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Opera Beta Released
Wil Mahan writes "According to the LWN daily updates page, a beta version of the Opera browser has been released for Linux, and is available at Metalab (1.9 MB). Looks like Opera fufilled its promise of a full public beta before Christmas."
Will it be be open sourced ?
mvg,
Kris "dJOEK" Vandecruys
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Well ... downloaded it, started it, looked fine, :(
couldn't log into slashdot (pressing the button didn't do anything), went searching for an option that could help me, which eventually crashed the
browser
Hmm, not quite stable yet.
Thomas S. Iversen
Hey, when did they become opera.com. They used to be "operasoftware" and "opera" really had something to do with singing.
I've been using opera for the BeOS on and off the last few months cause it's still buggy.
:-)
But it's getting better with every new release and I sure am happy with the look and feel of it.
Now for linux too yay!
Together with the deal with Be for being it's browser on BeOS and Stinger (A lean version of BeOS for webpads) This should generate enough revenue and attract enough investors to allow them to seriously speed up development.
On to a version that doesn't crash when you change too much preferences!
Happy holidays everyone!
However, I would like to call attention to a truly free (beer and speech) browser that has been available for Linux (as well Windows, Solaris and AIX). This is the W3 consortium's Amaya browser.
Some features (adapted from the w3 page):
1. Is a browser as well as editor
2. Amaya maintains a consistent internal document model adhering to the DTD.
3. Amaya is easily extended.
Several APIs and mechanisms are available to change and extend its functionality with the least modification to the source code. Amaya thus allows for easy customization by providing a means for extensions to access Amaya's internal procedures and functions.
4. Support of MathML protocol.
But best of all, it's released under the W3 Copyright which is fully compatible with the GPL
Why not give it a try?
Binary Distribution
Source Code
RPM distribution
I had a few rendering glitches, and post forms don't seem to work (voting, login, etc..). But overall, it's a fast browser and I'm sure it'll run well on older computers.
As for quicker computers, Mozilla M12 is starting to be a pretty good candidate. (and it's Open Source)
Hmm, as far as I know, 'Opera 4.0a' indicates that it's an alpha release...
It hung after I resized the window.
i got pretty excited, so i downloaded it run it and quickly became disspointed. it rendered the screens horribly. i tried www.cnn.com and it butchered it to pieces. i tried amaya, it was not all that great (almost same as above), but i have the source code, and i can try to fix it if i want to. but if i am going to pay for a browser, it better work better than stuff i can get for free (Mozilla, Netscape, Amaya). yeah, it loads quicker, and it has a much smaller footprint, but if Netscapes renders the screens properly, i'll stick with the bloat and lagginess until Opera looks better or Mozilla is complete
Seriously.. Stop complaining about people wanting to make a little money. If you use a program all the time, 100$ is not a lot. Hey, you payed for the computer, right?
--
sick and tired.. and it's christmas
Wow, this is pretty cool. I downloaded it, installed it and pointed it at slashdot. Yes, it's obviously beta with some things to fix (and a somewhat odd UI) but it's fast. Starts up within 1/2 second or so and seems to render pages fast ...
... although Mozilla seems to have 'shrunk' (in terms of bloat) over the last few releases ... still, the Linux space should be large enough to allow them to continue development/support of Opera under Linux ... I wish them well even if they're not open sourcing Opera ...
I think we have another (serious) entry in the Linux browser market with Opera. I've obviously just played with it for a few minutes now, but for a 1.5M download, it's pretty cool. The important question now is: how come it's so small? What features doesn't it have that Mozilla does have? All in all, I welcome the Opera people/browser to the Linux world. The more the merrier. Competition is good and will force any other browser makers out there to keep on their toes.
I still prefer Mozilla as it's open source, but this seems to be a nice addition to the Linux software world. What I'm wondering is: with Mozilla and (the rapidly aging) Netscape out there for free, what kind of market penetration do these guys hope for? This might be a good browser though for low end machines that don't have the RAM/CPU that mozilla seems to eat
try using open on a text file then type a url
into the resultant window.
however i had to post this in netscape as it wouldnt submit.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Hmm, if I were trying to release a browser for the Linux market, I'd be sure PNG was at least partially supported in the beta version.
When I saw that the beta was out I downlaoded it quickly beofre it was hit by the mass crowds who were bounds to slashdot the page. I untarred it and ran the script expecting it to goto the Opera webpage... but it didn't, just a grey background. After fidling around for awhile I figured out how to make it goto a web page. But unfortunatly every every web page I pointed it to either didn't render at all, or came up horibly mutilated. If anyone else had any beter luck with this, I would like to hear about it.
Mozilla will also have MathML Check this out for linux: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/reeases/m12/mozi lla-i386-pc-linux-M12-MathML.tar.gz
---
Screenshot
I quickly downloaded Opera while it was still possible. (/. effect 80k..40k...12k/s!) Anyway my primary Linux box is an Alpha and this is a binary, so either open the source (preferred) or get an Alpha binary compiled. I did try it on an Intel, a plain old P133 from yesteryear and it kinda worked.
