Opera Mini works by connecting to proxy servers that filter Web content so that it displays properly on a cell phone's tiny screen. All Opera Software would have to do is run a separate set of proxies for "Opera Mini China" and then actively refuse connections on their main proxies originating from Chinese IP address blocks. (Or, more likely, the Great Firewall will block them.)
The China version of Opera Mini was already using a transcoding server located in China. But people could install the international version if they wanted. What has changed now, is that usage from inside China of the international transcoding server is not supported anymore. It would indeed be trivially easy for the GFW to block this server in Oslo. But that didn't happen, instead the Chinese users now get a page asking them to use the the China Opera Mini version.
Well, that's exactly the problem indeed. In Firefox, the advanced users (least likely to need the protection) will be able to find the switch to 'live' phone home checking with Google. With gives a big warning about Google storing this data... Google has proven to put up a fight before handing over such data to the US government. But still... why do they need to store such data?
Opera will simply not keep the user data on their servers. Nothing to go for then for the autorities. So, there could only be a problem if Opera was lying. And they would be out-of-business real soon if they get caught, so that's unlikely IMHO. Maybe Opera should hire some auditors to certify their systems for this feature.
My mail program, Opera Mail, doesn't load *any* external material, unless I specifically enable it. This is the default setting for Opera Mail. This makes some commercial mailings look broken, and offers complete protection to webbugging.
Does Firefox send a referer header when fetching a blacklist? That would be bad, but I seriously doubt this. This should be checkable with a tool like Wireshark.
As for the ISP identifying the user... I'm probably missing the point here, my ISP already knows me perfectly well, and can easily keep track of all the sites I visit. It doesn't matter which browser I use. For the truly paranoid, downloaders of kiddieporn, or those living in certain dictatorships, using Tor would be a workaround. The downloading of the blacklist will happen over the same proxied connection.
You've probably last tried Opera 7.2, which was the worst as far as toolbar clutter is concerned. That was September 2003. 7.5, the next major release, was already much cleaner, and since 8.5 (when the ad was dropped) Opera has been as uncluttered as Firefox and Safari right out-of-the-box. They all have a comparable number of buttons and menus etc.
Yep, automatic filterset updates would be useful, if you really want to block all adds (instead of only removing some especially annoying ones). There are of course ethical issues...
Yes, hold Shift or Ctrl+Shift while clicking the menu item 0 this works just as well for menu entires and buttons that load a new page, as for links. You can also disable the 'reuse current tab' setting in the Preferences, which will cause all such actions to use a new tab instead of reusing the current tab.
Do you have to do this for every new ad you see? Or does Opera automagically create regexes for permanent blocking of similar ads by using your method?
No regexes, but a simple matching expression using * is automatically created. You can also block specific images only by holding Shift while clicking. It is quite intuitive, with a simple UI with only a few buttons and a short explanation text.
Extensions have nothing to do with Open Source, and a lot to do with APIs. Both MSIE and Firefox offer the possibility to add extensions that change the browser quite a lot. The only difference is, that Firefox is better in politely asking the user before installing them, and has always offered a way to remove them as well:)
Note how, for example, the Google Toolbar was developed first for MSIE, and only much later for Firefox.
You posted that link a few minutes ago as well. Did you file bug reports with clear testcases, or are you just whining here? Offset properties are underspecified, so hard to implement - something Opera is working on at the moment.
We'll see consistency when the SVG people put together an extensive testsuite, instead of spending their time on making the spc even more complex:)
Both Firefox and Opera developers have found difficulties in implementing SVG, because the spec was not written with webbrowsers in mind. Interaction between SVG and HTML and CSS is not so well defined. It was also found that existing SVG content (often written for use with the Adobe plugin) is not always usable in the browser if you follow the spec.
I love Opera, but their integrated bit torrent client sucks. It doesn't show transfer rates, you can't limit your upstream, you can't see how many people you're connected too, you can't see if there are any seeds and it doesn't keep track of your share ratio.
A not so thorough examination of BT in Opera...
In the transfer manager you can see various statistics, like upload/download speed, number of peers. In the BT preferences (available in the dialog when you open a.torrent file) you can limit your upload speed. Opera defaults to sensible upload values if you set nothing.
Of course you don't get all the features of heavy duty BT clients - most people wouldn't know what to do with them. But for the casual BT user, this implementation should be quite useful.
On the contrary. In HTML, error handling is not defined at all. So different browsers do different things when you, say, forget to close your opened H1 elements or forget to put a TR element around you table cells. As such code will get written, and is put on the web when it looks OK in the current market leader, all other browsers have to reverse engineer the error handling in the dominant browsers of all possible errors.
