Opera Free as in Beer

nekura writes "Just last month, Opera was celebrating their 10 year anniversary by giving away free registration codes; now they've trumped that by offering Opera for free. Quoth their site, 'Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made todays milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.' Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now has virtually no reason not to."

Torrents

[BrianJOpera]

torrents [opera.com]
save the servers :P

Re:Torrents

[endoplasmicMessenger]

BTW, Opera has torrent support built in. So once you install it, you can go get the torrent!

Oh, wait...

I like it, though won't use it

[sgant]

I do like Opera, but it's missing the two main features I love about Firefox. Google Toolbar and Adblock. I usually don't use Adblock all that much cause I'm one of those people that actually click on ads on web pages I use...you know, to give them a little income and as a way of a "thank you". But some places the ads are just way out of control so Adblock comes in handy.

But there's no way I could function without the Google Toolbar now. I use it all the time, not to mention the built in spell checker. If O

Good

[Metasquares]

They had no hope of competing with Firefox and IE, despite the merits of their browser, so long as they charged for it while the other two were free.

Re:Good

[varmittang]

I'm just wondering how they are going to make money now since the banners were supporting the freebees and the subscribtion or whatever for the paying customers. Are they going to do a thing where you have to pay for adding on personnal extentions to Opera or something?

Re:Good

[Cyn]

I don't think Opera was making much money with their free desktop browser anyway.

Their main profits are from embedded devices (PDAs and the like) that buy licenses to use their browser, because it's fast and small and has good support of all the desired features these days.

Course, I haven't seen a recent version of Netfront - they may be losing ground to them, or they may still be way ahead...

Re:Good

[Koiu Lpoi]

Until they release a non-smartphone Pocket PC version, they're losing ground.

Re:Good

[WhiteWolf666]

Yeah, I have a feeling there new business model is:

A) Make money off embedded devices
B) Provide 'premium' support to large corporations who are willing to switch to Opera for their default browser. Customize the browser based upon the corporations needs.

Re:Good

[Tyler Eaves]

My impression is that the real money was in licensing it to cell phone makers anyway.

Re:Good

[FireFury03]

My impression is that the real money was in licensing it to cell phone makers anyway.

I've not understood how this works - Sony Ericsson "recommend" using Opera on the P900, yet they bundle the crumby Symbian browser instead. Why don't they just bundle the devices with Opera on the ROM since presumably they've paid a licence fee for it (so their customers can install Opera for free).

Re:Good

[packman]

I have a P910i, and Opera is supplied on CD. It's a rather big application (2/3mb if I recall well) after being installed. For a symbian phone, that's big, so I can understand they choose not to by default.
They can't strip out the "default" symbian browser cause that's rather integrated and heavily used in the UIQ interface. Opera will however be the default browser on UIQ 3.0 platforms where it will replace the symbian browser.

Re:Good

[Patik]

They can't strip out the "default" symbian browser cause that's rather integrated and heavily used in the UIQ interface.

This sounds oddly familiar.

Re:Good

[It doesn't come easy]

According to Opera, their revenue was equally split between advertising, the fee, and search engines (not sure what this is -- does Opera run their own search engine?). Considering that no more than 3% of Opera users ever paid the fee, and considering you can still pay for premium support, it doesn't sound like it will take much to make up the difference. I, for example, never tried Opera becuase of the fee. Now I will install it and use it or Firefox, depending on which one gives the best experience (IE lost any chance of consideration as long as it is the security problem that it is -- and as far as I can see Microsoft will keep IE tightly integrated into the OS and thereby maintain it as the premium vector for security issues in Windows. It's bad enough I can't remove it, I'm surely not going to use it). I would bet that many others will do the same for Opera.

Re:Good

[Echnin]

Most of those they get paid for, yes. That's why editing search.ini to add your own search engines is not an officially supported feature even though it's easy to do. There's even a standalone program to do it. Where's the Firefox extension that does this, and also lets me search from the address bar by adding a short name as a prefix to the search word (for example, "i britney spears" will open a Google Image Search for Britney Spears, or "je bukkorosu" will search for the word "bukkorosu" in a Japanese-En

Re:Good

[Matthew Bafford]

Where's the Firefox extension that does this, and also lets me search from the address bar by adding a short name as a prefix to the search word

That's a built in feature. Try it - go g firefox quick search from address bar. It should search Google by default.

Re:Good

[Ryosen]

Did you try doing that? I'm guessing that you didn't.

Typing "g firefox" as you suggested lands me on http://firefox.g.hatena.ne.jp/popona/ [hatena.ne.jp] <-- don't click on it

If Firefox is searching google from the address bar, then it is going to the "I Feel Lucky" option.

Opera, by comparison, just does a regular search, showing the results in the main window. Furthermore, Opera supports a number of search engines in this manner, having different codes for each one and is extensible, too.

