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musings from beautiful L.A.

Posts tagged with "opera"

Ten Great Opera Widgets (like for Twitter)

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Cool list of useful Opera widgets at CNET by Don Reisenger. I've been using the Opera widget for Twitter lately...very handy. :wink:

The Future of Browsing? Just Look At Opera 10 Beta

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Good overview of Opera v10 beta by Jim Rapoza at eWeek.

His opening paragraph is exactly right, and shows that he knows the history of web browser design:

Ever wonder what features will be found in the next generation of Web browsers? Well, usually there’s one easy way to find out: Just check out the latest version of Opera.

Opera may not be the best known or most used Web browser out there, but, over the years, it has been one of the most innovative. Often, features that become mainstays across browsers appeared first in Opera.


You can see from Opera's history of innovation, for example, that original tabs were invented by Opera in March 2000 in Opera v4.0...and now comes Visual Tabs. (Don't forget that Tab Thumbnails were added by Opera long time ago also. Just hover your cursor over the Opera Tab Bar and watch what happens. You may need to check this box first.)

Opera added a search field in the toolbar WAY BACK in Dec. 2000...!

And now, we'll see how long until intelligent auto-Turbo is added by other (desktop & mobile) browsers to minimize flakey WIFI or slow connections. :wink:

Remember to set Opera Turbo to AUTO; then it'll only come ON when you need it (and turn itself OFF when your connection speeds up -- or after you complain to your internet provider). p:

Try Opera 10 Beta with all the new goodies here.



New Opera v10 beta 1

The visual tab bar in Opera v10 beta 1 looks cool and useful for many new Opera users... :wink:

Twitter is definitely a-flutter with Opera tweets. :lol:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OPERA! 15 YEARS!

I first discovered Opera around 2001, I think. I remember using Opera v4.0 on Windows 98; and paying for Opera v5.0 on a tangerine Apple iBook G3 with Mac OS 9...and, of course, I never looked back.



I've never wasted time with typing WWW or .COM, or closed tabs that I couldn't re-open (or having Tabs, at all!), or wasting time because it took 5x longer for a web site to come up, or save a session of 10 tabs to follow-up with next week, or a million other advantages by using Opera...for NINE YEARS now. :smile:

Here's a great site that show's Opera innovations, past & present. The cool thing, when you use Opera, is that you can assume and expect that the other browsers will continue to follow by adding Opera's innovations. Lately, I've been playing with the Opera v10-alpha with Turbo...and it's very cool!

Let me repeat something important about how Opera is faster & easier for you. I have not typed WWW or .COM in my browser address bar since 2001, when I switched to Opera. Don't you wish you had, too...? You can, in one minute. :smile:



Happy Birthday to the great team at Opera worldwide...and to Jon, Geir, and Håkon for getting it all started.

Cookie Overflow and cookie-less auth

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Interesting work by Alex on handling cookie security issues in Opera and other browsers.

He talks about cookie setting limits and how that may be exploitable given you can force an overflow of cookie writes by taking advantage of Opera's (and Firefox) cookie limit. Also, makes an interesting point about Opera's speed:

The question is; can we win this race?

In Firefox, it takes approximately 100 miliseconds on my machine to set 1000 cookies over 20 hostnames, with 1 hostname per iframe. So we can win any race.

In my testing Opera is much faster at navigating between pages and setting cookies, however I'm still unsure if we can win this race in Opera.



Maybe one of the Opera devs can take a look at this and see if Opera needs to be tweaked to lessen any possible security risk. Not sure if he was using the current release or Opera v9.5 beta 2.

Opera CEO: Why No Extensions (So Far) in Opera

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I've noticed some more debate about "why/why not" to have extensions in Opera, on various fora. Many people seem to have not seen Jon von Tetzchner's (Opera's CEO) comments about this topic, so I thought I'd post it and maybe put it to bed, already.