If instead the HTML spec would have clearly explained what should happen when elements appear in places where they shouldn't appear, this problem would hardly exist. This lesson was learned by the CSS spec writers (they tell exactly how to parse the CSS file, whatever you put in it) and the XML spec writers (they tell to show a big honking error message whenever something is wrong with the file).
Opera is the one browser that was apparently not researched, as the issues do not show there (#2) or are less severe (in case of issue #1). People sometimes complain that Opera throws a warning for (or refuses) a cookie that the other browsers happily accept. This is no error, just Opera better at following the specs like RFC 2965...
If they want to do business in the USA, they can't avoid this issue. They use US mirrors to offer downloads. Also, Opera has deals with Motorola and Adobe, American companies... Though for mobile or embedded browsers, which Opera delivers to these companies, it might be easier to avoid this particular patent.
"Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features."
Why does this post get marked as 'interesting'? There's no denying that Firefox' extension system is doing wonders for keeping the browser lean and still offering lots of (potential) functionality. But when manu of the extensions you can download are available by default in Opera (often Opera is the inspiration for the extension to begin with) it is hard to maintain that Opera didn't innovate in the past decade. It has pioneered the MDI browsing experience, spearheaded proper CSS implementation, and generally been focused on offering users control over their browsing experience. It is still the only browser where you can disable JavaScript with a simple shortcut. Etc.
Recently Opera has also focused on making all this power more accessible for everyone, and dropped the price tag and ads. You can attribute that to the power of real competition offered by Firefox if you like. But if Opera didn't have 'better features' in all these years, it wouldn't have been around for all this time.
Does anyone know if Opera now recognizes the noscript tag?
Opera has supported the Noscript element, as defined in the HTML spec, since version 5, years ago. This means that the content of Noscript will be parsed if it is preceded by a Script element with content that the browser doesn't support (because the Script element uses VBScript for example).
Without the desktop browser and a couple of million users, Opera would not have been able to create the mobile version it has now in the first place. Opera is better than other mobile browsers in getting as much of the real web onto the small screen as will fit.
Until they release a non-smartphone Pocket PC version, they're losing ground.
You might want to do a little check, comparing the number of smartphones sold (where Opera is developed for basically all operating systems) with the number of PocketPC devices sold. Hint: there are way more smartphones sold.
Slashdot Mirror
Opera Mini works by connecting to proxy servers that filter Web content so that it displays properly on a cell phone's tiny screen. All Opera Software would have to do is run a separate set of proxies for "Opera Mini China" and then actively refuse connections on their main proxies originating from Chinese IP address blocks. (Or, more likely, the Great Firewall will block them.)
The China version of Opera Mini was already using a transcoding server located in China. But people could install the international version if they wanted. What has changed now, is that usage from inside China of the international transcoding server is not supported anymore. It would indeed be trivially easy for the GFW to block this server in Oslo. But that didn't happen, instead the Chinese users now get a page asking them to use the the China Opera Mini version.
The advantage is that people can write articles saying "FF3 uses less memory, so it's the best".
"except the staleness problem"
Well, that's exactly the problem indeed. In Firefox, the advanced users (least likely to need the protection) will be able to find the switch to 'live' phone home checking with Google. With gives a big warning about Google storing this data... Google has proven to put up a fight before handing over such data to the US government. But still... why do they need to store such data?
Opera will simply not keep the user data on their servers. Nothing to go for then for the autorities. So, there could only be a problem if Opera was lying. And they would be out-of-business real soon if they get caught, so that's unlikely IMHO. Maybe Opera should hire some auditors to certify their systems for this feature.
My mail program, Opera Mail, doesn't load *any* external material, unless I specifically enable it. This is the default setting for Opera Mail. This makes some commercial mailings look broken, and offers complete protection to webbugging.
Does Firefox send a referer header when fetching a blacklist? That would be bad, but I seriously doubt this. This should be checkable with a tool like Wireshark.
As for the ISP identifying the user... I'm probably missing the point here, my ISP already knows me perfectly well, and can easily keep track of all the sites I visit. It doesn't matter which browser I use. For the truly paranoid, downloaders of kiddieporn, or those living in certain dictatorships, using Tor would be a workaround. The downloading of the blacklist will happen over the same proxied connection.
You've probably last tried Opera 7.2, which was the worst as far as toolbar clutter is concerned. That was September 2003. 7.5, the next major release, was already much cleaner, and since 8.5 (when the ad was dropped) Opera has been as uncluttered as Firefox and Safari right out-of-the-box. They all have a comparable number of buttons and menus etc.
