Submitted by “Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download, completely free of charge, here.” This news got submitted a staggering 14 times, and as far as I know, that’s a record.
Check out http://opera.com/free for more info and download from here: http://opera.com/download or via bittorrent: http://torrent.opera.com/pub/opera/
More information about Opera has gone free can be found:
http://www.opera.com/free/
Torrents are also available:
http://www.opera.com/download/torrents/
‘award-winning’ wonder why
The GUI of Opera is simply to strange.
No thanks FireFox is still the best browser around !
What’s wrong with this GUI?
http://opera.com/img/screenshots/opera8-tabbed-browsing.jpg
What’s wrong with this GUI?
The windowmanager theme. It looks too much like Windows
Both Opera and Konfabulator went free of charge after I bought them?
What would you like me to pay for next?
Let me know your preferences.
Iam sure whenever i gonna pay voluntarly for Windows ™, its gonna be free. (But then again i will never pay for it…)
If it’s only been a week, you can contact Opera to get a refund. But then you aren’t eligible for support though.
Borland Delphi 7 (and newer), MS Office, Windows 2003 Server, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Halflife 2 (and all other 3D shoot’em ups) and a lot more :p
Keep in mind, you’ll have to split the bill with the poor guy once they go free 😛
macmini
Have you seen just how beautiful the F430 is?
http://www.seriouswheels.com/top-2005-Ferrari-F430.htm
Jokes aside, this has happened to me too a couple of times. But, well, it’s ok.
Combined Firefox and Opera should be able to snoop away IE users to give MS a good kick in the groin and make them realize once more that they better hurry up IE7 and better make it good.
Thanks Opera! Great product.
(I keep using Firefox though
)
I would buy OPERA if I were trading on OSE
http://www.dn.no/finans/aksjekurser/?marked=OSE&symbol=OPERA&side=g…
Now Firefox is going to face a good competition… Jokes aside, this is wonderful news. Perhaps together, Opera and Firefox will be able to help in the fight for proper standards on the Internet.
DeadFish Man
Opera is so fast , in every area.
I love using it, allthough I miss some Firefox extensions
> I love using it, allthough I miss some Firefox extensions
Which ones? Anyone covered here:
(You see, with User JS you can do almost everything that you need from most Firefox extensions, and best of all, they work when you update too.)
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/opera-and-firefox-extensions
or here
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/09/opera-and-firefox-extensions…
For even more scripts check out http://userjs.org
How about the DOM Inspector and Web Developer Toolbar? How about live-http-headers?
Good link though. Some people are not aware much of the popular extensions are functionalities native to Opera, I used be an opera lover but these wonderful web-developer extensions for Firefox are giving me withdrawal symptoms.
How about Platypus?
“What would you like me to pay for next?”
A 15-inch Powerbook G4, please…
What would you like me to pay for next?
Microsoft Office??
It seems they now have no reason at all not to open source their browser product. On the contrary – they could benefit hugely from being OSS, and perhaps even draw some developers away from Firefox.
Just imagine the possibilities when all major browser engines except IE are open source…
Why on earth would they OSS the product? They generate plenty of revenue from their engine from commercial products; I doubt Macromedia would licence Presto if it was OSS.
There is NO inherent ‘goodness’ about OSS software and no reason that all software should go there.
The “inherent goodness” of OSS is that you get free development.
And it’s not like they have something to lose by OSS:ing the browser now that it’s free.
They will still get all of the revenue from selling embedded versions, using google search et al, PLUS the benefit of a huge mindshare working on their product for free. I see no reason for them not to do the same thing as Trolltech is currently doing.
“The “inherent goodness” of OSS is that you get free development.”
What is so good about that? The company has people who know the software inside out, who are committed to it and invested in it? What would then be the benefit of having a disparate bunch of strangers hacking at the code?
i agree, not everything is about OSS believe it or not. We need balance here.
that is great news about Opera finally good to see another browser on the loose. I just downloaded it to OS X and i am impressed. May even replace firefox as my secondary browser. Anything that will steal people from the MS thunder is only a good thing. Well done Opera for that radical move… what a brilliant marketing strategy here…what could ever happen next! No longer can we use the “fee excuse”. i think we should enjoy this before they change their minds
No longer can we use the “fee excuse”.
Amen to that! That is really getting tiring. They still have the OSS excuse though..
