Do you like Opera?

[baseballtwin86]

Not bad. Here is a quick overview of what I saw.

Great page loads, a lot of nice information that I like alot such as documents images etc.

Would have been nice to be able to customize the toolbar. Be able to delete the News, Messaging, and E-mail directories.

I love having the windows pop up in the browser. There is nothing worse than having my start bar covered with 10 IE windows, 5 GIMP windows, WinAmp, etc. Can't figure out which window is which. Great job there .

I love the pop-up blocking enabled, however some java popups don't work. I use a WebFTP at work to upload stuff to my web pages, and it wouldn't pop open once I enabled no popups. Nice customization of that would be nice. Like enabling certain URL's to popup.

Like everyone else, a better CSS handling is crucial to this browser. The only reason why I probably won't be using this all the time. The place where I am typing this right now in the post reply section is white instead of gray.

This is also true for all input text thigs.

The links are messed up. The underline is further down in relation to the text, and on the CFC forum index, the underlines interfere with the forum descriptions.

Just typical CSS issues. Various other things were messed up. This included the collapse and expand buttons at GIMPland (they didn't work and didn't look right either).

I was very impressed with the stability though. It runs extremely fast, and I can notice it very well on my T1 at work. The features are very good with the browser, but it just needs to improve its CSS handling. Other than that, and the ad grr!, not bad at all. The features really do show that MS needs to get it in gear, and reallly, this browser would be far superior to IE, if Microsoft didn't have their grubby little hands over every feature of the web. In closing, I would urge everyone to try it out, as I did like it a lot. It will stay on my computer, and I will probably use it often. The features are really awesome, and it is fast. I was really surprised by the quality of it.

 

[starlifter]

The underline is further down in relation to the text, and on the CFC forum index, the underlines interfere with the forum descriptions.

Mine do not look like that. Mine look alomst identical to IE. No overlap. It must be a font, or size, etc. issue. There are lots of CSS options you can choose in Opera, too. Even your personal choices, which can override the CSS of the websites. It is in Opera's Preferences, Fonts, Page Style. I have not fiddled with my settings too much, though.

I love the pop-up blocking enabled, however some java popups don't work. I use a WebFTP at work to upload stuff to my web pages, and it wouldn't pop open once I enabled no popups. Nice customization of that would be nice. Like enabling certain URL's to popup.

Right, but you understand that a popup is a popup... it is not ad-blocking software, and Opera does not maintain a database to block certain popup sources. If you block popups, then it affects all. Unless they use java to make a new window, for instance.

You need ot use software like AtGuard, or such, to go after ads. Opera makes it easier than anyone else to control what sites do on your machine, but is not an ad-blocker.

Would have been nice to be able to customize the toolbar. Be able to delete the News, Messaging, and E-mail directories.

You can. I did. I got rid of all that stuff you listed, and addd super search & find in page. Plus some other stuff. I only have exactly what I want, and nothing else. You just need to change the settings (use the dropdown menus from "View").

 

[Smash]

day 2 of test period and I'm still not sure.The browser itself is pretty darn good.Its the internet that is screwed

I'm getting some pretty inconsistant load times.Forums-Main took almost 1 minute 20 but this forum took less than 10 seconds.Civ2 general was just about 40 seconds and civ2 strategy was just under 15 seconds

Some sites look more "normal" at 90% zoom while others are better at 100%

All in all it is good.Tons of features.Way more than IE or NS.And I'm still finding new ones.Techie computer geeks would love this browser.You can control SO much.You don't have to,but you can.Customization up the ying yang in this.

I havn't seen any difference identifying as different browsers.Either the site likes it,or it doesn't.Most of what I visit is Opera freindly.

I quite like the hotlist thingy.Very handy.

I was concerned about spyware by a couple of lines in the agreement but it doesn't work like that.Ad-aware showed all clear after installation.Assuming ad aware is reliable

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

I've used Opera for 3 years now along with MSIE. It's an excellent browser especially when you have the paid for version <-- No ads!

