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Opera Browser for Linux/X11 Nears Beta
Samawi writes "Opera Software has issued this interview with cofounder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner. Highlights include screenshots, a new text only browser to compete with Lynx
support for Free BSD and other variants of UNIX/X11 (using cross-platform features of Qt). I can't wait to retire good 'ol buggy and bloated Netscape:-) " Its a bit thin on the details, but its nice to know that its coming.
I've been using Opera as my main browser on Windows systems for a few months, and I paid the $30 or $35 registration fee to help support the effort.
Early versions of Opera were weak and very skimpy on features like JavaScript and plug-in support, but the current version is great. It is smaller than Navigator and Internet Explorer and much faster to load and render pages. It supports JavaScript, CSS 1 and Netscape plug-ins.
Another thing I like about Opera is that it holds closer to standard HTML than the other browsers. It is less forgiving of bad HTML, so it's useful to have around when you're trying to create standard HTML that would pass the W3C HTML Validator.
Opera also has a button on the browser you can click to render a page in "easy-to-read" format, which helps when the designer has gone nuts with graphical backgrounds and text.
There are a couple of rendering things I don't like about Opera, such as the way it displays lists. For the most part, though, it handles pages as well or better than the other browsers.
Most tech journalists still describe the browser war as being Microsoft vs. Netscape/AOL. Some sites like BrowserWatch are reporting that up to 10 percent of its visitors are using Opera, so we may be reaching a point where it should be taken more seriously as a competitor.
To download a 30-day version, visit Opera Software.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Emphasis on "some". Personally, I love MDI. Especially Opera's implementation of it.
:) )
:)
:) ).
('Course, I'm also using a slightly hacked version of Windows 98, so consider the source...
Nice thing about MDI from the user perspective is that it's a big memory saver - for example, in Opera you can have about twenty browser windows open at once with little or no performance degradation - impossible if you have a totally new window all the time, or at least it is in Windoze.
I suppose it's more of an advantage to us Windoze users then the rest of you folks, but I still like it. Nice way to keep all my browser windows/IRC windows/email windows nicely organized and in a central location, WITHOUT screwing with virtual desktops (which I hate, but that's another story
"I don't believe that there is one, single, perfect spiritual way and, in realizing that, obviously you become a lot more open."
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
MDI on X11 is very uncommon and I don't like it. I wonder why they didn't change this, AFAIK the MacOS version will not have a MDI.
Thanks. I don't know what the previous poster's attack was based on - I didn't say much about how, or if, I contribute. Truth be told, I can't contribute much to Mozilla or Abiword except perhaps a bug report. I contribute in ways that I can, such as being a rabid Linux evangelist. :-) It's also made me want to become a better programmer so that I *can* contribute in that particular way.
But, I agree - there's nothing wrong with simply using free software. In fact, I think it's one of the best ways to support it. Ultimately, that's why it exists - to be used, right?
I do not have a Windows partition nowadays,
but one thing I miss from Windows is MDI.
It has many advantages:
1. You can have special window decorations
for child windows.
2. You can auto-arrange relevant windows in
a variety of ways.
3. This should be faster, at least as far
as Z-ordering goes.
4. If you ever used framebuffer with
split view, you love MDI and don't even
know it.
Being a web developer that rigorously adheres to standards and closely monitors and occasionally participates in W3C activity, and being knowledgable of browsers in general, I thought I'd take some time to give you all the skinny on this.
Despite Opera's reputation as "the standards compliant browser", it implements far less of current W3C standards than Netscape or in particular IE. Specifically, CSS-positioning (part of CSS2) appears to be completely non-existant.
Since Opera only implements a fraction of the Netscape/IE functionality, and until recently was completely unportable (Windows only), it's not too surprising that it is much smaller and faster.
Anyways, I'll list some of the pros and cons of Opera and some features/misfeatures it shares with its competition (Netscape/IE).
[Oh, one last thing before the list. MDI and SDI have been mentioned. For those of you who don't know what they are, basically:
SDI -- Single document interface. A limitation applying to an application program that only shows a single window giving a view of one document at a time.
MDI -- Multiple document interface. The ability of an application program to show windows giving views of more than one document at a time.]
