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Opera 6.0 for Linux Released 424

Posted by michael from the no-ads-in-mozilla dept.
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."
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Opera 6.0 for Linux Released More

Opera 6.0 for Linux Released

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  • Java (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dirvish ( 574948 )
    I have had problems with Java support using Opera. Have they fixed this yet?

    • Re:Java (Score:2, Informative)

      by wikki ( 13091 )
      it appears not I jsut got this post from bugtraq

      Title: Opera javascript protocoll vulnerability
      Date: [2002-05-15]
      Software: At least Opera 6.01, 6.0, 5.12 (win)
      Rating: High because Opera is assumed to be secure
      Impact: Read cookies/local filestructure/cache
      Vendor: Opera has confirmed the vulnerability and released
      today a new version 6.02 fixing the issue.
      http://www.opera.com/ _ _
      Workaround: Disable javascript.
      Author: Andreas Sandblad, sandblad@acc.umu.se

      • Re:Java (Score:2, Insightful)

        by tom.allender ( 217176 )
        Java != JavaScript
      • What part of "released today a new version...fixing the issue" did you not understand?
        (And depsite how the numbers look version 6.02 is actually older than version 6.0. Folks at Opera have really strange numbering conventions.)

    • Re:Java (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jaavaaguru ( 261551 )
      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.

  • This is how it was meant to be! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:17PM (#3525143)
    This is the sort of news that makes me think that things really are getting better and improving. Not so much because of Opera itself, though it is a fine browser indeed, but more because there are now plenty of good competitors in the web browsing arena.

    Especially on Linux, there are at least 3 excellent browsers, or 4 if you count Galeon/Gecko as separate to Mozilla, with none of them having a significant lead over the others as far as I'm aware.

    This happy situation, with all the browsers competing against each other on a level playing field unfortunately does not (yet) exist on Windows, but lets hope that soon as Mozilla and Opera both improve the market will balance out again.

    Hurray for the benefits of competition!

    • Re:This is how it was meant to be! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ender81b ( 520454 ) <wdinger@g m a il.com> on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:37PM (#3525311) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • 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.

      • 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.

        Should I undermind Microsoft by paying for a good browser by a small company, or by using an open-source browser that doesn't cost me or the developers anything? Decisions, decisions....
      • I use Opera. I downloaded the ad-containing version to start with and then, when I realized how k3w1 it was, I sent in the $30 they asked for. It's the fastest and smallest of the full-featured browsers, and that counts for a lot.

  • Also patches some security holes (Score:4, Informative)

    by pythas ( 75383 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:18PM (#3525153)
    A advisory was issued on Bugtraq today, and the 2 holes it referenced are fixed by 6.02.

    Here's the description (taken from the advisory):

    Opera allows the location of a frame to be overwritten by an url
    containing the javascript protocoll. The javascript code will be operating
    in the same domain as the url that was overwritten. Thus we can read
    cookies from other domains, local file structure and private information
    from the cache (history of links visited).
    • but the linux version is only up to 6.0. i wonder if the vulnerability even works on linux or if it is windows specific, since they released 6.0 today for linux, and 6.02 for windows.
      • Due to the confusing nature of how Opera numbered their releases, Opera 6.2 beta for Linux is actually an OLDER release than Opera 6.0 for Linux. (Because, you see, when it went out of beta mode into official release mode, they reset the version number to 6.0 again. It's as if they expect the dropping of the word "beta" to be more signifigant in people's eyes than the actual release number. I don't get it, since I ignore whether software has "beta" after it's name or not. The only difference between beta and released is number of bugs that have been fixed SO FAR.

        But at any rate, the upshot is that when he said "6.02" he was actually referring to an older version than the recent 6.0 release, despite what the numbers might make it look like.

    • Ack. Quick correction. Looks like just one vulnerability, but 2 exploits for it listed in the advisory.

      For more info, check out:

      http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/272583 /2 002-05-12/2002-05-18/0

  • the killer (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TunaPhish ( 81577 )
    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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thetechweenie ( 60363 ) <jsatrape@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:19PM (#3525164) Homepage
    Does anyone know how many people are involved in coding opera?

