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Opera 10.10 Released, Includes New "Unite" Tech
Opera 10.10 has been released, and with it their new "Unite" technology, which allows users to share content directly between all of their own devices. Unite wraps both web browser and web server into a single package in an attempt to change the way users think about their browser. "'We promised Opera Unite would reinvent the Web,' said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. 'What we are really doing is reinventing how we as consumers interact with the Web. By giving our devices the ability to serve content, we become equal citizens on the Web. In an age where we have ceded control of our personal data to third-parties, Opera Unite gives us the freedom to choose how we will share the data that belongs to us.'"
It's great that Opera Software understands the power of P2P like sharing between people. I dont want to have everything on sites like Facebook just so people can see them.
Let me give you an example.
If you're cooking your own pizza, you have the choice on what to put in it. Make it a normal pizza or a pan pizza? Make it square or round? What toppings to put on it? Unite allows you bake your own pizza in the heart of your pc, and you can choose what to put on it. Want ham? Fine! Want pineapples? Fine! Want tuna? Fine! Want pepperoni? Fine! What would you have as a sauce? Barbeque sauce! The widgets you install and enable are your toppings and you choose what you want to have.
What comes to the "from the but-does-it-live-in-the-cloud dept.", I personally dont want it to be in the cloud. Then I lose control over it. That would be like having a happening in your town square where everyone is ordered to bake their pizza. They bring it there, put it out and lose control over who eats it. Direct friend-to-friend model lets you control who eats your delicious pizza, or who even knows about it. And if that said pizza happens to be a bad one and it comes hunting you later, you can pull it off. Good luck trying to do that in the town square after people have ate your pizza already.
So what I'm basically saying is that *I* should be the one controlling my content, not some other site or cloud service. Unite makes that easy for people.
A lot of TOS cite that you cannot use your connection as a server. Other ISPs simply block all P2P traffic.
The best way, as of right now, is to sign up at a Web Hosting provider where you host your own website instead of relying on something like Facebook.
But why won't you try Opera? Is there a good reason? Is it because it's closed-source? Is it because at the beginning they were not offering their browser for free?
FWIW, Opera is a fine browser, much better than IE, on par with Firefox and Safari. Also runs very nicely on a Nintendo DSi, given the limits of the system.
By this line of reasoning, would you agree with the following?
Despite low desktop usage numbers after more than a decade in existence Linux folks continue to spew out features. Good for them but I still won't touch their product.
Nuff said.
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
I have. It's on my system right now along with Firefox, Konqueror and Chrome. Addons are the critical component in which these other browsers than Firefox are very much behind. I would ditch Firefox in an instant if Chrome or Opera or Konqueror managed to be as flexible as Firefox but they're not... yet.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
And I would even say that it's a better browser than Firefox or Safari, but that's of course everyones own opinion. The robust interface and feeling on how fast things work is just good though. Firefox doesn't really come close with it.
That being said, Opera doesn't really even have low usage numbers. It has over 50% marketshare in Russia and CIS countries, being the #1 browser. It has really wide deployment on mobile phones, Wii's, other electronic equipment and hotel tv's and so on.
Actually making a better profit than Mozilla too, so I don't see why they wouldn't keep developing new things (and Opera has usually been the first one to actually develop new browser features)
Mozilla Foundation: Revenue $75 million (4 employees)
Opera Software: Revenue $89 million (675+ employees)
Despite low usage numbers after more than a decade in existence Opera folks continue to spew out features. Good for them but I still won't touch their product.
I wonder why. It's not open source but it's still gratis and technically superior to anything else I've tried.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Linux doesn't go out of its way to please the Chinese government with its new update; Opera did. Linux isn't closed source either. The two aren't in the same boat here.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I love how all the computer companies have these new-age wonderful human mottos for their products, like "Unite", and then cut deals with dictators to try and make a couple of extra bucks.
This is my sig.
I have. It's on my system right now along with Firefox, Konqueror and Chrome. Addons are the critical component in which these other browsers than Firefox are very much behind. I would ditch Firefox in an instant if Chrome or Opera or Konqueror managed to be as flexible as Firefox but they're not... yet.