I'd give it a thumbs up but I still use MSIE more.

 

[starlifter]

by Smash:

I was concerned about spyware by a couple of lines in the agreement but it doesn't work like that.Ad-aware showed all clear after installation.Assuming ad aware is reliable

I also examine the Registry by hand after installing programs. I have a "system" to look at all the places a program can activate itself (e.g, what is listed in the HOWTO thread on Registry info).

I might know what the inconsistancies you are referring to, Smash. I have 3 peices of software that monitor all TCP/IP traffic, and more if I'm curious about something going on. The CFC site often delays in responding, and I watch this in real time. If you were not using at least something like even System Monitor, you might attribute those delays to the Broswer (even IE or NS). When the data flows, then what the Browser does with it is what's important, as is how the Browser handles lots of data, lots of windows, window changes, etc. These are some of what Opera is doing so fast. On a fast machine, the differences will be less obvious.... but if you are doing multi-tasking, then there will be fewer CPU cycles left over, and Opera's efficiency can really help other programs, too. Anyone that uses and INTERNAL modem is also greatly helped by Opera, because of all the cycles that modern internal modems push off on the CPU to save the $6 to $9 in manufacture costs that it would take to add the onboard modem chip that does the job in external and older internal modems.

 

[starlifter]

New Opera Topic:

I have not tried the built-in E-mail or News reader. If anyone does, be sure and post what you find.

I use Eudora for my external E-mail (and have for 10 years). Opera does a great job of handing off the e-mail to it. It can also use any other e-mail, like MS's.

 

[joespaniel]

I just got the free version, and it is REALLY fast!

Blows the doors off of IE. :scout:

In fact, I just realized I was wasting my cable connection speed with such a lousy browser (IE).

Die Microsoft!

 

[joespaniel]

@ Starlifter -
Yeah, I will play with the e-mail tomorow. I have Outlook Express to read my RR account right now.

Hopefully the Opera e-mail can link to it, and I can ditch OE.

 

[Smash]

I have the Civ2 Fire.wav as Opera's start up sound

 

[starlifter]

OK, for those that were wondering about compliance and standards. I normally just review white papers, like the W3C standards. Over 15 year ago, when I first began keeping an eye on MS and how/why it was delivering such terrible and bug-ridden DOS (anyone remember the DOS 4.xx debacles?), I started looking at standards. Today, those are easy to locate and read... and they are at the core of successful computer growth and improvement for end users. The stagnation and repression, primarily by MS, but also at times by companies like Symantec and Netscape, has hurt the PC world, and set it back by at least 5, and more like 7 to 8 years. This is why software is still so primitive on the PC.

Now that's outta the way, I finally decided to look to Opera's website to see what they have to say about standards, or if they deny the whole thing and shift the blame like MS typically does. It turns out Opera is very up front about exactly and precicesly they do and do not support. I will paste some of the most relevant sections. It will make more sense to HTML programmers, and likely be boring for plain end users. But here are the answers, in closed form (meaning no equivocation, or parsing of words, or pulling a Clinton):


Opera HTML support

Opera version 6 supports HTML 4.01 with these exceptions:

1.1 Intrinsic event attributes

These attributes are not supported:

Any event attribute for option
ondblclick

1.2 Form elements

These form elements are not supported: visual feedback for button, label, legend. These form attributes are not supported: accept, accept-charset, for.

1.3 Table elements

Opera supports HTML 3.2 style table elements fully (ie. table, caption, tr, th and td). Opera handles tfoot properly (it is always displayed at the bottom at a table), otherwise Opera doesn't support the new HTML 4.01 elements (col, colgroup, thead, tfoot, tbody) and attributes (abbr, axis, char, charoff, frame, headers, rules and scope). Opera doesn't assign styles to the grouping elements (tbody, tfoot and thead).

