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Opera Releases Version 7 For Linux 391

Posted by timothy from the de-gustibus-non-disputandum-est dept.
Wee writes "I happened to notice this morning that Opera 7 for Linux has been released. New features include fastforward and rewind, the ability to take notes in conjuction with web pages, a cookie manager, a password manager, and a very serviceable integrated email client called M2 (which was previously only available for the Windows version). Version 7 of Opera also represents a complete code rewrite, from the rendering engine up, and the improvements are fairly significant. Mirrors for debs, rpms and tarballs are on Opera's download page."
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Opera Releases Version 7 For Linux More

Opera Releases Version 7 For Linux

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  • MSN Bork bork! (Score:5, Funny)

    by agentZ ( 210674 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:04PM (#5995239)
    Does this version still display the MSN homepage in Sweedish Chef?

  • Re:Eventually, this would happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shatfield ( 199969 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:05PM (#5995249)
    All of that new functionality, and I still can only send the equivalent of postcards -- Opera's M2 Email client doesn't have any support for PGP or GPG at all.

    While their initial betas were pretty shaky, this "gold" build is very stable and looks terrific. Once they get the PGP/GPG thing sorted out, I'll have to evaluate it against Mozilla and see which I like more :)

    • Not just that; I still haven't been able to make it run with my university's IMAP server. Which is a pity though; was playing around with it with another POP mailbox I have, and the M2 stuff looks terrific.

      [Note that I'm not saying that it's unworkable with any IMAP server; just that I haven't been able to get it working. Time to buy a student licence and mail the developers, you'd think. ;-) ]

  • Helping everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zbowling ( 597617 ) * <<zac> <at> <zacbowling.com>> on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:06PM (#5995258) Homepage Journal
    Great. By releasing this newwer version of Opera, they are helping them get themselves more credit in the browser market. This will make it harder for designers to make the point that IE is the most used browser, so we will target only them, an idea of the past. Its hurting the Microsoft monopoly. I support this move all the way. It will make content more execessable to Linux users, but in the process will force people to make their information accessable to everyone without IE by weaning away from their IE only technologies (like VBScript, ActiveX controls, ASP.NET objects designed just for IE, and a number of other MS only techs). I don't personally like Opera but I use Mozilla (mostly the Firebird/Phonix version).
    • ASP.NET objects designed just for IE

      I don't know what you're talking about...ASP.NET controls run server side and has little or nothing to do w/ specific browsers.Are you insinuating that the asp.net objects purposely render html code that works only w/ IE? If so, I'd love to see an example of this.

      The only distinction that ASP.NET makes is between "up/down level" browsers, which really only affects a small subset of validation controls. The behaviour difference is whether some javascript validation
    • You make too many assumptions.

      1) Opera browsers do have a setting to state their browsers are MSIE, therefore, they contribute to the MSIE percentage in a small way.

      2) MSIE has a 94%+ market share. It's pretty evident that their got the market share from the sheer availability on the desktop. The masses know little of what browser their use, they just know the icon half the time. So until that changes, but it won't change, the masses will continue to use what's already there at their finger tips, instead

  • About the mail-client... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rainer_d ( 115765 ) * on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:06PM (#5995259) Homepage
    The version I use here (TP5 build 395 or so) on FreeBSD (linux-ABI) can't do SMTP-AUTH with TLS without me having to save the password in the configuration.
    Obviously, that's not what I want.
    Is the RELEASE better in this respect?

    Rainer

  • Be careful... (Score:3, Funny)

    by emo boy ( 586277 ) <(hoffman_brian) (at) (bah.com)> on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:07PM (#5995269) Homepage
    Fat lady in viking hat not included.

  • Opera 7.11 RPMs on default Red Hat 8.0 don't work (Score:5, Informative)

    by rklrkl ( 554527 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:11PM (#5995291) Homepage
    All 4 varieties of RPMs for Opera 7.11 don't work on Red Hat 8.0 because they've linked dynamically against an older openmotif library - I'm guessing possibly because of Netscape 4.X plugin incompatibilities with the later openmotif library that comes with Red Hat 8.0 by default. I'd have linked statically against the appropriate library in that case, but the Opera folks decided not to.

