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Wandering electrons... but not too far

Like free electrons, but with less direction

Ars Technica: "Opera 9.5 alpha a worthy contender"

Thanks to Vetle R for pointing out this article first (I think). I'll link to it as well here so it gets bumped a wee-little-bit higher in the search engines:

First impressions: Opera 9.5 alpha a worthy contender
By Jeremy Reimer | Published: September 05, 2007 at Ars Technica.

9.5 "Kestrel" alpha released

Hoo boy hoo boy!!!

The Desktop Opera Team released the alpha version of Opera 9.5 (aka "Kestrel") today.


You can download it here for a test drive. It will install itself beside your stable opera version by default, so no worries about losing your current stable version. On this same page you have a brief overview of what's new.

Here's the announcement from the desktop team, from which you can look at the platform-specific change logs.

Remember it's currently just an alpha; you can expect to run into bugs, which can be reported here. However you will want to "check the Known Issues list in the changelogs and discuss them in the forums or newsgroups first." (desktop team)

Smashing Magazine: Copyright explained

Copyright law provokes a fair amount of confusion, but having a good grip on how these laws work has become essential for all of us out there who blog or create websites.

Smashing Magazine Has published an excellent overview of copyright laws entitled Copyright Explained: I May Copy It, Right?

The article includes links to its sources, so at any time you can go in to the matter more deeply.

A good, timely, and very useful read.

Another good reason to use Opera

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Critical Firefox security flaw discovered

Oh uh, sorry, that was mean.

My.opera: Addictive?

Since I've become a member at my.opera, I find that I'm spending Waaaaay to much time here. For example, in theory, I have work to do, but instead I'm reading posts in the forum, looking through blogs-

And look! Now I'm writing a blog entry that serves no purpose whatsoever!

I think I'm going to need to join MOUA*










*My.Opera Users Anonymous

Safari for windows? No says Extremetech.com; use Opera instead

As was the case at wired news and Ars Technica, Extremetech.com has few nice things to say about the Safari Beta for Windows recently released by Apple. They've decided moreso to give you Ten Reasons Not to Use Safari on Windows.

Their recommendation:

If you really want to be different and superior in terms of browser speed and look, we recommend Opera, which has proven security, plenty of sidebar options, and lickety-split page rendering.



Thanks are in order to iliad for posting this article in the forums today (here and here).

I will add a disclaimer here: All this might give the impression that I have a chip on my shoulder against Safari. This isn't the case. In fact, I thing that the arrival of Safari in the Windows world might actually be a good thing. However, I find it strange that Apple released this not-at-all ready for primetime "beta"... They've GOT to know that the competition on the other side of the fence is pretty darn rude with IE7, Firefox and Opera (especially:D) all proposing top-class browsers these days.

The theory is out there that they did this just to make the Safari browser a bit more familiar to people for the release of the Iphone. Maybe. But really, I think they've done themselves more harm than good here...

EDIT: The day after writing this I found still another article at Eweek.com. The title says it all: "Safari on Windows Falls Short of Top Browsers".

And when it comes to browsers, Eweek knows what they're talking about.

Opera tips and tricks: keyboard shortcuts; The Essentials...

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The invention of the mouse revolutionized how computers are used by removing the need to memorize hundreds of keyboard commands. The idea was all the more brilliant in that it mimicked pushing buttons, a movement that is familiar to everyone.

However, keyboard commands never really went away. The reason for this is because once you've memorized a keyboard command, it is often actually faster to use than the mouse. this is because there is less movement through space if your hands are already on the keyboard. Using the mouse implies moving your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, moving the mouse to place the arrow on what you want to click, clicking, and bringing you hand back to the keyboard. For any one occasion this doesn't seem like that much time and effort wasted and the "no brainer" quality is advantagous. But if you spend the day on a computer, as many of us do, those tiny bits of time and effort, one after another, again and again, start adding up.

Here's a few of my favorite keyboard shortcuts to make your day more efficient...

Read more...

Opera tips and tricks: Selectively remove tooltips from Opera

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Tooltips are the little yellow boxes that appear when you hover on certain elements. You might have noticed that Opera seems to have more of them than other browsers. It's not your imagination.

Read more...

Review: Paul Anka, "Rock Swings"

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As this post had little to do with the Opera browser or technology, I've moved it my new "Wandering electrons... but not to far" blog, which is more oriented toward general interest subjects.

This specific blog post is here.

:cheers:

Safari fails to impress at Ars Technica

As was the case for wired.com in yesterday's post, Ars Technica has little good to say about the Safari for Windows beta.

The article ends with, "If the folks at Apple think that providing Windows users with a taste of Mac OS X through Safari is going to entice them to buy a Mac, it's going to take a better effort than the Safari 3 beta. Even if the final release is more polished and completely bug-free, it still won't be as powerful or feature-loaded as Opera or Firefox."