There is NO inherent ‘goodness’ about OSS software…
You’re right. But there is inherent ‘goodness’ in the GPL.
“There is NO inherent ‘goodness’ about OSS software and no reason that all software should go there.”
you are ignorant.
Personally I’m learning C++ and want to start developing a game I’ve been conceptualizing for a long time. I don’t think I would release my game as open source software even though I think the first few versions will be freeware.
The reason why I wouldn’t open source my software, and don’t expect any one else to is because it complicates things for the developer(s). I like OSS, and without it I might still be stuck with Windows as the only OS available to me; however, I’ve also seen some great proprietary applications, and I think it’s detrimental to expect every piece of software to be open source.
Open source licensing, in my opinion, made OSS projects like Azureus and Gaim more at risk of being modified and re-released as spiware-infested proprietary software; that did happen by the way, and it also damaged the reputation of those two programs imo. While OSS does protect the rights of the user, it doesn’t do a whole lot for developers who can’t afford legal battles. Also the technicalities can be argued until the sun explodes, but if OSS software were proprietary instead then maybe Mandriva Linux would not have a free version, and then to use it I would have to shell out for a copy instead of using the free download version, then Mandriva might actually make some money from me.
In my defence for always getting the free download version of Mandriva or SUSE though, I’m a student and cannot afford unecessary purchases, especially since I was recently laid off from work.
It would be nice to have opera as free software.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Which is the main reason I don’t use it and haven’t really given it a go.
– Jesse McNelis
Eh? It IS free now. That is the whole point of this thread! RTFA.
He meant free as in speech, not free as in beer.
If you don’t understand the difference, go read http://www.fsf.org/ and/or http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I downloaded the Ubuntu version but it has still the banner.
without the banner. a lot cleaner (running under pclinuxos) will use this and firefox… one happy person here.. good work
people, forget Opera… use Firefox!
been using FF for a few years. just tried opera and it seems noticeably faster. can’t see myself giving up FF just yet though.
Firefox will authenticate with MS Proxy server. Opera gives an error. Short evaluation…
did he swim sometime ago?
Yeah, he did. I think he got a couple feet before ‘accidentally’ swamping the boat his PR executive was following him in.
He had to abort the swim to heroically rescue the PR Manager, who says “The night had been crisp and starlit, and we had fallen asleep in the raft to the gentle movement of the waves. In the morning, I gave Jon two chocolate bars and some of those mini carrots he likes so much before he jumped back into the water. He had only been swimming for an hour or so when the raft suddenly punctured in open sea. I owe my life to Jon, and I can only hope that he doesn’t fire me for ruining his dream of swimming to America.”
You can read the full report at http://www.opera.com/swim/
If you’ve got someone that can quickly get you up to speed on Opera, you’ll come to like it more quickly. If you’re doing it by yourself, check out these links:
http://operalover.tntluoma.com/8/
http://my.opera.com/community/
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/
Aarrrggg! Can’t get the parser to recognize these links
In particular, the Opera community and forums are a great resource. I just put 8.02 on last night and set about customizing the interface to my 7.5 preferences. There are many new looks and controls for the UI and I was having problems getting them configured. Two searches in the Opera Customization Forum and I had all the answers I needed to my problems. Plus the forums give a lot of tips on tweaking and improving performance as well as making the UI look like you want it. I’m also curious to tinker with the voice browsing. That’ll be interesting. Anyone tried it yet?
So, um, how are Opera planning to make enough money as a company to survive now? There’s nothing in the press release about it (unsurprisingly) and I’m intrigued as to how they plan to do so.
Also, I thought it was quite amusing that all the Opera screenshots on their site are of the OS X version.
“So, um, how are Opera planning to make enough money as a company to survive now?”
Something like a third to a quarter of their income comes currently from the desktop licences.
There are two avenues they see as replacement for this (ignoring that they are ever increasing their mobile licence and engine licencing revenues and starting to build up their Slipstream service and I guess income):
1. Significantly more people get it, a percentage get the premium support. These probably will close to balance out.
2. Google searches through the browser bring in some income. More people using the browser, means more income.
Can’t remember who, but saw one Opera employee say they actually expect to increase their revenue with this release.
“1. Significantly more people get it, a percentage get the premium support. These probably will close to balance out. ”
But does this mean that Opera has an incentive to write buggier code to make people want the premium support? Or degrade the quality of free support?