    To fix this, you have to "rpm -Uvh openmotif21-2.1.30-6.i386.rpm" from one of your Red Hat install CDs (yep, the older openmotif21 RPM is not installed by default on Red Hat 8.0). Sadly, this crucial dependency problem is not mentioned on either the download page or the FAQ, but is buried in their knowledge base here [opera.com]. Hope this helps folks struggling out there...

  • Opera has lost it's appeal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zeut ( 24694 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:12PM (#5995303) Homepage
    I used to use Opera a lot. Primarily due to the fact that I could have it open up with all my web pages at once. Now that I can do this with Mozilla, I no longer use Opera. The only thing I still miss are the mouse gestures.

    • Re:Opera has lost it's appeal (Score:5, Informative)

      by cscx ( 541332 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:19PM (#5995328) Homepage
      The only thing I still miss are the mouse gestures.

      Actually in IE if you hold down the shift key, the scroll-wheel becomes a back-forward wheel, which is all I used the gestures for when I used Opera. Although they were cool, I have to admit.

    • Mouse Gestures for Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)

      by friedegg ( 96310 ) <bryan@noSPaM.wrestlingdb.com> on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:22PM (#5995345) Homepage
      Have you tried Optimoz Mouse Gestures [mozdev.org]?

    • Mouse Gestures here Re:Opera has lost it's appeal (Score:5, Informative)

      by EricHsu ( 578881 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:26PM (#5995363)
      Check out the Mozilla Mouse Gestures [mozdev.org] project. I don't use Opera, so I'm not sure if it reproduces all Opera gestures, but knowing Mozilla, there will be a very awkward but powerful way to customize it the way you like... - Eric
      • I found that an advantage of Opera gestures is that you use them by clicking the right mouse button. In Mozilla you have to use the left mouse button if you want to get anything usable out of the gestures which is still a bit awkward. Configuring them for the right button combines the gestures with the context menu which just doesn't work. Also Opera captures the gestures much better than Mozilla that doesn't figure out the gesture pretty often.

    • Lost it's appeal? Are you kidding? (Score:5, Informative)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:46PM (#5995482) Journal
      Opera has a lot going for it.

      In the past, Opera made a name for itself by being a smaller, faster browser. That's still true, but now it also has a superior feature set that elevates it above all browsers.

      Som of the better features include:

      Sessions - allow you to open up many different pages at once, either at startup or at any time;
      Mouse gestures - semi-intuitive mouse click and movement patterns that allow you to go back (hold down right mouse button, click the left one), go forward (hold down left mouse button, click the right one), etc, that greatly speed up the browsing experience;
      Notes - just what the name suggests; this lets you save and enter snippets of text to and from a browser window;
      M2 mail client - integrated mail client with spam filtering and POP3, IMAP, and ESMTP support;
      Wand - a fantastic password manager that saves lots of time when logging into sites;
      Transfers - a decent download manager; and
      Fast Forward and Rewind - lets you navigae forward automatically using the most obvious link (which can great but can also be a bit hit and miss sometimes).

      That's not an exhaustive list, it's just some of the features that I've found in Opera that make me love it. Yes, some of these features can be found in Mozilla but, equally, some of them can't.

      And while Opera might not be free, it's not exactly a rip-off either. True, there is an ad-supported version that won't cost you anything (and that doesn't impact on your surfing speed - check out the Opera website to find out why) but when a product's this good and "just works", why not support the developers by buying it?

      If you haven't already tried Opera then do it right away. Give it a month or two and you'll never want to go back to MSIE, Netscape, Mozilla or whatever else you've been using.
      • Which features can't be found in Mozilla?

        Notes can't be, but that's not a huge loss in my humble opinion. There are possible better alternatives (notepad, vim, ...)

        Mozilla's type ahead [mozilla.org] sounds far better than fast forward [opera.com].

        Everything else is supported in Mozilla...

        • It means that 36 keys or so on my keyboard that could be used for a variety of navigation/other functions are instead reserved for one single function. To me this seems an incredibly inefficient way of using the keyboard.
          • Selecting a link to go to is by definition the most important interaction there is with a browser. If you don't browse sans-mouse very often, it may not be worth it to you to lose all those keys (though you still have ctrl/alt/shift).

