Opera 8.5 just out

[Roedy Green]

Opera 8.5 a small fast browser is now out. It is now free and the
adware has been removed. I guess firefox/Mozilla/Netscape were
putting too much pressure by being free.

http://www.opera.com/download/

It works with any version of Java.

 

[Oliver Wong]

Opera 8.5 a small fast browser is now out. It is now free and the
adware has been removed. I guess firefox/Mozilla/Netscape were
putting too much pressure by being free.

VIP A: Damn, we're not making as much money because FireFox/Mozilla/Netscape
is free!
VIP B: I know, let's make our release our products for free!
VIP A: Genius!

I guess this is why I never got a management degree.

- Oliver

 

[Tim Tyler]

VIP A: Damn, we're not making as much money because FireFox/Mozilla/Netscape
is free!
VIP B: I know, let's make our release our products for free!
VIP A: Genius!

I guess this is why I never got a management degree.

The browser wars were never about revenue.

They were always about mindshare, power, and about who is in control of
the planet's gateway to the internet.

 

[Oliver Wong]

The browser wars were never about revenue.

They were always about mindshare, power, and about who is in control of
the planet's gateway to the internet.

Mindshare: This is only advantageous in a business context if, for
example, after trying out and liking Microsoft Internet Explorer, I decided
to buy other Microsoft products. AFAIK, the company that produces Opera
offers no other products (though they offer technical support for Opera as
service).

Power, control: I'm not sure how a browser can give a business power or
control over the Internet (or even just the web subset of it). There are
some very good open source web browsers out there which can serve as
"reference implementations". Any deviation from the behaviour of these
references that can be deemed detrimental to the user (e.g. censorship of
certain pages) would likely only cause a scandal.

- Oliver

 

[Roedy Green]

VIP A: Damn, we're not making as much money because FireFox/Mozilla/Netscape
is free!
VIP B: I know, let's make our release our products for free!
VIP A: Genius!

I guess this is why I never got a management degree.

It is amazing how there can be so much free stuff. Google grew huge
without any visible means of support.

You wonder how Sun can possibly support the philanthropy of Java.

Free stuff forces the for pay stuff to be great or else die
altogether.

I see a sort of split that mirrors the wealth split in society with
the high end stuff getting ever more expensive and the low end stuff
becoming cheaper and cheaper.

 

[Oliver Wong]

It is amazing how there can be so much free stuff. Google grew huge
without any visible means of support.

You wonder how Sun can possibly support the philanthropy of Java.

Free stuff forces the for pay stuff to be great or else die
altogether.

I see a sort of split that mirrors the wealth split in society with
the high end stuff getting ever more expensive and the low end stuff
becoming cheaper and cheaper.

Getting off topic here, but as a social experiment back in highschool, I
went around offering a $5 bill to my classmates who were not close
acquaintances of mine.

Nobody would take it. They had all assumed there must be some sort of
trap or trick involved.

These days, I don't pretend to try to understand why things are given
away for free; I just gratefully accept them. [*]

- Oliver

[*] Of course, I always make sure to read the fine print, if applicable.

 

[Roedy Green]

VIP A: Damn, we're not making as much money because FireFox/Mozilla/Netscape
is free!
VIP B: I know, let's make our release our products for free!
VIP A: Genius!

I think it works like this:

1. making it free increases desktop penetration.

2. Ad revenue from google searches increases making up for the lost
browser sales.

3. Opera gets more name recognition which will help it sell the
cellphone version.

 

[Oliver Wong]

I think it works like this:

2. Ad revenue from google searches increases making up for the lost
browser sales.

Not sure I understand this point: Wouldn't the Opera company have to PAY
to get their ads to show up on Google? And I don't think Google pays the
Opera company just because more people are searching for the keywords "Opera
web browser".

- Oliver

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Karl_=D8ie?=]

AFAIK, the company that produces Opera offers no other products

Opera Software has a lot of adaptations of their browser that they want
to earn money on, they has sized it down to a lot of different handhelds
and i had a demo of opera on my sony-ericcson p800 and that worked like
a sharm. In this field there are no firefox, mozilla, explorer, safari,
konqueror in sight with leads to a lot of attention in the handheld
market, and that gives opera power.

Power, control: I'm not sure how a browser can give a business power or
control over the Internet (or even just the web subset of it).

Im not sure either but i think that opera is sure by giving the browser
away they can retain mindshare and concentrate on the hanheld market

Karl

 

[Roedy Green]

Not sure I understand this point: Wouldn't the Opera company have to PAY
to get their ads to show up on Google? And I don't think Google pays the
Opera company just because more people are searching for the keywords "Opera
web browser".

Google wants hits. Opera is in a great position to give them hits by
setting up features in the browser to make Google the easiest search
engine to use. Google gets ad revenue for those hits, so presumably
Google would be willing to pay Opera for directing that traffic to
them.

On my site, searches to google don't generate revenue, but ads posted
on at the foot of each page (with my permission) by google do.

 

[E11]

Back to the topic, how's it compared to firefox?



Regards,
Edwin

 

[Roedy Green]

Back to the topic, how's it compared to firefox?

