Opera 6.0 for Linux Released

e1en0r writes "Opera released 6.0 for Linux and 6.02 for Windows today. The new features include cookie management and plug-in support. I've been using the beta release of Opera 6 for a while now and it's great."

Java

[dirvish]

I have had problems with Java support using Opera. Have they fixed this yet?

the killer

[TunaPhish]

Opera is great, but I can't stand the built in ads. I feel like I'm back on NetZero. Besides, Galeon [sourceforge.net] does all those mouse guestures anyway...

Number of coders

[thetechweenie]

Does anyone know how many people are involved in coding opera?

Re:Opera may be cool

[NanoGator]

Man, I havent run a 386 in like 10 years! ;)

On Windows, Opera beats the hell out of IE even with the 'bloat' that you seem to think taints it. I totally enjoy using it, but I do have issues with its stability. Oh well, maybe in version 7...

Re:opera as big as netscape?

[Dstrct0]

But Opera can identify itself as other browsers.

To cut down on annoying "You need MSIE x.x to see this site" messages, I have my Opera set to identify itself as IE.

I wonder how many of those other 94% of IE hits on your site are Opera (or other browsers with such an option) in disguise?

Re:This is how it was meant to be!

[ender81b]

You can already see the results of the competition between mozilla and opera with Mozilla introducing Tabbed windows, following Opera's lead. The real 'competive' barrier Opera faces is the fact that it isn't free. 20$ (education) isn't a lot, and I paid it, but so many people are used to free browsers that i don't know if Opera can gain more than a foothold because it costs money. And since it's a small company and not finaced by a huge corporation it can't really afford to make it's browser free, although with the advertising market what it is I can't believe they are making much.

Among the linux browsers I would have to say I prefer Opera better, mostly because of it's speed - better even than IE. Although the super-small d/l size and it's availability across a wide range of platforms is nice also.

Re:ASP support?

[dimator]

You know, it's wierd. ASP *is* a server side language, but 9 times out of 10, ASP pages look like shit. My guess is that ASP developers don't give a shit about browsers other than IE, and only test their layouts under that browser.

Competition, Schmompetition

[geoffsmith]

Yes, competition is good, but there is a point where there are just too many browsers. As a maker of all things web, it is very difficult to work around all the quirks of these browsers (and yes, *all* browsers have quirks) I have Opera users tell me they are MSIE in their user agents, I have Galeon users thinking they are running Mozilla, and bizarre rendering bugs across the board.

Making things even more difficult, I have to contend with varying and often non-existant toolbar API's which make things like the superb Google Toolbar and (in my mind) the also superb StumbleUpon Toolbar [stumbleupon.com] impossible to develop for browsers that are not Mozilla or IE.

I think its time to go for a little Darwinian Selection. Survival of the fittest browser. And I think that browser is Mozilla. Its the most full featured browser out there, it's free, it's open source. I had a couple problems with it, I filed bugs, and they were both fixed within the week! I'm having a hard time finding any flaws with RC2, it's brilliant. For all those who are using alternate browsers because Mozilla is "bloated" and "buggy", check again.

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]

Mouse Gestures In Opera

[John_Booty]

It's really the mouse gestures in Opera that make it the winner for me. They seriously make browsing much faster. Since I'm authoring and reading web pages all day, I really notice the small difference adding up. Especially when I have to go back to IE or something. :)

For the uninitiated, mouse gestures in Opera are Palm Graffitti like mouse motions that take the place of button-clicking for some operations. For example, right mouse button+moving the mouse left is like pressing the Back button. Similarly-simple commands exist for maximizing/closing/minimizing windows, etc.

Does Mozilla have similar gesture support? I thought I remember reading about that a while ago, but I haven't been able to find it.

Opera's also very fast. It eats up a lot of RAM by default, but you can edit the RAM cache size in Preferences, which actually makes it run pretty lean (or as lean as you want it to).

The built-in mail reader is quite nice. Fast and simple. The contact list management is nice. It's got instant messaging built-in, but I haven't tried that yet.

Opera does tend to crash at times, but it loads quickly, and when you load it back up it gives you the option of reloading all the URLs it was surfing when the crash occurred. After a crash, I'm up again so quickly that I hardly mind, although it is a bit annoying. Hopefully, this 6.02 release is even more stable.

Well, that's just my two cents about the Win32 version, anyway.

Re:This is how it was meant to be!

[Baconator]

Although the super-small d/l size and it's availability across a wide range of platforms is nice also.

Wide range of platforms compared to what? Mozilla? Nope. Netscape 4? Nope? Lynx? Nope. I think IE is about the only browser I know of with worse platform support.

Case in point, Linux/PPC is my main platform. Guess Opera just isn't an option for a lot of us.

Re:Java

[jaavaaguru]

I've just installed Opera 6.0 on Linux. I loaded a page containing a Java applet that works fine in Mozilla and Konqueror. using JRE 1.4, the applet begins loading in Opera, but only the first class starts to load, and never finishes. So, I'd say there are still some problems.

Re:ASP support?

[DNS-and-BIND]

When Opera identifies itself as MSIE or Netscape, the Opera string is still in the user-agent. Thus,

Opera/6.0 (Windows 2000; U) [en]

Is my current user-agent. If some idiot has created a page and chosen to restrict viewing to one or two of the many browsers availible, you tell Opera to report its user-agent as MSIE, but the Opera string is still there, and will show up in the logs:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows 2000; U) Opera 6.0 [en]

Knowing the mental qualities of most page-restrictors, this fools their detection scripts quite nicely. This can blow up in your face, however, if the malicious web designer chooses to intentionally exclude Opera, by denying all browsers that contain 'opera' anywhere. I have complained about this to the Opera support groups [opera.com] but they told me it wasn't possible to do a "complete" fake header. If you want that I guess you have to rewrite user-agent headers with a proxy.