Opera Software expressed significant doubts it would continue producing a browser for the Macintosh operating system, illustrating a growing problem for third-party Mac developers as Apple Computer steps up its own application development efforts. Also, Opera Software on Tuesday will release the final version of its newly rewritten browser for the Windows operating system, adding features without increasing the browser’s size. Update: Opera 7.00 for Windows is available. Update2: Official announcement and feature-list. Update3: I just added an OSNews sidebar panel for Opera.Scroll down any OSNews page, and click to the Opera button with your Opera browser. The OSNews sidebar panel will appear in your “Hotlist” bar (as long you have that bar visible that is).
The panel page is set to automatically reload itself every 1200 seconds. However, you might have to correct the Cache settings on your Opera preferences, to tell it to not use disk cache and to check “always” for Documents, Images and Other (the default cache scheme on Opera is just not very good).
The same goes for users who use Mozilla or Netscape 6+ (just click to the Mozilla icon and the same OSNews panel will appear to your Mozilla sidebar).
Please note that the same panel page (mozilla.php) serves both browsers pretty well. The page’s got the name mozilla.php because we got first developed it for Mozilla/Netscape a few months ago (we added Opera support just today).
IMHO is the fastest most HTML complaint browser around. I can only hope that they change the UI from the beta version (it was fare too bright)
Although I’m using IE now, I can’t wait to try out the latest release! Man, I hope all my reported bugs are settled..
I would HATE to loose Opera on Mac, especially since they use the same codebase which makes it very nice for crossplatform testing (using one browser on one platform). It’s also one of the most featurerich browsers on the Mac. Now its possible that both Chimera and Opera leaves the platform – NOT good.. Not good at all!
Oh, so going up against IE for Win is ok, but going against Safari is not? Does that mean that they think IE is crap but Safari is a real threat. =) They should stop being whiners and produce a browser of the same quality as Opera 6 for windows for MacOS X. Then they might convince people to switch. Having tried both the Win and MacOS X versions I can say that the Win version is great while the MacOS X version is worse than any of the top 3 options for MacOS.
After all my whining about interface design my main hope is that Opera 7.0 has sorted out all the interface glitches that got in the way. On another note I’d also like all those web designers out there to start paying attention to STANDARDS and let me use my browser of choice on EVERY site I visit. (That includes you to Microsoft).
ok guys, I just installed it and I am definately not happy with its usage. It is buggy.
I only use it for 10 mins now, and I already found 1 clear bug, and a few stupid design decisions.
So, first of all, I told the status bar to be “top” and then I dragged it next to my “small icon” toolbar. Instead of just moving the status bar, it copied it. And I was there with two status bars. Don’t tell me that this is a feature, I don’t eat that.
Then, just try this: Right click on the icons toolbar and tell it to not use large icons. You will see that opera won’t only change the icons to small, but it will use a _completely_ different set of icons! The icons are not the same at all than before! I don’t know if they have designers at Opera Software, but this is blatantly stupid. It is not consistent.
Then of course, I find that the menus are WAY too bloated. Just WAY too bloated with really bad UI issues, like having checkboxes on the menus! This is a browser we are talking about, a product that everyone should use and not get confused.
Then, when I run over fast its menus, the menus are slow responding. Obviously, Opera has re-written the UI for the browser, all with custom widget code. While it is faster than Mozilla’s XUL on my machine, it is still slower than the native Win32 code.
On the upside, pages DO seem to load faster. OSNews loads and renders really fast, much faster than in previous versions.
That’s after 10 minutes of using this version. Already found problems… I am sure it should have taken more than that, more than 10 minutes, in order to call a product “wow, great”. After you only use it for so little time and you already spot problems, I think there’s something wrong…
Well, they seem to have improved rendering quite a bit, since the second beta. At least my pages now work without fault. 🙂
Going up against IE isn’t, wasn’t and have never been Opera’s objective. Opera in its truest sense is a niche player. However, the Mac market is way smaller than the Windows and Linux market, and with Safari in the picture, it isn’t all rosy for Opera on the Mac. Especially since Opera haven’t establish a stable market on the Mac platform.
They are not whining.
on my mac at least, O6 was very buggy, crashed often, and wasnt as responsive as I wouldve liked. Ill give it one more try, but I was really looking forward to an O7 from Opera for mac.
