Opera 11 Web-Browser Released

[devius]

I just benchmarked that browser with peacekeeper. With kde4 it was much faster when the default effects are enabled than disabled (fglrx 10-12 used). You only see the better results.

http://clients.futuremark.com/peacek...ction?key=4uVF

Funny. A bit down the page are the IE9 results. Wasn't it supposed to be a kind of amazing browser marvell type thingy? It's slower than firefox 3.6. At least it can't be any worse than IE6.

[Apopas]

No real reason under Linux to choose that proprietary browser when you have two great free options.

[allquixotic]

No one has yet mentioned one major disadvantage to using Opera over e.g. Firefox or the Webkit family of browsers: it's not free software. Now, I'm not to the Stallman level of valuing free software to the point that I completely eschew non-free software, particularly because some non-free software has no free equivalent, e.g. games, each of which are unique and valuable due to the creativity of the designers. But I certainly value my freedom, and moreso with generally-useful things like web browsers, and especially in an area where features, performance and an extremely prolific selection of nearly-identical competitors are freely available. That description applies to web browsers.

Web browsers are so common, and so competitive, that even low-value features have to be taken into account. We can be picky if we want to, even for areas where a proprietary behemoth has cornered the market; but for web browsers, I see no reason not to insist on freedom, because freedom has essentially no disadvantages in terms of functionality when it comes to browsers.

So, on the spectrum of how much you as an individual value free software as a "feature" of a web browser you're trying, it could be anything from as essential to having an engine (whereas non-free software would, in that case, be like a car having no engine), or so inconsequential as the presence of absence of chrome trim on the doors (no pun intended, Google Chrome....).

However, we live in a day and age where almost every car (browser) has an engine and beautiful, pristine chrome trim. Then Opera comes along and offers a car without one of these (again, depending on your perspective). Why should we take the car without the trim, when we can take the car with it for the same price ($0)?

I tried Opera 11, and it has nothing that totally blew my socks off. Aside from that, the UI is slightly unfamiliar, even as a long-time user of Firefox, IE and Chrome. The UI looks a lot like a combination of Firefox 4 and Chrome. The speed is imperceptibly fast for the sites I visit; it is probably somewhere faster than Firefox 3.5 but slower than Chrome. Even if it's considerably faster than Chrome, I honestly don't care; I don't need faster. Chrome is perfectly fast on my Core i7 -- so perfectly that the only reason my browser doesn't load pages in tenths of nanoseconds is that I have a slow DSL connection, which is many orders of magnitude slower than the rendering engine in Chrome (or even the slow old Firefox 3.0, for that matter).

So, I do value freedom fairly highly as a "feature", but even if you don't, consider what you're getting. If you accept that freedom is beneficial at all -- even just "nice to have" -- then you'll realize that other offerings such as Firefox or Chrome have this, and its absence from Opera pushes it down into the ranks of obscurity, along with IE, Maxthon, and others.

Use an open source Gecko or WebKit-based browser with the UI trimmings of your choice. Opera is behind the times.

Edit: Apopas beat me to it by minutes!

[Apopas]

Edit: Apopas beat me to it by minutes!

Yeah but my english aren't as good as yours to be able to express myself as I'd like to do

[BlackStar]

@Apopas: I wonder, are you using closed-source drivers (nvidia/fglrx) or have you moved completely to the open-source stack?

@allquixotic: Firefox 4 actually copies the appearance of Opera 10 bit for bit (tabs on top, menu button, etc), whereas Chrome copies quite a bit from Opera 9.2 (speed dial). I don't disagree with the rest of your points, just thought I should point that out.

Now, I use Opera. Why? Four reasons:

a) Opera has more or less pioneered every single feature found in modern web browsers. Tabs, sessions, script blocking, user extensions, SVG, you name it, chances are it first sprung up in Opera before others copied (and polished) it.

b) Mouse gestures. It's unbelievable how freaking useful they are. How would you like iPhone or Android without multitouch? That's how Firefox and Chrome feel. Nowadays, I install http://easystroke.sourceforge.net/ for machine-wide mouse gestures (here is my config file in case anyone's interested, unzip to ~).

c) Great standards support and dev tools. Develop a site for Opera and 99.9% of the time it will work everywhere (bar IE6). Not necessarily so if you go for WebKit/Gecko first.

