Opera Unite on the other hand is a much larger monolithic program with many unrelated features hanging off it.
Huh? Opera Unite is a web server inside a browser. It's part of the "small, fast and simple" Opera, which also happens to include an email client, chat client, BitTorrent, newsgroups, etc. What on earth makes just one more feature Opera "larger and more monolithic" exactly?
It's much easier to set up and use (how much hacking and customization will you need to do in order to set up music streaming?), and will have lots of services doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things, such as controlling an RC car.
It's a good thing Opera 10 has automatic updates, then.
Unite is no more of a security risk than anything else that connects to the web.
If I don't trust Flickr or don't want them to hold my data hostage, I can still make it accessible over the web. If they grabbed my copyright protected photos from my computer like that and put them on display without my permission, I could sue them. If I uploaded to them, I couldn't, and would lose control.
Looks like you are the one who's not getting it. You don't need to leave your computer on 24/7 for Unite to be useful. Unite is amazingly simple and easy to use as an ad hoc communications channel. I used to upload files to various services just for someone else to have a quick look at it. Now i just drop it the relevant Unite service, and off it goes. And unlike your true P2P scenario, the other guy doesn't need special software. Just a browser.
Central servers will still be kind. Wouldn't live without them. But Unite offers an alternative.
Game changer? No idea. It's certainly revolutionary as far as my usage is concerned. Can't wait to see what kind of other services people will come up with.
You have evidently not even bothered to try learning what it's all about. I guess you are just another mindless Opera basher. If Unite had been released by Google, your keyboard would have been wet with saliva by now. Pathetic.
What is it with people today? You all seem to be ignoring my points and then throwin out some random opinionated nonsense. I just pointed out that this isn't just Opera, but that it has major business customers who will be pushing this thing as well.
Opera's lack of presence on the desktop? Opera has been free of charge for a little over 3 years. In that time, it has reached 3-4% market share globally, and nearly 10% in Europe. And that is desktop alone.
Opera Mobile is a full browser. It was around ages before newcomers like Safari started bragging about what Opera had been doing for years. There's a reason why just about every single major mobile OEM is an Opera customer. Including Nokia, which, despite their own browser, preinstalls Opera on high-volume phones that their browser is too bloated to fit onto.
Sell it? Opera is free. But why are you trying to change the subject? That you personally don't like the browser is irrelevant anyway. The point is that you said people won't understand it. To which I replied: "So because you don't understand it, no one does?"
I also pointed out the fallacious arguments used by the article author. And all you did was to change the subject and throw out lots of subjective opinions that are irrelevant to the discussion anyway.
You can already connect directly to your IP address and bypass both the server that gives you a hostname and the proxy. The logging in thing is just a convenience for noobs. I hope they will make it easier to just skip the whole logging in thing in the future.
So because you don't understand it, no one does? The author of the article was obviously completely clueless. Opera, a desktop software company? No dammit, Opera is a browser company. The less time you spend in your desktop apps and the more time you spend in their web browser, the more money they will be making. You are either extremely biased, and will reject anything Opera does out of hand, or you are extremely ignorant and possibly naive, and will believe anything some ill-informed "journalist" writes.
WebKit is already a fully functional browser. "Making" it is only slightly more involved than typing "make". You only need to integrate it with your graphics API if you are using one it doesn't already support. Its not trivial to integrate WebKit but its something most companies with the resources to develop a mobile phone can easily handle.
On the contrary. It's a huge undertaking, and requires committment. You can't just throw random developers at it. You need people who know browsers.
It took Google more than two years to get a basic desktop browser out there. Mobile phones are even worse because of the constraints, especially memory. And it shows. Nokia's WebKit browser is awful. As are attempts by others. Only Apple seems to have gotten it right.
I'm pretty sure mobile phone makers like Nokia, Apple and now Google would almost certainly rather develop their own WebKit browsers at this point than get locked in to one from a third party like Opera.
Sure. But not everyone is in their position. And I remember Nokia's attempts at making a browser. Using WebKit was their 4th or 5th attempt at it. They have wasted huge amounts of money just to create a sub-par browser for S60. And it's only available for S60, and only certain versions too. It's too much for them to port it to, e.g., S40.