Most of the features that are provided by add-ons to Firefox are built-in to Opera. Additionally, Opera allows User JavaScript, and even supports GreaseMonkey script. So ... is it just a matter of the principle and theory of flexibility, or are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
... and they employ more people. +1 Economy points. :) ;)
Best kept secret.
Nice features with a target size small enough that malware that might go after IE or firefox won't touch.
I browse in a VM with Opera. Never lets me down.
Still a small size. Damn thing fits in less than 10 MB of disk space.
Stuff like this unite threatens this. I wish they would stop making it better so suckers will stay with IE and firefox.
The unite stuff rocks. Your parents could never setup p2p or ftp, but they can use unite. Better than some file sharing site when all your family has got FIOS pipes. Only possible downside is needing to setup a opera account to use the DNS to get the "myopera" addresses, but I believe it is just another port 80 server that you could point to directly via IP. And any filehosting site is going to require a login/email, but will probably only give you crappy throughput and make it hard to share large binaries.
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
Y'know when I first saw this I thought "hey cool, if only it was on some other browser"...
What is it about Opera exactly that has the stink of death on it? I mean it went through phases where it wasn't free and had embedded ads in it, as far as I know those days are long gone. So if that's the case what gives?
My current running theory is that it just has an unfortunate name. When I think of "Opera" I think of a long, boring musical experience in Italian.
What? The government of China told Opera to change things? That's strange, I would have thought the democratic government in Taipei would do better than that.
It may sound silly and pointless to a lot of devs, but supporting things like border-radius and drop-shadow (even with the temporary vendor prefixes) would be nice.
That's one area where Safari is way, WAY ahead of both Opera and Firefox.
Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere, but this technology is sure to break many user's broadband service contracts. You are affectively running a web server, which isn't allowed under most plans. I wonder how this will be addressed?
I've been ever fan of Opera innovations, because i know i will probably see them in my future, no matter in which browser. But the new additions looks dangerous. Are open the field tie browser/user content to the maker of the browser (the 10gb of shared photos and opera turbo mean opera servers and services behind, and not so sure about the "embedded" server) and if well they could do that right or wrong, are practically forcing the other players in the browser arena to do the same, and not all are so well behaved.
Hmm, then on the other hand when I saw it I though “boy, I sure hope Firefox doesn’t suddenly get the irresistible urge to copy this silly feature”.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's nothing like Flock. Unite is a web server in the browser which is easy to use and add services to.
Clever signature text goes here.
Someone asked: "How does not having any kind of access to Opera Mobile/Google/etc helps the people in China, compared to having a censored version?"
I haven't seen a response to that yet.
What were Opera's alternatives?
Refuse? They would be thrown in jail, and the Chinese office would be history.
Pull out? How would that help anyone? It would just deprive the Chinese people of another way to access the web. The more ways to access the web, the more work for the government when they are trying to censor it. There needs to be as many ways to access the web as possible, because the more there are, the more difficult it is to police, and the easier it is to poke holes in the firewall. You are clearly blinded by your own ignorance.
Clever signature text goes here.
Revenue != profit
GM's revenues are in the billions of dollars, but they've been losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter for some time now....
As far as Opera goes, I don't use it because it's not FLOSS, and yet, it could and should be.
cheers,
Great, another let-down from Opera. Are they supporters of real-world, widely used standards like H.264 and AAC or are they supporters of open-source formats that practically nobody uses like Ogg Theora?
P.S.: I hate those open source projets names... it reminds me of the "Homer Car" Simpsons episode. Stop trying to sound smarter than the general public with your product names, maybe you'll have some luck (see: "FireFox"). "Ogg" sounds like the sound a caveman would make and "Theora" sounds like "theory" which we all know is always different than reality.
Forced is relative. They chose to comply with the government to keep their product in that market, much like Google, Yahoo, etc.
It's a great market, but you have to ask what your soul is worth (turns out mine is only 50 bucks and a copy of firefox).
Those revenues for Mozilla are including revenues from MozCo, which employes a couple of hundred people.
Clever signature text goes here.
No, they chose to comply in order to avoid trouble like arrests of their Chinese employees and such.
But you didn't answer the part of my comment that dealt with how staying in the market helps the Chinese people, and how pulling out would be detrimental to their freedom. Again: More services = more work for the government = less oversight = more chances that there are holes in the firewall.
