Built in SOCKS proxy support

Built in SOCKS proxy support

please add integrated SOCKS proxy support to Opera like other browsers have, thank you

Please don't double post!
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=139221

AFAIK does OPERA already support it, because it's supporting WAIS, as you can see from
Tools: Preferences > Advanced > Network -> 'Proxy servers'

But M/B I am wrong?
WAIS was often setup on SOCKS for speed reasons, but this must not be so forcedly...

Better look into the OPERA documentation therefore...

[EDIT]
Yes, I am wrong!
OPERA doesn't support SOCKS yet...
see:
http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=194
like IE and Netscape and ...

But OPERA has widgets...

+1

It is a real shame that Opera still doesn't supports the SOCKS protocol.

Originally posted by HaJotKE:

AFAIK does OPERA already support it, because it's supporting WAIS, as you can see from
Tools: Preferences > Advanced > Network -> 'Proxy servers'

But M/B I am wrong?

I'm afraid that you are wrong.

WAIS protocol

Originally posted by Krake:

I'm afraid that you are wrong.

Yes, I know. See my [EDIT] above...
You missed it by a couple of seconds!

But I really can't believe that, SOCKS is so important for speed as many servers provide it and browsers or FTP clients or DL-programs are able to use it.

I am really disappointed, that OPERA devs haven't implemented it long ago...

Now. so many difficulties get an explanation, because SOCKS isn't implemented!
So many problems in protocol handling could be alleviated when using the additional capabilities of SOCKS.

My god, this is incredible!

All those incomprehensible and inexplicable waitings for requests, etc....
compared to the much better IE and Netscape behavior in same situations...

something as important as this deserves more than a double post. more like a quadruple post!

M/B, but we here in the community want to be more effective...

And BTW, SOCKS is not only for proxy support...

Yes, and something so technical hardly anyone's ever heard of it - how can Opera resist?

You haven't ever heard of SOCKS, and there was even one living in the Whitehouse...

All joking aside, it IS important, many servers allow using it, even DNS servers provide it...
and in current version SOCKS5 it's simpler and therefore much faster than the normally used protocols,
it's located between application layer and the transport layer of the OSI layer model and is now
supporting UDP, authentication and even IPv6. It's really an amendment for speeding up things.

Originally posted by Gary Sugar:

Yes, and something so technical hardly anyone's ever heard of it - how can Opera resist?

Millions of people worldwide rely daily on the flexibility of SOCKS since it supports virtually all network protocols.

+1

Heck, even MSN Messenger has had SOCKS support for ages, now I know, why Opera users wonder why Firefox is taking the lead. This and autocomplete as well.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/216266?startidx=50#comment1558041

the developers make it out to be more difficult to implement than it really is. i don't accept that excuse from them at all.

And you know better than the developers because..?

Originally posted by Nilsen:

And you know better than the developers because..?

If he does know better, he would have the ability to code the implementation himself.

Originally posted by Krake:

+1

It is a real shame that Opera still doesn't supports the SOCKS protocol.

I revoke this statement upon reflection.

I always wished Opera could support SOCKS.
Upon reflection I changed my mind. Some of you may ask why?
I thought before that it would make Opera a more usuable browser for many users.
I realise now that there are not many users considering SOCKS support to be important.
Anyway advanced users among those who still do probably did already found some suitable workarounds for their needs. You can still use SOCKS in different ways with Opera according to your needs.
Regarding me (just as an example) I wouldn't benefit from SOCKS support in Opera at all.
Since I'm using Proxomitron (I can't imagine that Opera will ever "open" its browser to a degree that would make the use of Proxomitron superfluous) I couldn't forward SOCKS to a HTTP-proxy like Proxomitron anyway.
I also found more than one workaround to use SOCKS together with Opera & Proxomitron and nothing would change for me even if Opera would support SOCKS.

Originally posted by Nilsen:

And you know better than the developers because..?

because i'm a developer too and i know it's well within the grasp of the people who made this great browser.

from a business perspective their time probably is better spent on projects like 'widgets' and such which have higher consumer demand. i understand this, but i still don't accept the "it's too difficult" excuse.

Krake the point is not whether or not you think not alot of people consider a feature important or not. It really is ridiculous to not have this kind of support given the fact that so many other browsers support it and other things. Users should not be faced with using another program just to handle the kinds of things one can do with socks. Its like saying its ok not to be able to change keyboard shortcuts natively because I will never use it. [This is the argument people use for not having native keyboard configuration interfaces for Firefox.] Trust me being able to change shortcut keys is a godsend if you use a laptop or don't like the defaults.

nsSOCKSIOLayer.cpp

attached is a copy of part of firefox's SOCKS implementation.

this is from 1.5.0.3 source, and can be found under /netwerk/socket/base

it may not be exactly what the devs need, but at the very least it's nice readable code.