  • Opera as fast alternative (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:22PM (#3525195) Journal
    When I first started comparing browsers Mozilla was slow as dirt and really buggy (fixed since then) and IE was/is insecure so I looked into Opera.

    At first I thought that the required ads were going to get annoying, but in truth, they weren't that bad at all. Plus, if I hated them that much I could pay a small fee and get rid of them.

    But the best part about Opera is it is the fastest html renderer there is out on the market as far as I am concerned. A second high point to Opera, is that it is completely standard compliant. Unlike some browsers... which one you ask? Um... IE maybe, but that could just be me.

    The winner in the pack now has to be Mozilla, but a close second right now is Opera.
  • in a world where 90% of page designers design for IE, opera sure has a hard time, but it seems to be getting better. in the logs for my web site i am noticing that 94% of my users are using ie, 2% netscape, 2% opera, and 2% others. i would guess that the others would be spiders, mozilla, (unless this also is logged as netscape)kmeleon or konqueror. With opera gaining the same usership as netscape, even though it is only 2 % looks like the mark of success for me. although I am pretty much forced to use ie if i want to see pages the way they are meant to be seen, i have toyed around a bit with opera and love the mouse gestures.
    • 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?
      • > But Opera can identify itself as other browsers.

        More importantly, Opera by default identifies itself as another browser.

        One of the first things I did when I configured it was to set it to identify itself as Opera rather than MSIE. I can't say I've ever felt the need to revert.

        I guess I must have somewhat atypical browsing habits, since I can't say I've seen many problems with layout or JS - the worst I can think of from the past month or so was perhaps an offset CSS/Edge [meyerweb.com] style background image [meyerweb.com] on some site, and that's still rendered better than MSIE.

        Certainly as a web developer I find I hit problems with MSIE more often than I do with Opera. I guess that's because I'm not a DHTML weenie :)

      • However, when Opera spoofs IE, it only says:

        Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Linux 2.4.18-13mdk i686) Opera 6.0 [en]
        • It is a little-known fact that that the user-agent string for IE often ID's itself as another browser. For example, the last time I checked, which was back in IE 4.0, IE identified itself as Mosaic, with the only mention of MSIE being in parenthesis, just like the string you show above for Opera. I suspect that websites looking for IE ignore everything but the "compatable; MSIE x.x" part of the string. They just about have to, since the principal part of the user-agent string doesn't tell them that it's IE.
      • I'm just wondering...What sites say that? I haven't touched IE in months (k-meleon + 98lite makes for an uncrashable web machine, and at work I generally use Mozilla or K-Meleon), and I've never come across one...
        • Well, here are the two I visit:

          NYUHome [nyu.edu] - My university's interface for webmail/file management/various crap. Gives you an error and an invitation to "upgrade" to a supported browser. Works just fine under OmniWeb as long as it is set to identify as one of the "supported" browsers.

          Albert [nyu.edu] - My university's system for registering for classes, checking grades, and all kinds of important stuff online. Second only in annoyance level to the phone system that does the same thing (Welcome...to...Torch...Tone...) This thing is so crufty that it barfs under anything but sufficiently advanced versions of MSIE/Netscape. It doesn't even admit that it works under IE, but it does.

          I wouldn't visit these sites if it were optional, but there you have it.

          Meghan
  • < PLUG >

    Opera is awesome. I've used Opera since version
    3 on both Windows and (lately) Linux. If
    anyone else out there is sick of MS bullshat,
    think about trying it. The early Linux
    versions were OK, but now it is (for me) the
    hands-down winner for Linux browser.

    < /PLUG >
  • Opera has the best interface. They invinted tabs and gestures. Mozilla has coppied these, though. They also were the first with built-in popup blocking. Unfortunately, it blocks all pop-up's even requested ones. Mozilla now does everything special Opera does (exctept for righ-left click for back and left-right click for forward) and Mozilla has superior popup support.

    I can't wait till moz 1.0 comes out. I am building my grandpa a computer with OpenOffice 1.0, Mozilla 1.0, and Slackware (with windowmaker). That's all he needs.
  • Numerous pages that load correctly and look the same in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Konqueror were simply botched by Opera 5. Have they fixed it yet? Opera may be great, but I have no interest in missing information or not being able to use a needed Web site just to support this particular organization.