As it happens, there are several ways to access the uncensored web through Opera Mini even after this. If Opera pulled out, these holes would be gone forever, and there would be no opportunities to open new ones. Your brain. Use it.
Clever signature text goes here.
Userscripts still are quite a bit more clunky on Opera, as is their adblocking option.
Yes, they are both there, but adblock plus and greasemonkey on Firefox are much more functional and easy to use.
Linux doesn't go out of its way to please the Chinese government with its new update; Opera did.
1) Just out of curiosity, what demands could the Chinese government possibly have on an operating system? You don't need to censor an OS, it's the applications they're worried about.
2) I wasn't aware that "Linux" is an entity that the Chinese government can make demands on, but what's the point of demanding that "Linux" make changes when the Chinese can just make their own?
This is aside from the fact that the parent was comparing consistently low usage numbers instead of vague support for government ideologies.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Opera will obviously support the open format. The other ones are full of patent crap, and you have to pay through your nose for it.
Clever signature text goes here.
You're dealing with nerds, here. Coming up with 'Ogg' was probably a defining moment in that young person's life.
Rejected names were "ReallyGoodVideoCodec", "VideoOpenSource" and "dvxiddidvxd".
Because for me, IE does the trick (and prior to 8, FF did). Its a browser, kind of a "so what" thing, as long as it works.
That's funny... I haven't heard anything about Firefox or Chrome doing what Opera did. Opera certainly had a choice. They chose to support the censorship in China in exchange for more market-share. Nokia and friends helped China to set up the firewall in the first place for the market-share too; are their actions excusable as well?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
That's because neither Firefox nor Chrome work like Opera Mini. They are like Opera Mobile, but Opera Mini is a thin client which needs a server to handle websites, because that's the only way it can work on low-end phones.
Why did you ignore the part where I very clearly explained how Opera pulling out would be detrimental to the Chinese people because they would lose a way to access the web, and the fewer services, the easier it is for the government to keep track and plug all holes. As it is today, there are in fact several ways to circumvent the firewall using Opera Mini. If Opera pulled out, they would be completely blocked, and those holes would disappear.
Your view of the situation is simplstic, naive, and frankly, scary. I thought people were willing to use their brains!
Clever signature text goes here.
I'm simply stating that we make choices. It's been a long, long time since I was forced to do something. Opera could have closed down its site and simply quit selling its browser in China. Just like Google could have.
I would say it's a moot point to their freedom. The government will simply ban it, when it becomes a detriment. In addition to this, the government could just look at those with Opera as greater security threats.
These people should be using BETTER software to get around the china holes.
My entire point was simply use the proper language.
The Chinese government is detrimental to their freedom. If the internet gets to the point where the Chinese government feels that it doesn't have control, they'll throttle the hell out of it until they can control it. Using Nokia and Opera and any other corporate entity to accomplish the task.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
By the way, Google did what Opera did (or worse). They were forced to block Chinese people from their international search engine, and provide a censored version. As did Yahoo, Microsoft, and many other companies. But more services = more work for the government = more potential holes in the firewall = good for the Chinese people.
Clever signature text goes here.
1) red flag linux and green dam.
2) Red Hat and friends could be restricted from offering support for their flavors of Linux unless X demand is met.
3) Maybe so but I felt that it was worth noting a few things.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I just explained to you how Opera being completely shut down in Chine would have been detrimental to the freedom of the Chinese people, but you chose to ignore it and rant on.
The government doesn't see Opera as a problem, but the fact is that people have already discovered several ways to work around the firewall in Opera Mini. The more services, the more potential holes, and the more difficulty for the government to enforce the firewall.
Opera being completely blocked would not have helped at all. It would simply have deprived the Chinese people of choice and possible ways to access the uncensored web.
Clever signature text goes here.
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Noscript,CS Lite, Adblock, menu editing features, scrapbook etc... You *could* block ads and control cookies and javascript but it's not nearly so clean as Firefox's addons allow. To me, Opera reminds me of Gnome. Things can be done but it's not really designed to do the job efficiency.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
And for those of us who's ISP's Terms of Service inclue a line that boils down to "Thou shalt not run a web server on your home PC unless you pay for a buisness-class connection"... well, what then? Just... don't use Opera?