Opera did not outshine it’s competition on Mac before safari came out, and for the most part Safari blows all otther browsers (save chimera) away in every way. I really wish opera was as good on mac as it is on windows =/
Hmm… Eugenia, as much as I agree with you most of the time, I don’t consider the menus bloated or their UI design bad.
I’ve come to like the checkboxes in the menus quite much – esp. in the quick preferences menu. Something I think is really useful.
And please tell me: Where are the menus bloated? “Edit”, “Navigation”, “Bookmarks”, “Mail”, “Window” and “Help” are pretty standard. Leaving “View” and “File”.
As for “View” it gives you all the needed options to configure the way your interface looks in a fast and coherent way – IMHO. The “File” menu is standard plus a quick option to delete your private data – a great thing – to quickly change your preferences – another great thing – and to import and export stuff. No bloat here.
I agree with you on the icon set thing. Though I always use the small icon set, I can see your problem with it not looking like a small version of the large icons.
Opera is whining!…
They should stop being whiners and produce a browser of the same quality as Opera 6 for windows for MacOS X. Then they might convince people to switch.
Totally agree.
Also, Chimera have not decided to cancel developement and will be going on. Here is Mike Pinkertons response to that..
http://mozpink.blogspot.com/
Both the context menu, and the File and View are bloated.
And then, they have choices with radio buttons or checkboxes inside the menus, which is a no-no on UI design. Also, they have a lot of unessary menus, some could easily be replaced by other ways.
BTW, if you want to change the current skin on opera, I would recommend these two:
http://my.opera.com/customize/skin2.cgi?id=1829
http://my.opera.com/customize/skin2.cgi?id=1822
Oh, and why dragging and dropping from or to IE doesn’t work?? That’s a must have, especially for people who are in a transition. Even Mozilla can do that!!
Well, it’s not an official release yet. At least there is nothing about it on opera.com until now.
Perhaps we shall wait for _official_ release, and then start claiming?
If you don’t like it, don’t use it. I think – as with beauty – usability lies in the eye of the beholder.
And from my point of view Opera found the best possible way to achieve what I think is a great *useful* user interface.
We probably can be glad to have such a lot of different browsers nowadays that are capable to display all the web’s pages in about the same way. So everyone has a choice.
Hey, I know a lot of people (incl. myself) who thought that NCSA Mosaic was a neat idea. Granted, that was in 1994…
I too have never really liked Opera very much on Macs. In fact, I even like iCab better than Opera. Despite that, the Opera people are right in a sense at least in saying it is up to Apple. I hope they keep Safari light and fast. Fixt he bugs, continue to make it better, etc.,but don’t make it a full featured browser. This is one area where Apple could hold back some on its own application and, by doing so, benefit from it. If there is no good Mac browser except Safari, then Apple loses too, isolates itself. I really hope the Chimera people hang in there. Having both a great Gecko based browser and khtml browser on the Mac means all Mac users win.
Well, I don’t expect Opera to change their entire interface if it has been mostly the same in the 6.x versions, the 7.0beta1 and 7.0beta2.
Though you’re right, there’s no indication that the build Eugenia pointed us to is indeed the final release version.
>If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
I don’t think that works in my case. Running this site, means that I will be using a lot of things, and offer an opinion either as a review, or as simply in the commenting section. This is why we have a commenting section anyway. So we can discuss about it.
Every OS or GUI needs a well integrated browser. Apple is doing the right thing here. They do need a browser for their platform. Obviously it is bad for Opera. Opera’s only chance for desktop market is actually doing something way superior to other solutions. Also their technology for other small devices will also be good for them in the future.
>Having tried both the Win and MacOS X versions I can say that
>the Win version is great while the MacOS X version is worse
>than any of the top 3 options for MacOS.
I have to agree, Opera used to be my favourite browser for Windows, before I left
, but I really dislike Opera for MacOS. I don’t see why they should leave the mac because of Safari, Safari is great, but right now lacks many options and features and it will probably take some time until it will become acceptable (feature-wise), at least for me and if Opera could deliver me a good browser I would use it…
As for Chimera leaving the mac, the lead developper, Mike Pinkerton, confirmed that chimera will stay:
http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/pinkerton/
Well, let’s see. The news.com article says that the 7.0.0 release will be today, I am pointing you to a version that it HAS been uploaded today, and you tell me that the final version might be something so different that you hope for? Please. Changes in the software don’t happen that easily. Especially when you are on code freeze and release is imminent.