When a company changes tactics and starts giving away its flagship product for literally free with no strings attached, it’s a possible symptom that something isn’t going right inside the company. It’s a possible sign of desperation.
For example, Netscape used to give its beta-versions of its browsers for free, and now Netscape is gone. Then AOL decided to open up the source code, and the result is that Mozilla has never reached version a 2.0. Then the source fragmened into Firefox which is still at version 1.0, leaving a fragmented and confused user base. Is Mozilla 1.7.x still supported? Are security patches being updated? Is the Netscape browser still alive? In any event, Microsoft IE still hovers at around 90% (and IE isn’t Microsoft’s flagship product).
Sun gives away Java for completely free — the compiler, the specification, sometimes even the source code. The way Java has been marketed by Sun over the past decade, you would have thought it’s one of Sun’s flagship products. The result? Currently Sun Microsystems has an overall investor rating of F (the lowest value); see http://reports.finance.yahoo.com/w0?r=34905203:1 for more details.
Opera’s share of the browser market is very very very tiny after so many years. Thinking that this will increase their revenue seems to be wishful thinking.
“But does this mean that Opera has an incentive to write buggier code to make people want the premium support? Or degrade the quality of free support?”
Are you kidding?
Presto – the heart of Opera – is licenced by an increasing number of third party vendors.
Also, the browser itself (remember the codebase in it’s entirely is largely portable) is used for mobile browsing.
Opera still has commercial imperatives behind their development. This is one reason why it would make absolutely no sense to make it open source and allow the hackers in to play. You’d lose the cohesion that you get from a bunch of people whose livelihoods depend on this being a saleable product and who have pride in the work they are doing and have done for years.
“For example, Netscape used to give its beta-versions of its browsers for free, and now Netscape is gone. Then AOL decided to open up the source code, and the result is that Mozilla has never reached version a 2.0.”
Ignoring your inference that somehow Mozilla has failed (wha…?) the difference is that those were one-trick ponies. It was the one thing they did and it was given away. Opera has many other avenues of gaining revenue from the product they are giving away in one sphere, plus they have at least one related product that is making them money spun off from it (Slipstream).
“Sun gives away Java for completely free — the compiler, the specification, sometimes even the source code. The way Java has been marketed by Sun over the past decade, you would have thought it’s one of Sun’s flagship products. The result? Currently Sun Microsystems has an overall investor rating of F”
Trying to say that Sun giving away Java is the cause of that investor rating is *really* pushing it. Not even going to argue that point because it’s so vapid.
“Opera’s share of the browser market is very very very tiny after so many years. Thinking that this will increase their revenue seems to be wishful thinking.”
Why? It will increase their exposure in the desktop market, more people will hear of them, more will be interested in buying without the “it costs you money” FUD that has been routinely spread about. That means more people will use it, which means that when it comes to other platforms like mobile/cell phones, there will be that followon brand recognition there too.
And completely removed from this there are those licensing the engine for their own embedded purposes. Presto is still the best balance of smallest, fastest, portable and complete renderer out there.
Throw in the increased use of the searches from a larger amount of users and the base cost of losing 1-3% of users who paid is being at least partially offset just by the fact that it WILL have an increased amount of users.
Lets not forget one last thing. Goodwill from users. It isn’t unheard of for users who enjoy the product enough to pay for it even when they don’t have to (as a result of the birthday thing last month this happened). I’m sure buying the premium support for a smaller amount of money will also happen on this basis to some extent too; again ignoring those who pay for it to actually GET that support.
Ignoring your inference that somehow Mozilla has failed (wha…?)
You seem confused as to my assertion that Mozilla has failed. I ask you: What financial or strategic benefit has it brought to AOL, which purchased Netscape and then decided to create the Mozilla Foundation? The original intent was to harness the “goodwill” of the development community and use its creative powers to help beat Internet Explorer. It did not succeed in doing this, and brought AOL no financial reward, and hasn’t helped AOL’s present or future strategy.
the difference is that those were one-trick ponies. It was the one thing they did and it was given away. Opera has many other avenues
Except that you are wrong. Before it was purchased by AOL, Netscape was also in the business of selling Netscape Internet server applications to commercial businesses. Giving away the browser as a beta-for-free (while charging the customers for retail full-versions) was supposed to create the groundswell market for Netscape’s server software business…similar to what Opera is trying to do. It’s deja vu all over again. The goodwill of giving away the product, the high profile of Marc Andreessen, the nearly synonymous association of the Netscape Browser with the World Wide Web (leading many to think that Andreessen had invented the WWW!!), and its public perception as the browser innovators didn’t help increase Netscape’s server applications sales.
When AOL bought Netscape, AOL’s main revenue stream was (and is) from its ISP services. The purchase of Netscape was supposed to wean AOL from IE, and again provide the goodwill from customers to build loyalty to AOL. Didn’t work. AOL shut down its Netscape division two years ago and is trying to battle in the broadband market, its customer base having defected to other broadband ISP’s that don’t give away browsers.
Trying to say that Sun giving away Java is the cause of that investor rating is *really* pushing it. Not even going to argue that point because it’s so vapid.
I do not claim that Sun has an investor rating of “F” solely because they simply give Java away for free. The problem is that giving Java away was (among other things) supposed to create a customer base that would encourage people to buy Sun hardware and server software. Ten years later, is Sun really better off due to this strategy? Did Sun generate enough goodwill in the software community so that more Sun product solutions are purchased than the competition’s? Apparently not; thus, it’s one of the contributing factors to the “F” rating.
Opera is committing the same mistakes that Sun and Netscape did. Opera’s stock price may have rallied today, but it could simply be the dynamic of “the greater fool”, i.e. an investor bubble that relies on savvy investors preying on the gambling mentality of the overly-optimistic naive investors.
Lets not forget one last thing. Goodwill from users. It isn’t unheard of for users who enjoy the product enough to pay for it even when they don’t have to (as a result of the birthday thing last month this happened).
If you rely on goodwill for your business model, you will soon have to buy your clothes from Goodwill (see http://www.goodwill.org/page/guest/about/howweoperate/shop).
they are supplying mobile phone operators all around the world with opera embedded. They will make their cash there
Not only does opera sell their browser to phone manufacturers to embed in their product as previously mentioned (and the number of phones it’s embedded on has growing dramatically over the last few years) but it also has a few other revenue streams.
Most of them seem to come from systems like the embedded phone market. For example, they also sell the browser to cable companies so they can use the engine to render program schedules, etc. There has also been released (or soon to be released) a portable media player with the opera browser embedded inside of it. They’ve been working on a lot of multimedia integration for their browser as well.
For those of you worried that the desktop browser will suffer because of this, just remember, even though they don’t charge for the desktop browser anymore, the core browser engine is still almost 100% of their business, whether on the desktop, mobile, cable box or other. And when you’ve got a browser that’s as noticably efficient on cycles and memory as Opera’s it seems to be the logical choice when you’ve got a low resource embedded system, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to be threatened in the immediate future. So don’t worry too much about it, we’re all going to have a killer browser for a long time to come (if you use it of course…)
Not only does opera sell their browser to phone manufacturers to embed in their product as previously mentioned (and the number of phones it’s embedded on has growing dramatically over the last few years) but it also has a few other revenue streams.
Most of them seem to come from systems like the embedded phone market. For example, they also sell the browser to cable companies so they can use the engine to render program schedules, etc. There has also been released (or soon to be released) a portable media player with the opera browser embedded inside of it. They’ve been working on a lot of multimedia integration for their browser as well.
For those of you worried that the desktop browser will suffer because of this, just remember, even though they don’t charge for the desktop browser anymore, the core browser engine is still almost 100% of their business, whether on the desktop, mobile, cable box or other. And when you’ve got a browser that’s as noticably efficient on cycles and memory as Opera’s it seems to be the logical choice when you’ve got a low resource embedded system, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to be threatened in the immediate future. So don’t worry too much about it, we’re all going to have a killer browser for a long time to come (if you use it of course…)
But you cant use the mozilla-mplayer with Opera.
It has worked here, also plugger works.
This is cool.Good showing of them.Firefox is still my preference though.Will try Opera sometime.
any chance we’ll see some Opera in Firefox and vice versa?
They have incompatible licenses, so in terms of source,no. You’ll continue to see Opera’s features copied into Firefox, of course.
If they could just make it not run slow as molassas…
Is it just me, or is this release ‘throttled’ or something down to 14-18k/sec or something? I’m on a 4mbps downstream connect and EVERY site is like being on shotgun… Hell, old Mozilla on BeOS 5 inside MS VPC seems faster than Opera does native in XP… That can’t be good.
And it’s not my machine or connect, IE and FF are just fine… but it takes ten seconds to load GOOGLE. I tried it on another machine to the same results…
“And it’s not my machine or connect”
There is something up with your machine in some way, and it would seem software/config related because I’ve never had that with Opera.
Just had a quick check and getting from local (to my country) sites at ~100KBps…
That’s definitely a problem on your end. All my Opera installs are screaming fast.
Excellent!
I’m downloading now!
Opera is as revolutionary to FF as FF is to IE, and all adjectives and expeletives used when FF confronts a rabid IE fan could be used against FF users as well: Don’t want to even try Opera because “the UI is weird”, etc, etc… Fine! We don’t need you! Stick to your clumsy, open sourced browser and idiot download manager. We’ll be surfing the web much easier than you ever will.
Well I must be one, because if Opera is better than Firefox I’m too dumb to use it.
I just tried it out for a little over an hour.
The automatic menu when you highlight text is beyond annoying. I like to highlight text as I scroll, and this makes everything slow down and gives me unexpected results. I want to highlight text! That doesn’t mean I want to do anything with it! Copying in Linux is annoying as well, you should only have to highlight in Linux to copy then middle click to paste. This automatic menu ruins that.
The odd menu you get when you click the URL bar is non intuitive and annoying. If I want to double click the url to type over it, all of a sudden I have this menu with my home button show up. Makes no sense.
When you load a page in Opera this wierd loading bar shows up in the URL bar which is ultimately confusing and in the wrong place.
The UI widgets are non native and really ugly. Go to the preferences and look at that ugly menu with the blue background.
And on top of that it feels a lot slower on this machine when loading pages. Mozilla 1.6 or even konqueror is faster. Let alone firefox which it can’t even touch.
Then all of a sudden when browsing I got a dialog that informed me I had performed a mouse gesture and yatta yatta. I didn’t perform anything, I was just looking at a page, get out of here.
Then I make a post on slashdot and it totally ate my post, leaving me dumbfounded.
So ya, have fun with it, I’ll stick with FF.
I’d just like to mention I am happy it’s free now. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I would think Opera’s userbase is only going to grow due to this move.
Most of what you described, you can disable in preferences.
A nice step making it free of charge, as software should be, let’s just hope it doesn’t take even longer to make it open source, which will then be truly FREE.
If I can’t tinker with the source of a program, it’s not free, regardless of flames/trollish retorts, that’s fact.
Both Opera and Access (who just bought PalmOS) both make their money from selling web browsers to embedded devices.
Ever since Nokia switched to khtml browser for their smart phones — both Opera and Access saw the writing on the wall, that they will be out of business very soon if they don’t change their business model.
“Ever since Nokia switched to khtml browser for their smart phones — both Opera and Access saw the writing on the wall, that they will be out of business very soon if they don’t change their business model.”
On the contrary. KHTML isn’t exactly well suited for mobile phones (memory hungry!). It is a desktop browser after all, and Nokia has already tried several times to create their own mobile browser. And failed.
Also, Nokia’s KHTML browser will only be available for Series 60 devices, an incredibly limited market. Opera, on the other hand, is available for just about all mobile platforms there is, including Windows Mobile.
This news got submitted a staggering 14 times, and as far as I know, that’s a record.
Well, that’s because you’re dead slow, Thom
“This news got submitted a staggering 14 times, and as far as I know, that’s a record.”
Well, that’s because you’re dead slow, Thom
Meh, can’t work on OSNews while at university attending classes, now can I?
.
I guess I need to look up key-bindings to figure out how to open tabs like I do in Firefox… (hold a key, click the link and it opens) That, and find some way to get it to work with my university webmail (I have to click multiple times on each link for it to decide to load, something that really shouldn’t work, but apparently does)
Shift-click to open in a new tab/page. Shift+ctrl-click to open in a new background tab/page. Middle-click works, too.
Oh, interesting. That does make more sense than the Control-shift-enter-click thing I found searching through their help system. Thanks!
Now, if only I could figure out the deal with the reverse padding on some sites (http://www.somethingawful.com/) I’m guessing it had to do with IE autopadding some things, that I read somewhere from some disgruntled webadmin.
I’ll try 8.50 (I have 8.10 Technology Preview 2+BT) and see if it fixed the webmail bugs.
I find Opera to be far and away the fastest browser on the Mac. But its stability left a lot to be desired. Inexplicable crashes were an hourly occurrance. Under Windows it is only slightly more stable. Maybe your experiences vary?
Opera is notably the fatest browser on all platforms I have tested it under- Windows, Mac and Linux.
I must admit that I have experienced some minor stability issues on non-Windows platforms- I have noted that Opera is most stable on Windows. For me it crashes roughly once per day (heavy browsing). However, an Opera crash is not a problem at all- it auto saves your browsing session and re-opens all your pages you had opened before the crash occured.
I wouldn’t say FF (or any other browser) is better in this respect.
1. Opera doesn’t seem to support PNG.
2. I can’t see the text I’m writing now, as Opera shows me a black textarea with black text, since I have dark colours in KDE.That’s not right!
3. Half my Javascripts which work 100% without errors in Konqueror, Safari, Mozilla and Internet Explorer does not work in Opera (and this has been an issue for a long time)
4. Half the themes require you to run light colours on your GUI (KDE) to see the text many places. What’s up with this colour racism! 🙂
5. No opacity support, well Konqueror doesn’t support it either yet…
Other than that. I like the speed! It’s like having a new computer! I must say!
1. It does.
2. Check your system / settings. Nothing to do with opera.
3. Refer to answer 2.
4. Refer to answer 2.
5. What you moaning about then ?
I’ve been using opera for years on both win / linux platforms.
Only problems i’ve encountered are from beta versions.
Dougie.
Glasgow, Scotland.
1. Opera doesn’t seem to support PNG.
2. I can’t see the text I’m writing now, as Opera shows me a black textarea with black text, since I have dark colours in KDE.That’s not right!
3. Half my Javascripts which work 100% without errors in Konqueror, Safari, Mozilla and Internet Explorer does not work in Opera (and this has been an issue for a long time)
4. Half the themes require you to run light colours on your GUI (KDE) to see the text many places. What’s up with this colour racism! 🙂
5. No opacity support, well Konqueror doesn’t support it either yet…
Other than that. I like the speed! It’s like having a new computer! I must say!
Sorry, no quote button for anon’s ?
1. It does.
2. Check your system / settings. Nothing to do with opera.
3. Refer to answer 2.
4. Refer to answer 2.
5. What you moaning about then ?
I’ve been using opera for years on both win / linux platforms.
Only problems i’ve encountered are from beta versions.
Dougie.
Glasgow, Scotland.
check http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/pngtrans/
As you can see, both Firefox and Opera support all manner of .png transparency.
I might give it a try. But Firefox will be my preference unless, of course, they GPL it. But that will never happen, so Firefox has nothing to worry about. <G>
But Firefox ISN’T GPL’d….
Exactly, that’s why I would switch. That’s honestly about the only reason I would switch. Firefox is “good enough” for everything I like, plus I worked with some of those guys at Netscape, so its got some sentimental value.
Great move Opera!
I love this browser, it’s notably faster than anything else I’ve tried and it’s soo smooth to use.
And I just love how easy it is to add stuff like custom search boxes next to the google box. I have added imdb there for example.
I first switched to Opera a few years back, when IE just got on my nerves one time too much, and I’ve never looked back since.
I’ve tried to like Firefox as much, especially since it was free and Opera wasn’t (my only ‘issue’ with it) but I just couldn’t like it enough to switch. Opera is just soo much nicer to use and now it’s free too (saves me the license fee I undoubtedly would’ve payed sooner or later)! very nice.
Opera for free? it’s still a ripoff, no open source proves it.
I’d just wish they updated their browser for all of the platforms
I tried Opera a while back on OS X and it was very unstable. Downloaded today on Ubuntu and it’s working very well. Extremely fast, with lots of nice features. However, until I can get Web Developer, FlashBlock and certain other goodies in it, Firefox will be my main.
Gimme adblock and we’ll talk. Users need a GUI, not a text file to edit.
Other than that Opera is so much faster than Firefox on my old laptop running Linux…
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/OperaAdblock
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1860213,00.asp
For the life of me, I cannot understand just how the hell Opera is expecting to really make any money off of this. The Google Ads were perfectly fine by me and probably many others because they were just a little bar at the top of the browser. Now I don’t see how they are going to really make any money since most of their users don’t see the $30 support fee option.