Well, "Open Video CODEC" would have been "OVC" for short... not as tech-sounding as "H.264" or "MPEG-4", but still has a ring to it. Better than "Ogg".
Even a vague reference to something nerdy could have resulted in a better name, such as the "QHG CODEC" or "SB1 CODEC".
Clearly you've convinced me of the wrongness of my position with all the profanity and ad hominem attacks. China has significant control over the connections to its borders. They will not allow their walled garden to get out of their control unless the people fight them tooth and nail.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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I notice that you once again ignored my points. I said "fuck you" because I'm sick and tired of dishonest people like you. The more services, the less control. Face the facts, and stop being an asshole.
Clever signature text goes here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...or are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
Last I checked?
The Chinese government is detrimental to their freedom.
If the Chinese people are content to live under that system without trying to affect change, who are you to say that they should have a different government? If the Chinese feel like their freedoms are being curtailed, isn't it their responsibility to do something about it, not the responsibility of Opera or Google or some random guy on Slashdot?
I mean, we can sit here and talk about things the Chinese government has done or is doing, but at the end of the day the Chinese people are still content to live under that government. No one but the Chinese has the authority to say which government China should be run by.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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Opera also has a built in bittorrent client :D
Requiem for the American Dream
I don't know about the former, but JS can be quickly enabled/disabled by pressing F12. You can also associate the toggle to a shortcut of your own preference.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Lucky you - all I get is a nice browsing experience :(
Requiem for the American Dream
Noscript,CS Lite, Adblock, menu editing features, scrapbook etc... You *could* block ads and control cookies and javascript but it's not nearly so clean as Firefox's addons allow. To me, Opera reminds me of Gnome. Things can be done but it's not really designed to do the job efficiency.
I agree that the accessibility of some features really needs some work. My biggest complain in that regard is wrt the handling of UserJS files, for which you are essentially on your own.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
It's not Opera, it's people - they like the clunkiness of IE and Firefox - the massive amounts of wasted screen space - the lack of responsiveness. Try opening 75+ tabs in firefox without the universe grinding to a halt..!
Requiem for the American Dream
If I remember correctly, F12 enables/disables javascript globally but not locally. You can't selectively disable javascript with F12. So if you go on a site and want to keep the site's javascript but not doubleclick's javascript, then you're SOL. Noscript is wasily configurable and doesn't need to be told every single time you visit a site.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Considering the Chinese government's history of headshotting and crushing opposition under tanks, if you lived in China and opposed what the government was doing, would you be in any hurry to advertise that fact? The Chinese government is in the business of suppressing dissent with any and all means available. Don't assume that the government's existence is indicative that it's what the Chinese people want.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Unite makes a lot of sense to me:
- I keep ownership of my data. No more finding my personal photo used in an add, like happened to that woman a while back.
- I keep control of my data. No more entrusting it to some advertiser, their trainees, their subcontractors...
- I can easily backup all of my data. See the Sidekick debacle.
- Everything is in ONE location
- I have relatively fine control over who can see what, and can change content and rights at any time.
It currently is not very polished, though It IS very easy to use, much easier that setting up the same services with the usual software.
- not very good looking
- nor very feature rich
Hopefuly the design will get smoother, and addons will make it better... the idea by itself sounds very good, and the implementation is kinda OK, for a 1.0 version.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Mmmm how does it require UPnP ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Right-click->Edit site preferences.. lets you edit those for individual sites. If you want a no-script like thing, disable global javascript and enable for sites you want it to function at.
Just tried it on a vm running Windows 98 and it works! Holy retro Batman! We don' need no steenkin IE 6
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
This is false. Because of actions like these, the Chinese become increasingly aware of what's going on, as do foreigners.
You're defending this arrangement pretty strongly. Mind you, do you have a stake in it? I mean, I know a lot of companies and people make these kinds of claims and then trot out this line. I am leary of the conflict of interest. Are they really doing it to help the people of China, or are they really just helping themselves? I don't even think they see the difference.
This is my sig.
