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Opera 10.60 Released, With Faster JS, WebM Video Support
teh31337one writes "Four short months after Opera 10.50, the latest version of Opera's lightweight web browser has been released. It not only claims to be the fastest browser, but also the first final browser with WebM video support. It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux." Update: 07/04 21:53 GMT by T : Headline updated to reflect that this is Opera 10.60, rather than 10.6. Thanks to the readers who spotted this goof.
damn, it's fast!
At first I was confused by this article, since I was reading it in Opera 10.11. The new version is called 10.60, not 10.6.
Simon's Rock College
Opera brags about this, but my experience is that it's generally quirky in comparison to other browsers (not IE) with valid (X)HTML/CSS. For instance, W3 specs say that a blockquote should be rendered with equal whitespace before and after (link here) , yet Opera won't give it any whitespace in a after the closing blockquote tag. This breaks the appearance of many sites, including imageboards.
Why should I care about a non-extensible browser that does some artificial benchmarks a millisecond faster? Not trolling, I'm trying to figure out what practical benefit Opera has for its users.
Are you sure? This shows as your exact description of proper in Opera 10.6...
Can you post some screenshots of this problem? I have never noticed it before. My suspicion is that you're using a proxy or some filtering software that's damaging the HTML that Opera is subsequently displaying.
For a long time it was the only browser to support border-radius CSS. It's currently the only browser with WebM support. I like it because of its right click->Validate feature, which sends the cached copy of the current page to the w3 validator. Plus it also has Inspect Element (like Chrome), mouse gestures (like the Firefox addons), and it looks good in Mac OS X and Windows (although not so much in Linux). Plus Opera Unite is really cool too. Opera Mail is also pretty decent. Also, I can't find in the spec where W3 recommends equal whitespace before and after blockquotes. All it says, as far as I can tell, is that it should be indented.
Not trolling, I'm trying to figure out what practical benefit Opera has for its users.
The 80-20 rule, 80% of the benefit of Firefox with 20% of the effort fiddling with all the extensions. Firefox without any extensions at all is a poorer browser than Opera, and I got better things do to than to custom design my browser.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Opera used to cost money. Then they switched to an ad-supported shareware model (no ads if you paid). Then they went free (as on $0) on the desktop and brought in the revenue by licensing to mobile phones, consoles, etc. That worked when smartphones were neglected and the only other option was IE mobile. But these days, WebKit is used by (or will be used by) pretty much everyone except Microsoft (who are on the verge of irrelevance). And Mozilla might, someday, gain traction with their mobile browser.
Who is going to pay for Opera when they can use WebKit or Fennec for free? They don't have the google ad revenue that Mozilla has. They don't have a sugar daddy like IE or WebKit.
It doesn't matter how good their browser is, their business model is dead and their days are numbered.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux."
No, it's available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.
FYI, on my system the opera:about page shows it as version "10.60 internal", but its browser identification is:
"Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; U; en) Presto/2.6.30 Version/10.60"
which could be construed as meaning either version 9.80 or version 10.60.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Plus it also has Inspect Element (like Chrome), mouse gestures (like the Firefox addons), and it looks good in Mac OS X and Windows (although not so much in Linux).
I really like Opera on Windows, but I find it dreadful on OS X. I like mouse gestures and use them regularly, but Opera only supports the mouse gestures built into Opera, not the system service ones that work in all my other apps. The same goes for the rest of the system services. No support for the native spellchecker or grammar checker or word statistics. No automatic language translation, dictionary/thesaurus lookup, or text manipulation services. If you give up all the cool OS supplied features of OS X, you might as well be on Windows. I always seems to me like a badly ported Windows app, which is too bad because it is a very nice Windows app.
FYI, on my system the opera:about page shows it as version "10.60 internal", but its browser identification is:
"Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; U; en) Presto/2.6.30 Version/10.60"
which could be construed as meaning either version 9.80 or version 10.60.
You can thank idiots who do browser sniffing the wrong way for that.
Basically, some people who should have never been allowed to do any development checked for Opera's version by the first digit. When Opera went to 10.00, some scripts suddenly thought it was Opera 1, and things went very bad. Therefore, all future Opera versions will fake-identify as "Opera/9.x" in order to prevent that from happening.
Chrome seems to be the next in line to hit version 10 by the way things are going, so I don't doubt they'll be in the same boat when it happens.
Here is why: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-ua-string-changes/
I'm trying to figure out what practical benefit Opera has for its users.
Of all browsers I've tried, it has the most customizable keybindings, and, in general, the single best implementation of keyboard-only browsing.
(Yes, I've tried the Firefox plugins which promised the same. They're not on par.)