1.4 Other issues

The a element attributes coords, charset, and hreflang and shape.
The frameborder attribute is not supported.
The bidirectional override element bdo and the dir attribute. The lang attribute is not supported (in for instance q).
The attributes accesskey, tabindex are not supported.
Opera supports object, but not the attributes align, classid, codebase, codetype and standby. For plug-ins embed is used.
Opera doesn't support the applet attributes align and archive
Opera has no particular support for link apart from rel="stylesheet", nor for the meta attribute scheme or the head attribute profile.
The deprecated hr noshade attribute has no effect, neither does the deprecated attribute compact. CSS should be used for this.
Opera follows the HTML 4.01 specification for script and noscript. If any script element doesn't execute, all subsequent noscript element are displayed.

CSS support

Opera 6 supports all of CSS1.

Opera 6 supports all of CSS2 with the exception of:

Opera 6 is a visual browser and does not support Aural CSS
these properties: clip, cursor, direction, font-size-adjust, font-stretch, marker-offset, marks, text-shadow, unicode-bidi, and all outline properties
Linux only: the system values on the font property as well as system colors
the values added to list-style-type in CSS2
these property/value combination: 'display: marker', 'text-align: <string>', 'visibility: collapse', 'content: <url>', 'overflow: scroll', 'overflow:auto'
named pages (as described in section 13.3.2)
the '@font-face' construct

All CSS2 selectors are supported with the exception of:

:first-child, :focus, :lang
combinations with pseudo-classes before other selectors

2.1 Some differences of style from Internet Explorer and Netscape

When using the Opera browser, you may notice that some pages are displayed differently than in other browsers. In most cases, the differences are caused by errors in the pages that are being displayed. Few Web pages are authored according to W3C's specifications which Opera supports. Opera tries, to some extent, to replicate the errors in browsers from Netscape and Microsoft, but we prioritize implementing the specificaions. For a list of rendering differeces between Opera and Netscape/ Microsoft, please read below.

The color of an HR in Opera is a background property, and Opera accepts all background styles as well as generated content. In NN4 and IE it is a foreground property (color). NN6 does the right thing too (there is a difference between Opera and NN6 if generated content, :before and :after, is used).
Link underlines can be different in Opera and NN6 than older browsers (the underline one color, the text another). This is a consequence on CSS2 rules on text-decoration.
IE5/Windows is mistaken in their handling of height and width properties, in effect making Opera (and NN6) boxes appear larger. This is fixed in IE6 in compliant mode.
IE5 also has an issue with positioning, as a positioned element should be positioned to the nearest containing positioned element, not the containing element.
Positioning of background images is relative to the element box, not the window. This means that in Opera, a image placed with body{background-position: center center} will be roughly in the middle of a page, not in the middle of the window.
You would normally want to apply padding to the body element, and not margin (which is the margin between the body and the head/html elements).
Preformatting of blocklevel content. The allowed content in PRE is inline, not block. This means that content will not be preformatted when a block level element (like a headline) appears, <pre>Pre-formatted<h3>Headline</h3>Not pre- formatted</pre>. In NN and IE <h3>Headline</h3>Not pre-formatted</pre> will be preformatted too.
Note that while it is possible to style form controls in Opera, you can't make them look like anything other than form controls, eg by setting background color. The CSS specification doesn't require form control widgets to be styleable, and that can be in breach with the operating system UI guidelines. We still plan to support it one day.
While Netscape 6 is a great leap forward in standards compliance relative to the Netscape 4 series, Mozilla is better. For more information on Mozilla, see the Mozilla site.
The CSS improvements in IE6 are already implemented in Opera. This means that IE6's display of web pages in standards- compliant mode is much closer to Opera's web page display. For further information, see the Microsoft documentation on IE6.

 

[starlifter]

XML support

Opera 6 can parse and display XML documents. Documents with Content-type "text/xml" will be treated as an XML document. If a Content-type is not available, the ".xml" file extension will also make the document be treated as XML.

