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Opera 9.60 Released, With Upgraded Mail Client
Kelson writes "Opera Software has released Opera 9.60, the latest version of their web browser & internet suite. It's an evolutionary release, focused on performance optimization, improving the email client and adding more items to the Opera Link synchronization service."
Apparently you also couldn't wait to waste everybody's time with a totally pointless post on Slashdot. Good job!
Dick.
I haven't used the mail client in Opera to this point, but depending on the extent of the upgrades I may start to. It'd be nice to have everything all in one application.
rehab is for quitters
I wish I could un-read your post and pray that those responsible for it have been sacked.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Well said! I'm a big Opera fan (although I don't use the mail client) and I really don't understand the 'down' some people have on this most excellent browser. Perhaps he's a Microsoft whore.
Smivs on the intertubes!
The official download defaults to QT3 even though same build is offered as QT4 in beta.
There might be graphical bugs but I couldnt find any.
It's a lot lighter weight than FF and has everything built in including IRC and BT, spell check uses gnu-aspell, and the email client rocks. Tabs and mouse getures came from it, so whats not to love. If you haven't used it check it out. If you have, but not for a while, do yourself a favor and see how it is now.
Opera and myself have been browsing the web for porn since 2000 :) I never leave my pants on the floor without it :)
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Someone needs to engineer an app that would let me have a tab for each, we could call it Firefopera Internet Chromesplorer!
Opera has a mail client? Who knew?
Seriously - until a few weeks ago I never noticed it had a mail client. I just use Opera to verify sites. I never checked to see what other features the browser had. I'd run it long enough to see that menus, etc. rendered correctly and then shut it down and go right back to Firefox.
I mean, really. With all the great open source mail clients out there, why would I need a mail client from Opera?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Nope, FireFox freaks have more of a tendency to put down Opera, then IE fans (MS fans) do... by far.
I believe that has something to do with the fact that IE's bestest fans don't know of any other browsers.
You're right! My Wife is a fire-foxy and she hates Opera too. Women!
Smivs on the intertubes!
I don't know why Firefox people put down Opera. If Opera were to go away, where would Firefox developers get their ideas from? Firefox would stagnate.
Richard, is that you?
I've been using opera since v2. And yes that makes me one of those people who actually paid for a browser. Over the years it's grown in size and complexity but still manages a great and fast browser.
But I have to admit I'm finding Chrome very alluring.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
If I had to choose between Firefox 3, Chrome and Opera, currently I'd rather use Opera. It's the only one of the three that does not blur images that have been resized in the html source. FF3 and Chrome use scaling interpolation (or antialising?) so heavily on the images it makes you feel as if you had some kind of selective myopia. That unwanted effect breaks the design of a lot of pixelart/retrogaming websites, including mine, and I really don't see in which circumtances it may actually be useful.
If you haven't tried Opera, I highly recommend you give it a spin. It's a great browser and it's worth using for regular browsing; even better than Firefox, in my opinion. Firefox's extensions still give it the edge for web development, but Opera is quite close. Here are my favorite features Opera has over Firefox:
A sexy default look. I think Opera generally looks much sleeker, and the smooth-scrolling is worlds better (parabolic instead of linear, I think). It's a tiny aesthetic change that makes a big difference in ease of use (I don't lose my place) and feel of the app.
Speed dial. You've got your top nine right there in front of you.
The Wand. It's a huge time-saver if you have multiple logins for a site. Just click the username you need to use, and Opera submits the form with the creds you picked. It's faster and less clunky than the dropdown that Firefox uses.
The Trash bin. It lets you pick any recently closed page; you don't have to Ctrl-Shift-T through all the tabs you just closed to find the right one.
Quick search. Firefox has inline search too, but Opera simultaneously highlights *all* occurrences of the search text as you type.
And finally...