Opera Software just waits for the press release to get through NewsWire, this is why they haven’t updated their web site yet. The Opera 7.0.0 FINAL is already out in the servers, I found out about it, and I linked it FOR YOU. Stop complaining.
Ok, Eugenia, let’s discuss it:
How would you implement “Quick Preferences” in a way that is as fast and obvious as the one Opera chose?
>How would you implement “Quick Preferences” in a way that is as fast and obvious as the one Opera chose?
You do not implement “Quick Preferences” at all. There is already a preference panel for these choices, and by duplicating them, you are doing just that: duplication and bloatware. Nothing more.
Preferences is not something that someone changes everyday. This is why QUICK preferences are _not_ needed.
The problem with opera is that they switched their corporate strategy in the last 2 years to concentrate on internet appliances and cell phones. Opera for Windows brings in not much money for them — it’s basically a PR thing for them, not a money maker.
If Apple has sufficiently fixed khtml (and that the changes are merged back to the main tree in a timely manner) —- then you could see the same IA/cellphone companies may just write a wrapper for khtml, just like what Apple did. And it makes sense for Symbian and QNX — becasue they don’t have to pay Opera and Trolltech (since you don’t need QT) a single dime.
Hmm… I tend to change whether I want to have popups or as what browser my browser identifies itself on a pretty regular basis.
Depends on what you want, I guesss.
Before I switched over to linux, I used opera 6.11 on windows and it was fast and stable. However, opera 6.1 on linux is very unstable as well as having problems with java and the flash plugin. The workaround for java is to globally preload the java library that is causing segfaults, but that is just a waste of resources for when I’m not using java. Opera didn’t seem to like libflashplayer.so either even though both konq and mozilla could use it. Anyway, maybe I’ll give 6.11 a try for linux but in the mean time Mozilla 1.2.1 has been very stable for me.
There was only one bug which really drove me insane in Opera 7b2… right click + scroll wheel was broken. This has been fixed, hooray!
There were several other lingering bugs I ran into… I’ll see if they’ve been fixed in time, I suppose.
So I just responded to an e-mail (webmail-style using Opera), and all the recipient got was their own e-mail back… I’m not sure how that could possibly work, but it’s my first impression of the new Opera. Yay!
Oh, and it just closed out of nowhere after I clicked on a link…
Had I _ever_ complain? I use Opera since version 5.x and it’s pretty good for me. Not ideal, ofcourse, but good enough in terms of speed and usability. Let’s stop here.
BTW, has opera built-in instant messaging client gone forever?
and BTW, Ctrl+Tab shows windows list again, as it was in O6.
Cheers.
This is why QUICK preferences are _not_ needed.
Well, maybe _you_ don’t need them, but _I_ do. 😉
monty
Were have my adverts gone. Nemo isn’t that bad a skin. Much easier to install than Opera6.
It’s nice to see they’ve put in a “requested pop-up only” option. Using quick preferences to turn them on or off used to be a real pain, once I got into the nasty habit of leaving scripting turned on.
Yeah for Opera. I’m an Opera fanboy, and its nice to see that they’ve fixed the biggest gripe I personally had – cycle windows in created order actually works this time around. Time to update my registration.
One of the bugs I’ve been fighting with for quite some time is still present…
If you close the last window then do a new window gesture on the empty Opera window, and do it over the locations of one of the links in the last window which you closed, it will open the link you did the new window gesture over in the new window…
Ugh…
The Opera UI is far from perfect, but there are some very useful features that I find hard to live without when using other browsers. Being able to save multiple window sessions saves me a lot of time managing windows and there are a lot of nice touches that aren’t in other browsers.
Personally I think Opera should have had another beta of O7 to find any remaining bugs. Opera 6 had a bug ridden first release too, Opera Software should have learned their lesson. Hopefully remaining problems will be fixed quickly as it’s easily the best browser IMO, it’s real shame if another Mac OS version isn’t released.
Who would bother trying to fight Apple in any of the tools they produce? It’s not so much that they’re so great they can’t be out done, far from it, but it’s more than:
a) The apple software usually comes bundled with the OS
b) Apple users are often so fanatical that they’ll use whatever Apple produce, simply because it’s from Apple.