Thanks.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
No it doen't depend on UPnP. It's good to read the post made by other users and then post yours. Is basically a proxy service. As mentioned above by tomhudson "Check the documentation - your web browser is not really becoming a "web server" - your requests go through their proxy server at yourdevicename.yourusername.operaunite.com They've just wrapped xhmhttprequests (XHR) in their own custom javascript class, and provided a default proxy for it. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-unite-developer-primer-revisited/#conceptsproxy [opera.com]"
Really? Opera offers the same functionality built-in has thousands of addons? Then it must really be bloated.
By the way, where is Vimperator, DownThemAll, DownloadHelper and support for DBus notifications on download completion?
Dilbert RSS feed
Maybe in some ways, but it looses in flexibility for Firefox addon support. It may not mean much to you, but it does to a lot of people, including myself.
Dilbert RSS feed
I don't buy it. There are, what, 1.3 billion people living in China? If the people revolted against the government there's not a lot the government could do about it. The fact that the government is able to put down an uprising indicates to me that the uprising does not have popular support, which further indicates that the people who are not supporting the uprising support the government. That's probably a safer assumption to make than assuming that I know what's best for the Chinese people.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Dilbert RSS feed
Yep, stick with IE, get yesteryear's features with very high "usage numbers" (sic). You won't be missed. Don't forget to eat all your meals at McDonald's, wear whatever is the fashion, watch Fox, and use Windows+Office on a Dell.
You won't be missed.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
.>No but it does indicate how "strong" the browser is compared to Mozilla....
Come back when you get a clue. Revenue is meaningless on its own. Realizing this would be a prerequisite to Business 101.
>>I don't use it because it's not FLOSS, and yet, it could and should be
>>>Why? Just because you say so?
Yes, because I say so. That's my prerequisite for using any software. Am I not entitled to have my own conditions for software use, and to voice those OPINIONS?
cheers,
I give Ogg a pass for as long as the big raster image editor project uses the name, "gimp."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It gives you the option of using UPnP, it does not require it. All you need to do is untick the "Use UPnP port forwarding from my router" box. Not too diffcult.
Mozilla weave (bookmark/password sync), adblock plus, firebug and dictionary tooltip would be my necessities Anybody you ask will have an arbitrary list of a handful of extensions they must have. Is Opera's strategy to build-in every last one?
bite my glorious golden ass.
Yea, when Jimbo Wales decreed to go Ogg-only for Wikipedia back in 2004, there was many people saying something along the line of this. The support of Ogg in browsers for them is very good news, as it eliminated a lot of the pain that had existed for years.
Refuse? They would be thrown in jail, and the Chinese office would be history.
Could you give any real examples?
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Yep, 250 people. One should also keep in mind that the corp is a fully owned subsidiary of the foundation, and thus not the same sort of entirely profit-minded machine as a regular corp.
I have to agree with the latter two examples but Opera is perfectly capable of the first. You disallow JS globally and enable it on individual sites.
One thing to add to the list is a better adblocking system. You can add premade block content lists with Opera to serve the same purpose as adblock but it is not entirely trivial to do.
Hence you could change that to, "Just... don't enable the Unite feature."
Real examples of what?
Clever signature text goes here.
It doesn't need uPnP but services can use it if it is there.
Revenue is not profit.
Revenue is income before expensive (usually before tax as well but this varies). Profit is money after expenses and tax. Having a higher revenue != a higher profit. Mozilla has 4 employee's to Opera's 675+, something tells me Opera's overheads are a bit higher then Mozilla's.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Examples of throwing software-makers into jail.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Software-makers? Opera Mini is a service which Chinese people used to get around the government's firewall. Yes, people who do not follow orders from the Chinese government are indeed thrown in jail.
Clever signature text goes here.
1) Opera Sync does basically the same
2) There's that build-in adblocker, but I like Ad Muncher more. And it works in other browsers too.
4) Not exactly a tooltip, but double-click word->click dictionary with shift down. Then just ctrl+w to get back. Works just as good after a few uses.
which allows users to share content directly between all of their own devices
What, Opera users couldn’t copy a file (or copy/paste content) before??
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I guess their real plan is put that technology to Mobile version of Opera. Opera 10 Mobile beta is already out and it is absolutely amazing. Why amazing? Well, it works with same engine as Opera 10 on my poor Nokia E65 which is absolutely unsupported :)
I am sure this "plugin" was written in highly (amazingly) portable way and it will end up in mobile devices/game consoles.