Dragonfly, the Opera javascript debugger. This baby is impressive. It's much easier to use than Venkman and rivals Firebug. The script window lets you pick any loaded script (inline scripts have their own entry!). The DOM tab (which is less spastic than Firebug's) lets you inspect all of your elements in folding-tree style. The Styles pane with then show you the explicit and computed styles on the element. Fantastic.
So give Opera a try. You might find a thing or three that you like.
Miren al Pepino! Los vegetales invidian a su amigo, como él quieren bailar. Pepino Bailarín!
Seriously, Opera's mail client is amazing (No, I don't work for them). I've tried the other biggies (MS and TBird) and I really like the way Opera manages the content. It's almost like they took a step back and examined all the things that email should do as a properly databased system and made it do those things. Finding an email that's a few years old is extremely fast and easy, the filter system/contacts is amazing, it really understands the concept of an instance of the email -- the same email can appear in multiple places but doesn't have to be copied. It's just smooth. Only two minor gripes: 1-it's quite technical and I've had a bit of a hard time showing non-techs how to get the most of it, and 2-no HTML composition, but who cares? I'm in the design business and I rarely need it -- it's one of those features desired by people who really think that putting their content in bright green will make it more interesting/important (sorry, got off on a rant there)
That might be because switching from IE to Opera is relatively easy. IE is a very basic browser so when you switch to Opera you get all sorts of new features to play with.
When you're a Firefox user the first thing you miss is all the Firefox extensions. Firebug? AdBlock Plus subscriptions? Some Firefox extensions are replaced by Opera features, but many aren't. It's difficult trying to live without features you're used to. It's like having dual monitors for a few years and then going back to a single monitor.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
OP ERRATIC?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
On the other hand, an Opera user trying to use Firefox feels lost, the same way :)
I'm still using 9.27. Tried 9.5 and it had so many quirks that I reverted back. Not quite sure if I should even try 9.6...
Long-time opera user here, and I feel it's falling behind rapidly. No ACID3, relatively slow javascript, other browsers catching up.
When chrome gets fixed, safari gets inline search off the / key, FF stops being slow and/or any of them get the nifty right/left click gesture to go back I'll be switching.
Although just typing /. in the address bar to go to slashdot may be the opera clincher :-)
They don't have ads anymore. They stopped using ads YEARS ago.
I also would mention that I'm pretty sure Opera was the first to block unrequested popups (I'm not positive, but it was the first I saw doing that), and first with mouse gestures.
On a side note, has anyone used Opera mobile much, and how has it been?
This space for rent, inquire within.
In the same way, switching to Firefox from Opera feels really crippling as I've gotten so used to Opera's convenient mouse gestures. The feeling is like losing the mousewheel you've gotten so used to it.
http://www.object404.com
Opera 9.5 broke the "noko" feature in 4chan which forced me to revert to 9.27.
Is noko fixed in Opera 9.6? Does anyone know?
I tried the M2 client when it first came out in Opera. I stuck with it for about a year, hoping that terms like "revolutionary" and "bold re-imagining of e-mail" would actually take hold within my brain. It didn't.
If someone ever wanted a brief summary of M2, I'd say it's like GMail's retarded little brother.
Blazing-fast fullpage zoom: using the + and - keys makes Opera a delight to use for those of us browsing at high resolutions with websites designed for low resolutions. With 30" monitors like mine, it's an absolute must.
note:Firefox 3.1 has a horribly slow full page zoom on my dual core 2.2 Ghz AMD.
Instant page backtracking:. No re-rendering delay. (oh how I wish I could use Opera on my iPhone just because of that). The bonus is that any text typed by the user is also saved. A lifesaver for those of us who post on forums and hate to see their comments "eaten" by server and network errors.
Snappiest interface of the bunch: It shows quickdial tabs faster than the firefox plugin. Closing tabs and opening new ones is faster. Scrolling is faster. The reduced input latency makes interacting with the browser more enjoyable. Chrome is second best in this regard.
