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Opera Embraces Extensions For v.11
dkd903 writes "Opera is one of the most solid browsers around. It is very fast, extremely customizable, and has a lot of functionality that others do not have. Opera is also a very strong supporter of Web standards; it was one of the first browsers to pass the ACID 3 test. However, Opera has always been confined to a relatively small user-base because of one critical thing — lack of extensions. Well, that is about to change — at least the extensions part. Today, it has been announced that Opera 11 will support extensions."
Wish I could Mod Op..
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
It's about time! I'm now excited about Opera again.
Argh, and of course I mistype a word while railing against a lack of proofreading. Go figure...
Because, out of everything, the only thing has ever held Opera back is the lack of extensions. Yep. Definitely. Nothing about having a weird interface, or having preferences in unusual locations. Just the lack of extensions.
Sure.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
I'd prefer the best browser to maintain its current level of anonymity and leave the IE and Firefox user as cherries to be plucked.
Someone write a "FirefoxTab" extension. Who else would like their Opera to leak memory?
Now if you left it alone everyone would have thought you were making a point. :)
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I've never understood that. "Why not use this browser that does everything you say you want?" "Because it doesn't have EXTENSIONS!"
I don't get it. I suppose this is nice if it gets people to use Opera, but honestly... if that's your excuse, there's probably a better reason you're using something else.
I have been using Opera for quite some time, and the speed and feature set is very good. What I do wish for, more than extensions, is to have each tab have it's own thread in a similar fashion as Chrome. I have experienced some crashes on my Mac because of plugins, and it would be good to only have one tab crash, not the whole browser.
Dvorak on Doomtech
You can try out privoxy. It is an ad filtering proxy server, which will work with any browser. I don't surf the web without it. Just install it, set your browser to use proxy 127.0.0.1 on port 8118, and voilá, obnoxious ads be-gone.
Dvorak on Doomtech
You can enable a setting that allows plugin content to be downloaded only after clicking on it. Very useful:
http://my.opera.com/dude09/blog/on-demand-plugin-opera-turbo
Opera is what it is. Either you like it (like me) or you don't. Its lack of popularity is not due to the lack of extensions (after all, chrome and safari had bigger market share before having extensions themselves).
I prefer it, over any of the others. But it seems there are a lot of bad misconceptions around and that's the biggest problem Opera Software needs to find a way to solve.
Once again we see that we have very editors here at /.
I used Opera for about 7-8 years and loved it, and I still do, but I recently had to switch to Firefox because the security vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Flash Player plugins were just too great of a risk and I need the blocking plugins that Firefox has. Although I was able to replicate a lot of my Opera experience in Firefox through plugins, like speed dial, a plugin that emulates the search strings functionality, mouse gestures, etc., the startup times, load times, and UI in Firefox are way slower than what I knew and loved in Opera. I hope noscript, adblock and flashblock-esque plugins make to Opera very quickly so I can finally go back.
Given many Firefox extensions have traditionally worked with the internals of Firefox (though not recommended of course), this not only explains why many break with each new Firefox release, but why Opera can't do what you suggest. Opera would have to BECOME Firefox to get Firefox extensions.
On the other hand, Chrome has a fixed API for extensions, which you could theoretically implement in other apps easily enough (well, you need a JS engine first of course).
I use Opera on both my desktop and laptop and I honestly don't understand what the heck people have against using Opera as their browser. It's super fast and lightweight, the built-in RSS feeder is the best I've seen anywhere, and it works on 99.9% of the websites (the only issues I've had is when Adobe releases a particularly buggy version of Flash). And although I will get strung up for this, I LIKE Opera's Unite feature. It makes file sharing super easy when I need to set up something quick and easy for sharing photos with family or friends.
Frankly, the stock Opera gives me everything I need in a browser. Why do I need extensions again?
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
If only,
... opera had embraced a free model earlier
... had the backing of a massive corporation to have it pre-installed
... or had inherited a large core of users and developers
... or had the appeal of being open source
I have been an opera user / fan for a while, and wish more people use it. But blaming the low adoption on extensions is insane.
Opera 10 has been very disappointing in terms of quality control and I wish the team focused more on making it crash -proof and fixed all the non-working features (such as voice) instead of adding more and more functionality.
I'm pretty sure Opera had drop shadows far before Firefox. I don't count rounded corners since Firefox did it using -moz... CSS options. That's not really a standard, now, is it?
Opera hasn't had ads for nearly half a decade now. Where are you?
Opinions differ, but the main arguments you see here today are "Opera doesnt have NoScript" and "Opera has a weird interface"
.. The UserJS BlockIt certainly isn't as polished as NoScript, but it does have an extensive feature set (even blocking images and so forth, with per-element whitelists .. the whole 9 yards..) Personally I dont have a desire to be sp paranoid that I need that granularity .. I have JavaScript and plugins disabled by default and whitelist an entire site for JavaScript when I need it (either I trust the site, or I don't.. I'm not going to actually look at the scripts), and run plugins only on-demand.
The later one is asinine since its also one of the most configurable browser in regards to the interface. You can move buttons and menus pretty much anywhere, and so forth.
The former one.. well.. there are multiple Opera alternatives to NoScript, some built in and some in the form of UserJS
"His name was James Damore."
I'm using Opera as I write but unfortunately I'm stuck with v10.10. Opera has this habit of breaking stuff that used to work well when new versions are released. My current gripe is streaming/motion video from various types of webcams like the Panasonic network cams and pc cams streaming using Webcam32 (and some cam other software too). I have a bunch of these that monitor remote sites, watch spectrum analyzers that monitor satellite uplink gear, etc. If I upgrade to the latest Opera version it breaks the ability to view all of my cameras. I have filed bug reports and made Opera blog posts regarding the issue all to no avail. So, I keep using the last version known to work and hope for the best in future versions. Sure, I could use Firefox but I really do prefer Opera and there is a lot about Firefox that I do not like.
First browser to give me Tamper Data and Web Developer Toolkit extensions gains a big fan. Sick and tired of 400 meg RAM use from a browser. I'm looking at you, Firefox. O'course, sods law would be that somehow my extensions cause the FF memory leak. :o/
I don't understand you basis of comment in the least unless you're being a dick and trolling.
It's quite simple actually: ...
If you have used it once and then never used it again you probably don't know much about it
So your saying any user experience is invalid unless its YOUR user experience?
No. But actually having experience, and recent such, does make a difference.
What are the reasons to switch to Opera? Just because I don't see a reason doesn't mean there are not. I never asserted I was representing every user; which your comment seems to imply you believe you are.
I never stated my opinion at all. All I said was that yours probably doesn't matter much since you're not even an Opera user. But thanks for giving it anyway.
So rather than troll and troll moderation, why should people switch when firefox is plenty good for loads of people?
Why should they switch to Firefox when ... is good for loads of people?
I don't say people should do anything at all.
If so, clarify.
I used Opera around the same time as Mozilla 0.7 when no browser was really good.
Switched from Firefox 1.0.7 to Opera 8.52 when Firefox had huge memory leaks.
Have used very shitty Safari 2 for long.
Safari 3 wasn't good either if 5 is the current version. 4 worked.
I haven't used Firefox 4 since it doesn't run on my OS, Firefox 3 is decent, Opera is decent, Chrome is probably decent to, heck even IE 9 is supposed to be decent and I assume Safari 5 work to.
I doubt any of them really suck. Judging from history I would probably had chosen Opera or Chrome. But there is plenty of good browsers around and standard support seem to be a more and more important point for the developers of all of them.