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/opera.html

Opera is my favourite browser. The main reason I like it is that I
click start, and instantly it is up and has a page displayed. All the
other browsers take forever by comparison to load.

It is highly configurable. I can get every panel and button just the
way I want it. And the ini files are easy to manipulate with at text
editor.

I has a feature to fill in forms. This is not such a novelty, but it
originally was.

It is clever about downloads. It starts right away, even before you
have got the name of the save file typed, so often the download is
ready by the time you have selected it.

I can label files with 4NT describe during download. Other browsers
don't make them visible until the download is over.

Like firefox it has fun skins.

I keep testing my stuff in a number of browsers:
Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, and IE, but the one I keep falling
back on is Opera. I use IE for banking because the website is set up
only to work with that one browser. Other than that, I use Opera for
everything else.

All those browsers use the Sun Java and all automatically switch to
the most recently installed Java without fuss.

 

[Stefan Ram]

Opera is my favourite browser. The main reason I like it is that I
click start, and instantly it is up and has a page displayed. All the
other browsers take forever by comparison to load.

What really annoyed me the last time I tried "Opera":

- I start "Opera". (It was configured to start with no
page opened.)

- I wanted to open a web page, so I activated "File"/"Open ...".

- An "Open"-dialogue appeared.

- I entered a URI like "http://www.google.com/"

- It said "invalid filename".

I believe a web browser should accept a URI when the only
"open" operation it offers in its menus is invoked.

So how does one open a URI?

It does not seem to be contained in a menu.

One has to know the "secret": One has to press the key [F2].

 

[Roedy Green]

So how does one open a URI?

You must have turned off the address bar. That is the easiest place to
enter one.

 

[Dag Sunde]

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/opera.html

Opera is my favourite browser. The main reason I like it is that I
click start, and instantly it is up and has a page displayed. All the
other browsers take forever by comparison to load.

Hmmm...

I must be doing something wrong here. I have caching turned off in
all my browsers (IE6, NN7.2, FF1.02 and Opera 5.5). All browsers
are set up to use Google as the default start-page.

IE takes about 0.5 sec to open and show the page.
FF takes about 3 sec., and Opera 5-6 seconds.
Netscape use 8 to 10 seconds.

This on a 1.3GHz AMD with 512Mb Ram, running XP...

You have any clue what I'm doing wrong?

When developing Wep applications I always use FF, and then
test in the other 3 browsers afterwards. and when it comes
to rendering, Opera is what gives me most trouble (with css)
I'm not saying Opera is wrong, here... Its just that it often
behaves slightly different than the others...

 

[Roedy Green]

Opera 5.5).

I don't know. I would try uninstalling and installing the latest 8.5
You have machine similar to mine, and Opera loads in under 2 seconds
on mine.

I got quite a boost in speed by tweaking my RWIN to 255552,

You can do that with TweakDUN. See
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/tweakdun.html

Have you done a defrag recently? do you have it on a very slow drive?

 

[dnasmars]

I've tried opera 5 sec on http://maps.google.com
and it had strange behavoir so I uninstalled it
and upgraded firefox

 

[Chris Uppal]

I must be doing something wrong here. I have caching turned off in
all my browsers (IE6, NN7.2, FF1.02 and Opera 5.5). All browsers
are set up to use Google as the default start-page.

IE takes about 0.5 sec to open and show the page.
FF takes about 3 sec., and Opera 5-6 seconds.
Netscape use 8 to 10 seconds.

Probably just a consequence of how much code needs to be loaded from either the
file system or from pagefile as the application starts. Most of IE is
probably in memory anyway since it's used in lots of things. FF is smaller
than Netscape so it should load faster -- and if you use it as your primary
browser then there's a fair chance that its code is in memory, or at least
still present in the pagefile, when you start it up, even if no other FF
instance was running at that time. I'd guess the difference between Opera and
Netscape is a mixture of Opera being smaller (I presume it is) and perhaps also
having had more effort put into optimising its startup sequence (which might
have been more important to Opera -- wishing to retain a reputation for
producing a small, fast, browser, than for Netscape whose product is not
intended to seem "small").

FF and Netscape both have the option to keep the main executable always active,
allowing fast startup. I don't know if Opera has a similar option. IE hardly
needs it -- the dammed lump's code is pervasive anyway...

-- chris

 

[Stefan Ram]

You must have turned off the address bar. That is the easiest
place to enter one.

I am not aware of the keys that I would press to place the
cursor in the address bar (using a pointing device would slow
me down). Anyway - It could not get any easier to get there
than by pressing just a single key. Entering a single key to
open a URI is already possible now ([F2]), so I do not see how
the visibility of the address bar would help me.

Moreover: I have started Opera now with no initial page, so
the main window is empty. And both "Address bar" and
"Navigation bar" are grayed out in this state. Now, I am not
able to turne on the address bar, even if this would help me
to enter an address without a pointing device in this state.

 

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

- I wanted to open a web page, so I activated "File"/"Open ...".

But web pages are not files, even though Windows tries to wash out the
distinction by merging Explorer and Internet Explorer...

So how does one open a URI?

By typing into an address bar, as you have done in every GUI browser
since ViolaWWW for X11.