Opera Software today released Opera 9, its newest Web browser for personal computers. You can download it free in more than 25 languages for Windows, Mac, Linux and other platforms from Opera.com. Opera 9 enhances the way you access, share and use online content by including widgets and support for BitTorrent, the popular file distribution technology.
With Opera 9. you don’t need a separate BitTorrent application to download large files. Simply click a torrent link and start the download.
“For Opera 9, we worked hard to push the limits of what people expect from a Web browser, with increased speed, new Web standards support and innovative features such as widgets and BitTorrent,” said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software, in the press release. “Even though we shaped this browser for the Web’s future, we have the powerful features people want and need for their surfing today. I truly feel Opera 9 has something for everyone.”
Widgets make everyday browsing fun and useful by bringing a variety of Web content and data right to your computer’s desktop. You can play games, get organized, follow your favorite sports teams and more. Widget developers can create widgets using open and common Web standards including JavaScript, CSS, HTML and SVG and technologies like AJAX. For more information about using or making widgets, visit http://widgets.opera.com
Opera believes in an open Web by supporting open standards and technologies that lead the next wave of innovation. Opera 9 includes tools to make it easier for sites to code for these open standards. Built-in Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) helps developers make sure their sites work well on any Web-connected device. Opera’s browsers are built on the same core technology, making it easy to test once in Opera 9 and ensure compatibility with a variety of devices – from mobile phones to Nintendo’s Wii. You can read more about Opera, Web standards and our technology at http://labs.opera.com
More info: http://www.opera.com/
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I installed Opera 9 this morning and all is well so far. I have yet to encounter any page rendering issues of any kind. I did have to go to Adobe’s Shockwave TEST page to install the Shockwave plugin — the installer page fails to recognize Opera as a valid browser. I haven’t tried IDing the browser as Internet Explorer yet and I won’t until I come upon a situation where it is the only option.
Great work Opera community. Congratulations on a superb release!
P.S. It would be nice to eventually be able to bookmark all open tabs at once. I don’t think that functionality exists in Opera yet, does it?
I haven’t looked at Opera since they embraced the whole spyware thing. Has there corporate philosophy changed? Just wondering.
MDN Magic Word: “control”. Seems to fit. How does MDN know?
Yes it does, but it’s called ‘sessions’. See File -> Sessions -> Save session to save all your open tabs and restore them later.
Interesting… Safari no longer passes the Acid2 Test… but Opera does!
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html
MacMania: eh? Pass me some of the stuff you’re smoking
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />. There was once an allegation by an editor from the Register that the ad-sponsored version of Opera (which doesn’t exist anymore) was spyware, but the only thing it was doing was displaying context-based Google ads (and only if you gave it specific permission to do so) – he later withdrew his allegations after he discovered he was wrong.
I have no idea where you got the idea that Opera ’embraced the whole spyware thing’… Quite the opposite, I’d say.
Should be the Inquirer, not the Register… I always confuse the two.
Sorry for my ignorance but how does Opera make its living if they give the soft for free? Same Q about Firefox? Thnks.
Safari v418 clearly passes the Acid 2 Test
mdn magic word “issue” as there is no issure with the acid 2 test
Safari v418 clearly passes the Acid 2 Test
mdn magic word “issue” as there is no issure with the acid 2 test
Uhh –
where did you get v418? mine’s up-to-date and it’s v417.9.3
Uhh –
where did you get v418? mine’s up-to-date and it’s v417.9.3
How is the UI? Is it Mac-like or is it a Win port feel like FFX?
Sorry for my ignorance but how does Opera make its living if they give the soft for free? Same Q about Firefox? Thnks.
I checked out the Opera site and it doesn’t appear to be an Open Source project (correct me if I am wrong). They sell email tech-support for $29.00 (1 year). FFX, Camino, and other Open Source browsers are the work of many, many volunteers – they don’t make any money. It’s really a large grass-roots effort stemming from the need to establish and maintain web standards. The idea is that ANY browser based on these established standards will render content properly and consitently across ALL platforms – that is the goal. It’s an ongoing effort. In the Open Source community USERS are considered developers as well as they can submit ideas for features and bug reports. The main idea, as said, is all about establishing and maintaining STANDARDS across the various platforms (something MS neglected for years and has caused a huge mess). Open Source browsers have many people scrutinizing the code day-in and day-out. This (in theory – and I TOTALLY AGREE) is better than proprietary browsers, as more people hammer the code and get enhancements and fixes out faster. Release candidates (Betas) can be downloaded by anyone and pounded for bugs which are then reported to the developers and filed for fix. FFX and Camino even have “nightly-builds” which are the current development version EACH DAY (not official releases or betas, but the current “state” the project is in THAT DAY). Users are encouraged to use these builds to help the developers find bugs and the cycle continues. Users help the developers and the developers help the users.
It’s a bit different in layout (of the browser window), but it makes as much sense as the “standard” layout. I like it; I’ll keep it around as one of my FIVE browser alternatives. Who says being a Mac user limits choice in software?
Thanks AVL. At first glance, it looks like sessions will do just fine for my purposes! I appreciate the tip.
me, myself & I,
I have version 417.9.3 of Safari just like you. Software Update informs me that all my software is up to date, and I am running the latest version at home and at work.
