[gt24]

Why we're going free

Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today's milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.

http://opera.com/free/

Opera has been blasted over and over again for having those darn ads that they are so fond of.... now, they don't.

I think it is time to seriously look into Opera... but I have to do this tomorrow. Thought I would post a thread about the news...

[DaWiper]

Bump! (because I was just about to post this)

[9mmCensor]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.p...ighlight=opera

[gt24]

Originally Posted by 9mmCensor

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.p...ighlight=opera

oops...

[Kevin007]

Originally Posted by gt24

http://opera.com/free/

Opera has been blasted over and over again for having those darn ads that they are so fond of.... now, they don't.

I think it is time to seriously look into Opera... but I have to do this tomorrow. Thought I would post a thread about the news...

hmm, and I felt special for having the free version like that, from there aniversary.

[gt24]

Originally Posted by Kevin007

hmm, and I felt special for having the free version like that, from there aniversary.

Actually, so many people requested that free version that the Opera team made Opera free. They didn't notice before that event that there was a lot of people who would at least try Opera, as long as it had no ads (either from the registration code, or it simply not being there).

[thegreek]

this is good news

[TheGreySpectre]

Yay free opera, so is there still a retail version?

[gt24]

Originally Posted by TheGreySpectre

Yay free opera, so is there still a retail version?

There is an option for premium support... I dunno about a pay version persay...

By the way, I am using Opera now... and wrote a Firefox to Opera conversion tips thing that you can read at the link below. (joy of having a few Opera threads floating around...)

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.p...65#post3987865

[Albigger]

gt24 - thanks for writing that short guide on converting, I just installed opera and it seems much faster. going to go through your suggestions (especially about having the tabs under the address bar - it just makes more sense).

anyway, one thing is when I try to access my.yahoo account (SBC) through opera it says I need IE5 or Netscape 6.2 or higher (although I never had any problems with FF). I'm sure this is more of an SBC thing but before support for firefox was widespread I used to get annoyed with incorrectly loading websites. Is there anyone else that's using Opera to access your sbc/yahoo account successfully?


EDIT: fixed the yahoo issue. Had to edit ua.ini to read yahoo.com=4 and also get a cloaking js script. I think I'll be moving over completely now...

[Vulcan]

I decided to give it a try... Its running very fast for me, check out the results I got with BenchJS. A best time of 4.2 seconds, I could probably get more with some tweaking and such. In comparison, my best time in Firefox was around 6.97 using Firefox 1.5 b1. I am using Windows X64 by the way.

[Albigger]

Ok, so far loving Opera. A few nit-picky things still really bug me though, maybe someone has suggestions for me:

1) I get rid of status bar by un-checking the box Tools->appearance->toolbars but everytime I close and re-open Opera it comes back (all my other customizations are fine as far as I can tell). What gives?

2) All other apps I can think of (IE, FF, word, excel, etc...) 'remember' if they were opened on the secondary monitor (I have a dual-monitor setup). But Opera always opens to the primary one when I want it to open to the secondary. Yes I know I could probably use Ultramon but I really don't have much of a need for it and all my other programs 'remember where they were' just fine.


EDIT: 1) must have saved session BEFORE turning off status bar - duh me.
2) needed to save a new session maximized on my second monitor for it to open to that location.


Also - I must comment on some great aspects of Opera that are a good improvement over firefox - opens faster, back/forward faster, scolls more smoothly, memory management seems better. Although it can get up there 50-75mb I've seen, as soon as Opera is minimized to the taskbar mem usage drops below 5mb. Something I've never seen with FF.

[gt24]

Wow... this is INSANE...

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node&from=325

It's been an astonishing and sleepless 72 hours since we released Firefox Preview Release. Thanks to your impressive efforts, nearly 790,000 people have downloaded Firefox in 3 days, bringing us within arm's length of our 1 million goal with a week to go!

http://my.opera.com/community/

Opera is Free!
Tuesday, 20. September 2005, 07:26:35

Thursday, 22. September 2005, 12:37:18
Apparently the word got out about the new version of Opera. Version 8.5 has been downloaded over 1.4 million times so far. But this is only the beginning! We are depending on our community to help others Choose Opera.
Have you already helped people make the switch to the world's best browser? Blog about your experiences so we can all work together to bring a better browsing experience to the masses.
UPDATE (9/23/05): We've just reached 1.6 million downloads since the release of Opera 8.5. Keep up the good work!

A TON more people are downloading Opera compared to Firefox... comparing both to their initial launches. Just amazing.

Anyways, back to features... If you don't mind a 10 Mb additional download package, highlight some words and hit the v key on your keyboard. You have a browser that speaks to you... and speaks much better than Firefox does with its' extension.

ANOTHER ANNOYANCE... Page finding. Hit CTRL-F and you get the lovely IE "let's find things on this page in a painful manner" dialog box!!
SOLUTION... hit ., yes, the period key on your keyboard. A little box appears at the bottom left that says "Finding text". Start typing and you have find as you type. To find the next word in the page, hit F3.

Minor annoyances... Tab browsing has different keys. CTRL-N (not ctrl-t) is a new tab. SHIFT (not ctrl) click a link for it to appear in a tab, but the tab is thrown in your face. You have to CTRL-SHIFT on a link to have it appear in the background. You can optionally override that, but it isn't a big deal because middle clicking still makes a tab appear in the background.

Minor annoyance... Firefox shows in my Windows XP start menu as the browser for the internet, even though Opera is my default browser. In fact, Opera is submissive to Firefox!!

Plug-in path	D:\Program Files\Opera\Program\Plugins
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Plugins

Yeah... I was wondering how Opera installed all the plugins I ever needed without me knowing about it. Truth is, it is "borrowing" Firefox's plugins!! It makes it work wonderfully, but it would certainly cause issues later on if I didn't notice that. So, Opera is also less agressive about "taking over the system". Perhaps one day I can kick Firefox off of the darn start menu's internet option... hmmm...

So, anyways, I can make a preliminary conclusion finally. Opera is great... if you are somewhat handy with computers. It certainly needs a bit more kicking of the tires and tweaking under the hood to make it gel with your computing experience. Firefox, for the most part, has a great UI in place and is similar enough to Internet Explorer to work for most computer newbies. So, if you can figure it out, Opera is spectacular to work with. If you can't quite get your head around operating Opera, Firefox allows you to just browse the web with little learning required.

The features in Opera make it worth learning though... and currently, Opera has "won" the battle for my little piece of the desktop... although they can certainly improve (just like Firefox can certainly improve... and IE needs to catch up already!).

[Disputant]

Only thing I don't see that is of of the major reasons for me using Firefox is the ability to use multiple startup pages. When I launch Firefox, it automatically logs into 4 forums which is very handy. Maybe I am missing it, other than that I really like it a lot.

[Albigger]

Originally Posted by Disputant

Only thing I don't see that is of of the major reasons for me using Firefox is the ability to use multiple startup pages. When I launch Firefox, it automatically logs into 4 forums which is very handy. Maybe I am missing it, other than that I really like it a lot.

Open up whatever tabs you want to be your 'home' pages. THen go to file->save session and give it a name. This session should start up for you next time you open Opera.

[Disputant]

Originally Posted by Albigger

Open up whatever tabs you want to be your 'home' pages. THen go to file->save session and give it a name. This session should start up for you next time you open Opera.

Excallent! Thank you.

[MainEvent]

I might have to give Opera a try after hearing all of these good things about it. I have been using Firefox for quite some time and I guess the time has come for a change...