It has allready been stated what most of the obvious bugs are, can't submit anything and it quickly hangs after trying a few things. Not mentioned yet as far as i can see is the fact that it has a rather outdated Windoze look to it. The BeOS version is sharp and it works quite well. Also, there was a small problem in rendering some types of images such as; "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It isn't ready for market yet, but i'm considering throwing some of my money their way in the belief that if several people do that it will provide the necessary motivation to finish the job! It is however rather fast and so far unbloated, and just maybe this can be the 'browser on the floppy'.
It was quick as hell, but it really does not matter when it cannot load any pages huh??
This beta runs about as well under FreeBSD's emulation of Linux. Just as others have said, I can't use submit buttons, and occasionally it segfaults, but otherwise, it runs!
Ugh! This isn't beta software. Its barely alpha quality. Totally useless!
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
All of the above, and
Keep trying, Opera developers. Once this actually works it will be ready for beta testing.
I have the same problem (I'm using SuSE 6.1) so i downloaded an upgrade from SuSE.com (gppshare.rpm)
./opera
:-(
But now instead I get:
martin@martin:~/opera >
./opera: error in loading shared libraries
/usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2: undefined symbol: _IO_file_open
D'oh...
Learn the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, for one...
The whole thing has StarOffice-ish "look and feel" -- large window, MDI in it, widgets are exactly the same as in StarOffice.
It has good chances to become usable, however MDI shouldn't be the only option for windows handling -- while it may be tolerable in Windows, in X it looks like an insult to the idea of window manager.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Nobody loses any money directly as if it was stealing, but undirectly losing money because of pirated software is as real as it can get. If you give out those 10000 copies you just made, someone who would have bought it otherwise doesn't do it now.. piratism isn't any worst possible crime, but you must be pretty damn stupid to claim it doesn't cost one penny to commercial software makers..
And windows-version may lack some of the features compared to IE or Netscape, but it is *FAST*, *LIGHT*, and *STABLE*. That is why people think it is so good.
but they made it...
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I was able to run it under Debian potato. I've had the same problems with logging in to /.
;)
/tmp/opr. (That last may have been /var/tmp/opr, I've symlinked /tmp to /var/tmp). There was no man page or info page.
What did work worked fast. I didn't check memory use. I almost forgot what browser I was using!
I did think that I'd be willing to pay even $100 if the final version is as solid as I expect it will be. I'm glad to see someone mention that the expected (announced?) price is only $35. Geez, I haven't bought software since OS/2 in 1993! (Unless you count the MS tax *sigh*, I did reformat immediately
I haven't checked on where to submit bug reports yet. There is one 'bug' I haven't seen mentioned yet. I have no idea what files the binary installs on my system. I checked a few common places. It wrote directories ~/.opera and
Well, besides not knowing what a binary is doing, I have no other problem; it is a first release, after all!
There wasn't a single page I visited that didn't have rendering mistakes. The most annoying bug seems to be that if the page finishes loading before images are displayed, it just stops rendering the pages. Sometimes you don't even SEE some of the images on a page, just the holes where they're supposed to go.
It's apparent that there's no support for the HEIGHT and WIDTH options to img src= tags; they're just rendered at the original size.
Forms don't work. Submit buttons do not appear to do anything. Sometimes, input areas don't appear, so you can't even fill out the form before finding out that you can't submit it anyway.
Paragraph spacing is "odd". Anyone who writes pages to fit just right is going to go insane trying to get pages to look identical on IE/NN and Opera!
In all, I would say that this is not a beta. It's not even an alpha release.
Now the good news: :-)
What is encouraging is that pages do render VERY quickly compared to NN4. The status bar has a lot of geeky information (transfer speed that updates more quickly than NN's, and an elapsed time monitor), and it displays the full URL of each item that is being loaded. There were other widgets on the status bar that I didn't play with.
When Opera does have a true beta out, I'm sure it will be fantastic. It didn't crash on me, so I suppose that puts it ahead of NN :-)/2. But if you're expecting to jump in and use this starting today, you will be VERY disappointed. Instead, look at it as a "coming attractions" demo.
Bob Donahue
Dumb is making a statement like that when you know that this is an alpha version. Obviously no one would expect you to pay for this product. This is like saying that M1 of Mozilla was not worth paying for.
----------
Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
No frames support, poor "tactile" feel for when something is clickable, can't handle a simple redirect, often loads a page but won't display it, segfaults in a minute or so.
This has miles to go. What's interesting to me is that this is supposedly part of a port series that uses a common codebase. Based on that statement, I expected it to be a buggy cousin of the BeOS version in terms of where it stood in feature support. From the looks of this, it certainly doesn't look like they're managing to write cross-platform code.
Contrast this with everyone's favorite oft-delayed vaporware, Mozilla. A baseline Mozilla-based Communicator 5 now seems about 6 months away, and some 18 months past initial targets. But the codebase is by most measures 98% cross-platform, and it shows in the way the Win32, Unix and MacOS versions are progressing in lockstep.
Indeed, at the moment, Konqueror is in much better shape. Heck, the GNOME and Tk HTML widgets are in better shape.
I'm sure Opera will get something nice out the door. I'm still not sure what Opera's place in the world is, though. Consumers who use old, slow computers generally don't buy software. Companies that want to use old computers would probably be better off from a manageability standpoint if they turned them into X or ICA terminals (running Linux, DOS, *BSD, or whatever), and made full-featured browsers available on centralized servers.