On the whole, though, Opera doesn't have a single major killer feature. Rather, it's a combination of little (and obvious, come to think of it) things, each of which makes your life that much easier - and no-one else offers the entire set in one box. For example, Opera is the only browser I know of which lets you submit a form to a new tab, background tab etc (same keyboard modifiers when clicking submit button as for links).
You can thank idiots who do browser sniffing the wrong way for that.
If you're doing browser sniffing you're already doing it the wrong way.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Perhaps, but who cares? Let those sites break. Sites should display identically on every browser and adhere to all standards, not utilizing any browser qwirks. If they don't they are badly designed pages, plain and simple. It's not the browser's responsibility to compensate for an incompetent web developer.
How would the users know it's that site that is broken, and not the browser?
I've switched my default browser from opera to chrome. I'm ready to uninstall opera, it's not worth trying to browse the web with right now. I have to go to FireFox on FreeBSD because chrome is not ported.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Ask their geek friends who read Slashdot.
There are system mouse gestures? Since when? Do you mean multitouch gestures?
OS X supports system services which can be installed by themselves or be supplied by an application. There are two different services available for OS X that can be used in pretty much all applications that use the Cocoa APIs, but won't work in Opera. So while I can use gestures in Opera, I have to configure them independently of all my other mouse gestures, which rather sucks.
. As for all those other services, I don't need a grammar checker (generally...), there is a spell checker built-in to Opera (which, again, I don't need)
Maybe you don't like grammar checking, but it's nice to have the option. As for spell checking, it's a lot less useful when it hasn't been trained with all the words I've taught the native spell checker. I meant really, why would I want to have to teach it twice that MSDP isn't a misspelling, and do the same for every other word? Why for the love of buddha can't it simply use the native spell checker offered to all apps?
Opera can send you straight to MW.com for dictionary/thesaurus or Wikipedia for encyclopedia
Right, but it can't use the native dictionary/thesaurus already installed on my machine, and which also goes to wikipedia and online resources all at once. Why does it have to be different and not behave the same as all the other native apps that aren't badly ported?
and I don't know what "text manipulation" services you're talking about; the ones that show up in the services menu for me are the same that show up in Safari's services menu.
I take it you haven't installed any services that operate on text, like something to fix those terrible line endings left by notepad, or to replace smart quotes with straight ones, or to automatically change a URL into a proper bibliography citation? I use them heavily, but last check they still didn't work at all in Opera.
I'm sure better Mac OS X integration will come in time; it already looks like a native Mac app. More so than Firefox, at any rate.
I put in feature requests to fix the problem, wow, forever ago. It just doesn't seem to be a priority there. It is too bad because I do like it on Windows. It's about the same as Safari on Windows, just not there.
No, but I hear it's a good webserver.
and I'm on the verge of changing browsers. I paid for Opera back when the choice was between IE, Netscape, and Opera. Been using Opera as my main browser, and very happy with it, since then... must be quasi 10 years now. I'm very sad to see Opera dropping the ball that bad, and not fixing it:
- basically, 10.x versions are much lower quality than 9.x and before. An occasional hiccup can be understood, but 10.x is kinda old by now, there have been several point releases, and the issues that bother me still are there.
- broken feature 1: mouse gestures. One a large screen, with the mouse set for high velocity and high acceleration, mouse gestures don't register 9 out of 10 times. Chrome does not have that issue. It's probably kinda easy to fix (9.x has the issue, but not as badly).
- broken feature 2: autoscroll. 10.x goes out of autoscroll after a (random) handful of seconds. I've taken to copy-pasting URLs of long documents into Opera 9x, but that's cumbersome.
- broken feature 3: Opera Link keeps overwriting my main PCs bookmarks with stuff from PCs I haven't touched in ages. I'm back to synching bookmarks with backups and restore, and re-doing the rest (custom searches...) by hand.
- broken feature 4: cursor in text boxes. I routinely have issues getting my cursor back into rich-text edit boxes. I actually had the problem right now, and had to click on my comment's title then tab back into my text... this is cumbersome after a while.
- Broken feature 4: some sites that used to work perfectly no longer do. Hotmail is the main one, ZD sites are kinda screwy (the comments section)
I'm a bit disheartened. I've been a Opera fan and advocate for long, and now I feel they've dropped their focus on code quality to chase feature checklists and performance benchmarks. I personnaly don't care if my browser does WebM, or if it's 50% faster at javascript, if I can't use Hotmail, synch my PCs, scroll pages, and otherwise navigate with my mouse. These have been bugs since 10.0 beta, I've reported them, Opera hasn't moved on them.