All of this makes up for the slightly higher incompatibility issues Opera deals with and the lack of addons (segmented downloading? Adblock? etc.). I can always fire up Chrome or Firefox if I need to.
Why, they could copy the fresh and innovative features found in Microsoft's excellent browser.
Have you seen IE7 yet? They let you view multiple pages inside one window, via "tabs". Genius!
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
I might consider using it when they remove the ads.
2005 called. It wants your comment back.
Got any examples of addons that replicate Firefox features?
I can't actually think of any such features, but apparently they exist.
So I tried Opera a while back and the pages were noticeably slower to load then in Firefox. Having just tried it now, I can safely say that its finally a bit faster. I'll be happily switching and taking advantage of all of Opera's features that Firefox has yet to implement.
they're the only commercial browser maker to survive IE. i realize the guy from netscape created the mozilla foundation when he sold netscape to aol, but even aol has dropped netscape support as a result of firefox's popularity. thus making opera the only closed source IE survivor.
that alone is an accomplishment. and what other browser can run on a nintendo DS?
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Actually, according to the writers of the test, no engine passed completely until September 25th, when Webkit managed to render the animation portion smoothly
Opera's rendering engine (Presto/WinGogi) and WebKit (used in Chrome / Safari) both reached 100/100 on the 26th and 27th of March, respectively.
Introducing "smoothness" requirements means a browser may pass or fail the test depending on what hardware it's running on (and the opinion of the person watching the test - smooth for you might not be smooth for me). IMO the point of the Acid test is to check standards-compliance, not performance. If a browser gets 100/100, it passed.
And while both layout engines got the perfect score months ago, the current release version of Safari scores only 75/100, and Opera 9.60 scores only 85/100 (highest of any current non-beta browser, but still not 100).
BTW, the Acid3 test has changed several times after bugs in the test itself were discovered, the latest one on September 29th, so maybe no engine will actually get 100/100 when it's fixed.
it used to be that Opera had pretty much cloned all the neato features of other browsers
In fact, they were so good at "cloning the neato features of other browsers" that they often cloned those features months (sometimes years) before the other browsers had them (in some cases, before those browsers even existed). :-)
Personally, I like Opera on Windows quite a bit and it may be my favorite browser on that platform... but I don't browse in Windows [...] you realize they coded it for Windows
If you're going to pick one platform to optimise (or if you're going to pick one platform to benchmark), it makes sense to pick the platform with 90% market share (Windows) over one that barely reaches 5% (OS X), no? Or test all platforms and then weigh the final scores based on each platform's share.
"Yea, small wonder that you hate Opera, you 'FF fiend', you - Especially considering FireFox took features from Opera, such as:
1.) Primarily: The tabbed browsing style of user interface in a webbrowser from Opera (who had it prior to FF &/or IE) & built it into FF as a 'native feature'
2.) Also/Secondly (& far more recently), also how the .xpi addons makers for FireFox took the Opera 'speed-dial' feature & mimicked it for FireFox, via such an addon"...
----
Yes - That simple set of truths ALWAYS 'gets the firefox fiends' goats', everytime, & simply because it IS, the truth.
And the truth is??
"Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery!" ... & there is NO question that FireFox's dev team AND their addon makers rip features from Opera...
The whole Opera had XX features first doesn't fly in my book, certainly not when argued in any environment that has a tendency to support FOSS. I must be reading the wrong articles' comments lately, since the I am not hearing the FOSS voice much standing up for these things.
Even considering that, quality does matter. I used Opera when Mozilla still a monster, and loved tabs and mouse gestures. When Firefox came, and then had those options available, I was pleased to have them in a top notch browser that was open source to boot.
That said, I am ready for something better. If the reviews are great, I'll give Opera a look, but I imagine they're on the same page as everyone else.
Ah, a quick snipe at its lack of popularity.
If popularity is all that matters, then IE must be the best browser. Funny how Firefox fans suddenly aren't so keen to follow this logic when it comes to IE? You can't have it both ways.
