Opera has released an alpha build of their upcoming 9.5 release. "Following the release of Opera 9 last year, we re-wrote Opera's rendering engine for the coming Opera 9.5 release. As a result, Opera 9.5 contains more than a year's worth of speed, standards and performance improvements."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-08
Many people have been mad at Opera since then even if it's now free of charge and ad-free at the same time. Some ignorants also still think Opera is adware.
There's still the matter of Opera being proprietary software.
Firefox was not only able to build a stronger brand and a larger extention ecosystem, but embedded developers are using the Firefox codebase to build specialized web environments without paying for Opera. If that wasn't enough to contend with, WebKit has enormous momentum behind it now that Apple and KDE are reunited.
That said, Opera 9.5 seems to be somewhere in between Firefox 3 and 4 in terms of core technology. It doesn't have the offline application functionality of FF3 or the high-level scripting support slated for FF4, but the ECMAScript virtual machine is probably more comparable to the latter.
Opera is great technology. But a web platform certainly qualifies as a basic commodity these days, and that doesn't bode well for a proprietary software vendor with a marketshare problem. You have to wonder whether Qt-style dual-licensing is inevitable for Opera.
Member since:2005-07-06
>Opera is great technology. But a web platform certainly qualifies as a basic commodity these days
Depends: average web platforms such as Firefox are a commodity yes, but Opera is much better.
I really wonder how could Firefox spread so much even though unless you use extensions (which few do) it's really inferior to Opera (sluggish).
My only grip with Opera is its UI which has some annoying warts that prevent it to be truly great: for exemple Opera can reflow a webpage so that it fits your window's width which is really nice but you have to do it page per page, there's no way to toggle a switch 'fit width' to have it permanently: a great feature spoiled by a poor UI choice (and that's not the only one).
Member since:2006-08-22
Firefox was not only able to build a stronger brand and a larger extention ecosystem, but embedded developers are using the Firefox codebase to build specialized web environments without paying for Opera. If that wasn't enough to contend with, WebKit has enormous momentum behind it now that Apple and KDE are reunited.
But none of those matter to the general user. Firefox got momentum because geeks of all stripe and by whatever means pushed it out to friends, and friends of friends, and so on.
Member since:2007-09-05
Member since:2005-06-29
Hold on, Joe... A brand new desktop version finally released after more than a year of active development means that Opera has now left the desktop?
Where's the logic?
Ask on the Opera forum. Opera Software ASA doesn't count on the desktop anymore for the core of their profit. They are on the desktop just "to be present", but they don't count on money generated by desktop market.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Since the 8.x series, Opera has been the best browser in all areas (speed, features, security, etc...). Much faster and feature-rich than Firefox or IE for instance. I yet have to see what they could do to improve it!
But yet, Opera has lost the battle because of the ads. People got pissed off having to pay or to see ads. Many people have been mad at Opera since then even if it's now free of charge and ad-free at the same time. Some ignorants also still think Opera is adware.
Opera Software understands that and now left the desktop and targets the mobile market.