Now that I’m home I can see that v417.9.3 DOES pass Acid2, but at work it definitely does not. I can even use my work computer from home, using Apple Remote Desktop, to verify that it still doesn’t pass the test (The top three rows of the smiley face are distorted).
There must be some setting in the Safari that affects rendering and undermines the test.
to (c)
Thanks a lot! Just one more Q – I understand there must be a group of people who maintain the project; I assume they get paid for that – where this money come from? I use Camino (for sites where Safari does not work) and am happy with it but somewhere deep in my mind I am bothered about having a “free lunch”. I do not quite understand how Google makes money on its on-line services like Calendar, etc. but I am sure they definitelly do directly or indirectly [now or will do in the future]. As for the open source stuff I have no idea at all what are their incentives. Once again I do understand the users who do contribute to development (they do not get paid but by the same tocken they have no obligation to do the work and they do it when and as much as they want to) but there must be some people how are full-time involved into the project and they are to be paid for. Who does pay them?
Thanks again.
Evgeny – “I understand there must be a group of people who maintain the project; I assume they get paid for that – where this money come from?”
The Mozilla Foundation (think FFX, Camino and all Mozilla based browsers) was started in 2003 with seed money from AOL. It is still a NON-PROFIT organization that relies solely on donations, but there are paid staff and “Top-Level” developers – it’s not total anarchy. Nokia also donated an undisclosed sum of money a few years ago as well. They rely on donations (anyone can donate) and I’m sure there are quite a number of corporations with enough contempt for MS to keep The Mozilla Foundation afloat indefinitely.
Read here:
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/
And here:
http://www.mozilla.com/about/
thanks a lot
evgeny – hope you get back to this thread……..One MAJOR correction I need to make:
Camino in particular *is not* a product of the Mozilla Corporation (or of the Mozilla Foundation, for that matter); it’s developed and released by the all-volunteer Camino Project.
The Mozilla Foundation, being an actual legal entity unlike the Camino Project, does own the trademark and licenses it to the Camino Project, and Camino of course benefits from the work on the underlying technologies like Gecko (some of which is done by the Corporation), but the browser is not a product of either Mozilla entity. That’s why you’ll find Camino at http://www.caminobrowser.org rather than at http://www.mozilla.com with Firefox….
BTW: Camino is my main browser as well. A new stable release 1.0.2 just came out…….cool
Acid2 Mystery solved:
In Safari’s preferences, in the ‘Advanced’ section, the choice of minimum font size will affect Safari’s ability to pass the Acid2 test. Mine was set at 14 and it always failed the test. I reset it to 10 (the original setting) and it did better but still failed. Then I simply quit and restarted Safari and it now passes Acid2 every time.
I will not use that setting again, as it turns out it was corrupting the display of certain other websites.
The setting is called “Universal Access: Never use font sizes smaller than” in the Advanced section of Safari Preferences.
I have trouble seeing the appeal of integrating a BitTorrent client into a browser. Web browsing is instant gratification. By contrast, anything worth downloading over BitTorrent takes at least an hour. A dedicated torrent application like Azureus makes so much more sense, and I’m sure is much more fully-featured as well.
I downloaded Opera 9 for OS X and played with it for quite a while. Its bookmarks file is a pain, though I recognize that I may not have figured it out. Opera’s Help pages didn’t.
The thing downloads with a pile of bookmarks, and I could delete all of them except for three. One was amazon.com and another was downloads.com. I can’t remember the third. I could find no way to kill them through the browser. If I wasn’t so sweet and innocent, I’d suspect payoffs. I finally went into the bookmarks file and killed them with TextEditor.
I had trouble after importing my Firefox bookmarks, too. Most of them are in folders but three aren’t. In the sidebar, I moved the imported Firefox folders out of the main Firefox imported folder, but in the sidebar I couldn’t see the three bookmarks not in folders. I examined every folder in the sidebar, including the import folder, but they would not show up. So I created three new ones. They wouldn’t show up, either.
In searching for the solution, the Help pages took me in circles, even directing me to a subject heading under Help that doesn’t exist. And one Help link leads to another that leads back to the first. If it does this once, it likely does it more often.
I visited a few of my regular sites, but being hit with a barrage of ads on each page after being free of them for years thanks to Adblock was too much. I trashed Opera, and good riddance.
@ feedback,
You should have given Opera more of a chance. Most if not all of the problems you cite are easily changed with a journey through the magical land called the preferences menu. Opera actually has THE best pop-up blocker that I’ve seen in a browser (tried them all). As for the bookmarks, I think you may have been confused about how the file/folder hierarchy works in Opera. I was able to delete all of the bookmarks immediately when activating the browser for the first time.
I do agree with you on one point. The Opera HELP pages are VERY poorly organized and should be entirely rewritten (again) for version 9 — toss help pages for older versions in an archive.
According to:
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/
Content blocker
“Remove ads or images – it’s up to you. Right-click (CTRL-click on the Mac) on the Web page and choose ‘Block content’…”
You may have to turn this utility on first. As I said before, you would be wise keep an open mind and give Opera 9 another try.