I use the browser that I like most. I was using Opera before Firefox even existed, and long before it became trendy not to use IE. The fact that more people use Firefox than Opera is no more relevant to me than the fact that more people use IE.
As a KDE user, I prefer Opera over Firefox, simply use to better resource useage, that being said, has Opera 9.6 started using Qt4 yet?
Yes. The main download page, as far as I can tell, only offers the QT3 version, but you can download QT4 builds from the FTP server.
Widgets don't actually modify the functionality of Opera. I would like to have a verticle tree-view mode for the tabs in Opera. I get this on Firefox via the "Tree Style Tab" extension, and it's amazing. It's the only reason I'm typing this on Firefox at the moment. In many, many ways, I still prefer Opera. Bit this particular feature is a dealmaker. Widgets can't provide this kind of functionality.
I haven't checked the install file sizes lately, but one of the neat things about Opera is that it adds a lot of funtionality while still being very compact. Last time I checked, it had a *much* smaller download (and often memory) footprint than Firefox (especially when FF was v2) even with that extra functionality. It's also nice about not loading parts of the app that you don't need. Id est, if you don't load up a mail tab in Opera, it doesn't allocate resources needed for it. Feeds did get a big laggy when I used them, though, but that's probabaly because I go overboard with feeds (nrss == winner!). ^_^
Well, since the most-commonly mentioned extension seems to be Adblock Plus, how about a link to an Opera widget that replicates Adblock Plus's functionality? The ad-blocking feature included in Opera does not count, since, as has been mentioned many times already, it is inferior to Adblock Plus.
Or, if the afore-mentioned widget doesn't exist, you could just post an apology and an admission that I'm right. Either way is fine. ;)
"The whole Opera had XX features first doesn't fly in my book, certainly not when argued in any environment that has a tendency to support FOSS" - by centuren (106470) on Thursday October 09, @12:08AM (#25309185) Homepage
/.'s community has an immediate BIAS against anyone that doesn't do "FOSS", and that it is ok to steal the ideas (and probably code as well) of others from what you're stating, apparently.
"The whole Opera had XX features first doesn't fly in my book, certainly not when argued in any environment that has a tendency to support FOSS" - by centuren (106470) on Thursday October 09, @12:08AM (#25309185) Homepage
/.'s community has an immediate BIAS against anyone that doesn't do "FOSS", and that it is ok to steal the ideas (and probably code as well) of others from what you're stating, apparently.
"The whole Opera had XX features first doesn't fly in my book, certainly not when argued in any environment that has a tendency to support FOSS" - by centuren (106470) on Thursday October 09, @12:08AM (#25309185) Homepage
/.'s community has an immediate BIAS against anyone that doesn't do "FOSS", and that it is ok to steal the ideas (and probably code as well) of others from what you're stating, apparently.
That's apparent if you take the opening sentence and assume that nothing following it is further explanation, yes.
If your attention span survives the paragraph, the lack of comprehension in your response is what's apparent.
One important idea behind FOSS is innovating on what's out there for the benefit of all. There's no secret that there is a high number of FOSS supports in the /. community.
Complaining the Opera had XX features first doesn't fly, because Firefox has done them much better (imho).
I finish by saying that I'll give Opera another shot if they've actually innovated again, just like I did when they first came on the market as the best.
My point is that who had what first doesn't matter: no one can expect to ride one or two innovations without continuing to maintain that lead. I used Opera when I felt it was the best browser, and I haven't used it for years. It's not even my second choice.
That's only my opinion, of course. Anyone who argues that Opera is a quality browser based on XX current features is expressing their opinion (and I'll read through their points to see if I find changes that address the issues I have with Opera).
Arguing that Opera had XX features first is a poor argument, in any environment where people are looking for quality, not a time line. If you disagree with that statement, come up with a response to it, not a wildly (or conveniently) illogical inference.