3.1 XML and CSS

In order to display an XML document, a CSS style sheet should be present. Authors can attach style sheets to their XML documents through a processing instruction. Here is a simple example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="shakespeare.css" type="text/css"?>


If no style sheet is present and the page is not namespaced to HTML, Opera 6 will use the initial values on all CSS properties to display the document. All elements will be inline, and all text will be rendered in the same font.

3.2 XSL and XSLT

Opera does not support XSL formatting objects, and neither does it natively support XSLT transformations. XML documents transformed server side will be parsed and displayed by Opera just like any other XML document. For an opinion on client side XSL-FO, see Formatting Objects Considered Harmful.

3.3 XML namespaces

Opera 6 supports XML namespaces. The most common use of namespaces is for XHTML processing. From Opera 4, the temporary HTML namespace (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40) is recognized, from Opera 5.1 the XHTML namespace (http:// www.w3.org/1999/xhtml) is recognized too.

3.4 XHTML support

There are two "modes" of XHTML support, one where the document has the text/html content type and one where it is text/ xml, application/xml or application/xhtml+xml. In the first case the document is handles as any other HTML document (giving de facto support for XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic and XHTML 1.1). In the second case XHTML will be treated as XML with predetermined functionality for HTML elements and attributes. In "XML mode" Opera has the following additional exceptions:

base
script and event handlers
style (use the xml-stylesheet processing instruction instead)

JavaScript environment: DOM and DHTML

The following features are missing from JavaScript 1.3 support:

the event variable passed to event handlers does not match the javascript standard
cannot set the SRC attribute of iframes

We are currently working on DOM, based on the DOM 2.0 standard. We have also used some of Microsoft's extensions to DOM, notably the method for accessing CSS properties through a style attribute of the HTML elements. Modifying the document structure is not yet possible (ie. you cannot add or remove HTML elements). There are no plans to support Netscape's dynamic layers. Presently, we support getting and setting the following CSS attributes for absolutely positioned HTML elements:

visibility
pixelLeft, pixelTop
pixelWidth, pixelHeight
zIndex
color, background (only for setting of colors)

We support the following methods in the document object:

getElementsByTagName()
getElementById()
getElementsByName()

We support the following methods in HTML Elements:

getElementsByTagName()
contains()
parentNode

6.1 Support for JavaScript and JScript objects

Described in a separate document. Opera does not support W3C DOM Core apart from the methods mentioned above. Documentation on W3C DOM/HTML support is forthcoming.

Networking protocols support

Opera 6 has full support for HTTP 1.0 and HTTP 1.1. Here are some highlights:

Persistent connections (multiple request/response through one connection),
Cachecontrol for no-cache (always check for fresh document) and no-store (don't save to disk),
Basic Authentication (passwords). Supports Digest Authentication, excepting integrity check on body. No current plans to support NTLM,
Resume download, provided the server supports it,
SSL/TLS support (also through proxy/firewall),
Proxy for HTTP, FTP, Gopher and WAIS.

Encryption: 128 bit encryption (RSA key exchange only) for the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) versions 2 and 3, and the successor Transport Layer Security (TLS) v1.0. This is supported for HTTP (web), NNTP (news), POP and SMTP (e-mail). Support for generating private keys and submitting certificate requests.

News: simple online newsreader with support for encrypted newsservers and newsserver with passwords. Can decode single article attachments, MIME or uuencoded.

FTP including resume download is supported.

It is possible to download to file for both FTP and HTTP.

These are the most relevant things that might pertain to pages like some have mentioned. For anyone interested, if you revela teh HTML Page Source Code (in any browser), and look at the part that is displayed funny, you can check to see if Opera supports that particular function, or if it is a non-standard or mis-implemented function. Opera has a place on it's site for bug reports, and one for suggeste changes.

The complete source document is here:
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

...which is exactly why I use editPlus/IE instead.

 

[starlifter]

A new version of Opera came out today, 6.05. Just download it ( www.opera.com ) , and install over your current version of 6.xx opera, and everything will be updated.