There’s no way any sane company would want to compete in that kind of atmosphere, at least when stuff like IE and WMP was introduced a large enough body of users looked for alternatives.
I didn’t think I’d ever see quick preferences in Opera listed as a problem! To me it’s one of the best Opera features, I change some of those prefs several times a day, not having to go to the main preferences saves a lot of time.
Criticising quick prefs for duplicating options in the preferences panel, seems the same as criticising toolbars for having options also available in a menu. It’s not like it’s really in the way if you don’t want to use it.
I totally agree – the quick prefs are a timesaver, but what would be REALLY neat is the possibility of customizing the quick preferences yourself!
Sergio, I am happy to agree with you here. No way that MS would allow windows to ship without their own browser (were they happy with Netscape, no) so why would Apple ?
Its a shame if some players decide not to go on, but I don’t think Apple can be criticised for producing their own browser. These days I agree with MS, a browser is part of any serious operating system.
I really don’t like Opera’s new UI, but I love the new render engine. It’s a lot fast. They fixed a lot of stuff from beta 2 to final, but I really think it should be beta 3.. Well, it’s stable to me so far after I have been using for like thirty minutes without have the problem. The most thing that I am looking forward is… version 7 of Linux and FreeBSD! Hopeful, they won’t rewrite on the UI part for *nix version.
The idea that the quick preference menu is not useful can only be the opinion of someone who doesn’t use Opera as their main browser. If like me you use it as such, you’ll find it is a very, very useful part of the UI.
Now, I don’t like final version’s render for message boards such as vBulletin, IBForums and etc. It doesn’t render the size of column and row in the table correct.
Buuug…. I can’t resize the main Opera window _at all_ after I resized manually the hotlist on the left to become a bit less wide.
“Buuug…. I can’t resize the main Opera window _at all_ after I resized manually the hotlist on the left to become a bit less wide.”
Nope, can’t reproduce that one either.
Don’t like the way Opera 7.0 sometimes makes pages stick while an image is downloading into a table. I’d like to read the content not wait for some overblown piece of eyecandy to download.
It just wanted to let you know that people stopped selling browsers last year and you should really give up the ghost now. Seriously who gives a shit that opera won’t be on the mac anymore, I know I for one don’t.
Opera 7.0 doesn’t always render the highlight in the drop down menus. Damn difficult to know what you’re pointing when this happens.
That bug has been present since the first beta. 🙁
As for your problem what you’re pointing at: Probably the location the tip of your mouse pointer currently covers. ;-D
Actually I’m still willing to pay money on products I like/need, if they fulfill whatever purpose I want to use them for in a way that’s better than all the rest does.
And I guess I’m not alone.
is their sucky software compared to Apple’s
…it makes a lot of sense. Macs are stagnated on the 3% of the market share, and with a better browser than the uber-sucking IE for Mac being shipped with the system, theyre better concentrating resources for the PDA/cellphone market.
BTW, Opera 6.x for Linux and FreeBSD simply sux. Crashes randomly, has some funny rendering decisions and doesnt like plugins.
Actually, I change my preferences every other day. Right now, Opera is indentified as Opera. However when I come to a page where Opera is blocked, literary, then there is the Quick Preferences. Sometimes too there are reviews and articles that require pop-ups, but Opera thinks those are ads, again the Quick Preference comes to the rescue. Sometimes when a page heavily uses GIFs and JPGs and I don’t wanna look at then, I can toogle both with, again, Quick Preferences.
It may make you cringe. But remember, Opera is and has not been made for newbies. The very UI is made for power users. I can do much more because of the UI compared to other browsers. Sure, it may be bloated, but Opera users – faithful ones, sure aren’t complaining. I like the menus the way they are now, keep it that way.
However, if Opera focus changes to target more newbies, then why not remove the bloat (but at least leave an option to put it on again :-).
IE’s UI is far more simpler. Would I give up Opera for it if they still keep the simplicity while adding all the features I use? Doubt it.
I couldn’t reproduce that bug…..
Did they implement this? I’ve always loved bookmarks sorted in a “subfolders-first,links-last” way. But O7 betas always sorted alphabetically, mixing subfolders and links…
While I use Opera on Windows all the time, Opera on the Mac doesn’t cut it for me. I really love Opera’s features (I’m addicted to the gestures), but the Mac version just isn’t there. It’s very slow for me compared to the Windows version or Safari.