    If Konqueror can get it right and Konqueror is free and well integrated with my Linux system, Opera had better do it much better -- at least as long as they want me to leave open source and to pay for it either with my money or with my "eyeballs".

  • Competition, Schmompetition (Score:4, Interesting)

    by geoffsmith ( 161376 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:50PM (#3525412) Homepage
    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]
    • drwinianism doesn't work if one species can controll the complete enviroment.

      Not to mention that its the web master who do not keep with the standards that are at fault far more often then any browser.
    • 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)

      That's like saying there are too many makes of car. Nobody says that, because all cars conform to some basic defacto standards in terms of height, roadwidth etc.

      The solution is to have much better standards compliance. Mozilla is spot on. Opera I think lacked DOM support, not sure if that's fixed, I'd guess it is by now. KHTML is also pretty good. IE sucks of course, but IE6 is getting there (level 1 while moz crew start on level 3)

      • You can't compare mechanical engineering and software engineering. Like it or not, all large software projects have bugs... lots of bugs. In a perfect world, there would be no bugs, but in this world the bugs are the standard. Since IE6 is the predominant browser, people code HTML to work around IE6's rendering problems, and if other browsers do not account for these bugs, they will render incorrectly. No browser will ever support W3C's standards perfectly, Mozilla sure doesn't and neither does W3C's own reference browser!

        There is only one solution to this problem, and that is to limit the number of browsers. Otherwise there will simply be too many rendering problems for web developers to worry about, and a bunch of the browsers will get left behind. I do not have the time to test my pages in every browser, and neither does anyone else.

        Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]
    • You think the web begins and ends at the desktop.

      It doesn't. A major piece of Opera's business is embedded space. That their embedded and desktop browsers share the same lightweight core is an enormous boast. Mozilla is too bloated in this respect. Part of the reason it's lightweight is because it doesn't attempt to kludge around the errors of browsers past. It's standards support still remains strong. The only thing seriously missing being DOM support, but DOM usage should be reserved for applications in a closed environment, not the public web in any case.

      Opera clearly identifies itself in it's UA string, a knowledgable webmaster can easily deal with that. The UA spoofing is only there for the scarily large percentage of clueless webmasters....

  • Mouse Gestures In Opera (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John_Booty ( 149925 ) <johnbooty@bo[ ]p ... g ['oty' in gap]> on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:54PM (#3525441) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.

      Try:

      http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/ [mozdev.org]

      • http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/

        In addition, unlike Opera, optimoz users are able to define which gesture does what. Simply edit bin\chrome\mozgest\content\gestimp.js under the Mozilla installation directory and change it as you like. For example, I have "D" (down) binded to nextTab() and "U" (up) binded to previousTab(). Adding new actions is easy too because support for gestures implemented in pure javascript.

  • Ok, this is getting it even harder to choose which browser to use in Linux.

    Konqueror is really great and comes in handy especially when you want to use drag it to drag and drop images or files from webpages and FTP servers because of it's tight KDE integration. I hear they have tabs in CVS now too!

    Mozilla 1.0rc2 which I'm currently running is stable, has loads of features and actually works with almost every page (including my bank). It is very rare that this browser crasches. A lot of work has been done here for the past few months.

    Opera is the non-GPL browser and I actually try to get away from it a little. But once you get used to the mousegestures and the superfast page rendering it's hard to getaway.

    Well, off to download!!

    Ciryon

    • But once you get used to the mousegestures and the superfast page rendering it's hard to getaway.

      Mozilla _has_ mousegestures [mozdev.org].

      As far as superfast page rendering, how much faster than instant can you get??? Maybe it's just the sites that I goto, but I never have a noticable page loading lag...

  • DOM support... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @03:35PM (#3525682) Homepage
    I have been working with javascript, DOM, CSS2 for fun in the evenings, and so far Opera doesn't do enough of what I want it to do. Mozilla seems to be the only browser that supports the DOM as outlined by the W3C, and for that reason, I won't be using it, regardless of how fast it is.

    See an example of what I've been doing with Mozilla here [duke.edu]. It's a card game that I enjoy on my Handspring Visor and "ported". Works great in Mozilla, but dies in every other browser I've tried.