As far as a lean, stripped-down browser goes for local execution, it looks like perfecty good Opera clones could be built out of Mozilla code. And since the MPL allows for BSD-like commercial extension, Mozilla's support for XML, DOM, plugins and so forth makes for a more realistic browser for the future. As DHTML continues to go mainstream and become a staple of web-based application development, Opera's austerity will come to look quaint.
Then maybe you aren't running the "right" version of RedHat.
If the authors were sloppy about things, they'll have used the "latest" everything and it won't work right without the latest version of RH.
(I'm running 6.1 right now and the thing seems ok.) It's got some of the problems that some of the other people have been claiming about it.
It's fast and relatively small, yes.
This version of the software is clumsier to use than Opera for Windows (There's a clunkiness somewhere within their UI design that I can't quite describe with words- suffice it to say it's "not quite right".).
It's got rendering problems and it doesn't support as many image formats as the big boys.
Beta software? Nope.
Alpha software? Yep.
Welcome? That remains to be seen...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
MDI (Multiple Document Interface? or something) is what you see commonly in the Windows world and _never_ in the Unix world. MDI is when you have a main window and every document/image/file/whatever you open is in a new window that is contain entirely within the main window. Examples of this - MS Word, Adobe Photoshop, mIRC (as default), Jasc Paint Shot Pro, Opera.
Compare this to the unix world, where, for example, you run gimp and have the tool dialog and the image you're working on free floating anywhere on your desktop.
Thank you, http://www.W3C.org (location: http://www.w3c.org/), for standing athwart the tide of them who would take shortcuts and shouting "enoughttp://"!
why do I feel like this is the quake opensourcing argument all over again? First off, of COURSE it's going to have bugs. it's their FIRST LINUX RELEASE. Yes, some of them seem obvious enough that they should have been fixed. But instead of bitching about how a program that you haven't had to pay for (and won't until it's out of beta) has bugs, submit bug reports. sure, you can't debug or get the code, but pop off an e-mail mentioning a particular problem.
it's small, blazing fast, and isn't a system hog. I'ts missing e-mail? GOOD. I wanted to separate those two programs out anyway. at $35 and free minor release upgrades, I'm going to be proud to support them. I've talked to some of their sales people over the past few days while I tested out their windows client to see what we were looking at as far as a linux client. they were extremely helpful and patient with even my most obnoxious questions. This is ONE case where a commercial product is smaller, faster, and better than an open sourced "free" one. point me at a browser that DOESN'T have the same sort of problems that opera does FIVE RELEASES OR MORE IN, and I'll be amazed. Netscape is the closest, and for pete's sake, it's HUGE. You think once Opera is done, Mozilla will be able to compete? only on the free side, man. We can't directly affect the way Mozilla is going any more than we can Opera. Oh sure "but I can go in and change it myself". But how many of us have the time and knowledge to look through a code base that HUGE??? Not me, that's for sure. So don't look YET ANOTHER gift horse in the mouth. Please. If you can't be happy about it, keep your mouth SHUT and go sulk in the corner.
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
Two corrections: Word 2K is SDI. All other Office 2K programs are actually MDI but default to behaving as if they are SDI. Photoshop allows you to pull all of your working palettes out of the main window and place them wherever you want. This makes it easy to put all of your tool palettes out on your second monitor and devote your main, large, hi-res monitor to just image display.
I don't understand why so many people get excited about Opera. I can't believe there is a company that actually expects to make money by selling a web browser. Specially a web browser that has _less_ features than IE or Netscape or Mozilla. This is rediculous. Yes, it is somewhat faster, but this speed comes at a cost. Last time I have checked it did not have java support. Many sites just don't render correctly with it. I certainly wouldn't pay a dime for something like this. I am using Netscape 4.7 glibc2.0 version, Thank you very much.
Amaya package is now configured
Amaya configured with libWWW
Amaya configured with Math support
Amaya configured with Graph support
Motif seems not installed on this machine
Thot and Amaya need Motif 1.2 or 2.0
Thot and Amaya probably won't compile
Motif isn't free (Yes, I know about Lesstif, doesn't work here)
"Even Prophets don't know everything"
my take on piratism is this:
take photoshop. I would not use it enough to warrant paying $600, nor do I have enough money to throw out that much on a program I would rarely use. therefore, I would never have bought photoshop in the first place. if I downloaded it, and used it for personal (ie, noncommercial) tasks, and since I would not have bought it in the first place, adobe is losing absolutely nothing.
I am gaining something I otherwise would not have had, sure; but they lose nothing. it is simply greed and anti-altruism of software companies to claim they lose $40 billion (I made that up I don't know the real amount) per year to "software piracy."
sure, that is the theoretical loss, had every one who obtained it illegally instead purchased it. but I wager that that is a very small fraction indeed.
on a related note, if I had need of photoshop for commercial use and profited (directly or indirectly) from its usage, I would definitely pay for it.
All that aside: If you go to Opera and you happen to run Windows or BeOS you'll find new versions there as well.
Bugs, tech discussions, etc. can be found on theirdiscussions page (most of the links there are newsgroups, which works rather well).