It's something [extensions] that we have evaluated many times. We'll probably do something in the future. Our focus has been more on widgets – making applications that run outside the browser and are able to build on web technology. On the extensions side, traditionally our focus has been 'let's try to build as much into the browser as possible so people have a choice'. So we do it in a way that's tightly integrated and works out of the box. We've done so much – you mention extensions through user JavaScript, we've done it through CSS and we continue to find new ways to do it. It's clear that Firefox has a more extensible way of doing that. It will not be soon but we may provide some easier ways in the future to add more functionality to Opera.


So, there you have it. In my experience, with or without extensions, Opera has been the most productive, most innovative browser out there for years, YEARS; along with the fastest. Yes, there's all kinds of speed tests that everybody shouts about how their browser is faster. Everyone can make their own decision, so just try Opera on your own PC or Mac or phone or set-top device, with your own favorite sites and decide for yourself.

There's a list a mile long about the useful features in Opera that most of Internet Explorer or Safari users have never heard of, like Speed Dial or Fast Forward. (There's even some, that Firefox users haven't seen, like Rewind and Fast Forward or using your desktop bookmarks on your phone with Opera LINK.) You won't go back after trying it for a few days. (By the way, if you miss how your old browser looks while trying Opera, just go and get a new skin to pretend Opera is IE, or Safari or Firefox. You may even find a cool, new favorite skin that you love, like the Neanderthal skin!)



Discovering Nicknames in Opera Bookmarks

If you haven't discovered or used bookmark nicknames yet in Opera, don't wait!!

It's one of the fastest, easiest things you can do to speed up your browsing. It literally lets you rename the web to your own whims and habits. If you want to go to your own blog by typing in "b" this is how you do it. Or "n" for your favorite news site.

Any string of letters and numbers is at your disposal. Simply add a site as a bookmark and click on the "details" button and you'll see a nicknames field.

Given Opera's (new in v9.2, aka Merlin) Speed Dial™ feature, the numbers one through nine are assigned your Speed Dial sites, but beyond that, it's up to you. Also, shift-F2 opens a "turbo" nicknames field. This saves the <enter> keystroke for you, so even faster. (Note that I changed this to simply F2 in the keyboard manager in Opera.)

Even though Opera gives you a dizzying number of ways to accelerate your browsing, this will make your head spin given its simplicity.

  • Speed Dial (from a new tab)
  • Auto-complete in the address bar
  • Nicknames (1-chars or more & without <enter> key using <shift+F2>)
  • Trditional Bookmarks (in the Personal Bar or from the Bookmarks menu or from the Panel)




We hope to see a Nicknames manager in Kestrel (aka Opera v9.5) maybe, to help handle all the nicknames that pile up quickly in your bookmarks file. (hint, hint, ODT) :smile:

Greater Web Developer Support for Safari post-iPhone?

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I was just reading an interesting item at the TE site and a headline caught my eye, Will web developers start to develop for Safari first?

Given that Opera Mini/Mobile is available for various devices already, I don't think that Safari will suddenly have developer support where there was none when iPhone debuts. My guess is that, going forward, ACID2-compliance will be key in terms of browser development (and better developer tools, of course).

New <video> element in HTML5?

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Interesting item by Daniel at Opera Watch about an interview with everyone's favorite CTO, Håkon, about the OLPC project ($100 Linux-based laptop with Opera for developing countries and their yearning, smarty-pants kids).

...But another item in the interview caught my attention.

Anne at Opera seems to working on and proposing a new video element object in HTML5 which would greatly simplify embedding video in web pages (without plug-in issues -- i.e., Flash, Quicktime, WMP, Real...!). WOW, great idea to evolve web standards as online video takes off! (As the product managers for each of the previously-mentioned plug-ins has smoke coming out of their ears.) :no:

Give'em hell, Anne! :devil:

Peregrine's Stoop

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Given the Opera Desktop team's announcement about their aggressive roadmp for desktop browser development having a raptor theme, you might be wondering what a stoop, while hunting, actually looks like (wherein the Peregrine Falcon experiences the largest g-forces of any large animal in the natural world -- 25 g).

Wow, scary for a poor rabbit or pigeon, but very cool for browser users...! :smile: