Opera Soft. released Opera 7.50 Preview 2 for Windows and Unix with a lot of fixes and improvements.
Opera Software Releases Opera 7.50 Preview 2
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s nice to see that they have finally decided to make some drastic changes to the GUI. It’s a lot slimmer and more flexible now.
I have moved over to Firefox now but it’s nice to see that Opera is moving into the right direction. IE needs better competition.
Let’s just hope that they have done something about the stability problems.
“Let’s just hope that they have done something about the stability problems.”
The last version of Opera has been stable for me under Linux for a few months.
The last version of Opera has been stable for me under Linux for a few months.
Well, we all have different stories. For me it has crashed a lot, both on windows and linux(a bit less on linux though). I haven’t investigated why and where it crashes cause I haven’t had the motivation to do bugtesting really. So I guess I am to blame as well for the fact that these issues hasn’t been adressed yet.
Me too, haven’t seen any of crash since 7.x in stable version. I only see very few crash in alpha, review, beta or whatever development version.
For me it has crashed a lot, both on windows and linux(a bit less on linux though).
The beta series of the 7.1x branch crashed under Linux on me dozens of times a day. I occasionally experience crashes with the 7.23 release under Linux. But I have *never* had a stable version of Opera 7.x for Windows crash on me.
Is it just me, or do fast forward and rewind not seem to work properly in this version?
They seem to have fixed the bugs that caused weird behavior in css dropdown menus (like on http://www.slackcrew.com). From what I have experienced from 7.50 preview so far it looks like 7.50 is going to be a good release.
Works just fine here. What’s wrong for you?
Opera 7.50 P2 seems to have fixed few of the of the annoyances from 7.50 P1. The “Start Pane”, the IRC client, the “improved M2”, all seem like such an odd direction to go.
Fast forward/rewind are working, but not in the same way they used to.
I think I’ll be sticking with 7.23 until they get their heads back on straight again.
I think I’ll be sticking with 7.23 until they get their heads back on straight again.
Here too, I have linux-opera and linux-opera-devel ports installed on FreeBSD. I only use 7.5 for test, report bugs and etc, which 7.23 is for daily use. 🙂
I’m impressed, this has a lot of usability improvements!
“I think I’ll be sticking with 7.23 until they get their heads back on straight again.”
This might just be your new best friend.
From the Changelog:
Disable M2 (Mail, News, and Chat) (NOTE: Kiosk mode settings will have precedence):
[User Prefs]
Show E-mail Client=0
(This is in opera6.ini, btw.)
I found opera to crash on sites with javascript.
Does it still zoom images when you select zoom?
I found this to be annoying.
Also, when will they have a package for a more modern suse version, such as 8.2 or 9.0?
Also, when will they get java working on it?
Does it still zoom images when you select zoom?
Yes, it does…
Also, when will they have a package for a more modern suse version, such as 8.2 or 9.0?
Have you tried the normal one or static one?
Also, when will they get java working on it?
Something is wrong with your system, it always has been work perfect to me. Flash, Acrobat, Java, mplayerplug-in and etc, they all work fine.
“Does it still zoom images when you select zoom?
I found this to be annoying.”
— To each his own, I guess. The zoom is one of the main reasons I switched to Opera…
Does it still zoom images when you select zoom?
I found this to be annoying.
It’s a feature — why wouldn’t you want images to zoom when you zoom a page? Else the formatting is going to be off and the page will render differently from what the author intended.
Zooming images makes them look fuzzy. I prefer the way Mozilla zooms pages. Formatting stays just fine, while the images stay in native resolution.
However, I recently got a Nokia 9290 with built-in Opera web browser, and I see the value of images zooming with small screen rendering. On a small screen, you *do* want the images to zoom down in size to see it in the context of the whole page, and/or see more of the image in your screen.
Thus, I vote for this to be a user determined configuration, whether images zoom with the text or not.
I find myself using Firefox by default, even though I paid money for the opera license. I think type-ahead find is one of the great features that Opera doesn’t quite have. Firefox has been more stable for me also.
But I love Opera’s crash recovery and saved sessions feature. I think there’s a plugin for Firefox to do session recovery, but it doesn’t work well. But I guess I decided Firefox is stable enough that I don’t need the crash recovery feature, and I can still use save all tabs to get back to a session (although I really like Opera’s way of saving your history for each window too).
I guess I’m still waiting for the perfect browser…
Why does the hotlist look so funny?
There is one thing I don’t like about the new interface. I usually have the panel default to “bookmarks.” Hit F4 and blamo, my bookmarks are persistently listed.
With the new version, if all the windows are closed, there is no address bar to type into! I have to switch to the “start” panel from my usual “bookmarks” panel just to type in an address. This is pretty cumbersome.
Hm, that’s how it works right now, in 7.23!?
Just CTRL+n and you’ve got your window. Use F8 to go to the URL field if it doesn’t happen automatically.
I moved from firefox to oprea 7.50 cause it rocks and its layout is really cool.But i have been using opera for a long so for a new user he will feel a little confused.
Irc intergration is very nice. the only thing I miss is that getright plugins do not work for this version.
Bless u
Plugins getright it works. I just needed to restart my computer and now opera detected it.
Go for Opera !
from what i have experienced, firefox is much more sleek and fast than any of browsers out there except IE i guess ofcourse but it has much more built in options and really is what atleast I need in browser. IE is kind of stuck at one place for last year and half(except for patches and updates of course! :-).
Not an open source fanatic but fact is firefox team is doing really well on this browser and it’s worth a try for anyone. Opera comes second to it
Don’t forget to add the OSNews Channel on your Opera! Check at the bottom of our page!
I use opera and you use firefox so I won’t start an argument about which browser is the better, but IE sleek and fast!?!?
ok, and since you insist, I’ve tried using firefox the last few days and it’s slow. There.
hey by IE is sleek i mean it takes less time to load. I dont know why firefox is slow. mine works fine. It is more stable than IE and looks much better
I find myself using Firefox by default, even though I paid money for the opera license. I think type-ahead find is one of the great features that Opera doesn’t quite have. Firefox has been more stable for me also.
. (dot) starts quick search for text, and , (comma) – for links. Use F3 to move to next result, or Shift + F3 to go to previous one. All bindings are customizable on “Keyboard and mouse” preference page.
zooming does what is says: zoom
guess you are looking for “increase font size”
Hm, that’s how it works right now, in 7.23!?
You know what, you’re right. D’oh. Maybe it’s because the main toolbar is turned off by default and the “new” option wasn’t as handy.
Opera 3.6MB. Firefox what… 9MB?
Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox has always been slower for me than Opera, even the slowest Opera yet the early 7.x releases. And I think that Opera must use some voodoo encryption compression to get it that small. Very very impressive.
For me though, the featureset of Opera, speed and useability still blow every other browser out of the water.
That this version also gets one of my favourite web toys to work (Conquerchat) makes it a doubly fantastic plus.
“hey by IE is sleek i mean it takes less time to load. I dont know why firefox is slow. mine works fine. It is more stable than IE and looks much better”
That’s because fundemental parts of MSIE are started when Windows starts. This is not the (default) behaviour of other browsers, like Firefox.
“”hey by IE is sleek i mean it takes less time to load. I dont know why firefox is slow. mine works fine. It is more stable than IE and looks much better”
That’s because fundemental parts of MSIE are started when Windows starts. This is not the (default) behaviour of other browsers, like Firefox.”
You could achieve something similar to that effect by prelinking (linux). Maybe there is an util to load opera when you log into windows too, I don’t know.
And btw, thanks for the quick-type thingie with , and . didn’t know that!
— Opera v7.5p2 — is awsome, it still have some quirks, but the interface and sidepanel behaviour is much better now compared to Preview 1, it doesn’t seems to crash at all (Windows version). All the quirks and inconveniencies can be overcomed with a little bit of tweaking using the newly rewamped configutation menus, you can nearly do whatever you like with the interface and much more!
— Firefox — They are in the right track, but they still lack many features and their interface need a bit of polishing.
— IE — Yes, IE is fast, partly true of integration on the system and the preloading. But, its integration has a drawback, if IE starts to missbehave the whole system notices it and start to weaken as well. As the windows installation degrades and degenerates over time, so IE does.
Overall: Give Opera a try, it may take a few days to understand the program’s filosofy and get used to it, but once you do you’ll fall in love with it. And remember IE is still in the system in case you are forced to use it. So it is a win-win scenario!
In Opera 7.5p2, add a website to the panel and set the view once in the panel to “Small Screen” rendering.
Cool!
The free version of Opera is spyware. Buyer (er, downloader?) beware.
Yeah, but anyone who matters uses linux
Yeah, but anyone who matters uses linux
Like you can’t implement spyware in a linux browser.
I have downloaded Mozilla 1.6 and in the install I opted to have it load with Windows (as IE does). It is excellent. It is really the best browser out there, tabbed browser windows, no-popups, etc etc etc and loads like lightning.
Dont get me wrong, I used to love Opera, and I will probably use this new version a lot, but there is nothing to compare with Mozilla 1.6 at the moment.
[Mozilla] is really the best browser out there, tabbed browser windows, no-popups,
Opera had all of these features years ago. Until Mozilla/Firefox reaches an acceptable level of speed (and it’s still mind-numbingly slow on anything less than a P4) and actually gain the powerful interface features and customization of Opera (even with hordes of extensions, Mozilla doesn’t come close to matching Opera’s default feature-set), I’m sticking to Opera.
Opera had all of these features years ago.
So? Both have them now. It’s just a matter of who implements them in the best way. The pop-up blocker in opera has been somewhat badly implemented until a while ago (not allowing popups opened by the user) and even then it had issues with crashing on “user-popups” when the pop-up blocker was turned on. Firefox handles it beautifully IMO and the tabbed interface is a lot more logical in Firefox since it’s not MDI.
As for speed, I’d say that Firefox is faster in some areas and Opera is faster in others. The opera GUI is a lot faster while the actual page loading is slower (at least in my tests).
Firefox has been a lot more stable for me as well.
emagius said: “Opera had all of these features years ago. Until Mozilla/Firefox reaches an acceptable level of speed (and it’s still mind-numbingly slow on anything less than a P4) and actually gain the powerful interface features and customization of Opera (even with hordes of extensions, Mozilla doesn’t come close to matching Opera’s default feature-set), I’m sticking to Opera.”
What ???? Mozillis is slow ?
have you actually tried v1.6 ?
didn’t think so
“What ???? Mozillis is slow ?
have you actually tried v1.6 ?
didn’t think so”
I have FireFox 0.8 installed on my system right now and it horrendously sluggish. Opera doesn’t have this feature.
I use a 266Mhz w/64MB RAM notebook and Opera runs faster than MSIE on here, which is surprising. FireFox (the toned-down Mozilla) runs so slow.
If the toned down version runs slow, what can I expect from the “everything-even-the-kitchen-sink” version?
firefox 0.8 <> mozilla 1.6
thats like saying I dont like ie 6 coz my ie 4 is not the best
I dunno if they have done any code optimisation, but v1.6 flies on every pc I have installed it on… even ones like the old IBM m300 with 64mb ram
take a look at the http://www.enlightenment.org, opera screws it up.. the title and logo is over the text, Mozilla Firebird renders it correctly..
http://www.enlightenment.org renders just fine in Opera 7.23 (Windows). IE 6.0 on the other hand… It gets the background color of the logo all wrong and partly covers the text.
could be, however I was referring to 7.50 preview 2 (Linux) since that’s what this article is about..
1. No reputable source I know of claims Opera is spyware. Opera’s web pages provide quite detailed explanations of how Opera works and why it is not spyware. Easy to make or repeat accusations, harder to actually do the research and find out the truth.
2. Make sure “Allow empty workspace” is checked in Tools>Preferences>Windows. Then you have at least 3 ways of getting a new blank page with an address bar: (1) Ctrl+N as a previous poster commented; (2) Middle-click on an empty area of the pagebar; (3) Double-click in the empty workspace.
I don’t like Opera.
What ???? Mozillis is slow ?
have you actually tried v1.6 ?
didn’t think so
I most certainly have. On Pentium IVs running MS Windows XP, Mozilla 1.6 is quite speedy — I have no complaints on that score. On Pentium IIIs running XP, it’s alright although the interface (menus/dialogue boxes) lags a little. On Pentium IIIs running GNU/Linux (Red Hat 9.0), the interface is so slow as to be unusable, and switching tabs (or windows) is terrible. On Pentium IVs running RH 9.0 it’s just a little laggy. It’s absolutely not usable — even with just a single window/tab — on Pentium II machines running RH 9.0, and not usable with multiple tabs on Pentium II machines running XP.
Unfortunately, the UI still blows, no matter which platform you use.
lets not get into arguements of which is best. for me firefox works fast and good it’s stable. I used to use opera as default browser but don’t want to shell out money for it. It might be best browser out there but you have to pay for it. firefox is free. Mozilla is slow. atleast these hold true for me nyways all of above ar ebtter then ie!:-)
I’ve been playing with Opera today to test a site I’m developing, and I can’t really see anything revolutionary there.
However “Small Mode” is cool, since it allows you to preview what your site is going to look like on an Opera based portable – let me just say the phrase is “good!”, my next portable is gonna have to be packing a copy of Opera.
‘It’s nice to see that they have finally decided to make some drastic changes to the GUI. It’s a lot slimmer and more flexible now.’
I don’t see any significant changes to the GUI at all. Can you be more specific?
They seem to have tweaked the panels a bit, cleaned up the menus slightly and changed a few of the defaults. But that doesn’t seem like a drastic change to me.
Every version of O7 has been flexible, you could make any of their GUIs pretty much as slim as you liked. It took me about 1 minute to change the Opera 7.5 GUI back to how it was in 7.2.
wow, I love how all open pages are avalible on the left. Kinda like how an IDE lets you have multiple text files open. The GUI is still way to big for my tastes. Remove the tabes at the top(the left bar makes the tabs redundent) and make everything thiner, and opera will be even better!
I don’t know if I will use opera though, things kinda feel funny. Just a matter of taste I guess. I will try to tinker with the fonts. I’m having a hard time trying to figure out if I’m spelling everything right in this font!
Hey Eugenia! that opera butten down there is sweet!
Now I don’t have to waste soo much of your bandwith checking osnews.com 6 or 7 times a day! The news is always there 😀
No way, I’ve made tests and Firefox is much slower than Opera…
Hummm..about javascript performance, test both browsers: http://www.24fun.com/downloadcenter/benchjs/benchjs.html
I started using Opera back in the 3.2x days because my main computer died and I was forced to work on a P75 laptop for a few weeks. Working on a computer that slow really made me appreciate slim, powerful apps like Opera and Forte Agent – that thing also had probably the world’s worst touchpad, so it made me appreciate apps with single-key keyboard shortcuts too.
It’s pretty obvious from some of the comments that their authors haven’t spent much time using Opera. There aren’t really any “OMFG that’s the kewlest thing EVAR!” type of features, but there are a lot of nice little touches. For example, when you used tab to select/switch through links/form elements, Opera doesn’t start at the top of the page as IE does – it starts with the link that’s at the top of the window.
Another nice touch is that ctrl-tab behaves the same way as Alt-Tab does in Windows – takes you to the last window you were in, instead of just cycling through them in sequence as Mozilla does (at least for me). Oh, and (one of) the keyboard shortcut(s) for back/forward are CONTROL-right/left arrow, not bloody ALT (which is kind of awkward to do with one hand). And in general, I just found it more responsive than IE (much smoother when scrolling pages, less CPU use while rendering most pages, etc).
Then there’s Opera Show (http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/operashow/), the nice little download manager, the “Add Bookmark Here” item in sub folders of the bookmarks menu (why oh WHY hasn’t Mozilla copied this yet?), and a pile of other little features. Opera was just the best browser for “power users”, and in this context I mean people who browse the web a LOT for eg. research purposes and want the fastest way to perform the often-repetive various things you do while browsing.
However, with Opera 6 and the releases that followed, I’ve found myself increasingly disliking the direction Opera appears to be taking. For example, the ability to tab through links seems to have broken for me with 6; then there’s the way the “taskbar”, when it fills up, doesn’t shrink the individual buttons, but hides the extra ones and requires an extra click to get at them. In general, with each new release of Opera required more and more time for me to get it to behave the way I wanted. Then I tried the 7.x releases (not the very latest, although I’m sure I will) and after half an hour of tweaking settings, I just couldn’t get it set up the way I had been comfortable with in 6.0. I wish there were an “emulate 5/6.x UI” option a la the way DreamweaverMX can emulate DW 4.0’s UI.
I’ve mostly switched to Firebird/fox lately – including converting my sister to it and replacing IE with it on the computers where I work (Public Computer Access Centre). Although there are definitely some things I miss from Opera (one key keyboard shortcuts come immediately to mind), Firefox has some quite nice features and I like that it behaves pretty much the same on my Win2k box at work and my BeOS machine at home. I still keep Opera on my work and use it at least daily, but that’s 6.0 and I don’t expect I’ll be upgrading to 7.x anytime soon.
“For example, the ability to tab through links seems to have broken for me with 6”
Tab through links? Eh, you never could. You use Q and A for that. Or in Opera 7, spatial navigation: Use Shift+arrow keys to navigate ANYWHERE in the document. Much better.
“then there’s the way the “taskbar”, when it fills up, doesn’t shrink the individual buttons”
Yes it does.