            I personally think (being a keyboard nut) that mouseless browsing is probably faster for the large majority of pages out there. But even without that extremist view, I think that it's a pretty straightforward argument that least a portion (eg. this [google.com] or this [imdb.com]) of webpages are

        • Re:Lost it's appeal? Are you kidding? (Score:5, Informative)

          by critter_hunter ( 568942 ) <critter_hunter&hotmail,com> on Monday May 19, 2003 @08:59PM (#5995864)

          Opera has a feature similar to type-ahead. Type ctrl+j to open a list of links in the page. Type in letters - the list of links will decrease as you type in new letters to display only those containing the sequence of letter you've specified (similar to the Jump feature in Winamp (and I believe, XMMS)

          The list of features the parent has posted are the features your grandmother would use. Opera has a lot more features than that - excellent keyboard navigation, incredibly configurable interface, the ability to change your Quick Preferences (UA string, pop-up blocking, toggling Java/JavaScript/Background Music/Plugins/Gif Animation, cookies, referrer logging and proxy servers) in a few keypresses, image zooming, Navigation Bar (allowing you to get to a document's related document (link rel = First, Previous, Next, Last, Home, Index, Search etc). Then there's Kiosk mode (allowing you to securely setup a browsing computer in a public place), all the neat things for developpers (such as the ability to see what your page would look like when viewed from a PDA, or to validate your page by pressing alt+ctrl+v), the useful user stylesheet they provide (Accessibility layout, Debug with outline and Hide certain-sized elements, in particular are nice) and tons of things I'm just forgetting or haven't even discovered yet.

          Opera 7 is light, fast, incredibly efficient and full of features - well worth the money. Now that it's (officially) out on Linux, I'll be able to take advantage of their multiple platform discount :)

          • Re:Lost it's appeal? Are you kidding? (Score:4, Informative)

            by interiot ( 50685 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @09:33PM (#5996062) Homepage
            Mozilla also has most of those features. They may not be as straightforward or as immediately available as in Opera (eg. may require downloading a module, hacking the prefs file, etc.) but in a sense, this is one of Mozilla's strenghths, at least for programmers/hackers (not grandmothers).

            Besides being open source and having the C source availalbe, Mozilla contains approx 150,000 lines or 4.5mb (uncompressed) of javascript code. Its object hierarchy [mozilla.org] is very accessible [mozilla.org] and can be easily reconfigured [paperlined.org]. New modules can alter the existing set of javascript in infinite ways.

            So, while it's likely harder to tweak Mozilla to exactly suit your needs, in the long run, it's much much more flexible than opera, and because it has a larger marketshare [uiuc.edu], its features will eventually easily surpass Opera's. Mozilla may always be a step behind in terms of speed, but in terms of features, it definitely won't.

            • In fact, dare I say it, Mozilla vs. Opera seems to be sort of like Emacs vs. Vi.
              • For a long time, vi was proprietary.
              • Vi is light weight and fast.
              • Emacs is an operating system that just happens to have an editor written for it.
              • Emacs is seen as a pinacle of open source efforts by some, and as a nth-degree unnecessary bloat by others.
            • The 'market share' here doesn't account for all of those folks who set their Opera to appear as IE to avoid problems with certain web sites. Like I do.

              Max

        • Re:Lost it's appeal? Are you kidding? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @11:44PM (#5996627) Homepage
          Who cares if they can be found in Mozilla or not? This article isn't about Mozilla - it's about Opera.

          In any event, Opera is still much, much faster than Mozilla, and it looks like it always will be.

          The real question here is: what makes Mozilla more appealing than Opera? That it's free and open source? Big - fucking - deal.

          Max

  • Flash, Opera, and Firebird? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:16PM (#5995314)
    From what I've read, people have had 50/50 success with getting flash working correctly. Sort of the same thing that's been haunting Firebird/Phoenix.

    So my question is, have you gotten Flash to run correctly under the new Opera, and more importantly, why are there so many problems with these fringe browsers and Flash?

    Loomis

    • Re:Flash, Opera, and Firebird? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:25PM (#5995360) Homepage
      I'd have to venture that part of the problem, if you want to call it that, is that a good portion of users that use "fringe" browsers don't WANT flash, and so don't encounter any problem. I certainly don't need advertisements barking at me, so I would consider having Flash not work a bonus.

      Just a thought.
    • It's really not that hard...grab flash plugin, untar, run installer script, choose directory. kaboom.
    • "Sort of the same thing that's been haunting Firebird/Phoenix."

      I've never had a problem with Flash on either Linux or Windows in the last year in which I've been using various builds of Mozilla/Phoenix full time.

      If you can't get it to work stop by Mozillazine.

      "why are there so many problems with these fringe browsers and Flash?"

      I dunno maybe Flash just sucks? Why don't you ask why so many websites are shoving useless Flash animations down our throats? I end up killing Flash on 99% of websites I visit be
      • I dunno maybe Flash just sucks? Why don't you ask why so many websites are shoving useless Flash animations down our throats? I end up killing Flash on 99% of websites I visit because it ends up just getting in the way.

        Maybe this [zombo.com] can help in liking flash a bit more?
        The only limit is yourself! (And Opera 7)
    • because if it was anymore than 50% the justice department might audit macromedia and find that M$ is one of their biggest investors?

  • It's easy to be fast... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikol ( 121322 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:31PM (#5995388)
    ...when you don't care about being correct. I grabbed a copy of 7.11 to see what's what. It's still blazingly fast, but can't render DOM/JS heavy content that both Mozilla and MSIE can.
    • Rather than just some assertions?
      Opera simply works in the vast majority of cases for me.
      • When I was trying Opera 7.0x for Windows, I noticed that many sites did not render properly. Those sites tended to use fairly simple HTML. For example, on the front page of Slashdot, italic letters had their descenders but off on the left side of the text.

        The sites that used JS/DOM rendered correctly but were very sluggish. For example, try to navigate the menus at the PGA Tour website [pgatour.com] in Opera 7 and in another browser such as Mozilla or IE. Opera is so slow it's nearly unusable.

      • <fieldset>
        <legend>
        Opera doesn't support fieldsets
        </legend>
        It's something I use. Oh well.
        </fieldset>

  • No Mac Opera 7 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by runenfool ( 503 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:32PM (#5995395)
    It looks like they have indeed given up on working on the Mac version.

    http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/index.dml? pl atform=mac

    I don't think a lot of Mac users will miss it, however. With Safari doing the things that people would have bought Opera for, its a tough sell. Of course, Opera could have made it better for themselves by making a browser that wasn't dog slow on the Mac.
    • There's no evidence that Opera will not release version 7 for Mac, only that the current version for the Mac is version 6. Opera always releases the new version of its software for Windows first, then ports it to other platforms. Opera 7 for Windows was released in January 2003, and the Linux port was released in May 2003. It may be a few more months before there's any sign of a Mac version.

    • Re:No Mac Opera 7 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Creosote ( 33182 ) *
      It may be that few Mac-only users will miss a decent Opera version, but it's a loss to people who move around from Mac to Windows to Linux. I used (and paid for) Opera when I was predominantly working on a Windows desktop, and used the Linux version from time to time. Last year when I migrated to OS X for my work platform I tried to stick with Opera, but the Mac version was so deficient and buggy that I shifted to Mozilla on all platforms; I preferred Opera's navigational modes and shortcuts, but cross-plat

  • Ads (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:39PM (#5995431) Homepage
    I happened to notice this morning

    ... when I got to work at

    Opera Software ASA
    Waldemar Thranes gate 98
    NO-0175 OSLO
    NORWAY

    ... that the new version for Linux was released! Imagine that!

  • I guess it is a sign of the times, when the latest Opera versions for Linux are released much sooner then the same release for OS X.

  • My word (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @07:57PM (#5995523)
    Opera 7 for Linux has been released.

    [checks to see if Satan is skating]

  • Not trying to be a troll here.. I really liked Opera 6.x, but I always found the fonts difficult to read, so I ended up using Mozilla more frequently. Have there been many (any?) improvements with 7.11 that don't require a lot of adjustments to the default settings?

  • All very well... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @08:41PM (#5995771) Homepage
    Cookie manager, password manager, skinning, fine, fine.