No Zen is good zen
not to be picky, but word 2k actually opens separate windows for each document. very nice! now I can alt-tab between docs. (why they didn't also do this for excel 2k, I will never know.)
you know, one thing I never figured out, why didn't they make it so you could type alt-# to switch between docs in the old versions? alt-w # is very awkward. (perhaps you can configure keys to do this, I never checked.)
Although it's great to see Opera coming, i think that KFM would be an adequate browser for 90% of my needs if they'd just fix the stupid cookie bug. (KFM never saves cookies, even when you tell it to.) Is it too much to ask KDE developers to step back from Krash long enough to fix this stupid bug, which would render stand-alone browsers largely superfluous? Why should we have to wait until KDE 2.0?
My first opera session:
./runnow ~/opera-19991224 ./runnow ~/opera-19991224 ./opera ~/opera-19991224 ../ ~/opera-19991224
:)
one% cd opera-19991224/ ~
one% ls ~/opera-19991224
gif opera runnow
one%
one%
Sorry, not implemented: ProxyServerConfigurationDialogx::slotHelp()
UNDEFINED STRING -- SEE PrefsManager::GetLanguageString()UNDEFINED STRING -- SEEone%
one% cd
one% rm -rf opera-19991224 ~
opera-19991224 opera-19991224.tar.gz
one% rm -rf opera-19991224* ~
one%
Yes, it is beta. I think I'll wait another 2 or 3 months.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
I'm using suse 6.2 and Opera runs fine (well... except that it segfaults all the time). ;-) I'm going to wait for konqueror 2.0. I really think it's something to watch.
I'm grateful that opera took the time to port the software but ( always a but
until they fix those nasty bugs and release a version for us Alpha Linux users! Then I'll buy as many copies as I can afford/have machines for..
LONG LIVE ALPHA!!!
Hey all,
... and then which kernel versions ?
;)
Quite a few comments seem to be slagging off this release with views such as 'segfaults after a mintue' and the like.
Well, what do you expect ? Tell me how many distributions of *nix's are there out there... and now how many libraries... and now how many versions of those libraries
I think most of those who post these types of comments have never even attempted to get substantial program working accross many platforms. I certainly havn't, I'm a PHP programmer, so that isn't going to happen... but I can appreciate how difficult the task is.
So, chill out a little... This release of Opera just about works for me and it is very quick... it's not like Netscape which is so *slow* and crashes 90% of the time if a lookup on an URL fails... and that's happened on *every* platform I have tested it on...
As for the comparasins to Mozilla... I'm running on a 400 Mhz 128mb system... and yet it still crawls along... fair enough, it's not even officially alpha status yet.
So, finally, sod off to all you so ready to slag of an attempt to produce a half-decent browser.
P.S. Don't forget that Opera 3.62 works perfectly under WINE... well, for me that is
It's very very unstable. I was able to bring up slashdot 50X faster than with any other browser, but it's got a lot of work to do. Mozilla is a lot farther along and doesn't use Qt. Also, Opera costs money, and Mozilla is free, not to mention way farther along in development.
Simple... SuSE 6.1 had serious problems with the Glibc2 (or something like that) libraries... I used to run 6.1 and couldn't run any program that required it, such as Mozilla...
;)
However, I'm now running Sexy SuSE 6.3 which has them sorted and I'm flying with Opera at last
I welcome any new piece of software; expecially when there is only a few others that do the same thing. It keeps everyone else on their toes and encourages competition.
Opera loads and displays nicely; but it hurt my feelings when it wouldn't load my site: http://www.jackchaos.com
It sites there doing nothing, and eventually begins to take X with it until I kill.
-Oy Vey
I'm still not sure what Opera's place in the world is, though. Consumers who use old, slow computersgenerally don't buy software.
.1 second. (no, really) From my experience with Opera on Windows I'd say that opera is the only browser that comes close to being able to meet my criterion. The Windows version is also about the most stable browser I ever used. I really think the Linux version will be even better, once it's done. I'm not going to dump on them for releasing a little early just so they could get it out before Santa comes.
I'm not a consumer. I'm running a 300 MHz, and typical browsers whether by Microsoft, Netscape, the KDE team, or whoever, take a ridiculous time to launch, let alone what they do to my machine performance by hogging all the memory. In my book, no program you run should take more than a second to load. Personally, I prefer load times less than
I guess Opera's best strategy would be to open-source their code the rest of the way, let us geeks fix the code some more, proclaim themselves a linux company, and cash in with an IPO.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I looked on the site and didn't even *see* a place to report bugs. I would be surprised if it was even possible to report bugs.
Even if Opera wants to make money, (nothing wrong with that, of course), they could still be more open. How about using a SCSL which is not free, but certainly allows more flexibility.
-BrentSegmentation fault (core dumped)
-Kris
First of all mozilla is further along. I'm using a nightly build to post this. It works great and getting better daily. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how to get a browser window opened I just kept on hitting file->new. It crashed before I saw a web page. I eventually got to see a web page taking a tip from a previous poster by trying to open a file and then typing in the url in the window that opens. It rendered yahoo horibly. It made yahoo look uglier than it really is. I am totally unimpressed. Then I noticed a whole bunch if GIFS! in the directory where I extracted opera. You would think they had some more tact and used pngs or xpms. It also used an interface similar to many windows programs and star office. I don't like star office just for that reason. I don't like to see windows in windows there is no reason for it. I just don't see myself paying $100 dollars for software thats gonna suck this bad. I don't think that they will make user interface changes when they go to beta or release. I'm happy with mozilla.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Well the program itself seems to run fairly well. It didnt crash on me but it would not let me log into slashdot. Some .jpg images came up looking wierd also. It is gunctional right now though. Goot work Opera, hope the actual release comes soon. It loads much faster than Netscape and of course looks better than lynx. It could be my happy medium.