I had been a huge fan of Opera since I discovered it in 1995. I happily tolerated the rigid CSS implementation that would make it "incompatible" with other sites designed with IE's bugginess and broken features in mind. I've since left Opera for Firefox with nary a look back. I only wish that a search extension similar to Opera's would be made available. I'm not sure, however, that an extension can intercept requests from the address bar (just glanced over the API - I might be wrong about that).

It's unfortunate that Opera has to go free. They have a great product. They're just in the wrong market. Here's hoping that they don't suffer the same fate as Netscape.

Re:Good

[Ryosen]

I forgot to mention, for those wanting to change how Firefox invokes Google from the command line, nav to about:config, search for "keyword.url" and change the value to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=, then restart Firefox.

Anything entered on the address bar that is not recognized by FF to be a domain name or URL will be sent to Google instead as a standard search.

Re:Good

[Excelsior]

I had been a huge fan of Opera since I discovered it

I had been a huge fan of the Internet since I created it.

-Al

Re:Good

[Hungry Student]

Typing g <searchterm> automatically runs an IFL search, typing google <searchterm> runs a proper google search.

You can create your own ones of these. Create a bookmark, edit it and choose a keyword. Edit the url of the bookmark and add %s where you want your search term to appear i.e. Keyword google.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%s

Now, by typing google slashdot opera into my address bar, I search google for "slashdot opera". An example of a custom keyword search is the one I use for searching the PHP manual. I have the bookmark set as http://www.php.net/%s and the keyword as f. By typing f mysql_connect Firefox opens the manual page for mysql_connect on the php website.

For your image search, you'd want something like
http://images.google.com/images?q=%s, and set the bookmark keyword to i. Then type i britney spears and thus, it will load.

All very handy.

Re:Good

[Bogtha]

They had no hope of competing with Firefox and IE, despite the merits of their browser, so long as they charged for it while the other two were free.

People have been saying the same thing for as long as Opera has been around - "nobody will pay when the competition's free!" And yet they've managed to stay in business for the past ten years. Maybe people are willing to pay for quality software even if there's a cheaper alternative.

Re:Good

[NDPTAL85]

The profit doesn't come from the desktop browser so yes it is a failed business model. Without their mobile sales they would have gone out of business a long time ago.

Re:Good

[Rits]

Without the desktop browser and a couple of million users, Opera would not have been able to create the mobile version it has now in the first place. Opera is better than other mobile browsers in getting as much of the real web onto the small screen as will fit.

Re:Good

[Bogtha]

Giving away something for free which was previously charged for is typically what happens when the product is obsolete and uncompetitive.

That's just one possible reason to give something away. There are plenty of others. Loss-leaders, for example. Added value to other products is another example. When Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer it wasn't because it was obsolete and uncompetitive, was it?

No

[BeanThere]

Giving away something for free which was previously charged for is typically what happens when the product is obsolete and uncompetitive.

I'm uninstalling my TCP/IP stack then, apparently it's obsolete.

(OK, seriously though: It's called "software commoditization". If you look at a price/demand elasticity curve, there are two main possible reasons why the price of a particular commodity may approach zero: (1) the demand side is approaching zero, or (2) the supply side is approaching infinity. You suggest (

Re:Good

[loconet]

Make no mistake, IE is not free. It is as free as the bread they serve you at restaurants (stale, cold, moldy bread at that).

Re:Good

[bcmm]

IE is not free, even as in beer. IE for Mac is now abandoned. Recent versions of IE work (legally) only in Windows. Being included in Windows is not the same as being free (again ignoring widespread violation of relevant laws).

Re:Good

[R.D.Olivaw]

yep open-source kills another business.

I would like to mention that the first free browser was from a commercial company and was intended to kill another business.

worth mentioning as well is the fact that the opera business is not dead. They just realised that giving the browser for free would increase their userbase and by extension other revenue streams.

I dub thee 'sir troll'

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't let this pass. The first free browser was WorldWideWeb [w3.org] in 1991 from none other than T. Berners-Lee himself.

Cello [wikipedia.org] also predates Netscape.

Re:What merits?

[masklinn]

I had great hopes for Opera, so I'm the more bitter about how they, IMO, misprioritized development. In comparison, the FireFox team did everything right. It took a few years waiting for Mozilla to come around, but now it's here and it's solid, while Opera isn't even small or fast any longer. Too bad.

As much as I love Firefox, using it as my main browser and all, that has to be corrected.

• Opera's installer is lighter than Firefox's
• Opera takes about 20% of the memory a regular Firefox takes, and if you use firefox for a few hours on content-filled website you'll end with the fox hogging 200Mb of RAM while Opera will still be far under 50Mb
• Opera's javascript engine is about 15-20 times faster than Gecko's
• Standards support of Opera is comparable to that of Gecko.

Opera is still lighter than Firefox, and still faster, by a far margin.

Re:What merits?