Nokia already has a Webserver for Symbian devices. Believe or not, it doesn't use that much battery and RAM. Less than a very high end multi purpose messenger. If you haven't heard about it, blame nobody else than Nokia.
http://mymobilesite.net/
It worked fine under 24MB RAM/200Mhz ARM powered E65.
they abrogate the 1st & 2nd amendments: freedom of speech & the right to keep & bear servers... 'bout time the b-o-r is given a 21st century interpretation!-)
... are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
I was an Opera user for several years, even using the "ad-supported" version of their software, because I really liked it.
Nowadays I run firefox. Opera would need to provide the functionality of the following extensions for me:
ScrapBook: Capture pages locally, add comments and remove DOM objects.
Stylish: Change CSS of pages you visit
TinyMenu: Change the menu bar to a single "Menu" button and move the other control bars so that they occupy only one row in the screen.
Tree Style Tab: Present tabs in a vertical tree (on the left of the screen).
DelIcioUS: Bookmarks
DownThemAll: Mass Downloader/Download Manager.
PriceDrop: Track amazon and bestbuy price changes and notify about them.
The issue with Opera is that to get the same functionality of Firefox, it will either need to make use of addons/plugins or it will suffer the same fate as Netscape or other browsers who wanted to do everything.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Does this method allow you to block other active content, like silverlight and flash on a per-site, quick-toggle fashion? Noscript does all that and I don't have to click more than twice to allow/disallow a site.
"A lot" paints a bit false image. Yes, there is certainly sizable number of people who use addons/functionality that are only available in a form of FF extension.
However...you are a very small minority of FF users. Which doesn't mean that vast majority of its users don't use extensions! It just means that, using the example of Opera in this discussion, all of the features that most people boast about with few popular FF extensions, are available out-of-the-box in Opera or easily added.
One that hath name thou can not otter
That can be solved with a magic little key called F11, and Vimperator and/or Mouse Gestures to control the browser. Besides, you can fully configure the bars, to the smallest detail (it's all CSS).
I think you realize F11 goes a little too far in any browser; CSS goes too far when it comes to vast majority of users. As for full keyboard navigation or mouse gestures - it's nice to have it nativelly implemented instead of the browser being possibly bog down with another extension...
At the same time? Sure. But I don't usually do that. Using the browser with 75+ tabs open is smooth, though.
Sure you can't...not on comparable hardware at least (I'm doing much more on ancient Athlon XP 1467MHz + 768MB that I have lying around here...). And you don't really have a way to navigate those tabs in default FF GUI (so again...more extensions). In Opera not only tab buttons resize their width by default and have more "spatial" behavior when opening/closing, but also:
a) "tab menu list" actually allows you to see all tabs (uses Windows Start menu - like "revealing" instead of scrolling through one column)
b) there's also a tree view with all the tabs in all windows, with text search
c) "hold RMB & scroll" is handy too...
One that hath name thou can not otter
...Opera (on the desktop; excluding former Soviet block) and Linux (on the desktop)...
Fixed that for you.
One that hath name thou can not otter
The most obvious answers is yes. Unless opera include everything under the kitchen sink, chances are it is missing something that firefox add-ons has to offer. Of course, it's in opera best interest NOT to include every feature (as many conflict). Not to mention the different ways a feature can be approached.
Missing opera features as far as I'm aware of: No-script ability to easily change javascript on/off based on site. Easy menu to control greasemonkey scripts (it has the capabilities but it's barried within a few options) unlike a simple icon. Compact menu: icon to replace menu saving space
Of course, this is specifically stuff that I find missing since i last did a quick check (opera 9 developing a cross-platform greasemonkey script).
Having a specific feature doesn't mean it presented the way a user might like. Hence why you might see duplicates of the same feature for firefox plugins. Nothing wrong with opera method of no addon but that just means only a subset of people will like opera. I'm sure many firefox users who don't use addons or only use a few (of the more common) could easily switch to opera but that doesn't meant everyone will find the switch pleasant.
The problem is that most people are uninformed and unwilling to be informed, pretty much as it was at the beginning for IE vs Firefox. The point about feature presentation is very interesting. I mentioned in another article that there are quite a few points where some of Opera's feature could improve handling-wise, most notably the UserJS handling (equivalent of GreaseMonkey).
