Slashdot Mirror
Opera 10 Benchmarked and Evaluated
CNETNate writes "Dial-up connections and flaky Wi-Fi are made significantly more tolerable with Opera 10, it seems. After yesterdays news that Opera 10's first beta had landed, some testing was in order. One major new feature is Opera Turbo — server-side compression — which shrinks pages before sending them down your browser. With a 100Mbps connection throttled to a laughable 50Kbps, Opera 10 proved itself to outperform every other desktop browser on the planet, and there are graphs to prove it. Javascript benchmarks put the new browser in fourth place overall, after Chrome 2, Safari 4 and Firefox, but it indeed passes the Acid3 test with a perfect score. If you ever use a laptop on public Wi-Fi, to not have Opera 10 installed could be a big mistake"
Back when my net connection was a 56kb/s modem, I used to make an ssh connection (with compression) to a machine at university, and then tunnel through that to the university's http proxy server. That gave a handy speed increase compared to making http requests directly over the modem link. You could also try the RabbIT compressing web proxy. All this relies on having a server somewhere with a fast net connection that you can run programs on - and this is the service that Opera Software are really providing.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Opera is a phenomenal browser. Seriously, they keep churning out useful features for their browser, and it's a pleasure to use. It definitely feels faster than the other major browsers, though they're all pretty good nowadays.
Given this is server side technology, I presume it's not part of the opera web browser. Sounds like they're using a proxy server with gzip added. There's a beta stage patch for squid to allow you to do that yourself http://devel.squid-cache.org/projects.html#gzip
"I don't browse the web often, but when I do I ... prefer to use Opera"
-the most interesting man
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
I don't use Opera myself, but as far as I'm concerned, if Opera passes ACID, the problem is with your firewall's web interface. It's not Opera's fault your software is non compliant.
I'm using it since yesterday, and I had to disable Turbo mode, since all images were looking like crap, flash sometimes didn't work, some sites never finished loading (stopped at for example 18 element of out 25).
But I guess that for dial-up (people still use that? @_@) or crappy Wi-Fi it might be good.
Umm, perhaps you should take a look at what Turbo's intended usage is for.
For some reason I thought Opera was a pay browser (or had ads or something making it not free-as-in-beer). Yesterday I happened to visit their page and apparently it's offered without charge for desktop platforms (and without source code, of course). Ironically, it's the only browser that still supports the older Mac OS X 10.3.9; Apple's own Safari hasn't for years, and Firefox 3.x doesn't either.
They say in their specs they do NOT compress https at all.
Those are encrypted pages you're requesting, which jumbles up the data. Jumbled data does NOT compress well at all. Plus, they're 'secure.' You don't want someone else handling your secure files.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Well with the bandwidth bill they'll have after this little venture, I don't think you'll have to worry about them for too long.
The browser is eclectic, with too many preferences, too complicated preferences, too many customisation options. Features not everybody needs, or wants.
I'd rather have a browser that provides functionality that I do not (yet) need than a browser that's slimmed down so much it doesn't offer functionality that I do need.
If you don't like Opera -- fine, don't use it.
But please remember that not all people are like you, and some may like, want or even need what you despise.
If we would only write software with features that everybody or at least a majority of people would need, we wouldn't have any progress.
Mehhh...in every thread about Opera those misconceptions.
Adblock - http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ that's basically the same list that Adblock addon uses. It certainly blocks everything just as well. And the functionality itself is built in, no messing around with plugins. According to my buddy who moved from FF to Opera, style file works slightly better at hiding empty spots. And, if something isn't blocked, you have a nice way of blocking this and similar elements through Opera UI.
GreaseMonkey - you do understand Opera pioneered also this functionality, right? Check UserJS (it is capable of running many GreaseMonkey scripts btw)
FxIF - built in. Didn't it ever occured to you to just right click on the frakking image and bring up properties?
del.icio.us, Twitter - something wrong with bookmarklets placed within one click, on navigation bar?
I guess the main problem of Opera is that people assume, because of beeing used to other apps, that there's now way it can pack so much in so little executable, so properly/speedy implemented.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Opera uses its own UI toolkit. Qt is only used in things like file selector in Linux version.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Wow, that critic seems oddly familiar
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
About Opera. Seriously.
Really? That build of FireFox you're using today would be barely recognizable if Opera had never come into being.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Tabbed browsing is 1994. Thats right... 1994.
Surely the Mozilla folks picked up on the idea soon after, right? Well, no.. Netscape 6 (Mozilla 0.6) was released 6 years later but did not support tabbed browsing. It was only in 2001 that there was even a hint of a decent browser comming from them that would have tabbed browsing, which they were calling Phoenix (later to be called Firefox)
Great ideas surely can be thought of by multiple people, but it very much seems like even when they don't have to do ANY of the thinking, it takes more than the idea... It also takes the will to implement it, which even the Mozilla boys seem to only do after years and years of the killer feature being right in their face.
Not only does nobody else but Opera seem to be innovative, it doesnt even seem like the others can even recognize a good idea when they see it, requiring years and years of sinking in.
I'm glad that the mozilla boys finally listened to the raves.. I'm sad that I have to include the word "finally" in there.
"His name was James Damore."