See Preferences -> Advanced -> Redraw after to have it be more/less aggressive at page (re)drawing.
I can't remember or immediately find the equivilent setting in Firefox.
The only problem I have with using Opera is that there is just no substitute for Adblock plus, something that allows me to subscribe to a list of blocked urls and html and have it do its thing in the background. If someone has found one please let me know.
And that gets modded as funny? Have I transported back into the 70's, where because someone spoke with an accent we should point and laugh at them? What next for slashdot - stories about Baidu.com getting comments about their CEO having slitty eyes and being referred to as ting tong?
You are probably not aware that after MS changed one of their sites to specifically break Opera, Opera released a "version" that turned that site into Swedish Chef talk. The GP was making reference to that. Probably could have made his point with only a few paragraphs, but it is humorous to those with the requisite background knowledge to understand the joke.
Holy huge wall of unintelligible text. You must be a Perl coder.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
A polite request
Please stop posting this article on sites like Slashdot, Digg, newspapers, etc. It is old news. This article is around 2 years old now (although it has been kept up to date), and has been retired - posting it simply shows how long it took you to find it. It has already been posted on Slashdot enough times, Digg more than enough times, similar sites more times than I can count, as well as newspaper sites all around the world, and far more blogs than I will ever be able to read.
I thank you for your attention, and I am very happy that you found this article interesting or useful enough to read. However, it really does not need you to post it yet again - all you will do is eat my bandwidth, and I ask you not to do that.
He seems to think that Opera is fast. My experience has been that although Opera renders more accurately than Firefox (1.5.0.2), Opera is a lot slower.
If only it mattered how fast Firefox is. Since when you open few more tabs in it, it'll instantly become ultra slow or hang mid-action while waiting for who-knows-what, while no other browser (safari, ie, opera) does this.
As a heavy Firefox/Opera user I can tell you, the overall experience in Firefox is sluggish at best.
It's truely the only cross platform browser there is.
I can have Opera on Windows, Opera on my Mobile, Opera on my Wii, Opera on my PS3.
As soon as they sort out having bookmarks shared between all of these, seamlessly, then it's a no brainer.
Seriously, why people choose Linux or BSD is beyond me.
He didn't say that. You people try to find ways to put words in peoples mouths they did not say. That is not the correct way to argue. If you cannot take his criticism of your browser, don't reply. Reply on equal grounds. Explain why Opera is not superior to Firefox.
there goes another point about installation time and effort.
Nor does that refute his point. You cannot knock down points as you please by changing them because you think it makes the argument easier, that's a straw man argument.
His point still stands, it's faster for HIM.
His point is that Opera is the superior product in itself. This point still stands. He isn't referring to the political aspect of being closed source.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Your calling Opera cluttered makes me doubt you've ever used it. Mine has a menubar, tab bar and address bar, none of which has any buttons on it. You don't even need the menu, with the sidebar and gestures. So, try using something before trolling.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
It really annoys me when people claim that Opera or Mozilla introduced tabbed browsing. I know /. will love to hear it, but AOL was the first that I've seen. Their GNN browser in the early 90's had tabbed browsing. It was even able to load multiple tabs at once on Windows 3.1, an OS w/o threads. I remember having a dozen or more tabs open at once, several of them loading simultaneously, on a machine with 4MB of ram.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
He did, he said Opera is non-Free. There are two sorts of F/OSS users. Open Source advocates believe that an open development model will produce superior code. Free Software advocates believe that having the freedom to modify and redistribute your code is inherently valuable, and many believe that this makes up for any lack of features since it means that they can add (or pay someone else to add) any missing feature they care enough about. If you are one of these people, then it doesn't matter how many features Opera has, the fact it is non-Free is a problem.
While I'm not a completely rabid Free Software advocate, I've been burned enough by proprietary software to want to avoid depending on any more of it than I have to. I don't mind using a proprietary browser (based on a Free Software rendering engine), because it's easy to switch browsers if the limitations become concrete, but it's a line other people are less willing to cross.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
BROWSER SPEED COMPARISONS ON MANY TASKS & MULTIPLE OPERATING SYSTEM PLATFORMS:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
(Especially on the MOST USED OS PLATFORM ON THE PC, Windows, but also, overall!)