I also like the fact that the dev tools are built in. Yes, the relevant Firefox extension are slightly more powerful, but you have to hunt for them by hand - ugh.

d) Its email client is aeons ahead of Evolution or Thunderbird. Plus, it opens as a tab directly in the browser - no need to launch and manage two separate programs. Ditto for its IRC client.

The downside is that it's closed-source. But you know what? I don't really care. Unlike IE, Opera doesn't hold the web back (indeed it has many members in the standardization group and often implements experimental standards for testing). Moreover, it actually has a better security record than firefox (26 vs 85 vulnerabilities) so I'm not worried about that.

Other people have different priorities.

@Kano: fglrx is generally faster with desktop effects nowadays. This is true for Compiz, too, since 10.3 or so.

[Apopas]

Other people have different priorities.

So freedom comes very low at your rating. Acceptable! That's much more common after all.

[Apopas]

@Apopas: I wonder, are you using closed-source drivers (nvidia/fglrx) or have you moved completely to the open-source stack?

My laptop has intel GPU

But do you think I'm an extremist? Because I just advocate free software?
I just follow a simple rule.

When I can use free software without sacrificing necessary (mind the word) functionality but I insist on unfree software, then I don't care for freedom at all.

Sounds very extremistic?

[BlackStar]

My laptop has intel GPU

Ouch. My condolences.

But do you think I'm an extremist? Because I just advocate free software?

Not necessarily. Linus advocates free software and I don't consider him an extremist.

I just follow a simple rule.

When I can use free software without sacrificing necessary (mind the word) functionality but I insist on unfree software, then I don't care for freedom at all.

Sounds you are mostly a pragmatist, even though you seem to be viewing things as black and white.

I keep all browsers installed on my machine, as they they all have their respective merits. Right now I'm typing in Opera - but Chrome is playing music in the background. There are times I switch to Chrome completely but there are things that make my day to day experience worse compared to Opera, which is why I keep switching back to that.

This is also why I also keep flash installed on my system. Every two months I try gnash and the moment it manages to play fullscreen video smoothly, I'll boot adobe completely.

From my point of view, the greatest danger is the consolidation of power. I don't wish to see a IE6-like or flash-like domination *ever* again - and the more players in the arena the less likely this is to happen.

Consider this a deep shade of gray if you will.

[BlackStar]

Fake edit: if you are trying Opera, go to Menu -> Settings -> Preferences -> Advanced and modify these two options:

1. Tabs (when cycling with Ctrl-Tab): Cycle without showing list.
2. Browsing (loading): Redraw instantly.

The first option will allow you to switch tabs immediately via right click + mouse wheel up/down (try it, this is awesome!)

The second option will make Opera feel much faster. (It's a placebo but a very effective one at that! This is actually why many people consider Chrome faster than the competition.)

I also enable the "open new tab next to active" option under Tabs as it's more efficient with Ctrl-Tab, but some people may not like that.

[PsynoKhi0]

Now, I use Opera. Why? Four reasons:

a) Opera has more or less pioneered every single feature found in modern web browsers. Tabs, sessions, script blocking, user extensions, SVG, you name it, chances are it first sprung up in Opera before others copied (and polished) it.

b) Mouse gestures. It's unbelievable how freaking useful they are. How would you like iPhone or Android without multitouch? That's how Firefox and Chrome feel. Nowadays, I install http://easystroke.sourceforge.net/ for machine-wide mouse gestures (here is my config file in case anyone's interested, unzip to ~).

c) Great standards support and dev tools. Develop a site for Opera and 99.9% of the time it will work everywhere (bar IE6). Not necessarily so if you go for WebKit/Gecko first.

I also like the fact that the dev tools are built in. Yes, the relevant Firefox extension are slightly more powerful, but you have to hunt for them by hand - ugh.

d) Its email client is aeons ahead of Evolution or Thunderbird. Plus, it opens as a tab directly in the browser - no need to launch and manage two separate programs. Ditto for its IRC client.

The downside is that it's closed-source. But you know what? I don't really care. Unlike IE, Opera doesn't hold the web back (indeed it has many members in the standardization group and often implements experimental standards for testing). Moreover, it actually has a better security record than firefox (26 vs 85 vulnerabilities) so I'm not worried about that.

Other people have different priorities.

Thanks for sparing me the time to list those out

Long-time Opera user here (does anyone else remember the ad-suported version? ).
Yes, it's closed source... Yes, I wish it wasn't...
However it still holds a special place on my "Favourite software" list.
They innovate a lot and are close to their users, and they at least contribute to one kind of freedom: that of choice.
I'm all for it!