Yes! Mercifully all the many options for sorting the bookmarks are now back. The abundance of options my provoke accusations of UI bloat, but the power offered by the functionality is wonderfully usefull.
“Why don’t you just use a skin that looks like your desktop?”
Not quoting anyone here, just in general the response one get when I say I want it to look like a normal application.
Operas strongpoint is their really fast rendering, but sadly someone high up in the ranks at Opera thought it’d be cool to turn the interface into a veritable mess of graphics and animations.
This is really crappy and I expect their 6.x line to still be used by a vast amount of users, 6.x UI sucked too but it’s still better then 7.0, which many of us thought would improve the UI, not ruin it.
IE will remain king on my Windows machine.
I used Opera on Mac OS 9 (5.0 days) and was amazed my its speed and the way and it rendered pages.
Then came the Mac OS X version. Opera seems to have lost something. The UI is terrible in 6.0, buggy and the rendering subpar.
Opera releases a version for Windows then takes months to even begin a beta for the Mac. On top of that, there isn’t feature parity between the two. So what Opera is telling us Mac users is this, “You are second class citizens. Here, use this buggy browser which is a version behind the Windows version and doesn’t have the same features. And be happy about it.”
Then they have the guts to say they’re dropping Mac support? If they had released the same versions at the same time as Windows, they’d have more converts on the Mac side. We deserve better.
initial reaction: UUUUGH!
have they decided they want to be mozilla now?
“Why don’t you just use a skin that looks like your desktop?”
Not quoting anyone here, just in general the response one get when I say I want it to look like a normal application.
Operas strongpoint is their really fast rendering, but sadly someone high up in the ranks at Opera thought it’d be cool to turn the interface into a veritable mess of graphics and animations.
Windows look: View -> Skin -> windows
Disable animations: View -> Skin -> turn off “Special effects”
Because it’s very stable (6.03 et 7.0 beta2 and release on winXP) and compatible, very configurable (as in “hide everything but the menu”), much faster than IE. And i just love the mouse gestures.
Windows look: View -> Skin -> windows
Disable animations: View -> Skin -> turn off “Special effects”
Thanks a bundle, I remember searching for an option like this when I tried the betas but couldn’t find it (is it new since then or?)
Either way, this is exactly what I wanted, now all I have to get is some nice glyphs for my toolbar icons but that’s something I easily can live with.
After so many years of either dragging their feet, or just not having the brains to figure out the pressing needs for a Mac browser, or then Mac acceptance for a too-late browser that WOULD HAVE BEEN SO WELCOME, they make this kind of noise? And it still is not completely right?
After how long?
And they call SAFARI a “nice little browser”, too bad. Given the sense of none-urgency and the totally slow, slow, slow bunch of excuses they continued to offer for not getting the Mac to market, then they have no reason to complain. This is Opera’s fault, 100 per cent.
At one time, I was really positive about what they do, and then one excuse and postponement became another, and another, and another.
As someone mentioned, if they think their browser is so good, then they should have the guts to go head on with the top browsers, of which they apparantly ARE NOT one.
Nice try, Opera, just a half-decade or so too late with your whining and your excuses.
I think Safari will work just fine, and I have a hunch IE will continue to serve just as well, and I will bet Mozilla continues on. So, Opera, bye bye, no tears.
Thanks a bundle, I remember searching for an option like this when I tried the betas but couldn’t find it (is it new since then or?)
It was introduced in Opera 7 Beta 2.
Either way, this is exactly what I wanted, now all I have to get is some nice glyphs for my toolbar icons but that’s something I easily can live with.
Just disable that toolbar!
http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.oortwijn/got/opera7.png (43KB)
Opera for OS X is ambitious in some ways, but has one of the clunkiest, oddest UIs I’ve seen in a while. The nice features (searchable bookmarks, for example) are buried under a heap of endless toolbars and weird widgets. Not to mention it’s crashy, has odd rendering problems, and so forth.
The News article quoted here is pretty bizarre, too. Why on earth would Apple replace KHTML with Opera’s engine? Why would Apple care whether Opera exists for the Mac or not? Weeeeird, and very out of touch.
Anyway, I’ve got to assume Opera 7 is better on Windows, for no loss here on the Mac.
