we should support opera

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I don't see the need for the browser to be open source. I love supporting open source projects as much as the next guy, and believe deeply in the philosophy, but as excellent a browser as opera is, I can live with one or two programs not being such. Besides, what would anyone here who is not a specifically a developer want to do with the source code anyway, modify the browser?

You can definitely chalk me up on the list of people who love it, i've been using it for a long time. I never liked Firefox much. One, I loved Netscape and used it religiously back when it was in existence. I always felt that while everyone had some extreme affection for the extensions system, the browser always seemed a little slower and clunky in comparison to Netscape.
I'm not into a bunch of extras, add-ons, etc., just ad-blocking, which Opera's system always seemed to be more efficient for the such anyway.

Overall, it's clearly faster on my system too (launch time to surfing to site A, etc), but that's just my system.

It is, unless i'm mistaken, the only browser who's browsing engine, Presto, is truly 100% W3C compliant too is it not? Also a notable trait :)

--Q
 
oliverh said:
A small hint: NDA
Of course I've never heard of NDAs. :OOO

oliverh said:
so you don't even know whether they're using anything additional
Exactly. So maybe it's all or mostly internally-owned code...

oliverh said:
Why do you think the FOSS community had to rewrite some missing parts of open sourced Java? Or why do you think there are missing parts in OpenSolaris compared to Solaris?
... or Unix System Laboratories (Bell Labs) versus the Regents of the University of California and the copyrighted AT&T code, if you want. And look where we are now.
Plus a browser is not really comparable to 386BSD or Solaris in terms of size and complexity. So the community would write the few missing bits and the sun will keep on shining.

oliverh said:
Sorry I forgot the peanuts
What would a modern browser do without the compression, TLS, font rasterization and spellchecking peanuts. Peanuts, yeah sure!
 
Purple_Q said:
. . . It is, unless i'm mistaken, the only browser who's browsing engine, Presto, is truly 100% W3C compliant too is it not? Also a notable trait :)
--Q
Isn't SeaMonkey also 100% W3C compliant?
 
We definitely should support Opera ...

Its one of the best browsers (Firefox may be only considered because of extensions, without extensions, Opera is the best).

Built in email client is a PROBLEM?

Opera also has built in Torrent client, Opera Unity, Opera Dragonfly and Widgets, but gues what, all of these can be disabled, and the most funny part, even having all these enabled, its a lot faster then Firefox without any extensions ...

Firefox being very actively developed for more then 5 years, with available source still has memory leaks ... this is just non acceptable.

... and the 'QT problem' I personally avoid QT/QT3/QT4/KDE apps at any cost, opera is the only QT based application that I use, and I use statically compiled in QT, for simplicity.

What else ... I can have Opera running for more then two weeks straight with 80+ tabs open with enabled flash and be sure that it does not eat all available memory, be fast and stable at the same time, do the same with Firefox ...

Kudos to Opera team.

PS. I would like to see some extensions interface in Opera thru, Widgets was wrong decision IMHO.
 
Beastie said:
Of course I've never heard of NDAs. :OOO


Exactly. So maybe it's all or mostly internally-owned code...


... or Unix System Laboratories (Bell Labs) versus the Regents of the University of California and the copyrighted AT&T code, if you want. And look where we are now.
Plus a browser is not really comparable to 386BSD or Solaris in terms of size and complexity. So the community would write the few missing bits and the sun will keep on shining.


What would a modern browser do without the compression, TLS, font rasterization and spellchecking peanuts. Peanuts, yeah sure!

Oh c'mon you really don't get it? Why don't you just hire for the FSF or Richard Stallman? The BSD community in common has no problem with commercial software etc. pp. That's real freedom and I like it. They earn money with licenses for their mobile browser and some of their technologies per se. If they open source anything, which is impossible for such a company, then they will earn no money anymore. Maybe Mysql comes to the mind and dual-licensing, but that's a database not a mere browser.

And the so-called peanuts are peanuts because they could be easily rewritten. They can use it, it's free an so it's okay.

