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Opera 10.0 Released, With Integrated Web Server Functionality
sherl0k writes "Opera 10.0, dubbed Opera Unite, has been released. Built into the Web browser is a full-fledged Web server, complete with nifty little gadgets such as a 'fridge' that people can post notes onto, a chat room, a widget to stream your music library anywhere, and a built-in file-sharing mechanism. It also scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test."
Readers fudreporter and TLS point to The Register's report on the new release and a
5-minute video demo, respectively. Update: 06/16 15:18 GMT by T: Roar Lauritzsen of Opera Software writes to point out that "release" isn't quite the right word here; though you can download it, version 10.0 is still in beta, and the version with Unite is a labs (experimental) release.
Pretend for a second that I don't know anything about Acid 3. Pretend I'm just a regular Joe-sixpack web user.
Why should I care that my browser scored 100/100 on the Acid 3 test?
Acid test tests only the compatibility with the standards. It says nothing about how vulnerable the executable is in the hands of malicious web masters.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm posting this from Opera 10. It seems quite different from the last version. Slashdot looks very, very good. To enable the file sharing, you have to click the "+" tab at the bottom and explicitly enable the web serving goodness. It includes a media player, to share your music collection around. I think we might have a game changer here. hanzie.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
You should reread and look at what is actually going on.
Why will this not lead to a hackers wet dream? Static HTML, no scripting language so nothing like php vulnerabilities or access to anything except what the browser allows you to. The file shares are running from a folder that you select to share. This makes a VERY nice way to share big files with your friends. Access is not publicly advertised, you have to invite somebody to have access. If they do give some dynamic features it will be in the form of widgets (which themselves are sandboxed) and gives them a lot of control over what those widgets are and aren't allowed to do.
A number of these features seem akin to devices such as slingbox which let you pick up your home tv from anywhere and gives you access to your material anywhere you go.
Opera already has chat functionality so hosting its own IRC or whatever isn't a big jump.
I find it funny the google talks about wave and everybody is all gaga over it but opera is bring something similar that is not hosted and its horrible.
Why does a web browser have full access to the file system, other than read-only access to its own "program" and "files to upload" folder[...]
It has filesystem access because, even without a file server component, users want to upload files
Uploading a file doesn't need file system access; it needs file chooser access. In the Sugar toolkit used by OLPC's XO laptops, for instance, apps that let the user select a file send a request to the file chooser service, which then opens the file and passes the equivalent of a file descriptor to the app. (In fact, a Sugar app's installer doesn't even let a single program request both directory listing and network connection privileges; the user has to apply them manually after the fact.) Another way to do this is to have the user use the operating system's file manager to copy the file into "files to upload" before uploading it, and then the "Browse" button behaves more like the pop-up menu that a <select> element creates.
The "Fishbowl" browser had an integrated web server.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010502014727/chronofish.com/FishBowl/
-CF
geocities2.0
I'd say it is a BAD THING when someone who doesn't care or know how to install a web server winds up installing a web server just because it is part of his web browser. I'd say it is a massive hole through which bad guys can poke at someone's system without the victim knowing that he's installed it.
Why is it a massive hole? You know, its not apache or anything complicated. It doesn't run php scripts. It serves files and only does that. Seeing how secure Opera has been compared to IE/FF I'd say they know how to secure it aswell.
Personally, I don't want my VNC server also running an http demon to distribute widgets to anyone who comes by. I don't want my web browser doing the same thing.
Nor it does, it has a good access police thats easily noticed by the user. Opera's site has some pics in the press section if you dont want to install it to see.
As long as your friends are explicit in wanting you to be able to this, ok.
As said, user access controls and the services/widgets DONT run on by default.
If that were true, it's trivial to set up a real webserver to provide exactly what you want them to get, instead of it being a side-effect of browsing the morning's ration of pr0n.
Internet is not just us nerds anymore. Actually, we're quite minority like in teh real world. Not anyone has interest to learn how to install and configure apache and hell, I would be more worried about someone using apache instead of opera's very basic webserver, if they get it working they most likely dont know what they're doing.
Yes, the file sharing is basically like FTP, you pick a folder that has the files you want to share, anyone who browses your files or downloads on, downloads it from you directly. The browsing is some sort of auto-created webpage depending on which section you are sharing under (Images, Music, Generic, Web-Server). If you go offline, or disable it, then that's that no one can connect or download. I would assume the same for The Lounge chatroom although I haven't had a reason to use it, but the Fridge/PostIt note thing might work differently, if you go offline it might keep the messages on one of their servers until you connect again.
As a side note, I played with it for awhile, photo-sharing was decent, but file and/or music sharing was a huge pain and crashed (well froze for far too long, would take about 15 minutes to load/refresh the pages) a few times. It' doesnt deal with large amounts of files (currently anyways). Sharing about 25 files/tunes... is ok, but thousands, and it craps out. And the URL's are horrible:
unite://home.%username%.operaunite.com/file_sharing/access/... etc
But all in all it's promising, and rather useful if you don't have any other alternatives or dedicated applications to do the same things.
Also, although I have no idea about it's security fundamentally, it allows you to share things with 3 different options:
Wide Open (anyone who knows the urls, or hunts you down on my.opera can view/use)
Password Protected
Only Me
... isn't this just what the Iranians are looking for? This kind of democratic peer to peer communication removes the need to rely on central social networking sites and puts the internet back in the hands of the people.