[kesuki]

just a few small corrections here.
your first point is right on the money, ~5 MB (opera) to ~15 MB (firefox)

point 2. Does not compute.
Even after 3 days of reading slashdot the most I've ever gotten firefox* up to is about 90MB with 2 windows and 24 tabs open. Also, on a 'fresh' load of the identical 'saved in tabs' bookmarks firefox uses 12MB less RAM than opera. albeit opera is better at prolonged usage in terms of ram, since it rarely if ever goes past 50MB, while firefox can easily go to 60-90 MB

point 3 D

Re:What merits?

[masklinn]

point 2. Does not compute. Even after 3 days of reading slashdot the most I've ever gotten firefox* up to is about 90MB with 2 windows and 24 tabs open. Also, on a 'fresh' load of the identical 'saved in tabs' bookmarks firefox uses 12MB less RAM than opera. albeit opera is better at prolonged usage in terms of ram, since it rarely if ever goes past 50MB, while firefox can easily go to 60-90 MB

Bare firefox doesn't cut it, it's stripped to the bone compared to Opera's feature. My fox, the one I want to use and that makes me keep in instead of switching to opera, has something like 40 extensions. These hog a lot of memory, yet are what makes Firefox superior in my opinion. Bare firefox blows, it's still slower than opera and doesn't have a tenth of Opera's features.

point 3 Dubious claims... considering the entire interface of firefox is rendered by the gecko engine using java etc... perhaps on a slow computer, with low ram you could mamage to get 15x faster perfomance out of opera than out of gecko/firefox... but on the typical PC being sold in stores today the margin is going to be quite slim, between the two engines.

XUL is based on Javascript, not firefox, and I don't give a damn about what you think, the reality is that Opera is faster in 95% of the DOM operations, and has much better optimized loops than firefox (proof of that one being that reverse-counting in a for loop yields 50% improvement in looping speed for firefox, and just about nothing for Opera). Try these getElementsByClass emulations if you don't believe me [masklinnscans.free.fr].

i run firefox pretty well from a 'stock' configuration, no plugins, no extentions, just a browser. claiming that firefox 'easily consumes 200MB' is quite misleading, as only a firefox bloated down with dozens of 'feature extending' extenions will consume that much ram. hardly fair to blame the browser for the extentions bloated RAM use.

Yes I can, of course I can, extensions and extensibility are what allow firefox to be above Opera for most users, without extensions Firefox is little more than a standard-compliant IE, the only thing is has being the JS console (which Opera has) and the DOM inspector (which opera, to my knowledge, doesn't have)...

No reason? I think not.

[rockclimber]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

Except those who want free as in speech.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[LLuthor]

Its easier to get Opera to make a change to their browser than Firefox. I needed a specific CSS feature that was used by my company on its pages, and neither FF or Opera supported it properly. I submitted the bug to Opera and to FF. I also wrote a patch later that week for FF. The FF developers completely ignored me and my patch and any further requests. Meanwhile, Opera's next beta had the problem fixed with no further interaction from me, except for an email request for a way to reproduce the bug. FF is open-source only in name and the fact that I can see the code. Every part of the development is totally closed.

One question:

[hummassa]

was the CSS feature in question a standard CSS feature, or something non-standard your company used from IE?

Re:One question:

[ceeam]

Oh, don't tell me that Mozilla is so pure about it. They even have now document.all['..'] in quirks mode (IIRC).

Re:No reason? I think not.

[poptones]

What are you talking about? The fact you HAD the source code to the firefox browser allowed you to solve the problem within your company with no dependance upon anyone else. Whether or not the Firefox developers moved your patch into the distribution, you still had the problem solved within your infrastructure because you were able to patch Firefox yourself.

Open source does not mean the project leaders will solve every problem for the asking. Open source means you have the freedom and the information required to solve the problem yourself.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[TheRealMindChild]

What if this on a website that clients use? It is a lot easier to say "Use the latest browers" than "If you want to use firefox, you have to use this custom built version I made so it would be compatible"?

Re:No reason? I think not.

[FireFury03]

What if this on a website that clients use? It is a lot easier to say "Use the latest browers" than "If you want to use firefox, you have to use this custom built version I made so it would be compatible"?

Sorry, if you need to use a bleeding edge browser to view a public web site then that site is essentially broken - you need to provide support to browsers at least a year or so old if you want the site reachable to the masses.

Your right and wrong

[SmallFurryCreature]

You see being easy to use is NOT what opensource is all about. It is the fact that YOU can modify YOUR copy of the sourcecode so that YOUR binary will do what YOU want it to do.

It does not mean YOU can alter MY copy of MY sourcecode. Or even to force me to distribute YOUR alteration.

Sure in the case were you are unable to distribute your alteration to those who need it it sucks donkey balls. Just as IE's total domination of the browser market sucks donkey balls because it still means I can't use many many many features that work beautifull in every real browser out there.

So firefox in this case showed both how opensource works, namely that he was able to modify his own copy of it to do what he wanted AND showed why doing doing web development is such a pain in the ass. Because ultimately you can't develop for the browser on your machine, you have to write for the browser installed on your clients machine. Even if that is netscape 4.