PS- One more thing, could installation be any easier? Just tar -xvzf (filename) and then click on the shell script and it works! I wish Quake installed that easily!
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
And how do you propose to "replicate" the creative efforts of the software author ? Are you attempting to argue that the software author is not worthy of compensation for his/her efforts ?
Nobody loses any money because of piracy
This statement is extremely dumb. If the author puts in time and effort into a piece of software and isn't properly compensated because a bunch of leeches don't pay their dues, they have lost money.
I certainly will NOT give them one penny for Opera but I may use it if someone comes out with a crack or a key generator for it
If you are not prepared to give money for it, you have no right to use it. BTW, if you think it "sucks", don't use it. Myself, and a lot of people disagree with you though.
At around $39, Opera was much cheaper to buy than a hardware upgrade for my mother's 486SX with 8 MB RAM, which she used until early this year. Without Opera, the web was effectively unusable on this hardware.
Mozilla may well win in the longer term, but my experience with Opera on Windows has been very good.
Haven't yet tried the Linux version but the Windows version does have frames, redirects, etc - I'm surprised they've released such an incomplete version since it sounds more like an alpha than a beta.
Opera was, perhaps unfortunately, never designed to be cross-platform as far as I can tell (which is one reason it has a small memory+disk footprint).
For someone running Linux on a low memory 486 or Pentium, Opera may still be the better choice. Since a lot of Linux boxes appear to be 'recycled', there may actually be a good market for Opera here.
(a) You lack write permission to system directories. This has NOTHING to do with linux.
(b) You appear unwilling to learn how you can install libraries in your home directory and use LD_LIBRARY_PATH to make the app search your home directory for shared files.
It's hardly linux's fault that you lack sysadmin priveliges and that you are lazy.
You should run the runnow script, it preloads a couple things.
"There's a clunkiness somewhere within their UI design that I can't quite describe with words- suffice it to say it's 'not quite right'."
I've run Opera on win32 and I must agree with your observation...but I would chalk this "clunkiness" up to the fact that the designers are Norwegian... It's a style issue!
Living in Europe for as long as I did has shown me that not everyone on the planet does things like the Americans...
Are you just trolling, or are you that dumb? Read the original poster's problem. It's a library version issue.
My impressions:
1. It is FAST. It beats the crap out of Netscape4 I use now in Linux.
2. My current version of Netscape is almost as unstable as this early beta version of Opera.
3. It is amazing Opera is only ~5Mb.
4. I has (or will have) everything I need from a web browser.
I really wish Mozilla development team concentrated on a simple web browser and left alone all bells and whistles. Really, how many of us use Netscape mail? Pine is much better for me.
Whatever happened to the initial goal of Mozilla team to make a browser that fits on a floppy? Sorry to say, but Opera beat them in here. (OK, Gekko fits on a floppy, but the ENTIRE Opera fits on a floppy - or almost fits).
Mozilla becoming a ~20Mb source code monstrosity.
Can anybody tell me what is it about a web browser (plus all imaginable bells and whistles) that makes its source code bigger that the source code for the entire Linux Kernel? Should any application be more complex than a full featured operating system?
If you just look at the browser, all Opera is missing (in the Windows version, which is stable, small, and damn fast) is DHTML, Java, and a few small things like images as table backgrounds. In fact, the only sites I've seen that don't render correctly have either been badly written (depending on bugs in the way Netscape and IE display pages) or use DHTML (which I suspect will be supported in Opera 4.0, since the Linux version is willing to at least hide divisions through stylesheets). Sites with correct HTML display fine. As for Java, all you have to do is download Sun's Java Plug-in. If you do Java programming anyway, you'll want the latest JDK, which already includes the plugin. Otherwise, the JRE's an extra 6 or so megs. THIS is the major reason Opera is small: simply because Java takes up huge honkin' amounts of space.
It's a 'technical preview', which seems more or less equivalent to a daily build from the looks of things.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I am really, really tired of waiting forever for a browser that works without problems on Linux. What the hell? This beta is a rush job that doesn't half work. Why bother? Where the hell is Netscape 5 or a version of Mozilla that doesn't crash even more often than Netscape 4? Where is the much vaunted advantage of Open Source when it comes to producing a simple browser? This is really beginning to burn me. Do I have to drop my own work and projects and go write my own? Why is Konqueror all bundled up with the rest of KDE? Why not break some of these things loose on their own to fill such pressing needs? Or did the code end up so tightly coupled and entangled that this isn't possible? If so, what does this say about the way we are designing and implementing these tools?
I don't mean to be a grinch but it sure looks like I won't be getting one thing I very much wanted for Christmas.