Btw, a little bit of satire about them:
http://www.blindmindseye.com/archives/2005/09/opera_to_flood.html
Way to go Opera!! I use Opera exclusively on my windows box and firefox on linux and freebsd. the only reason I don’t use it on my nix boxes is because of the add, I didn’t think buying the same program for different OS’s would be a smart thing to do!! I guess now I don’t have to 🙂 ….. However now that they went free I wounder how they are playing to make money?!? is it a good thing that they went free? or is it a desperate move to stay competitive? I hope not the latter!!!
Why does opera render pages so fast? Are there any numbers to prove this because it sure “feels” faster than anything I’ve used. Any comments from people who know this stuff??
Very tight coding. Also, while it is cross platform, it doesn’t work the same way as Firefox. Firefox code is very abstract to make it cross-platform, but that means it takes a performance hit. IE is actually pretty fast too.
Opera also feels faster for some people because of instant back/fwd.
Yes … this is the most wonderful feature ever written for a browser. I’m serious. I’ll happily hit refresh to check if the page updated: Just don’t make me spend extra time going back!
Tabs, extensions, blah, blah, blah, and all that; nothing compared to instant back!
Why does opera render pages so fast? Are there any numbers to prove this because it sure “feels” faster than anything I’ve used. Any comments from people who know this stuff??
What would you like me to pay for next?”
Some fake boobs for the wife?
…what kind of crazy open source zealot would turn down free beer because the manufacturer won’t divulge the recipe
…what kind of crazy open source zealot would turn down free beer because the manufacturer won’t divulge the recipe
The kind that has 3 kegs of his friend’s finest home brew when you’re offering them Budweiser or, to be fair, Alaskan Smoked Porter.
…what kind of crazy open source zealot would turn down free beer because the manufacturer won’t divulge the recipe
Those that a accustomed to drinking free beer from manufactures that do divulge the recipe and a familiar with those that do not divulge the recipe and a known to use suspicious contents.
Oh, I really have to wonder, too, how a very common phrase like this get a 5 positive moderation. What’s happening here? Did you really find 5 mo^H^Hgentlemen to vote +5?
Now, to be on-topic, just a word to make you think:
“Soylent Green”.
(Actually, that’s two, I know…)
dôLôb
** Opera 8.50 is out!! **
<u>…what kind of crazy open source zealot would turn down free beer because the manufacturer won’t divulge the recipe</u>
I might. With Opera, I always bought the program. Other free software could be different. The advice I give to others is always to use extreme caution when downloading free software, particularly when it isn’t open source. Much of it is spyware of some kind or other, or associated with spyware.
I suspect you already knew that, but it always helps to advise caution, even with Opera.
There is no spyware in Opera. Read the EULA.
If there was, you would here about it in the media FAST.
I would like to see Opera kill Firefox. It’s just a superior browser.
1) it has a history of what were searched like in Firefox saves the last X # of search keyword in the Google bar.
2) Increase the view percentage in Opera increases both the font and the picture. It would be more convenient for a quick method to just increase the font alone (equiv to Firefox Control + )
Other than that I really like it, it’s quick.
“2) Increase the view percentage in Opera increases both the font and the picture. It would be more convenient for a quick method to just increase the font alone (equiv to Firefox Control + )”
Actually it’s because it doesn’t try and be coy by calling it “view percentage” and calls it zoom. And it’s an accurate and proper zoom instead.
2) Use zoom and then hit ctrl+f11
As far as legal battle is concerned, you can contact FSF and OSDL defense fund if you really need help as developers. There’s also a GPL enforcement mechanism available if need.
The only problem is when it comes to software patent; and in this case it will be harder and you will need to put extra effort to work around the patent at issue.
It’s been going up this past while dramatically.
But look what happened today with this news…
http://www.dn.no/finans/aksjekurser/?marked=OSE&symbol=OPERA&side=g…
anyone knows any port of firefox to mobile devices??/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/
Finally there is an alternative for Firefox that can be taken seriously.
Maybe this will drive Firefox devs to improve the quality of their browser now. They should at least fix the horrible memory leaks.
Opera has been my browser since early 1998, and no complaints. IMO, its by far,the best one, beating Firefox and all others.