Next time I get a snide remark about a C programmer building 100% clientside software for Windows 2000 only I am gonna go postal. PHP/ASP/Perl may be joke languages but crosscoding between browsers is the ultimate challenge. Doom3 engine, PAH! Try just getting a bunch of left floated images to center. Now that takes brains.

What do you mean I sound bitter?

Re:No reason? I think not.

[Bogtha]

Whether or not the Firefox developers moved your patch into the distribution, you still had the problem solved within your infrastructure because you were able to patch Firefox yourself.

That's a distinctly sub-optimal solution. What happens when the next version of Firefox is released? Is he supposed to make the changes to the new version too? And after that? Is he supposed to maintain a separate fork for as long as he needs this feature?

Open source does not mean the project leaders will solve every problem for the asking.

No, but there's at least a reasonable expectation that they'll apply a patch that adds a missing feature.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[Jugalator]

Open source means you have the freedom and the information required to solve the problem yourself.

If you're a developer with deep insight in the Mozilla codebase.

Bull

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the fundamental issue I have with the F/OSS mindeset--you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else.

First of all, let me be the 5 millionth person to point out that not every user has the skills, tools, time, and inclination needed to fix things. (Yes, you were responding to a person who did provide a fix, but I'm talking about the more genral case.)

Second, the inherent selfishness and short sightedness of this F/OSS mindset is very damaging to the whole community's image, and ultimately, to the success of projects. What the hell ever happened to putting the user first, to valuing and maximizing the benefit the project provides to non-developers? Until the F/OSS community stops acting like a bunch of petulant kids and starts behaving like responsible adults, this will be a very serious problem, one that many people within the community don't even see.

Re:Bull

[bunratty]

This is the fundamental issue I have with the F/OSS mindeset--you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else.

No, that's not the F/OSS mindset, just your misunderstanding of it.

Do car manufacturers expect drivers to fix their own cars? In some cases they do, but most people just take their cars into a shop for even the most minor maintenance.

The F/OSS mindset compares open software to normal cars as we have them today, and closed software to a car with its hood loc

Re:Bull

[kabocox]

What the hell ever happened to putting the user first, to valuing and maximizing the benefit the project provides to non-developers?

That's for that other software building model. Closed source and pay some one else to do it.
If you don't like the way an F/OSS project has neglected your bugs/features, then you fork and fix it yourself. No one else is going to do it for you unless you pay them.

Right... but wrong

[poptones]

The incentive to put users first comes when I have to earn a buck. If I can't present *my* client with a better solution than the other guy then I lose the sale.

THAT is where the user enters the picture. Open source software gives developers a box of quality tools that developers can then offer to their customers.

If you are using redhat and redhat's support team then you are using redhat's version of firefox - NOT the version of firefox you download from firefox.com. if you are using ubuntu and ubuntu's upd

But We Do It For Free!

[Makarakalax]

I spend a lot of time catering my software to its users, and the vast majority of them are nice to me in return. However unfortunately there are plenty of arseholes (like you?) who seem to think my time is solely for their benefit, that they owe me nothing, and that they can expect everything from me.

Yes you can expect quality user-orientated software from projects that advertise these features. But you can't expect this from all software and you can't go round acting like it's somehow owed to you.

Yes its t

Re:No reason? I think not.

[SWroclawski]

Every part of the development is totally closed.

What you really mean is, "I would like to get someone else to change thier code and they didn't want to!"

The whole point in this Free Software stuff is, if you think this is a bad thing, you're free to make a competing version. If enough people have trouble like what you're describing, they will join forces and either your fork will work out, or you'll be able to convince Firefox to change thier minds.

Thier policies toward code changes have nothing to do with

Re:No reason? I think not.

[black mariah]

Thier policies toward code changes have nothing to do with thier license agreement.

Which just goes to show that open source is pretty fucking useless unless you want to fork the entire fucking codebase of everything you submit a patch for.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[BZ]

Could you please point me to the Mozilla bug in question? Better late than never...

Re:No reason? I think not.

[91degrees]

"Free" has two meanings. The first is free as in cost. Free beer is an example where free means "costs nothing", so some people use this as a shorthand explanation. The other meaning is free in the sense of freedom. i.e. Unrestricted. Free Speech is free in this way, so some people say free as in speech to illustrate they mean this definition.

Software is free in either of these ways. Internet Explorer is free to download so is free as in cost (Free as in Beer). Linux is free to copy and modify, so it's free in the sense of freedom (Free as in speech).

It also has certain positive connotations that many free software advocates like. Free speech is regarded as a good thing. Associating free software with free speech gives it a positive image.

Hope this helps.

Free Opera??

[Artie_Effim]

Now if only the local troupe would also follow suit, oh wait, no Wagner. Nevermind.

Next Step

[someguy456]

Obviously Opera has realized that a browser with a cost can no longer survive in this post-2000 market. However, I wonder how long it will take until they open source it?

Re:Next Step

[sH4RD]

Never, as long as Opera still makes it's real money on mobile phones powered by the Opera engine.