Some pros:
That's really all of the pros. While only two items are listed, both of them are extremely important and make for a much different feel compared to the bigger fish. Anyways, the cons:
Anyways, my current favorite browser is IE5 though I almost never get to use it because I'm stuck in Linux with WindowMaker so that I actually have a productive and stable environment. IE5 really does implement most of the current standards and is quite fast (being seemingly hooked into the lowest guts of Windows), though Mozilla will be the true 100% compliant browser and smaller and faster to boot. I hate most of Microsoft's products, but a few things like their browser and Powerpoint (which Linus admits liking) are really okay.
So,
That's enough writing for now,
Christopher
Just exactly what is your argument? That Qt isn't free? WRONG. It's 100% free for developing Free Software. So what if you can't use the free version to develop proprietary software. You can't do that under the GPL anyway. But you are free to develop commerical open-source and free applications. Or maybe you're pissed that Qt costs so much for commercial development. Think again. Price out some **real** commercial tools, not just motif/JBuilder/VC++. If it was overpriced no one would buy it and Troll would go out of business. But guess what, they're not out of business, so people are buying it. If it makes you feel any better, just think of all the money they're losing by not catering to the AC market.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Well, despite what M$ will tell you Win95/98 sits ontop of a 16 bit dos, and it is 32 bit. So its possible. Remember those dos games that came with DOS/4GW I believe that also allowed apps to be 32 bit. Though I could be Wrong!
It looks from the screenshot that they are doing the Linux version the same way they did the MS-Windows version, with many windows inside a larger one. I'd much prefer to have the windows be seperate entities, as that allows for a larger browsing space, while still leaving room for other applications. It also makes it harder to switch between other apps and a specific browser window.
The benefits are that you can have many browsing windows open without cluttering up, for instance, the taskbar in KDE, or simply without running numerous processes, which can be difficult to switch between. It also allows for such features as tiling and cascading only the Opera windows.
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to have multiple windows, especially with the multihomepages of Opera. I could open Opera and get a browser with slashdot, one with links to the comics I read, and one with google. Or somesuch.
What do you think?
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When WordPerfect for Linux first came out, I thought "whoohooo!" and went out and downloaded the whole mess. Same with StarOffice. But I fire it up, and I see some problems, some things I don't like, and maybe it crashes on me. I think "hm... wonder how long 'til THAT gets fixed..." And you know what? I haven't used either one in a very long time. However, I use AbiWord almost daily. Sure, it doesn't yet have as many features, but it's off to a good start, it's not bloated, it's done right - in short, it's Free Software and it's lookin' good. And I feel comfortable using it.
I won't whine about Opera's license, some people will be happy to pay for it, and more power to them. I personally will not bother with it, and I'll keep rooting for Mozilla. Someday my Lizard will come.... :)
geez they really don't know how to make windows binaries :) are you just supposed to rename the .1 file to a .exe and run it.. thats what I did and it said it couldn't find a .dll .. which I guess is positive meaning.. well it ran.
Actually mozilla has very little code from netscape left at this point. They've totally rewritten the rendering code, the network code, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Mozilla is essentially a completely new browser. I still like netscape x.x over ie 4. Maybe it's because I've been using netscape since the time when you could fit it on a single floppy, or maybe it's just cuz i hate microsoft, but netscape just feels better. That and it works in Linux.
-matt
Opera's text browser PNG is showing either tables or stylesheet formatting! This is a very good thing. Are lynx developers working on this?
And just a general note...
I'd rather GPL'ed software so I probably won't switch from lynx unless I switch to Opera from Netscape and their text browser is included. I'd much prefer an Xlib based GPL'ed browser. Are there any in the works? (Mozilla is not GPL) The w3c has a library ((L)GPL) for the guts of the `net communication; so with a proper renderer, the project is 'done'. Any takers?
Actually I think the lynx way would work a lot better w/ text to speech. Let's say you have a side bar on the left and then content on the right. What would probally happen w/ a synth is that it would read a line from the sidebar, then from the content, then from the sidebar, then from the content, and so on. I know lynx works fine for text to speech because I used to have a friend who was completely blind (well he could make out shadows and bright lights at a distance of about 1 foot but that was it) and he used lynx all the time for web stuff.
-matt