I used to recommend Opera, I no longer do, and after enduring 10.x for months, I'm ready to leave, too. Chrome's mouse gestures and autoscroll work fine on my PC, as do Hotmail and text boxes...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I'll bite.
NoScript: disable scripting and enable it selectively using the F12 "site preferences" shortcut.
AdBlockPlus: You can get various urlfilter.ini if you really want to. I really dont need this, just block the most annoying ones with right-click:block_content. Some sites need the "normal" advertising, and once you block the top-10, you don't have much to complain about. Anyway, I will give you that point.
Flashblock: Here. Myself I just "enable plugins" (F12 again) on sites I want. *And* you can block the flash content with the normal "block content" too.
Firebug: Meh. Have you worked with dragon fly?
RefControl: Hmpf. F12, disable "send referrer information". Maybe it is just me, but I never needed to spoof referrers.
And yes, I use every one of these extensions on firefox, because it is not there as default. And some more. In a *memory-limited VM* just so it does not goes haywire and swaps the hell out of my current apps to oblivion. Lucky me.
eliphas
Move the tab bar to the left or right side.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I think you're missing the big picture. The Mac port of Opera is very poorly designed -- with lots of really minor issues which, all added up, make the experience of using Opera on the mac worse than even Firefox. Look at Chrome for a better port -- they made a lot of effort to ensure that Chrome blended in well with the Mac environment. The result is very good -- to the point that Chrome looks and feels like a native browser.
Opera has had a Mac port for a long time now, so filing a bug report about a minor issue like not using the built-in spellcheck seems pointless to me -- Opera seems to not care about the little issues which stands out like a sore thumb to people who have actually sat down and tried using Opera on the Mac.
Right click Tab Bar, click Customize, select "Only display when needed", same place as it's always been.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Perhaps, but who cares?
Opera, because if their users notice less sites work they will leave.
Let those sites break.
I agree.
Sites should display identically on every browser
Impossible, and imho not necessary, but I'm not into the teh-interwebs-is-an-application-shit.
and adhere to all standards
You can use standards and still break things. Since an old browser don't support the latest standards. Eventually one reason to check the version.
not utilizing any browser qwirks.
Agreed.
If they don't they are badly designed pages
Or the opposite, not designed sources of Information.
plain and simple. It's not the browser's responsibility to compensate for an incompetent web developer.
True.
Tested on FF, Opera, Chrome, and IE8. The only difference in rendering the blockquote appears to be based on font and relative sizing, determining at which point the text wraps and how far over it is when it does so.
Opera 10.60 is still roughly twice as fast as Firefox 4.0b1, and less aggressive gobbling memory than either Firefox or Chrome (the hog) on average.
You generally only need extensions if something's already broken; on Opera, you can load up an ad blocking filter+CSS element hider, enable/disable both per-site, enable cookies/JS/etc on a per-site basis, and run many but-not-all user javascript. All of which require 'extensions' on Firefox.
It's also widely accepted to be the most standards compliant browser on virtually any comparative time frame, and also typically gives equal treatment to all supported OSes, so there are lots of reasons to use it and enjoy it.
People seem to like to complain about Opera, like they like to complain about XP x64. They heard about it once and so it just must absolutely be horrible, because giving it a real chance is too much work.
The last time I had any rendering/formatting problems was with old buggy javascript layout in 2006. Those were with Opera 9 beta(ish) I think? By 9.5 the problems (on minor, entirely non-public code) were gone again. And now (as in, for all of recent memory), like most browsers, you can report websites that don't work directly (and can post code snippets on the forums, IIRC).
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
No.
6 11.
This is hilarious.
People like you have been predicting Opera's demise for 15 years. And for some reason, Opera is still around, and not only, that, but it's thriving. They just reported having more than 120 million users globally, up from 100 million a few months ago.
They're pulling in major deals with the likes of AT&T, Sony, Nintendo, Verizon, etc. all the time.
They're profitable, have a large cash reserve, and are even buying up other companies.
The fact is that the only people who are saying that Opera is doomed are the ignorant ones who haven't a clue about the market. You whine about a web server in the browser without understanding why they are doing it, for example. Hint: they have an actual strategy behind it. You just haven't bothered to educate yourself about it.
Clever signature text goes here.
Opera usage is calculated on usage, not downloads. For the desktop browser it's based on the number of users querying for an upgrade. So if you have turned off "automatically check for updates" you won't even be counted.
120M is under-reporting, not over-reporting.
I love Opera but I've never seen so many bugs in stable release as in this one. I'm using it on linux and I constantly have problems with flash and locked keyboard both at my home and work PCs. This is so anoying that I'm thinking of switching to another browser