Opera 9.01 is an Opera bugfix release that was released today. People using Opera 9.0 should upgrade to this release. From what I can tell, the Linux version is the same version as that off the latest weekly. For those of you that don’t use Opera yet and for those who need to upgrade, download it here. Have a nice day, and I hope to resume blogging sometime soon…
Opera 9 was released today. It has all sorts of new features, like Bittorrent, an easy way to add search engines, site-specific preferences, widgets, content blocking, a built-in source viewer, a manual configuration page, tab thumbnails, and a hell of a lot more. They also added a lot of functionality to Presto as well, such as full Acid2 compatibility. a lot of CSS stuff, and a lot of ajax stuff. Get it now. Seriously, it’s amazing.
A new Opera “weekly” build came out today. You can get it at the Desktop Team blog. However, that’s not the issue. It uses the old RSS icon…
Now, I like the old RSS icon that Opera used. Safari uses the same icon, and there really was no need to switch. Firefox’s feed icon looks like a transmitter, and rss hardly transmits anything. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, Mozilla’s making Opera and other programs that use their feed icon sign an agreement. Why they’re doing this, I have no idea.
A few days ago, mitchell posted on her blog about the whole feed icon thing. There were 3 options: one was setting the icon loose with an open-source licence, another was trademarking it, and the third was to basically get everyone together who will use the icon and set some boundaries. I’m assuming they did the third.
So it seems now that Mozilla had a good idea, they’re running the show. Now, nobody can use the icon until they sign an agreement, which is kind of silly. I’m disappointed in them. I would at least let others use the icon until the agreement is taken care of, then have everyone conform to that agreement. Oh well, whatever. It’s their icon.
Opera’s shipping weekly-ish preview builds until the release of Opera 9. These builds aren’t as tested as the Technology Previews, Betas, and Release Candidates, but they are brand new every week. Keep up with the latest builds over at the Desktop Team blog. A real blog entry will come in the next few days.
Opera 8.01 is out with improved acid2 support and more stability. Get it now at opera.com. Any problems should be reported at https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/
As most of you know, Opera 8 is out. It’ll run on just about every operating system, and it’s my browser of choice, which many of you are probably surprised to hear since I’m an Open Source fanatic. Even though I’m an official Opera Ambassador and everything, I really don’t care whether or not someone uses Firefox or Opera, since both are better than IE. What I am sick of, is Firefox getting credit for extensions and features that Opera had before anything else. People say you should switch to Firefox because it has tabbed browsing. Opera had it before anybody else. Well, actually Netcaptor had it first, but Netcaptor is IE based, so I don’t count it as a real browser. Second came Opera. People say you should switch to Firefox because of extensions. Well, guess what? Extensions make Firefox load slower, and all they do is add functionality that Opera already has, except for the Ad-block extension, which there is a Opera counterpart for, and the Webdev toolbar, which there is also a counterpart for.
The last thing I’m sick of, is people saying Opera is bad because of the ads, and people saying that Opera has too much bloat and too many features, like the Washington Post review does. Too many features. For a browser like Opera, which has always been tiny (much smaller than Firefox), this is a bit strange. You can never have too many features. He says that Opera is too complex, but then doesn’t go into detail to say why. In truth, it’s not. The mail, chat, and rss clients are all hidden until you have mail, chat, or rss feeds/accounts set up, using the rather simple “Mail & Chat accounts” dialog. For RSS feeds, you just click on the RSS icon in the address bar, you choose which feed, and it’ll ask you if you want to subscribe to it. Simple.
The review goes on to address Opera’s useful features. It doesn’t seem like the reviewer, Rob Pegoraro, likes Opera’s MDI. He appears to think that it’s too complicated or something, because he gives the function to cascade or tile webpages a rather bad review. He says the it “crudely shrink[s] or overlap[s] open pages to display all of them at once,” and it ” add[s] nothing to the standard tabbed view”. That’s not true. I use that function all the time to compare pages, for instance. With other browsers, all the buttons move with the windows, but in this one, you can move around and resize pages within the same window, moving only the address bar with it. He also says that when windows pop up, they are imprisoned by the browser. I say, so what? If you want, you can just drag the tab to your taskbar and the page will leave the browser.
So basically, this was a horrible review, and the reviewer is obviously biased. Don’t pay any attention to it, but also read what people who use the browser think of it. A good place for this is to check out Get The Facts. It has user opinions on Firefox and Opera, so you can read the ones for Firefox, and the ones for Opera, and see which one you like better based on what was written. Have fun!
Alright, so I’ve been using Opera 8.0 final for a few days now. Holy crap it’s awesome. Seriously, I thought beta 3 was fast, the final version is even faster! Seriously, it’s insanely fast. I don’t know how they do it. They don’t precache the pages as far as I know, because otherwise the XMG account acception page wouldn’t work right. Another thing is the configuration. The preferences dialog and appearence dialog are both nice and clean, with comprehensive options and such, and then there are the INIs (configuration files). Yeah, you can manually edit the INIs in your profile directory to change almost anything. You can change the title bar text, you could change the searchs available in the drop-down search field or the individual search fields, you can even change the menus themselves. It’s incredible. I was so amazed at the new version, I actually bought it. I know, I know, who buys a browser. Apparently, me. I’m sure many people just get a serial number from some keygen to get rid of the ads, but how would Opera ASA make money? Well, that’s why I bought it. I’d feel horrible if Opera went out of business because nobody wanted to buy such a great browser. Anyway, if you want to download the free version, or buy the paid version of Opera, click here to go to Opera’s site. It’s actually an affiliate program. If I get 250 clicks, I get a registration number for Opera. Now, I already bought Opera, so this is no use to me, but I guess I can always raffle it off, or give it away on this site. Yeah, that’s right. If I can get 250 unique clicks to opera.com through my affiliate link, I’m probably going to run some sort of contest, where, say, the first… or eighth person to email me gets the registration code. Sounds good, right? We’ll see if I get enough clicks.
I saw The Ring today! Well, I saw Ring, Ring 2, and Ring 0 last week. This week, I got The Ring out from the library and watched it with my dad. It was a joke compared to the Japanese version. It was still really scary, but not as scary as Ring. There was a lot of parts that were totally different from Ring in The Ring. For instance, in The Ring, Samara’s father keeps her in the barn. In Ring 0: Birthday, he’s a doctor first of all, and he keeps her in this locked room. In The Ring, she gets thrown into the well from her mother, putting a plastic bag or something over her head. In Ring, she gets whacked brutally over the head by the doctor, believed to be her father, and thrown into the well. In Ring, you never see Shizuko/Samara’s face, but in The Ring, you see it, like, all the time. Completely ruins the movie. It’s scarier when she doesn’t talk and you don’t see her face. There are other differences, but I don’t want to give away the movies. You’ll have to see and judge them for yourselves.
Anyway, that’s all. Go download Opera and try it out. You won’t regret it.