Yep, automatic filterset updates would be useful, if you really want to block all adds (instead of only removing some especially annoying ones). There are of course ethical issues...
Yes, hold Shift or Ctrl+Shift while clicking the menu item 0 this works just as well for menu entires and buttons that load a new page, as for links. You can also disable the 'reuse current tab' setting in the Preferences, which will cause all such actions to use a new tab instead of reusing the current tab.
Or just set the Personal bar to 'wrap', if you've got a normal screen.
No regexes, but a simple matching expression using * is automatically created. You can also block specific images only by holding Shift while clicking. It is quite intuitive, with a simple UI with only a few buttons and a short explanation text.
Extensions have nothing to do with Open Source, and a lot to do with APIs. Both MSIE and Firefox offer the possibility to add extensions that change the browser quite a lot. The only difference is, that Firefox is better in politely asking the user before installing them, and has always offered a way to remove them as well :)
Note how, for example, the Google Toolbar was developed first for MSIE, and only much later for Firefox.
You posted that link a few minutes ago as well. Did you file bug reports with clear testcases, or are you just whining here? Offset properties are underspecified, so hard to implement - something Opera is working on at the moment.
We'll see consistency when the SVG people put together an extensive testsuite, instead of spending their time on making the spc even more complex :)
Both Firefox and Opera developers have found difficulties in implementing SVG, because the spec was not written with webbrowsers in mind. Interaction between SVG and HTML and CSS is not so well defined. It was also found that existing SVG content (often written for use with the Adobe plugin) is not always usable in the browser if you follow the spec.
A not so thorough examination of BT in Opera...
In the transfer manager you can see various statistics, like upload/download speed, number of peers. In the BT preferences (available in the dialog when you open a
Of course you don't get all the features of heavy duty BT clients - most people wouldn't know what to do with them. But for the casual BT user, this implementation should be quite useful.
On the contrary. In HTML, error handling is not defined at all. So different browsers do different things when you, say, forget to close your opened H1 elements or forget to put a TR element around you table cells. As such code will get written, and is put on the web when it looks OK in the current market leader, all other browsers have to reverse engineer the error handling in the dominant browsers of all possible errors.
If instead the HTML spec would have clearly explained what should happen when elements appear in places where they shouldn't appear, this problem would hardly exist. This lesson was learned by the CSS spec writers (they tell exactly how to parse the CSS file, whatever you put in it) and the XML spec writers (they tell to show a big honking error message whenever something is wrong with the file).
LOL, an instant jump of what, maybe 20% of the GPL community? Which is at most 4% (and that's being charitable) of the market?
Opera is the one browser that was apparently not researched, as the issues do not show there (#2) or are less severe (in case of issue #1). People sometimes complain that Opera throws a warning for (or refuses) a cookie that the other browsers happily accept. This is no error, just Opera better at following the specs like RFC 2965...
If they want to do business in the USA, they can't avoid this issue. They use US mirrors to offer downloads. Also, Opera has deals with Motorola and Adobe, American companies... Though for mobile or embedded browsers, which Opera delivers to these companies, it might be easier to avoid this particular patent.
Why does this post get marked as 'interesting'? There's no denying that Firefox' extension system is doing wonders for keeping the browser lean and still offering lots of (potential) functionality. But when manu of the extensions you can download are available by default in Opera (often Opera is the inspiration for the extension to begin with) it is hard to maintain that Opera didn't innovate in the past decade. It has pioneered the MDI browsing experience, spearheaded proper CSS implementation, and generally been focused on offering users control over their browsing experience. It is still the only browser where you can disable JavaScript with a simple shortcut. Etc.
Recently Opera has also focused on making all this power more accessible for everyone, and dropped the price tag and ads. You can attribute that to the power of real competition offered by Firefox if you like. But if Opera didn't have 'better features' in all these years, it wouldn't have been around for all this time.
Opera has supported the Noscript element, as defined in the HTML spec, since version 5, years ago. This means that the content of Noscript will be parsed if it is preceded by a Script element with content that the browser doesn't support (because the Script element uses VBScript for example).
Without the desktop browser and a couple of million users, Opera would not have been able to create the mobile version it has now in the first place. Opera is better than other mobile browsers in getting as much of the real web onto the small screen as will fit.
You might want to do a little check, comparing the number of smartphones sold (where Opera is developed for basically all operating systems) with the number of PocketPC devices sold. Hint: there are way more smartphones sold.
You also prefer a hundred children to get abused or killed, to prevent one parent from getting problems with the authorities when nothing is wrong?
It is a real pity they didn't go with Opera at that time... Obviously, it was an option.