    This is the part I actually care about:

    The standards support in Opera 7 has been improved with added support for DOM level 2 and CSS2; improved ECMAScript and HTML 4.01 support; and complete WML 1.3 and 2.0 support. Opera 7 also handles non-standard pages using DHTML, giving Opera's millions of old and new users a hassle-free Internet experience.

    That is what's important to me. What I ultimately want to hear is that Opera can render everything Internet Explorer 6.0 can, if not more. Most websites are designed with IE in mind--like it or not, the dominant browser drives website innovation, not the W3C. It's not right, but that's how it is.

    The only way I would ever switch to Opera would be if I knew I was going to have the same, or better, viewing functionalty as IE. It looks as if they're finally making progress in this respect.

    • Re:All very well... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @11:51PM (#5996650) Homepage
      the dominant browser drives website innovation

      The dominant browser drives website *stagnation*. It's the maverick that drives innovation - in *any* area of human endeavor.

      Max

    • The standards support in Opera 7 has been improved with added support for DOM level 2 and CSS2; improved ECMAScript and HTML 4.01 support; and complete WML 1.3 and 2.0 support. Opera 7 also handles non-standard pages using DHTML, giving Opera's millions of old and new users a hassle-free Internet experience.

      That is what's important to me. What I ultimately want to hear is that Opera can render everything Internet Explorer 6.0 can, if not more.

      I hope you realize you are asking for two different things:

      1

  • The irony... (Score:3, Funny)

    by KevinIsOwn ( 618900 ) <herrkevin@@@gmail...com> on Monday May 19, 2003 @08:41PM (#5995777) Homepage
    Ironically enough, my Opera crashed on me when I viewed this... Looks like there's still some work to do ;)

  • As someone who paid for Opera 5.0 . . (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alhaz ( 11039 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @08:53PM (#5995831) Homepage
    I will not be upgrading to 7.0 any time soon.

    Not just because i'd have to upgrade my registration key to get rid of the ads, but because the entire ui just feels dumb. They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

    I don't like the new UI. If they release a skin that makes it look and behave like opera 6 (or, better yet, 5), maybe I might consider it then, but they also dumbed down the configuration interface.

    Great to hear that it's a complete rewrite. I guess now they'll never fix the ECMA bugs in 6.12.

  • Opera now features opt-mod left-scrolling (Score:3, Insightful)

    by westyvw ( 653833 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @08:54PM (#5995837)
    This is something I have been waiting for forever. I mean I dont mind the plain opt for scroll, but the opt-mod in transparency is JUST KICK ASS when attached to the left scroll device feature. Man it used to be gustures, but I can really see this taking aff as more users find ways to use it!

  • I love Opera 7 but.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by marcushnk ( 90744 ) <senectus@gmaiCOWl.com minus herbivore> on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @12:39AM (#5996771) Journal
    Every win2k machine I have ever installed it on I have to turn of JAVA support or the broweser crashed constantly.. kinda sad actually.

    Oh well..

  • Opera for USB Memory Sticks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mubarmij ( 176563 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @03:19AM (#5997184)
    I have installed Opera on my USB memory stick. Now I can just launch it in my office, home, an internet cafe.. and even when I am not connected to the internet, and it will open with all the pages I have last viewed the exact way I have had them before removing the USB stick.

    This is possible because Opera has two great features:

    1. On Windows at least (I have no idea about the Linux version), it installs cleanly to a directory. There are no hard coded registry keys or such. Everything is under the installation directory.

    2. It has a great crash recovery feature. If a PC (or just Opera) crashes for whatever reason, I just relaunch it and it will get me back to exactly where I was before the crash, and all the pages will load from the up-to-the-minute cache.

    If you want to do the same, here is the trick:

    1. Install Opera to a directory in your USB memory stick, ie, K:\Opera

    2. Configure all that you want.

    3. That is it. Now, the only thing that is hard coded in the installation is the drive letter (K in the example above), so when you go to the other machine, just issue the DOS command "SUBST G: K:\".

    This will give you a new drive named K: pointing to the actual USB drive, which is G: in the example.

    Now I have my favorite browser, my links, and the web papges I was reading last all in my key ring. Can't say I can do this with any other browser.

    Have fun.

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