Re:Next Step

[plumby]

The real question is - are they going to bother updating their desktop browser any more if their profits all come from the mobile version?

Re:Next Step

[MosesJones]

How about "Never"... Opera actually make a PROFIT out of their browser business.. which is certainly better than "survival". Their main profit comes from their device platform but some people are indeed willing to pay for a better quality browser.

Opera is much better, and quicker, to use than either of the other popular browsers out there, and some organisations will continue to pay for Opera based on that responsiveness and security. More often people will pay for the mobile browser however. If there is common code between the two then Opera would be releasing the crown jewels for free and would cease to be a VIABLE company.

Open Source is NOT always the only answer, some people have to make a living.

Can someone please explain to me...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

the advantages of using Opera over Firefox?

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Errtu76]

smaller binary name == less chance on RSI while executing it from the command line

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Errtu76]

"sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/ff"

It was a joke, but okay:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/opera /usr/bin/o

i win again! :P

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[simetra]

• pop-up blocker, mouse gestures, etc, built in; no need to download/trust/install extensions from god knows who
  
• changing settings, you don't need to close and re-open it every bloody time
  
• built-in IRC client
  
• built-in email client
  
• built-in bit torrent client
  
• highly-configurable thru gui, not through text file hacks
  
• produced by an actual company with an actual interest in quality moreso than freedom/clunky-breakiness
  

These are the main reasons I can think of, besides the features that are probably common to Opera and Firefox, such as being very fast (I didn't use FF long enough to tell if it was as fast as Opera), having community-built themes, etc.

Basically, it comes "out of the box" ready to go and requires much, much, much less dicking around with to get it Just The Way I Like. This is really important to actual users, believe it or not.

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Jugalator]

built-in IRC client
built-in email client
built-in bit torrent client

With a total size at around 5 MB, by the way.

And also a smaller memory footprint it seems from some quick testing.

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Fweeky]

"built-in bit torrent client"

This is still only in the 8.10/8.02 previews, right? I don't see it in the changelogs or feature lists for 8.50.

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[adolfojp]

Imagine Firefox with most of its plugins in a smaller, more responsive package, and not feeling that you are using a Frankenbrowser.

Now imagine being able to disable any page's design so that you can improve readability. Also imagine being able to store a number of pages in sessions instead of individual bookmarks. Imagine a button that stores the links of the pages that you have just closed in case that you want to open them again. Imagine true page zooming, a RSS reader, irc chat, and a gmail like mail client in less than 4 MB.

Whenever I use anything else I feel as if I am not getting the whole internet experience.

Cheers,
Adolfo

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[endoplasmicMessenger]

One Opera feature that I'm addicted to: Undo on tab close.

After having drilled ten levels deep into a web site I accidently close the tab. With Opera, just Undo and you're back where you were.

On Firefox, well, lets hope you remember how you got to that tenth level.

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Fourier]

FYI, someone did write an Undo Close Tab [extensionsmirror.nl] extension for Firefox.

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[slapout]

See 30 Days to Becoming an Opera7 Lover [tntluoma.com]

Opera does a lot more than most people realize.

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[cgenman]

As an avid Opera user, and a fan of Firefox, they can similar to a light or average user. I'll assume here that you're familiar with both.

I like to think of Opera as a highly configurable tool for heavy users who like to get their hands dirty with their tools, and Firefox for everyone else. Opera is highly configurable, has nice data semi-permanence features, and there are a million advanced options that speed up use for people willing to learn about what it can do.

If you don't like where the menu bar is, you can move it to the bottom of the screen, or to the sides, or you can move the buttons to a different bar, or move the buttons from other bars to that one. You can liberally re-arrange everything about the interface to suit your particular tastes, and can add and remove buttons and functionality as you please. I've seen people who have all of the functionality of the browser on a single pop-up address bar on the side of the window, and others that spread everything around onto dozens of little areas.

And there are quick and easy buttons available in the interface for everything: from zooming to above 100% to changing your "identify as" to toggling javascript. Basically all of these behave intelligently. If you hold the zoom drop-down button you get a standard drop-down menu to select the zoom resolution you want, and if you click on it, it automatically resets to 100%. And you move buttons by simply grabbing and moving them, which is very easy and convienient.

If you're comfortable editing a simple menu.ini file, you can add or subtract menu options. As a real-world example, you can add menu options for "open in I.E." "Validate HTML" "Validate Links" and "Spell Check" pretty easily to the right-click menu. While these can't be completely new code, you can pipe existing functions together in new ways to create things that do new behaviors.

Unlike Firefox's extensions you can't add extensive code that doesn't already exist. You can, however, run external applications which seems to cover the extreme cases. But if I needed to code an HTML editor in an extension, for example, I would recommend Firefox as a base over Opera. But for nearly all other personal customization, I'd go with Opera.