Well, considering how ludicrously easy the PNG team has made adding PNG support, it's pretty much a no-brainer. Have you ever written a PNG-reader/displayer? Trust me, it's about 100 lines of well-spaced, well-commented code. LibPNG is the bomb.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
However, if you would take the other guys advice, and fix the problem instead of whining, you'd have it working by now.
i hate netscape (opera isn't looking too good either with it's windows-inside-a-window design). i truly do. in linux/freebsd, not only is it slow and bloated, but it likes to crash when there's a hint of java or when you get it confused by trying to close windows. some people will most likely say i'm lame because i want the EVIL EMPIRE(tm) to release a version of IE for linux/freebsd, but that's okay. if it works, i don't care who makes it. i know many people who would also like to see IE for linux/freebsd, and i hope it's released someday.
Um no.
Mozilla M1 was not "alpha". Actually, there was no M1, so I'll assume you meant M3. M3-11 were build-up milestones where the core feature set were created. M12 is supposedly "Engineering Dogfood" (although there has been some talk about "alpha" status).
Mozilla seems to use much more memory than Opera (although I didn't run the Opera beta/alpha/whatever very long), but Mozilla M12 could shut the sidebar easily, it could display the icons on toolbar buttons and work for most of the time where I found the Opera alpha to be annoying and require more perseverence to use. (This may be because of its quirky interface as well, I'm not an experienced Opera user).
These errors are much, much, much more irritating than missing files :\.
If you want simple program installation, use package management exclusively. Someone will make an rpm or debian of it soon enough. You just have to wait a little longer. This combined with (gnorpm & rpmfind) will allow you to easily install almost any software package as root. The remaining problem is simplifying installation for non-root users. The problem here is that many packages are not made relocatable. RedHat really needs to fix this, and they need to design some sort of standard bin, lib, & etc structure for user specific programs and then export all neccessary varaibles. Then, rpm should come with a tag, --for-me-only , or --user-specific, so it installs in said users directory.
Better yet, use w3m. As fast as Lynx but it looks a hell of a lot better.
Come on! Lighten up! Is this how the Linux community is going to react every time some piece of commercial software is ported to our fine OS? Cut these guys some slack! Have you ever tried to write an application as complicated as a browser? Even targetting ONE platform is immensely complex.
Yes, the rendering quarks and their time to port might suggest some slight problems in their cross-platform architecture, but geez! Software just isn't that easy, folks! Personally, I'm amazed they have it working at all...
If someone were to ask me to port some huge piece of graphic code to X-windows, I'd estimate about a year for a completion time. X ain't easy, HTML rendering ain't easy, cross platform threading ain't easy, making money off software ain't easy...and these guys are trying to do it all. So the version they're throwing out before Christmas is a little buggy. Big freaking deal. They're a small company supporting several different platforms! X and UNIX are not the most natural environments to step into.
Cut them some slack and offer some words of encouragement when a company is willing to port their software over to Linux. That's what most people want, right? Application support under Linux? Even if it's not an application you're gonna use, it's still a step in the right direction. The more companies that support Linux, the more well known and accepted out platform becomes. Before long, you have companies *assuming* they'll have to support Linux rather than asking if they should bother or not...
(b) I don't expect someone completely lacking in expertees to use unsupported alpha quality software.
I downloaded the Opera binary to give it a run. I was impressed by how small it was and how small of a footprint it has while it is running. However, it's important to remember that with Mozilla you can create a small web browser as well. Everything is embeddable so you can create whatever interface ( with whatever size ) you want. Everything is modular so if you don't want it, you don't have to load it. Here is a screenshot of the "simplebrowser" test program. It's simple. It's small. The nice thing about Mozilla is that you can design any interface you want around it since it's completely embeddable. You like the Opera interface with MDI? Write one! There's nothing stopping you.
:)
I also found it interesting that they called this a "beta release." Mozilla is more stable and has a greater amount of its final functionality impelemented than the current Opera release. We didn't want to call the Mozilla M12 release "Alpha" because we weren't comfortable enough with its level of stability (although we consider it almost there.) Yet another example of the redefinition of the word "Beta."
I though you could switch between windows in MDI (such as word) using Ctrl-Tab. Or was it Ctrl-F6? Too bad I don't use Windows, so I can't check. :)
LoppEar.
> pages to fit just right is going to go insane
> trying to get pages to look identical on IE/NN > and Opera!
Um. How does one go about writing pages to fit just right? This sort of involves knowing the resolution being used by the client, the font size, and a bunch of other details that there is no way to know.
Not to mention the fact that the whole concept is anathema to the logical-formatting ideal that HTML should strive for.
Living in Europe for as long as I did has shown me that not everyone on the planet does things like the Americans...
:-)
You had to live in Europe to learn that?
Anyway, the thing with the 'clunkiness' was an observation shared by all of the Europeans I showed it (the Windows version) to also. I don't think this is necessarily one of those 'things'. The various Europeans may have different tastes about different things, but I think they like a smooth interface as much as anyone.
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I'd actually debate that. Lynx isn't all that bad. It's biggest drawback is, of course, that it's non-graphical. But aside from that, it's very usable and doesn't look too bad at all. I even use it from time-to-time, when I don't have need for the pretty pictures (unfortunately, most of the time, I do have such needs).
Amaya, however, just looks like CRAP.