I also downloaded the newest Java from Sun (Sun makes Java). If you download the newest Java, it is version 1.4.01. You should uninstall prior Java first (it is in Control Panel), then install the new Java. The Java install will find and recognize Netscape and IE. I thinke new Java is much better, esp. the Java Console and options, like setting the Java Cache location and size (I always put my caches on a special drive, where they don't fragment the OS's drives).

To update (or install for the 1st time) Opera and Java 1.4, here are the steps:

1. Download Opera. You don't need the Java version of Opera, if you are going to download the 1.4 version from Sun (See step 2). That's because JRE 1.3 is included with Opera's Java version, and 1.3 is OK, but 1.4 just came out and I recommend you download it from Sun. It will help all your browsers and anything on yur system that uses Java, including Netscape and MS IE.

2. Download Java 1.4, All Languages, JRE ( here ). Choose only the "all languages" version: it's the 2nd row, first column (the JRE column, not SDK). Check the filesize as you download; it will be about 12 MB in size (English-only JRE is about 9MB).

Note: JRE=Java Runtime Environment, which all modern 6.xx and higer browsers use; SDK= Developer's Kit.... you don't want THAT!

3. Install Opera. If you DL'd the java version of Opera 6.05, then just do not run the Java install when asked at the end of the Opera install (it would just install JRE 1.3, which you should then uninstall anyway).

4. Unistall existing Java, assuming you have it on your machine (99% of you do, already). (Control Panel --> Add/remove Programs, then select "Java 2 Runtime ..." or something very similar).

5. Run the Java All Languages JRE 1.4 Install you downloaded from Sun.

6. You can check Java by looking at the icon in Control Panel (double click to see/change settings like cache location). You can check it from within Opera by using Window ---> Special ---> Java Console. You can also use File --> Preferences --> MultiMedia ---> Find Plugins, if yu want to see more info (and set Java settings from Multimedia).



SKINS/BUTTONS

I looked at the Skins thing which Smash was talking about earlier, and decided to try some. The best 15 look like this:

I took them, and made a separate directory to keep all of them separate in the \buttons directory of Opera. With Preferences, you can switch fast!

If you want all 15 fast, you need only download the file below, and unzip it (with path) into the Opera\Buttons directory. Most would install to their own directory anyway (if you Download them individually), but some authors simply dumped all files into the \Buttons directory, and made a mess, .

The file with the 15 new skins/buttons is 1.4 MB:

15 Opera Skins

 

[starlifter]

by Fluffy:

...which is exactly why I use editPlus/IE instead.

I don't understand ???

I assume your context is that because a browser does not implement some aspects of the White paper you don't use it? MS IE does not. Further, MS IE incorrectly and deliberately does not follow the M3C standards. No browser engine (the thing that displays and renders pages) implements all white paper standards... the important thing, to ensure industry and cross platform standards, is to implement what you do use correctly. This is what MS fails to do, in an effort to try and get developers to used the nonstandard stuff. Netscape used to add it's own extensions, back in the early and mid 1990's, when the standards committees were behind the times. Since about 1999, though, the industry has been doing fine... except mainly the MS stuff.


That said, people should keep MS IE installed anyways, because MS has sabotaged windows help system if you ininstall it. MS will not tell you how to get rid of IE, but some of us know how and actually do it on some OS installs. It is not easy, in the newer OSs, though. And many MS apps will not run if you give IE the axe, and even some 3rd party apps will not run. This is the element of insurance MS has done with their illegal OS monopoly, to ensure people are chained to tow the MS line.


As far as Browsers go, I've found 3 sites out of over 400 so far that have display problems (cramming lots of table or pull down choices into a small or overlapping area) using Opera. Netscape as difficulty with some sites, too, but some pages it is able to mimick Explorer and display similarly. I've been running MS IE side by side at times, but won't risk it for too long, because MS IE has crashed the machine twice today, and of course that takes time because it usually damages the File structure on the hard drives when it crashed.

