Feanor

Well, sorry but I don't like it, too dark and the 3D shaped grey bars don't look well when put side by side, like when you have your "personal bar" enabled. The tab bar is too high.

Original post on Opera Desktop Team blog:
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/06/05/looking-sharp

Thanks to BleedingHeart I've learnend a "strange" new thing, when you set "display:none" as image CSS property Opera doens't load the image from the server. That makes the "CSS content blocking" more effective than I thought before.

On a side note I am too lazy to test what happens when you change the display property after the page has loaded...

There have been some discussions on the Web about this:
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2007/12/13/

I've seen a lot of bad comments so far like my friend Simone (.Net developer mostly) on his blog here:
http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2007/12/17/Sick-of-Opera.aspx
Or Asa (from Mozilla corp.) here:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/12/opera_calls_for.html

I've got mixed ideas. First of all this is a never ending issue about Microsoft being so dominant on the software market that they can make the rules and there isn't any real "competitor", other software makers can either play by Microsoft rules or live in the little thiny spaces Microsoft hasn't colonized yet. Once upon a time there was Netscape and Java then Microsoft finally decided Internet and Web Applications/Services could be real business so they first integrated Internet Explorer in the operating system to crush Netscape then developed the .Net technology to crush Java. There have been some years when all the developers thought there was no point in considering anything else but Microsoft as standard, till from the ashes of Netscape resurrected Phoenix now called Firefox, backed by a big player like Google. People at Google so far tried their best to not confront Microsoft directly, yet Microsoft launched MSN with search engine and the "Live" services that mimic Google main business. Everybody knows about the EU ordering Microsoft to separate their Media Player from the O.S. but that came when the war about multimedia/video players was already almost over. Who thinks Real Player can be a competitor now? Adobe with Flash and related technologies on the RIA applications are "doubled" by SilverLight. I don't know if Adobe sees Microsoft as a competitor or what, given they have exaclty the same business model based on license fees. Opera's action to me seems just another round. Since I don't make a living on Microsoft products or related business, I welcome what ever initiative that potentially can make things better for the whole IT and ultimately for the users. The only flaw I can see here is that nothing could stop Microsoft so far either make them change their course of actions, so I guess the whole thing is a little pointless. Opera has got less than 1% of the browsers "market", it is extremely improbable they can get much more than some sort of agreement by sueing Microsoft. When AOL acquired Netscape they sued MS, then agreed for some million dollars and quit Netscape. If we consider the million developers who work on Microsoft technologies, they see Opera mostly like a pain in the ass, so no support can come from that direction. The Open Source world is too busy in their own internal civil wars and watching their bellybuttons to make any difference.

Time will tell. In my opinion it isn't time any more for David against Goliath, so I am not positive. Mostly because Opera doens't have any support out of its own small community of fans. Besides, I guess even the Web in itself is changing and so is the "browser" concept.

I joined the braves that are testing the alpha version of the next Opera 9.5. So far nothing exploded. The installation is safe since the alpha installs in a separate directory and creates its own profile, there is no danger to mess with the 9.2x version. First impression is the browser is really fast, much faster than Firefox.

Edit: My other blog on "Blogger" finally looks fine with Opera. The glitches with fonts (see the post archive) seem to be corrected.

Edit2: It looks like the alpha has got some memory leak problem. On my old PC (Win2K SP4 PIII 500 256M RAM) it takes much more memory thant the 9.23. I got it from the continous swapping on the hard hisk. (reported on the beta test forum)

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Mi sono unito ai coraggiosi che stanno testando la versione alpha del prossimo Opera 9.5. Per adesso non è esploso niente. L'installazione è sicura dato che la versione alpha si installa in una directory separata e crea il suo profilo a parte, non c'è pericolo di danneggiare la versione 9.2x. La prima impressione è che il browser e veramente veloce, molto più veloce di Firefox.

Edit: Il mio altro blog su "Blogger" finalmente si vede bene con Opera. I problemi con i font (vedi l'archivio dei post) sembrano essere stati corretti.

Edit2: Sembra che la versione alpha abbia qualche problema di consumo della memoria. Sul mio vecchio PC (Win2K SP4 PIII 500 256M RAM) prende molta più memoria della 9.23. Me ne sono accorto dallo swap continuo sul disco.