I dunno about Opera. I use the Windows one all the time and love it (doing so right now, in fact). But I haven't finished downloading the Linux beta yet.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
It's a lot faster. Not only is it far faster, it's also more stable, and if it's STILL not fast enough for you it gives the user an incredible amount of control over how it operates - for real speed experiment with the image loading modes. (I am talking about the windows version here - the linux version, contrary to the blurb above, is actually an alpha NOT a beta release and still very buggy and unstable. Much like ANY Alpha release - tried KRASH?) It's had java support for ages. It supports any netscape compatible plugin. If you WANT java, just download the plugin from sun and install it. This is an advantage - not a disadvantage - those that want JAVA get it and those that don't are not obligated to have it. I have never found a site with valid HTML that did not render properly in Opera. The last few releases it's even been so forgiving that crap HTML like usa.net (for example) render just fine on it - I have mixed feelings about that. HTML is not a layout language. If your goal is to totally control layout, use .pdf. HTML is a logical language, for the presentation of information. It is deliberately abstract to allow the same logical structures to be rendered differently in different environments (think cross-platform). The problem is some web designers want to rebel against this and try to achieve total layout control in HTML. This is an utter renunciation of the very purpose of HTML in the first place, and the end result is all those stupid pages that you need IE 5 at a given resolution to view. Don't blame Opera for not rendering them as intended - blame the idiot that wrote them for not learning how to use HTML - or alternatively finding an appropriate format to do what he did. HTML isn't it. And yes, I'm using Netscrape 4.7 to post this - but only because of a lesser of two evils choice - I would rather use Linux than Windows EVEN THOUGH that means using Netscrape atm. When Opera is ready to use on Linux that choice will be a whole lot easier to make. And finally, yeah, it isn't open source. Of course it would be nice if it was. But better an open source OS with a good closed source browser than the other way around. I wish the Mozilla folks all the luck in the world, but I'm sure not gonna hold my breath waiting for Mozilla to be half as functional as Opera.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's a lot faster. Not only is it far faster, it's also more stable, and if it's STILL not fast enough for you it gives the user an incredible amount of control over how it operates - for real speed experiment with the image loading modes. (I am talking about the windows version here - the linux version, contrary to the blurb above, is actually an alpha NOT a beta release and still very buggy and unstable. Much like ANY Alpha release - tried KRASH?)
.pdf. HTML is a logical language, for the presentation of information. It is deliberately abstract to allow the same logical structures to be rendered differently in different environments (think cross-platform).
It's had java support for ages. It supports any netscape compatible plugin. If you WANT java, just download the plugin from sun and install it. This is an advantage - not a disadvantage - those that want JAVA get it and those that don't are not obligated to have it.
I have never found a site with valid HTML that did not render properly in Opera. The last few releases it's even been so forgiving that crap HTML like usa.net (for example) render just fine on it - I have mixed feelings about that.
HTML is not a layout language. If your goal is to totally control layout, use
The problem is some web designers want to rebel against this and try to achieve total layout control in HTML. This is an utter renunciation of the very purpose of HTML in the first place, and the end result is all those stupid pages that you need IE 5 at a given resolution to view. Don't blame Opera for not rendering them as intended - blame the idiot that wrote them for not learning how to use HTML - or alternatively finding an appropriate format to do what he did. HTML isn't it.
And yes, I'm using Netscrape 4.7 to post this - but only because of a lesser of two evils choice - I would rather use Linux than Windows EVEN THOUGH that means using Netscrape atm. When Opera is ready to use on Linux that choice will be a whole lot easier to make.
And finally, yeah, it isn't open source. Of course it would be nice if it was. But better an open source OS with a good closed source browser than the other way around. I wish the Mozilla folks all the luck in the world, but I'm sure not gonna hold my breath waiting for Mozilla to be half as functional as Opera.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I agree. Lynx has become a little too big these days though, I'm just wondering if they'll ever *attempt* to redo the codebase. But yeah, I hear you, from my Lynx session running inside an rxvt with a kool cyan/black pixmap background, and Window Maker set up without a titlebar or resizebars for the window. Ohh how I love my lynx in X :-)
the real at&t mix
I've been waiting for this moment for along time, so I obviously grabbed it asap! After using it for a about 15 - 20 minutes I was pretty disappointed. Why? Here's a few examples:
.JPG and then either right clicking on the image, (causes previous page to load) OR it's a totally invisable .JPG until you go to different workspace in X and then shoot back. (wow! the image suddenly appears!)
Seg faults. Try bringing up a
Personnaly I think Mozilla M12 is further ahead.
But it is nice to see! Hopefully things will progress at a rapid pace.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
If you go to the W3M site, there is a glibc 2.1 binary build I contributed (RH 6.0) which may work for you - It's at least worth a try.
Ummm... I don't think you realize the vast amounts of money that are lost every year in countries like China where real and pirated copies of software sit side-by-side on the shelf, and people think they are buying the real version, but instead of going to the people who wrote it, the money they pay goes to the counterfieters.
That's where the real money is lost, and I don't think the amounts the software manufacturers claim are all that unrealistic.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
in my first sentence, i also typed "it's" when i should have typed "its." i guess i'm not as perfect as i build myself up to be. :(
In Opera? No. They (the guys a OperaSoft) have explicitly stated that they will not support ActiveX, VBScript, or any other proprietary Microsoftisms.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
I don't know about the rest of the world, but for me, it *SEEMS* that the StarOffice browser is pretty good. I haven't done any advanced testing, but it doesn't *SEEM* to crash as ofter as nutscrape, and works a bit better than Mozzila and Opera. (I just tried the Opera beta out, and it seems to crash just a bit too often, but hey, its a beta).