Data permanence is also a big issue in Opera. If you go backwards and forwards in Firefox, you lose any text you may have typed into a comment box. If you go backwards and forwards in Opera, your comment stays right where it was. On Slashdot this lets you go a couple of links back, launch a new window with the story in it, and go back forwards to what you were writing. It also caches the rendered page, so that going forwards and backwards is instantaneous.

You can also undo closing tabs. I can't tell you the number of times this has come in handy. Unfortunately, comment fields are not permanent across tab or application closures, something I wish they would fix. However, you do keep your history on that tab, which is nice. You also have windows open across sessions. If the application crashes or is accidentally closed, you can re-open it with all of your tabs still in place, and can still go back and forwards through their histories. Basically, Opera crashing is a 3 second fix, while Firefox crashing requires tediously going back through the history figuring out where all of your tabs were.

You can also save all of your open tabs or windows as a session, and can re-open sessions as bookmarks, on startup, etc.

There is also basic psuedo command line functionality, in that you can convert any *.[space]TEXT into http://www.yoursearchengine.com/search?q=TEXT [yoursearchengine.com]. "g footloose" will search google for the term "footloose". "z firefly" will search amaZon for "firefly." I personally have searches setup for ebay, friend's bulletin boards, language translators, and a whole lot else.

The mail client was the first mail client that I know of to use freestanding searches as virtual folders, but tha

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Fweeky]

I use this in Opera, not sure if it works in Firefox (last time I checked this use of content: didn't work there). I've sadly lost the original source, so if anyone recognises it...

embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"] {content:"Flash"; outline: 1px dotted gray; color: gray; background: black}
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ].zichtbaar {content: normal; outline: none}
 
body:before {
position: absolute; visibility: hidden;
background-image: url("javascript:(function(){ window.onclick = function(){ var srcElem=window.event.srcElement; var tag=srcElem.tagName; if(tag=='EMBED') srcElem.className='zichtbaar'}; })()");
content:""}

Add to your user CSS file or edit the .ini to put it in the same list as the bundled CSS files; turns Flash into ickle grey "Flash" boxes you can click on to load.

Great News for Standards Compliance

[stinerman]

I'm certainly glad that they are doing this even though I don't plan to use Opera in the near future. More alternatives will push web developers to use standards instead of just coding for IE.

Re:Great News for Standards Compliance

[morcego]

I'm not sure.

I have a feeling that a free-Opera will hurt Firefox's marketshare more than it will hurt IE's.

Yeah, right.

[Levine]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

Yeah, cause I was just biding my time with Firefox until Opera was free. Right.

My reasons for not switching.

[Alranor]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to

AdBlock Plus
BugMeNot
CustomizeGoogle
DictionarySearch
Farkit
Gmail Notifier
Nuke Anything
Plain Text Links
Switch Proxy Tool
Greasemonkey

I'm glad there's a version without the annoying advertising, but it wasn't that which was keeping me from using Opera.

Re:My reasons for not switching.

[hkmwbz]

Most of those are either available outside the browser (notifiers, etc.), or possible to do in Opera in some way (User JS to convert links in plain text files, built-in searches are there already, etc.). Greasemonkey is just the Firefox equivalent of User JS in Opera. It's rather easy to add a button to Opera which gets a BugMeNot login for the current page, too. As an example.

Just FYI.

Re:My reasons for not switching.

[Kimos]

Links to said Mozilla/Firefox extensions:

AdBlock Plus [sitesled.com]
BugMeNot [roachfiend.com]
CustomizeGoogle [customizegoogle.com]
DictionarySearch [mozdev.org]
Farkit [fark.com]
Gmail Notifier [nexgenmedia.net]
Nuke Anything [mielczarek.org]
Plain Text Links [mielczarek.org]
Switch Proxy Tool [mozilla.org]
Greasemonkey [mozdev.org]

Re:My reasons for not switching.

[porneL]

* There are some AdBlock-like Opera hacks (filter.ini, user.css/user.js) or you can use external software, like AdMuncher
* You can customize searches, google Opera Search ini editor.
* BugMeNot, Nuke Anything and alike are available as favelets, which you can drag as buttons on toolbar.
* Greasemonkey is built-in, known as UserJS and Opera software maintains scripts that fix many lame websites (IEisms, NN4-era menus, etc).
* Plain Text Links = doubleclick, choose "go to url".

Plus you may find some unique featu

Re:My reasons for not switching.

[sznupi]

http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/opera-and-f irefox-extensions [virtuelvis.com]
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/09/opera-and-f irefox-extensions-ii [virtuelvis.com]
http://userjs.org/ [userjs.org]

What were you saying again?...

Hopefully Microsoft will do this as well!

[mynickwastaken]

I hope that Microsoft will decide also to give Internet Explorer for free. My desktop is full of banners and popup windows.

And vice versa

[Guspaz]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

And anyone who wasn't on the verge of switching has virtually no reason to do so. I mean, this is all well and good, but Firefox is working rather nicely, why should I switch to Opera? How is Opera going to make my browsing experience better in a way that cannot be replicated via Firefox extensions? And how will Opera provide to me the functionality that I have via Firefox extensions that isn't part of Opera?