---- "My experience has been that although Opera renders more accurately than Firefox (1.5.0.2)" - by ChrisMaple (607946) on Sunday August 19, @11:16PM (#20289859) It passed the "ACID2" test, & iirc, before ANY other did... but, don't quote me on THAT account (before any other browser):
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/12/1416222.shtml
AND, just 2 days ago, I loaded Opera 9.23.8808, FireFox 2.0.0.6, & IE7 fully hotfix patched as of last "Microsoft Patch Tuesday", & the memory usage was in this order:
- Per Taskmanager processes tab, prior to minimizing the window (which causes unused application features to page back to the backing
IE7 (least, with GOOGLE toolbar) memory usage = 19,048k
Opera (next least - & no widgets installed) = 18,272k
FireFox (most - & no addons installed) = 31,172k
Read 'em & weep, or test yourself - your numbers SHOULD be the same, unless you opened a lot of tabs in them, OR extended your say, FireFox with
---- "Opera is a lot slower." - by ChrisMaple (607946) on Sunday August 19, @11:16PM (#20289859) Says you... others say differently, per the url & test above, as well as the security data below (as far as that is concerned, & today online? IT IS A DEFINITE CONCERN!) plus, if you are a FireFox fan? Perhaps you ought to look @ this page:
FIREFOX MYTHS:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMy
AND, yes folks:
Opera had tabbed browsing before IE, or FireFox/Mozilla AND YES, it can be extended with addons, if you look up "Opera Widgets"...
PLUS, Opera 9.23.8080 final biuld IS FREE + FULLY FEATURE LADEN, more than any other browser imo, without addons thrown in (as is, outta the box/stock oem model)
APK
P.S.=> Opera also shows LESS security vulnerabilities than the other 2 of the "big 3" & their most current builds/models/versions:
Opera security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/product/10615/?task=advisories
FireFox security advisories @ SECUNIA (43% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/product/12434/
IE 7 security advisories @ SECUNIA (56% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/product/12366/
apk
I currently run Firefox on my home PC, home Mac, home Mac-mini, and wife's computer.
Just last week I switched to Opera at work, after learning one of my, well respected, co-workers was using it for browsing. Ever year or so I'd done a "switch" for a day, but always went back to Firefox. I think this time the switch to Opera is going to stay.
Seems Opera is on par to all the features I've come to rely on in Firefox (tabs, mouse gestures, adblocking, tabbed download info), except that they are all baked into the browser instead of needing to be added in. The tight integration, shows in many subtle ways (e.g., where options are presented in the menus, etc...) that makes the overall product feel more polished. The smaller memory foot-print, faster (perceived?) UI response, and better standards compliance all make me feel more comfortable than the browser I've been advocating to friends the last 7+ years.
The lack of Open Source use to bug me, but not any more; I don't see myself ever becoming involved in the source code. I truely believe the money behind Opera is what has contributed to it being such a great product.
- Built in tabs (I don't care who was first, I care if there are tabs in the current version.)
- Built in tabbed download status
- Built in mouse gestures
- Built in ad-blocking
- Built in FULL full screen
- Built in "Speed Dial" feature (neat idea!)
- Better CSS2 compliance than Firefox or IE
- A solid bookmark manager
- Smaller (than Firefox) memory footprint
Another week of test driving this at work, and then my home computers are switching over too.
The lower the marketshare, the lower the chance that your browser ist targeted by malware authors. Since Firefox is gaining at such a great speed I have started to advise Windows users to use Opera for security reasons. Other than for security neither Firefox, IE7, nor Opera make a difference for the casual PC user.
Personally I use Iceweasel, because it comes directly from my good ol' trusted repository, but I also have Opera installed and use it as a secondary browser for sites that don't work in Firefox. I also prefer the cookie management in Firefox to that in Opera. Opera used to be way ahead, but they stopped making progress on that front a long time ago. Though I realize that privacy is more of a myth now with special Flash and Java supercookies and the likes that never show up anywhere.
I used Proxomitron back in 2004 and somehow it managed to create 8000 hits in one hour to /. when I rearranged the panels on the main page. This resulted in me getting banned from Slashdot. Not funny, I can assure you! This came to light after an e-mail exchange with Robert Rozeboom from /. (if you're still working there: thanks Robert!). I found out it was Proxomitron because when I had it active my firewall indicated very heavy network traffic, which did not occur when proxomitron was bypassed.
Of course this was years ago and maybe it's improved now, but I have not used it ever since.
What person will donate an airborne act of love?