Opera Adopts Browser Rapid Release Cycles

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belardo

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Really people.... Opera 11 does kick butt. IE9, Chrome and Firefox 4 are coping the features of Opera 9 and up.

Tab-stacking is VERY VERY useful. Tab-browser history is Such a life-saver for me... it allows me to work in ways that IE, FF and chome don't.

When I power up my desktop or notebook, open Opera... all of my TABS I had open when I shut down, are there when I come back! Chome - nope. FF - nope.

Open 10 tabs, close out your browser... what happens? Opera can crash (like any browser) and when it comes back up, all MY tabs are there. Also, the browse history is still valid after restarting Opera. You can go back various pages... like nothing happened.

The TEXT search feature of Opera is the BEST (but I have it customized like Opera 9 - its ALWAYS on at the bottom). ZOOM feature still better than IE8+

Speed dial is great... Which Safari Kind of copied - but does it automatically from your last pages. Chrome just shows little icons of your last few visited sites.

Opera deserves more than 2% of the market share because it really is a great product. Its customizable beyond anything else out there. Its interface is still better than IE9 (which is vastly improved over IE8 - just gotta fix the TABs onto their own bar... idiot MS)

So folks... try Opera for a week or two. What would it hurt? Its free only a 10mb download.
 

molo9000

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I've been using Opera as my browser on my Windows machines since Version 8 and I've never looked back.
Opera is always a few features ahead of the competition.

The current version is rather unstable on my machine though....
I blame Adobe Flash ;)
 

Thunderfox

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FF can remember your tabs by default, or ask you every time you close it if you want it to. It also remembers your last session if it crashes. I never cared about things like speeddial because I have bookmarks for the things I visit regularly, and for everything else I tend to leave the page open in a tab until I don't need it any more. What is superior about Opera's text search? FF's is at the bottom as well.

Opera doesn't have much market share because there is no one big promoting it. Every other browser is owned by some big company that everyone has heard of, and those people are constantly promoting their products. Opera is just Opera, so it's got no advertising machine behind it.

Also you still hear the occasional report of a site not working right or looking right with Opera, and while Opera people might like to claim that that is the fault of the people who made the site for not strictly adhering to standards, the other browsers have to work around such things, so Opera should too. If they refuse to acknowledge that not everybody does things precisely by the book (or agrees with them about how to interpret the book) then they are just shooting themselves in the foot.
 

belardo

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[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]FF can remember your tabs by default, or ask you every time you close it if you want it to. It also remembers your last session if it crashes.[/citation]
Yeah, its easy to click that off. But yeah, as long as the user make that choice - otherwise it'll wipe out the tabs, which is what most users do by clicking "just quit". The Crash part is not really a feature, just something I was stating.

Other cool OPERA TAB features not found on some other browsers:
- Tab views (see thumbnails in all main tabs) - kind of ugly, somewhat useful.
- Thumbnail view (hover you mouse over the tab), very much like Windows7 Tasks buttons.
- Tab Stacking. Group tabs together in an easy to mange single tab. It will open up with thumbnails like Windows7 task bar to choose the tab to use). For example, my car developed a problem and I have 4 browsers tabs with parts & help issues - but they are grouped under a single tab. I do work on two different websites, so I now group 3-4 tabs into one now. This is freeing up my browser window in many ways - its great.

Chrome has gone through "10" versions, yet you can't tell by functionality the different... other than added standards for HTML5, etc.

[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]I never cared about things like speeddial because I have bookmarks for the things I visit regularly, and for everything else I tend to leave the page open in a tab until I don't need it any more.[/citation]
Bookmarks are a text base menu listing of sites. We may have dozens of not hundreds of favorites/bookmarks. Speed Dial is a visual aide for the top sites you may want to view. When you open a new TAB, its there. I don't use IMDB, newegg and a few other sites everyday... but I can open a tab, click a single button and I'm there. You can choose 6~24 buttons. Its handy - better than having even MORE tabs open... :( Of course it can set to a single home page.

[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]What is superior about Opera's text search? FF's is at the bottom as well.[/citation]

When you use it... then you'll know what makes it far superior to anything else. The bottom location is NOT "a feature". I had to add it to the bottom because I use it everyday. Since Opera 10, they removed it for a cleaner look. Otherwise, like FF or Chrome, you CTRL-F.
But Chrome has recently changed their text search to work very much like Opera... 8~9.

I'd give text search scores to the browsers as:
Opera 11 = A
Safari 5 = A+ (it pops a bit more, recently works like Opera)
Chrome 11 = B (recently works like Opera)
IE 8 = B (recently works like Opera - since IE8)
FF 3.x = D

Point is, Operas text search style has been around longer than the existances of the other browsers.