So far, Opera has not crashed at all. Yea!

 

[baseballtwin86]

How about the sweet mouse gestures. They are great as well. I learned about them by accident. Anyone with an Opera Browser just hold down the right mouse button and move it down. Up pops a new window. Fantastic .

 

[Padma]

I downloaded Opera 6.04 yesterday based on the recommendations here. My opinion:

Anything that pushes MS a little further off my desktop has to be good. But Opera isn't just good! It's so much better than IE!

And now I see 6.05 is out. (Boy, I'm glad I have a cable modem. )

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

sl:

believe me, if I can do something anti-microsoft then I do. but using opera just goes past it. The reason I use IE/editPlus is not only because opera doesn't work properly for me but becuase the combination is so good.

Opera has trouble displaying tables/layout...there are always troubles with this, no matter how you switch the stylesheet settings (which is a pretty cool option btw ). Now the one thing that it seriously screws up on is phpBB. and the one thing that I spend most of my free time doing is phpBB...it's truly an eyesore. Next, it doesn't support chunks of css...css is my absolute most favourite thing ever, even better than php. I regularly use many of the things that it doesn't support.

And yes, I know how MSIE doesn't support things properly...but if I use IE, then my page will display how people expect it to display. the fact still remains that 90%+ (just a guess) use IE, and that the majority of pages are tested/designed for IE and will thus work better on it.

For a little user who doesn't care about fancy CSS, then yes, opera is the way to go...but for people like me, when I design stuff, if I test it in opera and it displays fine in that, who knows what it will look like in IE??

I go with the majority, it's much simpler

But that's not only why I use editplus and IE. It's because this combination is soooo perfect for me. I always found IE horendously (sp??) slow, but editplus is very fast. As I said before, I spend most of my time doing something with phpBB. I also generally have a lot (a lot being about 20+ ) of windows open usually. editplus stores all the browser windows inside itself like opera can.

the other thing (related to phpBB) that I spend a lot of time doing is coding. That's what editplus is designed for. I can be surfing the web, coding something and viewing it locally, writing my homework and viewing a template in just one program. It works almost perfectly for me, it just suits me so well having the things that I spend my time on all neatly placed in one program instead of scattered across my screen in a dozen windows. It's like trillian in a way - instead of having multiple programs to do something, it has them all lumped into one for me.

Most people wouldn't like it, but it suits me perfectly.

 

[Mikoyan]

I too have been using Opera 6.04 since yesterday, and i can't bear to look at IE anymore.
Opera is so much faster, and it doesn't screw up my music half as much while loading.

 

[starlifter]

As FBL has said, there are sites that Opera will not display too well, and ditto for Netscape. For those, just use IE (or NS). Unlike MS, Opera is far more apt to listen and act on user input. Anyone should use the opportunity to tell Opera what you want, as they are always working on it.

Opera is a much more "secure" browser than MS IE, for technical reasons. That is, Opera is not as exploitable as IE. For instance, the 6.05 upgrade is mainly in response two the new standards form 7 August, 2002 (last week).

Opera finally crashed today (a first). However, the crash was caused by an ill-behaved MS program, LOL! Opera simply terminated after it was violated, and when I restarted Opera, all the pages I was working on (over a dozen) were returned!!! Wow! Sooo cool. And fast.

 

[Smash]

I'm getting less and less enthusiastic about Opera.I havn't written it off yet though.Too many great features to do that.

The reason:incredibly inconsistant page loads.The babe thread #3 in OT took 2 minutes 40 before I finally said screw it.It had alot to go yet.This thread took about 20 seconds.Not bad but not great.Red Hot Pawn loves Opera and I zoom around that site.Fast load times with Opera are 10-15 seconds for me.That is not outperforming IE or Mozilla at all.

Yet another security issue has put IE out of bounds permanently.But how do you get along in the MS dominated area?...you don't.You either knuckle under or suffer.
It sucks