As for the other two you mention specifically:
JavaScript toggling: Put a button on one of the bottom toolbar if you're too lazy to go the F12 way. Still faster than installing noscript if all you want is toggling JS on/off.
Also, the iconized menu is available in Opera 10 too, and in fact it was the default in some of the betas but user complained so you now have to enabled it by deselecting File -> Show Menu Bar.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
and 3) DragonFly is an excellent replacement for firebug
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Uhm, saying only that you don't use it because it's not FLOSS would be fine (BTW, I wonder - certainly you never use Nvidia GFX drivers, or proprietary firmware/bios?). But you've said more, that Opera "could and should be" FLOSS. Which simply doesn't fit their business model, at which they are quite successful.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Of course it doesn't. But trust me, it offers all the functionality that some 90+ % (from my experience) of FF users want and "can only have in FF extension" (yes, not in the same GUI...why would FF copy things from Opera in exactly the same way? ;) )
Regarding your examples - Opera has full keyboard navigation for a long time (well, it's not like in Vim...why should it be? Though I don't know if you can make it behave like Vim, I don't use it; it's certainly configurable), DownThemAll is built in since..."forever", DownloadHelper is a case of simple UserJS/Greasemonkey script or bookmarklet. I wouldn't know about DBus generally, perhaps only about specific usage scenario if I knew what you want to do with that info.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Adding to other answers: adblock is built-in, using basically the same list...
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
(and from what my buddy who used FF for a long time says, "empty field hider" works slightly better in Opera)
Plus you can add manually through GUI element blocker whatever comes through...but that doesn't happen to me, so it's probably quite rare...
And no, not everybody will have an arbitrary different list of extensions. Yes, there are some specialized ones used by sizable number of people. But majority (90+ % from what I see...) use only a few common extensions, with their functionality built into Opera for a long time.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yes, toggle for plugins is in the same places as for js.
One that hath name thou can not otter
All new windows in tabs: Tab Mix Plus (okay, it's bloated, some people say - but you asked for it) has a Single Window Mode. It is what it sounds like.
change skin without restarting the application: the Mozilla Labs folk have Personas. Also, should you be using Windows, AnyColor works even better.
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
Not interested in QT3 and not gtk. QT4 is where they should be now. This is silly of them to implement a depricating library.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I was an Opera user for several years, even using the "ad-supported" version of their software, because I really liked it.
Nowadays I run firefox. Opera would need to provide the functionality of the following extensions for me:
ScrapBook: Capture pages locally, add comments and remove DOM objects.
Not sure what you mean by 'capture pages' and 'remove DOM objects', but you can (1) save pages as .mht (2) add personal notes to any webpage and (3) block any content.
Stylish: Change CSS of pages you visit
In Opera you can do this at any particular time by editing the (local cache copy of the) remote CSS or HTML file, or programmatically using UserJS (in fact, this is something Opera does already to fix some b0rked sites that send bogus data to Opera).
TinyMenu: Change the menu bar to a single "Menu" button and move the other control bars so that they occupy only one row in the screen.
This is built in Opera 10.
Tree Style Tab: Present tabs in a vertical tree (on the left of the screen).
You can customize the tab bar placement in Opera too, on any of the 4 sides of the screen.
DelIcioUS: Bookmarks
Like adding the delicious bookamrks page to the Opera panel?
DownThemAll: Mass Downloader/Download Manager.
The 'Links' tab in the Opera panel does that pretty well.
PriceDrop: Track amazon and bestbuy price changes and notify about them.
That's probably missing, but it should be straightforward to make an Opera widget for that.
The issue with Opera is that to get the same functionality of Firefox, it will either need to make use of addons/plugins or it will suffer the same fate as Netscape or other browsers who wanted to do everything.
I disagree. The biggest issue with Opera is that people are not informed about all the stuff it can do. This post is an excellent example of it.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
In first line "a bit" and in second "much more"?...
Anyway, it's a bit debatable...yes, adblock in Opera requires you to put one file in a directory and restart Opera. Afterwards it's actually much better than FF, with its GUI element hider, if you want to block something additional.
One that hath name thou can not otter