“Preferences is not something that someone changes everyday. This is why QUICK preferences are _not_ needed.”
I use Quick Preferences a lot to disable / enable popus (I always disable them unless I really need a popup). BTW you can also press F12 for it. This is why I like the Quick Preferences.
“There is already a preference panel for these choices, and by duplicating them, you are doing just that: duplication and bloatware. Nothing more.”
I don’t see it that way, the preferences panel has a lot of options, the quick preferences makes you access the most used preferences quickly (duh).
After all he install file is only 3,5 MB ‘big’ I can’t see much bloat here.
I’ll be on a certain level if Opera stops working on Mac product, but I have to say that Safari is now my default browser on my G4, having dethroned Opera 6 for OS X. It had some real potential, but it just wasn’t as good as Safari, nor was it even as good as Opera on the PC.
On the PC side of things, Opera is still my browser of choice. Easy to configure, easy to manage, and I *love* the option of minimising popup windows to the toolbar (where I can right click and kill without opening) and not just having to block them outright. (Some of the sites I go to on a regular basis open up links as popup windows.)
If Opera for OS X had had an open popups in the dock or had better bookmark management tools, I still think it would be my default.
Both IE and Gecko provide full BiDi support, the seventh generation of Opera doesn’t.
They have been promising this for years, but their promises aren’t worth the webpage their rendered on :-
For a few hundred million users of Arabic and Hebrew, Opera is a complete waste of time.
Prog.
Mike, i know what you mean about why would anyone make a browser for the Mac with Safari now in play. However, at least from the beta, it does not appear that Safari is, at least right now, intended to be a full featured browser. But, who knows what Apple will do. The thing is though, I am pretty sure OmniWeb will continue and it is making slow but sure progress. It renders pages so beautifully. The one trouble spot is Chimera – I hope those guys don’t give up. It’s a wonderful browser with tremendous potential.
Eugenia – you can’t resize the main wondow? I haven’t had a chance to install Opera 7 on my PC yet – what in the world are they doing??
I purchased Opera 6.0 for the Mac, under a special deal with Opera, that would get me a free upgrade to 7.0 for the mac as well as six month premium email. This was done well before Safari came out BUT it seems Opera has removed the full offer from their web pages. I hope that they are going to keep up with their committment as per my purchase. They do not seem to working on resolving the bugs in 6.0, so this might be a good excuse for them to opt out of releasing 7.0 for mac. I sure hope that if that is what they are planning, then they better be prepared to provide me a Windows license (at no change) for whatever windows version it is at that time. Opera is better than all of them. I wish it to continue for the mac. I am sure, tho, that for some of the other operating systems that they are working, sales MUST be worse than for the MAC but yet I do not see they getting in a huff about that. I say “Opera stop whining and get on with making a better browser for the mac”. Fix the problems with 6.0, release 7.0, and you will see people come back to Opera.
Opera is getting better all the time but I see one bug so far.
When in a text windows to edit text that is already inside and you highlight words and then scroll, the words do not scroll but the first bottom line in the text box does scroll up and then disappears.
Other than that I am really impressed!
Inachu
http://inachu.tripod.com
Opera is my main browser now, it rocks! Especially with the Cocoa theme
I have just downloaded the “final” version of Opera 7 for Windows. It will get more use than beta 2. They fixed a few things. Most annoying for me was losing keyboard control every time I opened a page from the hot list. One could get it back by tapping ALT twice, but what a hassle. That alone makes the downloaded final version worth while.
I often use a slow, Transmeta based, laptop for my browsing. Both Mozilla (along with Phoenix and K-Meleon) and Internet Explorer were slow. Opera launches relatively quickly and renders blisteringly fast. This is the fastest Windows browser out there by a wide margin.
How do i “refresh” the panel???
PS: I’m using opera 6.5 not 7.0.
I guess you just have to click to the osnews button on the sidebar and it *should* refresh it. If not, then their system is retarded. The Mozilla sidebar panel refreshes it every time you click the osnews button on its sidebar.
However, I have code there to already refresh the panel *automatically* every 1200 seconds, so it is not all bad.
I disagree, I use QUICK preferences on a daily basis. Don’t mess with it just because you don’t use it. Somebody else does. That’s what’s so nice about Opera it gives you choices.