Re:And vice versa

[real_smiff]

hello? a browser that doesn't use 200MB RAM, 200MB VM, sometimes take minutes to restore and requires periodic restarts to get these numbers down? and is fast on slow computers. as a >1 year firefox user and advocate, seeing that firefox 1.5b hasnt really fixed these problems, i'll be trying Opera again now its free & advert free... sorry, but my time is more important than The Cause ultimately. Maybe firefox is ok for people who don't visit that many sites, or who restart often the browser/computer

Re:And vice versa

[timmyd]

Well you've only had it open since 10 this morning. I've run firefox on linux for weeks and after a few days it starts bloating especially if you have extensions that try to replicate opera's session support. Here is my current firefox process:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
16563 timmy 15 0 443m 243m 25m S 0.0 19.3 56:13.84 firefox-bin

as you can see, about 443 MB virtual memory (doesn't matter), but 243 MB resident in memory, so that is one big suc

thinking of switching?

[illtron]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to."

Who *thinks* of switching? It's not like you have to invest in new hardware.

In my experience, people get fed up with IE and just switch. There's nobody out there who's thinking, "gee, the fact that just about everything out there is better than IE is tempting...but, man I sure do like Microsoft!"

Sorry, but nobody was holding out for free Opera. If you couldn't take IE's shit for another day, you're already using Firefox, not waiting for an also-ran browser to stop charging.

Cool, but...

[inkdesign]

..how far is the ceo going to swim [opera.com] this time?

Nope, no reason at all, except...

[karlandtanya]

printing [opera.com]

Oh, and site compatability.

Seriously, I love everything about opera except printing. I browse using opera, print using firefox, and access MSIE-only sites (just a few that really don't work; most just say they don't) with konqueror.

patchwork, patchwork, patchwork.

Opera

[CastrTroy]

Opera is a really good web browser. It is fast, renders most pages really well, and has a good UI. However, the spot where FireFox beats it, is in the Extensions department. Extensions are what makes firefox the best browser out there. The Web Developer extension makes web development a breeze, and FlashBlock makes sure I don't have any animations hogging my CPU cycles unless I want to. Oh, and the Javascript Debugger is the best tool ever. It's not the best debugger, and ironically, is kind of buggy itself, but, it has saved me hours of infesting my code with alerts() in order to find out the problem.

Some info on their new revenue model

[ziggamon2.0]

Cut and paste from their investors FAQ:

1. Search partners

The Opera Browser features integrated search and shopping bars, and partner companies pay a fee to Opera every time a user utilizes the integrated search or shopping bar. Opera cooperates with a few select partners it feels can contribute value to its product and users. Deals with companies like Google, Fast, Lycos, InfoSeek, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay are showing constant growth in revenues for Opera.

2. Rendering engine as a separate product
Opera delivers a full-featured, embeddable version of its desktop browser that can be integrated into a wide range of applications. Adobe and Macromedia are important partners in this segment.

3. Opera Web Mail
Opera provides a free and a pay service Webmail. When users pay for the premium service, Opera splits the revenue with Outblaze, the company that operates the service.

It seems to me they have made a very wise choice. Being ad-free will increase the popularity of the browser tremendously, and thereby increase their incomes from sponsored search partners, like Google, which will probably more than compensate for their incomes from the paid browser, and annoying ads.

Looks splendid so far...

[TractorBarry]

Well I've just downloaded Opera 8.3 and so far my impression is that it's a splendid thing as following 10 minutes of using it there's one thing I'd like to mention...

Currently I'm posting from a works machine where you have to go through a proxy server to get to the internet. We also access a number of local intranet seites plus our own local "development" intranet (which consists of a single crappy old box)

Now out of IE, Firefox and Opera, Opera is the only browser which will allow me to browse the internet, the intranet and our local intranet.

All three browsers have identical proxy settings but both Firefox and IE won't browse to "http://ourserver" - despite there being an entry for "ourserver" in my hosts file and despite their proxy server settings specifying "ourserver" on the "no proxy for these addresses" list.

So top marks to Opera.

P.S. The only reason I didn't post this from Opera is because I've forgotten my password (which Firefox has kindly cached for me :)

Reason not to switch

[Gropo]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

Well, here's one salient reason keeping me from switching:

A certain amount of Opera's UI functionality doesn't conform to OS X (or sensible) standards. A single-click in the address field, for instance, selects the entire string. No other text manipulation field or application acts like this. It's not as though saving me those extra two clicks to select the entire string trumps everyone having to learn a new modality (and having to devote extra thought to our UI's).

I'm not sure if I like this

[slapout]

I have mixed feelings about this. Opera has so many features that (to me) it is worth paying for. I hope that they will be able to maintain it without the income it's sales generated.

On the other hand, hopefully many people will now check it out and see what a great browser it is.

Switching? Maybe not, but ...