:).
:)
Only thing is, StarOffice isn't free. (Well, it is free (as in beer) for personal evaluation use).
Its also a pretty damn hefty download for just using it as a browser. 70megs download. ~150-170 installed. But, atleast you get an entire office suit for that price
If this thing doesn't crash that much, I might buy it.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
If you use a program all the time, 100$ is not a lot.
I totally agree! I gladly pay a million bucks for any software that I use more than once! Heck, I'd pay - like - a billion $$$ to Bill 'cause I use Windows all the time and it got - like - a million little programs in it! Did you know that those weird files named .dll are also programs! Yes, it is true - there is even more value for money in Windows that you'd think (unless you are educated like me - I've taken a computer course at community college - so now I know EVERYTHING about computer-thinga-majjigies).
Hey, you payed for the computer, right?
I sure didn't! Thank God for race riots - that's the only time I go shopping - like - window shopping - if you know what I mean! Buy quick, use a brick - I always say!
W S B Fucci butti! (that's merry christmas in italian for those who haven't attended night school.)WSB
Considering plains, my homepage isn't at all that plain and if it isn't fancy enough, it's not because of the standards is strict. And you can validate it on http://validator.w3.org
It's great to get Opera for Linux too. As we so often want to point out: the freedom to choose is important. Also Opera and Mozilla will definitely battle each other and result in better products.
I downloaded both. Opera starts up fast. I pressed enter and there was the window. Then I visited slashdot with it. The front page loaded fast and it also showed this topic nicely. The feeling I got is that Opera loads slashdot pages faster than Mozilla but Mozilla renders the page faster. Just resize the window to see the difference. However, Mozilla's slowness with big Slashdot pages come from early incremental reflow code and still unoptimized table code. However, some new code has gone in lately to make Mozilla faster.
Opera also lacked features. If you click on submit buttons, nothing happens. Also it has big problems with some web pages. But as programmers know, this is very normal at this stage.
Check out the latest Mozilla. The Linux version has become a lot faster lately. It also crashes a lot more seldom and renders pages better than ever. There's still a lot of bugs left but this one is almost good enough for daily browsing. And as Mozilla could use some good testers, report the bugs you find at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org
In a nutshell: Opera is still far behind Mozilla. It's not possible to use it for daily browsing. Mozilla is almost there.
If they distribute it as binary only, they should provide with versions compiled agains variety of existing libraries, or make static binaries as netscape does.
I think it's mainly a how-you-use-it issue.
At 40-50 simultaneously open pages, I can see an obvious benefit from having a main containing program to organize all the browser windows together, and conserving memory from not defining multiple sets of menus, toolbars, etc. If programs are always run maximized, then non-MDI also is not necessary. This may be the general case for desktops at 800x600 or smaller.
Speaking for myself, but I think also for many others, I don't usually have nearly that many simultaneous windows open so I prefer to space out all my windows, including non-browser ones, on my desktop (they may still have areas overlapping). With an MDI browser in this situation, to have my browser windows spread out, I would have to make the parent window large enough, and this would cover-up my other non-browser programs.
Here in Finland there has just been introduced the
new so-called WAP services for mobile phones. They seem gllued-together crap to me, although I haven't enough interest to go to a phone store to check them out. The services, such as some sort of email and some information services, are all text-based and they work on top of traditional GSM SMS text messages. And all of them seem to be proprietary and work only on one operator's network.
The scary part is, the advertisers refer to WAP services as new Internet. "See www.sonera.fi or wap.sonera.fi!" Notice also that the people should know how to get the services just by looking at the prefix. The guy who first named a web server www.domain.suffix should be hanged by his/her balls...
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
Ahh... so it has a name. MDI huh? I used it for a few minutes and thought 'ugh - just like star office. I'm never going to be using this one.' Kind of a shame - it sure did load fast.
... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
Bah, these people are idiots! Anyone ever heard of a small time software company called IDSoftware?? Have you any phucking clue how much money they lost because of "qcrack"???????? the problem is that piracy is a grey area. no, adobe isn't losing money if i get photoshop for free (you're right. i wouldn't buy it if i couldn't crack it.) but IDSoftware IS losing money if you get a cracked copy of Q3 Arena...why?? because 99% of the people who crack it would have bought it if there was no crack.
Evaluate what is is that you're "pirating." If it's good software and you would have bought it anyway...go buy it. If everyone had cracked Quake instead of buying it, ID wouldn't have made Q2 or Q3...thusly we'd all still be posting to newsgroups about how Wolfenstein was the most advanced game ever made. Supply and demand kiddies...no one spends shitloads of money on RND to make stuff for free!
P.S. - the people who think piracy doesn't hurt are the same idiots who think that their vote doesn't count in elections.
--FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I did not quite understood, is there a difference in libc5 and glibc2 licenses, or is there going to be any?
We don't want your bug reports either. I didn't include a README and LICENCE in the .tar.gz, that was an error. I'll post an updated version with those files as well, soon.