You don't really believe someone could think of such a thing as looking into FF-code at OPERA S.A., don't you...?

Originally posted by ophiel:

Originally posted by Nilsen:

And you know better than the developers because..?

because i'm a developer too and i know it's well within the grasp of the people who made this great browser.

They never said it wasn't. They said it was a huge undertaking.

Have you actually implemented full SOCKS support? Do you know exactly what is needed to do so?

from a business perspective their time probably is better spent on projects like 'widgets' and such which have higher consumer demand.

I doubt that the developers working on widgets would ever touch the network code. Funny that a developer like yourself doesn't know about how large software projects work... You know, different tasks for different developers and all that.

i understand this, but i still don't accept the "it's too difficult" excuse.

No one said "too difficult". The exact words were:

"That puts the job is in same complexity class as implementing a fullsize cryptographic protocol like SSL. And that one took a year to get shippable.

Originally posted by Nilsen:

That puts the job is in same complexity class as implementing a fullsize cryptographic protocol like SSL. And that one took a year to get shippable.

Seems to be a VERY LONG time for me, because there have been sufficient 'Open source' examples one could have taken to LEARN FROM, nothing else, for sure...

Do those devs be able to concentrate on ONE JOB, or do they have to work simultaneously on different tasks?
The latter would explain this huge expenditure of time...

Originally posted by Nilsen:

Have you actually implemented full SOCKS support? Do you know exactly what is needed to do so?

no, but i've written proxy checking software. exactly what's needed? yep. they need to rewrite their network code from the ground up.

I doubt that the developers working on widgets would ever touch the network code. Funny that a developer like yourself doesn't know about how large software projects work... You know, different tasks for different developers and all that.

and i doubt that they have a single developer working on network code at all. i doubt networking stuff has been touched in a while, so why wouldn't they work on a different project?

No one said "too difficult". The exact words were:

"That puts the job is in same complexity class as implementing a fullsize cryptographic protocol like SSL. And that one took a year to get shippable.

haha. i knew someone would say that. when condensing a paragraph down into a 2 word phrase it's bound to sound a bit more simplistic. so yes, "too difficult" isn't exactly what he said, but it's definitely the message he conveyed.

Originally posted by ophiel:

Originally posted by Nilsen:

Have you actually implemented full SOCKS support? Do you know exactly what is needed to do so?

no, but i've written proxy checking software.

Proxy checking software! Yes, that sounds like it can be compared to full SOCKS support!

exactly what's needed? yep. they need to rewrite their network code from the ground up.

Sounds like a huge undertaking to me. So you are basically contradicting yourself.

I doubt that the developers working on widgets would ever touch the network code. Funny that a developer like yourself doesn't know about how large software projects work... You know, different tasks for different developers and all that.

and i doubt that they have a single developer working on network code at all. i doubt networking stuff has been touched in a while, so why wouldn't they work on a different project?

I guess changes in the latest weekly like "Fixed IPv6 on FreeBSD" don't count, then... What makes you think a developer working on network code would suddenly start coding on the user interface anyway?

No one said "too difficult". The exact words were:

"That puts the job is in same complexity class as implementing a fullsize cryptographic protocol like SSL. And that one took a year to get shippable.

haha. i knew someone would say that. when condensing a paragraph down into a 2 word phrase it's bound to sound a bit more simplistic. so yes, "too difficult" isn't exactly what he said, but it's definitely the message he conveyed.

If your definition of "difficult" is "takes ages", then yes. Otherwise you are just twisting his words to fit your flawed arguments.

What makes you think a developer working on network code would suddenly start coding on the user interface anyway?

and what makes you think that they COULDN'T?

i could care less who works on what.

Proxy checking software! Yes, that sounds like it can be compared to full SOCKS support!

i'm sorry i have never made a browser, does that mean i can't request things for a browser?

Originally posted by ophiel:

What makes you think a developer working on network code would suddenly start coding on the user interface anyway?

and what makes you think that they COULDN'T?

Hmm, repeated comments from Opera explaining that different developers have different areas/tasks?

i could care less who works on what.

You wrote:

"their time probably is better spent on projects like 'widgets'"

Proxy checking software! Yes, that sounds like it can be compared to full SOCKS support!

i'm sorry i have never made a browser, does that mean i can't request things for a browser?