Btw. you're right Opera isn't comparable with Sun, because they earn money with service and hardware too.

So stop the crusade, we aren't Linux zealots, aren't we? We like freedom and it's their choice. There are many companies that't don't do open source but they are supporting open source with money, servers, hardware, sponsoring etc. and that's okay too.

P.S.

>and the copyrighted AT&T code, if you want

Different story, some _lines_ of code in BSD and vice versa a plethora of code without proper license from BSD in AT&T UNIX.

The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed.

http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
 
I don't know a thing about Seamonkey. I've never liked the Mozilla projects in the first place, so other than giving Firefox a spin, i've never tried any of the other stuff. My only experience, as mentioned before, was a slow and kind of clunky one in comparison to Opera.

As per seamonkey-project.org, it states that Seamonkey has the same codebase and rendering engine as everything else Mozilla; Gecko.
--Q
 
Seamonkey is okay. It looks very much like Netscape and acts similarly. I rarely use it though, only for the very few websites that fail to work well on Opera (only 1 so far).


darkshadow said:
no for sure im not , I love freebsd becuase it flag for freedom .
This one was for me. And calling someone a ____-zealot is usually used as some sort of "insult" in the computing world. So in order to stop the (flame) war before the first shots are fired, I decided to ignore it as well as his falsification of parts of what I first said.
 
Yeah, some can definitely get touchy about OS name dropping. Still, one statement he makes that I believe in:
"We like freedom and it's their choice. There are many companies that't don't do open source but they are supporting open source with money, servers, hardware, sponsoring etc. and that's okay too."

This is why, depending obviously on who the company is and what they're producing, I have no problems using some closed source softwares.

It's obviously difficult to avoid an outright flamewar when comparing something so broad as web browsers, because everyone has good data and strong bias to back up their favorite software. Still, my original 2 cents stands; I don't care that Opera is closed source, for me, it's a better written, more efficient browser than is "insert browser here". Well, except links, can't really beat that with a stick :)
--Q
 
Well , personnaly i like to use Opera.
I use it since several years now (may be five or six) under WinXP, Linux, FreeBSD.
I only use Firefox for flash plugin because it works better and because of DownloadHelper plugin.
For all other web browsing i prefer Opera.
 
Oxyd said:
Actually, this is what makes me wanna switch to Firefox occasionally -- lots of these cool and super-modern pages, like Facebook, don't work well in Opera. But whenever I start Firefox I go like "Ughhhh" and it's back to Opera for me.

Can't agree more.

I love Opera except for the tab scrolling when you have too many tabs opened. The 'show extender menu' doesn't work as nice as Firefox. But yea, Opera provides tab thumbnail view which Firefox doesn't.

Oh well, I like both.
 
I've been using Opera {again} since start of this thread...

I must admint, that It has Evolved a lot since I last used it. I found that I can use it for almost everything I use Firefox....

Ad blocking is not as good as with adblock+, but It works.... I like, that I can disable, enable cookies/JS/java/plugins very fast... [F12 key]. And easily manage per website preferences....

Also It's very customizable... and customizing is much easier....

I have to admin.... I'm very impressed.
I've tweaked Opera almost similar to my firefox config [except for vimperator addon, but I'll look at modifying key bindings...]

Will be using Opera for while :D

Thanks to darkshadow, for reminding me about Opera
 
killasmurf86 said:
I like, that I can disable, enable cookies/JS/java/plugins very fast... [F12 key].
I usually have custom buttons on status bar which enable/disable menu bar and the same for plugins.

killasmurf86 said:
I've tweaked Opera almost similar to my firefox config [except for vimperator addon, but I'll look at modifying key bindings...]
About config, try Opera 9.2 Compatible setting and enable single key bindings below, I always use it that way and its a lot more keyboard friendly, several things to mention:

[1] / [2] ----------> previous tab / next tab
[z] / [x] ----------> go back / go forward
[/] / [f3] ---------> start text search (vi like) / next result
[CTRL] + [T] -------> new tab
[CTRL] + [W] -------> close tab
[CTRL] + [Z] -------> bring back last closed tab, same like [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [T] in Firefox
[CTRL] + [.] -------> stop
[SHIFT] + [ARROW] --> select next link in that direction (UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT)


Also check this one for more info:
http://opera.com/browser/tutorials/nomouse/
 
At the very top, right under the menu bar (File, Edit, etc.) I have Backward, Forward, New tab, Open, Save, Reload, a Status Field, a button that opens the Transmission Web Interface and a Enable JavaScript checkbox. :)
 
After reading what others are saying and thinking about it, I decided to try Opera. I did try it the first week it came out, but that was some years ago - around the same time as Cello, IIRC. Thanks for the suggestion darkshadow.

Yes, open source is one of the most important aspects, but it isn't the only criterion. The behaviour and ethics of a company counts too.

Anyway, Opera looks good on my new FreeBSD box and after an hour of using it, I can only say that it is a fine browser. The speed is good, things seem pretty standard, and nothing really bothered me.

The only thing is the tabs. Why? It means all tabs are resized if the window is! The idea of all open pages sharing the same window doesn't make sense to me. I've got over 40 pages open in FF right now and they each have their own window which is sized to suit the content. I just move through them like tabs. Alt-tab shows a list and I can pick or cycle. So, can someone enlighten me? Why only tabs?
 
File > New Window (ctrl+n)?
Right click on a URL > Open in New/Background Window?

Cycle with ctrl+tab.

Also check Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Tabs and Additional tab options....
 
hermit said:
well...[font="Comic Sans MS"]OPERA[/font] ROCKS!
ah...and it's better than fireshit...
:e
# cd /usr/ports
# make search key=fireshit
(no output appears)
# cd -

Hmm, there appears to be no such thing as fireshit in ports...

If you like Opera that's fine, so do I. But you'd probably do a much better job advocating Opera on its own merits than you would trashtalking a rival browser that isn't bad either. Just a thought...

Alphons
 
that a little harsh

OJ said:
Anyway, Opera looks good on my new FreeBSD box and after an hour of using it, I can only say that it is a fine browser. The speed is good, things seem pretty standard, and nothing really bothered me.
sory,but I have to say ,what you mean by fine speed and pretty standard , just for general knowledge one of the first browser that obey and implement w3c standard is opera and it pay a lot of market share for that ,case many people think that they are over the standard and "they have the most of os market share or browser share like (microsoft or (put other here))" try to add or tweak the standard or invent new one ,which lead most web site "that want there site be viewable in these platform" to follow these tweaks which make these sites not pretty viewable in opera(since it follow the standard) , and for speed point ,I think opera has Excelent speed so please when you measure something dont less estimate it
 
Unreadable sentence. Apply some punctuation and capitalisation in your posts, please.
 
DutchDaemon said:
Unreadable sentence. Apply some punctuation and capitalisation in your posts, please.
True.

Nevertheless, he raises an interesting point. If you have a very dominant position, you can try to "bend" standards and use your market share to move web designers towards your "standard" rather than the real one.

We've seen this in the past when the Microsoft-Netscape war was at its high (I'm talking about the mid to late '90s when the Internet Explorer was at version 3, 4 or maybe 5 and Netscape was at version 3 or 4). Both browsers suported several unique tags (remember Microsoft's <MARQUEE> monstrosity?) that were not part of any standard and if you as a webmaster wanted to build a site that looked good in both browsers, you had to go through quite a bit of trouble.

And even today, when HTML/CSS is highly standardized, many (less educated?) webdesigners seem to have a "it works with the latest MSIE so it's good" philosophy.

Odd thing is that although Opera is said to be one of the most standard-compliant browsers, several sites don't work (well) with it. I'd like to chalk that one up to poor webdesign (and/or application programming, as the case may be), but that means there are a lot of bad webdesigners out there.

Alphons
 
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