Any company adopting Android gets an integrated WebKit browser for free, with source, thanks to Google. Not saying some companies wont still opt for Opera but with WebKit in Android for free it certainly creates a head wind against Opera continuing to make money in this area.
Opera will be on Android. Vodafone said that they would base their whole mobile strategy on Opera or something like that. You see, Opera is available for all platforms and gives a consistent experience. Vodafone has lots of different phones from different vendors, remember. Also, Opera has Opera Mini and Opera Turbo. And widgets. And now Unite, which they are also making for mobile phones.
W3schools stats are just for that site. Opera actually has more than Chrome. In Europe it's even bigger. Which is surprising considering Google's massive advertising muscles.
Also, even if your claims were correct, why would Opera be in trouble? They are setting profit records all the time even during these economic downtimes. The user base is growing quickly as well. They probably have something like 100 million users for all their products.
The vast majority of phones run on proprietary operating systems, and that will continue. It's usually cheaper to just license Opera than to create your own browser team and spend massive resources on your own browser.
Opera is not in trouble at all. WebKit has been around for a long time, as have the companies using it, and yet Opera is setting profit records all the time. Most phones don't run any of the OSes you mention. And it's unreasonable to expect all device manufacturers in the world to become browser vendors. It's extremely time-consuming and expensive to make a browser, even with a finished engine available.
if a manufacturer who is making 1 million+ devices has to decide between Opera ($$$) or Webkit (free), which would they go with if both are standards complaint enough?
Your fallacy is that you are assuming that WebKit is free. Yes, it's free to download, but it's not free to make a browser from. You need paid developers to work on it, and it's extremely time-consuming. In other words, expensive. It's probably cheaper for most to just license Opera. You get a great browser straight away.
And do you really think every single device manufacturer out there wants to become a browser company? No, they want to focus on their core business.
Opera browsers are free on the desktop but Opera in embedded applications is relatively expensive to license and closed source so its days are probably numbered in the one place it makes money. Maybe Opera can compete against it by offering better value in some areas to justify the price tag and the head aches of dealing with a proprietary closed source browser.... but in the long run.... I doubt it.
It's probably cheaper to just license Opera than to assemble your own browser team and make your own browser. It's extremely time-consuming and expensive to make a browser. Just look at Chrome. More than two years to make a basic browser like that, despite not having to build a rendering engine. Browsers are massively complex, and as long as it's this difficult to make your own Opera will have business. And their business is thriving.
Dealing with Opera in the embedded space has all the negatives you would expect from dealing with a closed source, proprietary, software company.
They are not all moving to WebKit at all. The vast majority of phones run on proprietary operating systems, and that will continue. It's usually cheaper to just license Opera than to create your own browser team and spend massive resources on your own browser. And on Windows Mobile, Opera Mobile is used instead of IE.
Opera has more than 40 million desktop users, 20-30 million Opera Mini users, and millions of users on various devices and through customers. So there are probably more than 100 million Opera users in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Latest public Firefox: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.5rc2/win32/en-US/ (7.9 MB, a hefty 1.2 MB bigger than even Opera's bloated MSI, and 2.4 MB bigger than the classic installer)
And you were saying again?
Huh? Opera Unite is a web server inside a browser. It's part of the "small, fast and simple" Opera, which also happens to include an email client, chat client, BitTorrent, newsgroups, etc. What on earth makes just one more feature Opera "larger and more monolithic" exactly?
It's much easier to set up and use (how much hacking and customization will you need to do in order to set up music streaming?), and will have lots of services doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things, such as controlling an RC car.
Unite is no more of a security risk than anything else that connects to the web.
If I don't trust Flickr or don't want them to hold my data hostage, I can still make it accessible over the web. If they grabbed my copyright protected photos from my computer like that and put them on display without my permission, I could sue them. If I uploaded to them, I couldn't, and would lose control.
Unite is getting attention way beyond Slashdot.
Central servers will still be kind. Wouldn't live without them. But Unite offers an alternative.
Game changer? No idea. It's certainly revolutionary as far as my usage is concerned. Can't wait to see what kind of other services people will come up with.
You have evidently not even bothered to try learning what it's all about. I guess you are just another mindless Opera basher. If Unite had been released by Google, your keyboard would have been wet with saliva by now. Pathetic.