[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]Opera is just Opera, so it's got no advertising machine behind it. Also you still hear the occasional report of a site not working right or looking right with Opera[/citation]
You are right about that. They don't have MS, Apple, Google or GNU/Netscape/AOL to pay for and support those browsers. Opera screwed up big-time by wanting to CHARGE for their browser. Very difficult to SELL a program when IE & Netscape were free.
Then Opera 5~8.5, they made it free - but with AD-BANNERS... which made the brower ugly and people would constantly hack out the advertising. Since about Opera 8.5 - it has been a free browser.
About the time of 8.5, FF had hit 2.0 and IE7 was released. I was an IE user since 3.0. I went with FF 2.0 and it didn't do many things right (the way I need them to - and they still don't) I used FF 2.x on and off for 2 weeks but kept going back to IE6.
Then I saw TomsHardware announce that Opera 8.5 was free. And with that, I was about to switch OFF of IE as my primary browser since day one. Just changed to a custom skin that looked more Windows-MCE like. :)
Opera 10, they finally fixed 95% of their printer issues (still weaker than IE) - but the UI was amazing. I even joined the beta program and with thousands of others - we helped made Opera what it is today. (There were weekly beta releases for us).

Yes, there ARE standards. And as a web developer, IE always broke things. IE6 not compatible with IE7, IE8 etc. Stuff that works for Opera, FF, Chrome - breaks under IE8.
When I develop for webwork, Chrome and Opera are my benchmark... As long as IE doesn't completely screw something up, I let its errors be. *I DON'T* design for IE. I make stuff that works on desktop, iPads/tablets and iPhones/Androids. And yes, IE is the dog.
Ask any web developer... we HATE IE. The only reason I have FF, Safari and use IE is to check for problems.

IE 9, the latest from MS - still doesn't include a spell checker... how stupid is that?

For almost ALL websites, Opera has NO PROBLEMS. There are about 2-5 sites I use that don't or refuse to work with Opera. Some developer tools are not certified - so I use Chrome. Others are because the developer purposely look up the brower type and refuse to load onto Opera - which is BS when its a city public site. :(
((Just in, just checked my city site, Opera 11 works in all sections now - not perfectly as the errors on on the site)) These problem sites tend to be MS (of course) and those using ASPX (MS webservers) Opera has the option to "fake" being IE or FF - which is now more buried as in the old days, many Opera users pretended to be IE.

Tomshardware have run all these browsers through various tests, and Opera is constly at the top for compatiblity. Chrome is top. FF is a bit lower, IE is always at the bottom.
My experince with IE9 is very limted... I already like it over IE8, but I'll be sticking with Opera. IE is still bad about tab-browsing, with pop-ups and addition windows opening up a whole new task bar item - which is WRONG. FF, Opera and others know how to keep the tabs where they belong.
By all means, I want to see IE total market share get down below 30%. This would increase compatiblity between all browsers.

Other than constantly improving on their brower (there are still areas of improvement) - Not sure how Opera can get the word out. Amazon.com installs it on Kindles or Facebook requires it?
MS has Operating Systems. Apple has Macs and iOS devices. Google has a search engine and Android devices. FF has GNU / Linux.

I and others can only recommend people to try and use Opera - there are tens of millions of us out there. Its free to try, so whats it going to hurt?
Ah, FF 4.0 is finally public... guess I'll give it a spin.... I notice from the screen shots... it looks like.... more like OPERA... or actually like IE9. IE9 looks stupid with the big round Back button that is cut-off (Vista).

I'm willing to try new software, never know if ya find something better. I use notepad++ which is 1000x the text editor that Windows notepad is (it has tabs and tons of tools - 100% free).
 

belardo

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[citation][nom]choirbass[/nom]maybe opera will provide an update beyond version 5 finally lol.. might be worth using again[/citation]

??? Opera is version 11.10, it has gone through more changes in the past 2 years than the 10 versions of google's Chrome in the past 2 years.

Opera.com - Not hard to try.

Hey, I'm downloading FF4.0 now. And will update to IE9 in a day or so.
 

Tamz_msc

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Opera has very interesting features by default, but you can add all of them, and even more with the addons FF has.
 

phatbuddha79

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it's a huge shame Opera doesn't have higher market share than that. It is fast, almost as robust as FF, and also opens up way faster than FF. Chrome is good for light browsing(average user) and IE can kiss my a$$. don't get me wrong, my favorite browser is still FF(due to add-ons and customization level) but if only it opened up faster and has built-in session manager like Opera does it'd be even better. I thought FF4 was going to open up faster but I haven't noticed any difference.
 

elfsun

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I love this competition between browsers, it has made them all so good .-----Agree with you, firefox, IE, chrome, opera, Avant browser all make some big changes in 2011.
 