You didn't just request things. You implied that they were lying and simply coming up with excuses:

"the developers make it out to be more difficult to implement than it really is. i don't accept that excuse from them at all."

See, this would have been so much easier if you could stick to just requesting things and not making all sorts of other comments and claims

i never called anyone a liar, but it definitely was an excuse.

i'm sorry they didn't have the foresight to include it from the beginning, but that's no reason not to do it now.

i do appreciate the bumps even tho it hasn't garnered many extra views.

Can someone give an example URL where pages would open faster or something would work better with SOCKS support?

Originally posted by xErath:

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/216266?startidx=50#comment1558041

Originally posted by Gary Sugar:

Can someone give an example URL where pages would open faster or something would work better with SOCKS support?

the normal purpose of a proxy is not to be faster, but to provide solutions to routing problems faced by your current connection.

for instance millions of people living under communist regimes rely on proxies to deliver uncensored content.

SOCKS has the added benefits of supporting all network protocols and DNS resolution.

Originally posted by Gary Sugar:

Can someone give an example URL where pages would open faster or something would work better with SOCKS support?

As it has been explained already by *ophiel* SOCKS allows for speeding up site loading procedures and activities when having routing problems by using the many proxies on the way.

And such routing porblems are getting more frequent the more load is on the internet!

Take e.g. the following link I stumbled across in the forum elsewhere:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=browse&group_id=95717&atid=612382
which loads very slowly with OPERA...

If you empty your cache and load again it's nearly all the same, not much faster!

If you then take IE (V5.01 here, an old one...) you will see a nearly instantaneous loading of said site, a site, BTW, not notorious for a special MS affinity...

How come:
the information you got downloaded with OPERA is still cached in many proxies on the way from 'sourceforge.net' to your browsers, but ONLY IE takes advantage from that, because it has INTEGRATED SOCKS! >>> (Or MOZILLA or FIREFOX!)

OPERA hasn't it integrated, and using the workaround mentioned above or elsewhere by using some plug-in is NOT the same as an INTEGRATED and SMART i.e. INTELLIGENT integrated solution.

M/B that's why such a long expenditure of time is esteemed necessary by *Yngve*...

You can try it yourself, please.
To dig deeper into this, you need a packet sniffer and an intelligent route tracker...

BTW, all the same happens with DNS resolutions, or during FTP transfers and so on...

Cool, thanks HaJotKE.

+1 for SOCKS

very fine explanantion HaJotKE, thanks for writing that.

+1 for SOCKS.
Switching to Firefox + Thunderbird unless/until I find a solution to socksify Opera.
Wouldn't have to waste my time if SOCKS was supported.

Originally posted by ling_uist:

Switching to Firefox + Thunderbird unless/until I find a solution to socksify Opera.

You can use a localhost proxy.

Originally posted by xErath:

You can use a localhost proxy.

To be more precise, Privoxy

Would use Firefox much less, if Opera supported Socks proxy. I need this fast and badly...

I would like something like this, I just learned how to tunnel my Internet connection "ssh -D port# hostname" and then localhost:port# in Firefox however if I do that in Opera I get blank pages, is there any way to do this without installing additional software?

TorPark is already all over the news, geting praise and this time rightly so, and here we are still "discussing SOCKS implementation"

The only thing close enough is an unofficial bundle or OperaTor, surely Opera ASA could do better?

Why not using sockscap?.

What's sockscap? Ah, it seems to be a Windows program, sorry I don't do Windows.

But anyway why use and install another program, if I wanted addons I would have used Firefox and its stupid extensions (although this is a standard feature in Firefox)

OK, I don't want to turn this into bitching... I only hoped there's something that I missed when I configure it.

+1 for SOCKS.

Currently when I am on a "public wireless" connection (like the airport, etc) I use an SSH tunnel for my browsing/email. I can set this up properly through Thunderbird (which I use for my email) but must use Firefox to browse. If Opera added in SOCKS support, I could dump FF

+1

+1

Same case as cajunman4life.

I'd like to hear from an Opera representative, if this feature, is at all in the pipeline, beta by next year perhapes?

+1

Originally posted by xErath:

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/216266?startidx=50#comment1558041

oh well... back to firefox it is.

I give up!

I'm tired of making requests. Clearly Opera doesn't listen and won't implement this or any other requests.

Thread Unsubscribed...

+1 yes need socks in opera.For ssh tunelling.

@RADicaLMMS: so because Opera doesn't add this single thing you want, they aren't listenting? This somehow negates all the other requests they have fulfilled like Firefox-like tab closing behavior, synchronizing bookmarks, etc.?

Nice trolling.

+1
I thought this functionality would be added a long time ago. Alas...