Opera's lack of presence on the desktop? Opera has been free of charge for a little over 3 years. In that time, it has reached 3-4% market share globally, and nearly 10% in Europe. And that is desktop alone.
Opera Mobile is a full browser. It was around ages before newcomers like Safari started bragging about what Opera had been doing for years. There's a reason why just about every single major mobile OEM is an Opera customer. Including Nokia, which, despite their own browser, preinstalls Opera on high-volume phones that their browser is too bloated to fit onto.
I also pointed out the fallacious arguments used by the article author. And all you did was to change the subject and throw out lots of subjective opinions that are irrelevant to the discussion anyway.
Yes, as we all know, installing Opera destroys all your other browsers.
You can already connect directly to your IP address and bypass both the server that gives you a hostname and the proxy. The logging in thing is just a convenience for noobs. I hope they will make it easier to just skip the whole logging in thing in the future.
So because you don't understand it, no one does? The author of the article was obviously completely clueless. Opera, a desktop software company? No dammit, Opera is a browser company. The less time you spend in your desktop apps and the more time you spend in their web browser, the more money they will be making. You are either extremely biased, and will reject anything Opera does out of hand, or you are extremely ignorant and possibly naive, and will believe anything some ill-informed "journalist" writes.
I guess it's easier to write them in HTML/JS/CSS. Maybe Tonido performs better?
On the contrary. It's a huge undertaking, and requires committment. You can't just throw random developers at it. You need people who know browsers.
It took Google more than two years to get a basic desktop browser out there. Mobile phones are even worse because of the constraints, especially memory. And it shows. Nokia's WebKit browser is awful. As are attempts by others. Only Apple seems to have gotten it right.
Sure. But not everyone is in their position. And I remember Nokia's attempts at making a browser. Using WebKit was their 4th or 5th attempt at it. They have wasted huge amounts of money just to create a sub-par browser for S60. And it's only available for S60, and only certain versions too. It's too much for them to port it to, e.g., S40.
Opera will be on Android. Vodafone said that they would base their whole mobile strategy on Opera or something like that. You see, Opera is available for all platforms and gives a consistent experience. Vodafone has lots of different phones from different vendors, remember. Also, Opera has Opera Mini and Opera Turbo. And widgets. And now Unite, which they are also making for mobile phones.
I was having problems too. Turns out the launch was so successful their servers kept getting overloaded :D
Also, even if your claims were correct, why would Opera be in trouble? They are setting profit records all the time even during these economic downtimes. The user base is growing quickly as well. They probably have something like 100 million users for all their products.
There is only one browser for the iPhone: Safari. The other ones are just shells/skins around Safari's engine.
The vast majority of phones run on proprietary operating systems, and that will continue. It's usually cheaper to just license Opera than to create your own browser team and spend massive resources on your own browser.
Opera is not in trouble at all. WebKit has been around for a long time, as have the companies using it, and yet Opera is setting profit records all the time. Most phones don't run any of the OSes you mention. And it's unreasonable to expect all device manufacturers in the world to become browser vendors. It's extremely time-consuming and expensive to make a browser, even with a finished engine available.
Opera for PC is free, numbnuts.
And regarding performance, Opera is actually better than anyone else there on mobile phones.
Your fallacy is that you are assuming that WebKit is free. Yes, it's free to download, but it's not free to make a browser from. You need paid developers to work on it, and it's extremely time-consuming. In other words, expensive. It's probably cheaper for most to just license Opera. You get a great browser straight away.
And do you really think every single device manufacturer out there wants to become a browser company? No, they want to focus on their core business.
That's because RIM won't let Opera improve it.
It's probably cheaper to just license Opera than to assemble your own browser team and make your own browser. It's extremely time-consuming and expensive to make a browser. Just look at Chrome. More than two years to make a basic browser like that, despite not having to build a rendering engine. Browsers are massively complex, and as long as it's this difficult to make your own Opera will have business. And their business is thriving.
How do you know?
They are not all moving to WebKit at all. The vast majority of phones run on proprietary operating systems, and that will continue. It's usually cheaper to just license Opera than to create your own browser team and spend massive resources on your own browser. And on Windows Mobile, Opera Mobile is used instead of IE.
Opera has more than 40 million desktop users, 20-30 million Opera Mini users, and millions of users on various devices and through customers. So there are probably more than 100 million Opera users in the world.