    Ah well. Go Moz!
    • I was about to complain that your card game didn't fit in my Mozilla window (maximized at 800x600), but then I tried doing a text zoom, and it worked! Thanks for using em units.

  • Resource usage on Windows: Opera rules! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gryffin ( 86893 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @03:59PM (#3525843) Homepage

    In another post, someone is bemoaning how Opera, which previously shipped on a single floppy, has added too much bloat.

    Bloat? BLOAT? PuhLEEZE.

    Try this on Windoze: from a fresh log-in launch Opera, Mozilla, Internet Exploder and Outlook Express. Then press ALT-CTL-DEL, and click Task Manager, then click the Processes tab. Then take a look at how much RAM each is eating up.

    I did this at home, so I don't have the exact numbers handy, but as I recall Mozilla ate about 24MB, IE 7MB, OE 13MB (yikes!), and Opera 6 about 7MB.

    That's with no sites loaded. Now open up some good, large, complex pages; I tried Slashdot, Salon, CNN, and a few others, the same sites in each browser. In OE, Opera and Mozilla, go sign onto my IMAP email server, just for good measure. Now Mozilla uses 30+MB, IE is up over 20MB, OE is still eating 13MB or so, and Opera is using... about 12MB. Not too shabby.

    Now close all the browser windows and log off email. Guess what? Moz is back to 24MB, Opera's back to 7MB, OE still hasnt' changed much, but IE is still sucking down 24MB. Nice garbage collection there, Microsoft.

    When you consider that A) Opera provides the functionality of IE *and* OE, and B) some of IE/OE's resource usage is hidden in assorted other "OS" DLLs, Which one is bloated again?

    Oh, one last little test... open up a loooong site in each (nice fat thread on Slashdot at Score:0 will do it), then press and hold the down arrow key and see how long it takes to scroll to the bottom. Opera is about twice as fast as Mozilla, and about half again as fast as IE. Add in Opera's industry-best standards compliance and rendering speed, what's not to like?

  • Opera 6.02 for Windows is missing support for bookmarklets [google.com]. If you use bookmarklets, skip this release and go back to 6.0 or 6.01 [opera.com].

    This is sad because while Opera never supported advanced DOM2 bookmarklets [squarefree.com], it supported simpler bookmarklets better than other browsers [squarefree.com]. For example, clicking a bookmarklet in Opera would not cause the page to stop loading, and changes made by bookmarklets would not be lost after hitting the Back button like they are in other browsers.

    Rant: first IE 6 doesn't support [google.com] bookmarklets longer than 508 characters, and now Opera 6.02 doesn't support them at all. Recent versions of Mozilla have a bug where windows created by bookmarklets end up behind the current window (108394) and a bug that prevents the linked-images bookmarklet from working on porn sites (123293). I'm frustrated. Regressions suck.
  • Under Windows, I finally switched from IE to Opera during 5.02, but the one feature they're really lacking is javascript popup management. If they'd just add the same support they have for cookies, it would be perfect.
  • ... integrate well with Sun's StarOffice 6.0 [sun.com], which was also released today?

  • Sorry, Mozilla is TOO good (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @08:15PM (#3527126) Journal
    Opera is a very good browser, as far as the engine goes, but it comes up short where the interface is concerned.

    If you have multiple tabs open, and close one, the next one made active is the one last opened. That means that the order can been terribly random. With Mozilla, you close one tab and it takes you to the next one to the left. Quite simple.

    Opera's interface has always been bulky, and a bit weird. You have forward and back buttons on the main toolbar, but the stop button (was) only on the windows' toolbar.

    Mozilla allows you to better customize javascript permissions, and don't even get me started on Opera's bookmark system (hotlist).

    As far as I'm concerned, the only thing Opera has to offer that Mozilla hasn't, is the button to easilly toggle from 'Autor' to 'User' Mode. What this does is allow you on a per-window basis to easilly switch between the colors & fonts the page has defined, and the color/font you have defined. You'll appreciate this if you've ever visited a page with fonts so small you couldn't read them, or page colors that either blind you, or blend the fonts with the bacground so you can't really read it.

    I realize that Mozilla eats up much more Memory and CPU power, but that's just something the needs to be gradually improved on. Even as it is, it's requirements fit my machines just fine.

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