“Specifically, Tetzchner said that he had asked Apple whether it would be willing to license Opera either to replace KHTML, or to supplement the current Safari version,…”
I guess that living in Norway has skewed Tetzchner’s estimate of a snowball’s chance in Hell.
Doesn’t work, it opens another window of osnews.com in opera…The sidebar hasn’t been updated in a while (since i added the panel), maybe it’s because it’s opera 6.5
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/qu011612/opera.png
Well, are you sure you have your Opera configured correctly? The default configuration of Opera regarding Cache, is just wrong if you are a power user.
You need to tell it to do server checking “always” on documents, images and other. And uncheck any checkboxes on the “Disk Cache”. After doing that, the osnews panel should be reloading itself every 1200 seconds, automatically. For me, it works, I am able to see the new news items.
Works now, thanks Eugenia
It works great in native Linux and FreeBSD! Thanks Eugenia!! 😀
I really think that Opera missed the chance to be a dominant player in the Mac market. If they approached Apple year ago when there was only bad IE on the market and tell them, we have the engine, make a good browser of it I believe Apple would have taken it. But now, they complain after they saw Safari. They really don’t have good browser for OSX, I tried every single beta and final release and they all sucked badly. If only they have chosen to use Cocoa instead of QT (not quicktime, but Trolltech’s windowing toolkit) maybe browser would be more responsive and better integrated into the OS.
Still, I don’t want to see them go, they have the best browser for Windows and great browser for Linux. I hope they will reconsider and put some pressure on Apple but not by asking them to use their engine but by creating the best browser for OSX.
“I just wanted to let you know that people stopped selling browsers last year and you should really give up the ghost now. Seriously who gives a shit that opera won’t be on the mac anymore, I know I for one don’t. ”
For real. They have absolutely no right to complain. If Opera had managed to write anything better than a stinking POS then Apple wouldn’t have had to show them how to write a real Mac web browser. Now that Apple has schooled the competition, with the exception of Chimera, there’s no room for crap like Opera. It’s pretty sad when a public beta is better than a product that is being sold and is at version 6.0+.
“waaaaahhhhhhh”
> I totally agree – the quick prefs are a timesaver,
> but what would be REALLY neat is the possibility
> of customizing the quick preferences yourself!
That is actually perfectly doable. One of the nicer things about Opera 7 is that you can edit, change and add *any* menu or dialog *anywhere* by editing “menu.ini”, “toolbar.ini” and “dialog.ini”. For example, if you want the “Active bookmark folder” back, then take a look at this:
http://opera.attardi.org/archives/000017.html
You can also change all the keyboard shortcuts by editing “input.ini”, and the search options are in “search.ini”. And with its advanced skinning capabilities, Opera 7 is without a doubt the undisputed king of customisability!
HTH. Just be sure to make a backup of the files before starting to play around…
I’ve gotta disagree with comments saying the Opera UI sucks. It’s more configurable and stable than any other browser I’ve tried for ages…including Mozilla (and derivatives – win and linux), konqueror, IE etc. etc.
It may be on the way out on the Mac but I’m sold on v7 for Windows. Tabbed browsing, popup killer, fast rendering…three great features just for starters. I haven’t hit a bug yet so fingers crossed…
Great job guys!
As for the UI, I think mine works well and looks great
http://home.iprimus.com.au/bres5/files/opera.jpg
Is it my imagination, or does each new version of Opera waste more screen space than the one before it?
Is it my imagination, or does each new version of Opera waste more screen space than the one before it?
————–
Honestly, I don’t know who at Opera makes the decisions about Opera’s default icons & toolbar, but it SUCKS (as usual). Those blue icons and a million additional toolbar items shouldn’t be there to face new users by default. They should be added, by the user themselves, in due course as they get familiar with the application. The default icons are drab, lifeless and dull. The small icons they have are so much better. IE is miles ahead on the toolbar and first-use usability, if nothing else.
I bet virtually everyone starting up Opera has changed the defaults to get rid of the bloat. Not a Good Thing(TM).
> Is it my imagination, or does each new version of
> Opera waste more screen space than the one before it?
It’s your imagination. With my current setup, I actually save screen real-estate in Opera 7:
http://w1.265.telia.com/~u26503001/opera/screenshot/myopera7.png
opera people lack any sense of ergonomics they just have no clue about it. go here to learn how much opera has really improved its UI in 4 years. it took them 4 years which would only take 2 or 3 months