[Random BedHead Ed]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

Well, they certainly have no reason not to try Opera. Switch? I do appreciate the open development model of competing browsers like Firefox. As someone who cares about open standards and think the web will get better the more we embrace them, I like the fact that Opera is not Microsoft. Nothing against Redmond, but it matters a lot to me that browser's design is done independently of any server's design.

I'm using the Debian 3.1 version on Ubuntu right now and have to admit it's a pretty snappy browser. It renders Slashdot nicely. I may keep playing with it, but I'm not sure I'll switch from Firefox with Deer Park coming out soon. These browsers are pretty much on par, so I think I'll take the open source one.

I feel kind of bad for Opera. That the browser is now free is an indication that the company realizes it can no longer sell its flagship product. You know, for money. That's got to hurt.

Firefox, it's not you, it's me

[skryche]

I love Firefox... it just gets better and better, and I love OSS success stories.

But I've always been happy to admit: Opera's the better browser. And now that it's completely gratis, it's going to be hard to justify my Firefox habit.

The problem with opera...

[netcrusher88]

is that they don't use standard keyboard shortcuts, i.e. F6 for jump to URL bar(FF, IE, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla), Ctrl-T (or Apple-T) for new tab (FF, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla). I have a friend who uses Opera and every time I go to show him a page I have to have him click things for me because STANDARD keyboard shortcuts DON'T WORK!!!!111one

</rant>

But I have to say, the built-in mouse gestures is a cool feature.

Re:Free is good...

[It doesn't come easy]

Free beer with every copy of Opera is best.

Re:Free is good...

[nicomen]

If you have bought a license during the last 30 days I think you are entitled to a refund.

You still get premium support if you have registered. Some people value that much more than removal of 40 pixels of ads :-)

Re:Free is good...

[d3bruts1d]

Yup... Opera has stated in the IRC, Blog, and forums that if you purchased Opera in the last 30 days you can get a full refund. I've purchased Opera no less than 5 times over the years (home, work, family, new version, etc.) and still I don't have an issue with Opera now releasing the product as free. I'll continue to support the product and the company. I like doing that for quality software.

Re:Free is good...

[mr_shifty]

Definitely.

That's the same reason I actually ordered my copy of Slackware 10.1 from the Slackware Store [slackware.com], even though it was available free for the taking.

The way I see it, I got more than a year's worth of use out of Slackware 9.1, and I didn't pay anything for that (being the first version of Slackware I tried). I figure I got way more than $39.95's worth of use, so I showed my support by actually purchasing the next release I wanted to have.

I don't have an aversion to paying for quality software.

Re:A reason not to..

[Knome_fan]

I agree that this is a reason not to use it for people who want free (as in freedom) software.
However, I think those people are clearly in the minority.

Finally, I don't like you implying that people who disagree with you on free software don't value freedom, that's just stupid and insulting.

Re:Firefox

[MysteriousPreacher]

Well FireFox is a web browser as well so you can't rule out the posibility that Opera is trying to compete with it.

Re:Future development

[bigman2003]

You make a very good point at the end....

Nothing brings out the real jerks like taking a few dollars from them. Some people really do believe that when they are purchasing software that they are not just buying what you currently offer, but that they have a right to every possible upgrade for the next 10 years. And if you don't deliver, then they will go on and on about the $35 they spent 'for this piece of crap.'

That is where the software subscription comes in. A lot of people (especially here on Slashd

Re:Sorry...

[jaymzter]

By 2000 Opera was old. I was using it in 1998, and then it was the bee's knees. You could (and still can) surf the web normally without ever touching your mouse. Opera taught me how much time is actually wasted by using a mouse, and what a crutch it is.

Re:no reason?

[Karhgath]

Unless you are taking an ideological stance in which you do not use any closed/proprietary software(including windows, office, etc.), in which case it's justified, or if you are a Firefox developper and need the source, I don't see that as a strong argument. The fact that it's open source doesn't mean much beside for development and ideological reasons. In the end it's a product.

Now, you may not like Opera for other reasons, or you are happy with firefox and don't see why you'd switch, that's fine. But not trying it because it's not open source is pretty stupid IMHO.

Now, since they are mostly similar, I don't see a lot of people switching from one to another, but that's something else and has nothing to do in the fact that it's open source or not. Those using FF don't see why they should switch, and Oepra users don't see why they should switch. Some will switch because of a couple of features or other reasons, but they both do a pretty good job.

Maybe I'm an open source traitor, but I do like open source and see the advantage of it, but if a closed source software does a better job, or is really cool and innovate, and the price is right, I'll gladly pay to encourage the company. 20-40 bucks for a software I use everyday? That's fair. Now it's free, which is even better. I use tons of open source software whenever I can, but I still use some closed software too. I donate or contribute to open source projects whenever I can, just as I pay for a closed software if I like it.

Open-Source as end-user feature!?

[porneL]

Did you patch and compile your Firefox? Or did you just download binary like 80 millions other users?