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Opera is simply fantastic, I use it across every PC and laptop in the family, Opera Link is awesome, keeping every browser across every PC synced with history and bookmarks, the mail client built in is very very good, and has replaced outlook on a daily basis and having the e-mails on any machine really helps!

Opera Unite is absolutely awesome, and I cannot say how much I love Media Server, any place any time, I can stream music from my NAS drive across my rescued atom powered netbook running as a media server on any PC or Laptop anywhere I have an Internet connection, with the 160GB music I own, who needs spotify!

Speed dial is the best home page of all the browsers, simple, and now coming soon having my apps on there will be even better, Opera Turbo is awesome when i am out and about on my Laptop using a 3G wireless dongle, helping keep costs down to a minimum as its a PAYG dongle and its faster over prro connections as compression happens on OPERAS servers!

The Tab Recycle bin is brilliant, stackable tabs just works and the minimum interface lets me enjoy my 24" screen to browse.

The Built in Torrent client lets me pull new Linux Distros with ease from my browser, and the Zoom settings are the best out of every browser out there! Opera handles crashes far far better than every other browser and crashes are rare as it is!

Session management is a godsend when creating Quotes for new builds for customers as each search session gets saved under the customers name for easy retrieval when they give the go-ahead!

Private browsing is present allowing me to get presents and the like for my Wife and family without that appearing in the history on every machine!

My opera browser looks like no other browser due to the awesome skin I have.

The only downside so far is a few Websites that do not work in Opera, but these are mostly Goverment Sites that only work in IE, so to do my PAYE Tax I use IE when the time comes around!

Every single customer I go to I show them Opera, and the vast majority now use it as their main browser!
 

belardo

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Oh yeah... I forgot all about the tab recycle bin.

A very handy feature, I use it almost every day. Closing out a tab by accident or realizing there is something I wanted to look at again.

I've upgraded to FireFox 4.0 now. I must say, it looks pretty sharp. But of course - Opera spent a great deal of time designing Opera 10~11 into the sharp interface it is today. And FireFox copied the layout and functionality. IE9 seemed to have copied FF4....

Might as well use the browser THAT makes innovation, not copies it, eh?
 

LauRoman

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I don't really know if this is a rapid release cycle or they just release final betas and RCs as final now, because even outside nightly builds opera did (does) release versions rather frequent.
 

Silmarunya

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Opera 11.50 offer more than speed dial extensions - from my experience, several web site compability issues are fixed (including my inability to comment here on Tom's), loading times for graphics-heavy websites has decreased even further and minor tweaks were made to standards compliance.

Even without hardware rendering, Opera 11.50 is as fast as Chrome in my experience. Even better, it does so using even less memory and while looking a lot better.

Opera is also more than a browser - it's a suite. It has built in torrent support, a fantastic webmail client and built-in ad blocking.

If you're a web dev, make sure you check out Dragonfly - it beats Webkit inspector and even good old Firebug hands down.

The list of reasons to go Opera is nigh infinite!
 

enforcer22

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[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom] Also you still hear the occasional report of a site not working right or looking right with Opera, and while Opera people might like to claim that that is the fault of the people who made the site for not strictly adhering to standards, the other browsers have to work around such things, so Opera should too. If they refuse to acknowledge that not everybody does things precisely by the book (or agrees with them about how to interpret the book) then they are just shooting themselves in the foot.[/citation]

Funny thats what all the FF fanboys always say when pages dont work right.

I have found personally that FF chrome safari all show pages incorrectly vary often. In IE and Opera i don't get that issue. Honestly i don't care about fast release cycles all it is most of the time is changing to the next digit and a bunch of useless bloat ware that gets pushed into the browsers. Thats one reason i liked opera it didn't add a bunch of useless junk like ff does. and had a super small bar on top with just an address bar.

I read all these posts about what browser can do what. I need my browser to do one thing. Browse the web with one option and address bar. Anything more is just junk.
 

eddieroolz

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So basically Google starts this trend, Mozilla hops in and then even Opera does.

Guess Microsoft is the only one sticking to true versioning schemes.
 
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Meh, marketshare is no measure of product quality. The sooner people that think it does wake up the better.

Marketshare is a measure of how much money and marketing you can burn.
 

belardo

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[citation][nom]bv90andy[/nom]I can't use Opera because it doesn't support yahoo mail beta, (which is faster, and the original will soon be completely removed.[/citation]

What a load of crap... Opera 10 even works with Yahoo Beta as well as 11.x.

 
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