Opera is free on several PC platforms and fee-based on some of the other platforms, I think, and it uses open standards for Internet communication, but I don't think it's open source or GNU or anything. I think they do get money from Google for instance...?

I didn't know about the tab thing, is that new in 10? I'm still on 9.64. Have about 100 tabs open - literally - so it takes a while to get through it all!

Support for Qt3 is there which makes it look somewhat ugly under desktop managers such as kde 4.x. Those fake 3d menus just don't cut it with me. The lack of add-in support for adblock type programs tho are the clincher.

@K`Tetch - Opera had options to show an extender on the tab bar or wrap to multiple lines in version 7 in 2002. I can't remember if they were even in version 6 or earlier.

@BB - Opera already has branched out. Aren't you even aware they make lots of money from mobile phones, set top boxes, game consoles and handhelds?

And as for no one needing 2001, I think that really shows how small your thinking is. Opera are doing well in the far east where large swathes of the population still have dialup or very slow broadband.

Then there are plenty of rural areas in eastern Europe where broadband isn't available, or at least at a price the average worker can afford.

Opera turbo is aimed at them, and will no doubt be very useful to them.

If any program does something you don't need, just stop and think for a moment that it's probably been put there primarily for someone else.

Over the yers I've seen plenty of people complain about Opera creating tabs, user javascript, user CSS, a heavily customisable GUI, widgets, single hotkeys to control everything from navigation to image loading mode, speech recognition and synthesis, email client, Bit Torrent, RSS and just about everything else. For every one of those there are plenty more out there who actually appreciate those features.

Just ignore the features you don't need, just like you ignore the TV stations and programmes you don't want to watch.

You mean like, never use IE again?

posted by : BB, 09 September 2009

"Dead market

Opera needs to branch out into something else. This is like IOmega still selling Zip drives. It's something people don't care ab..."

butthurt failfox boi

Opera needs to branch out into something else. This is like IOmega still selling Zip drives. It's something people don't care about anymore.

Most browsers "work" well enough for people not to bother downloading an alternative. This is why IE has staying power. It's not Microsoft pushing it. People just don't care what browser they use so long as most of their webpages display correctly.

Turbo modes, UIs, whatever. People don't care about those. It's not 2001 anymore. The last major "innovation" most people gave any notice to was the tabbed interface, and now every browser has it. Opera, the EC and all these other folk need to stop living in the past.

Guess I shoudn't have downloaded it 8 million times by myself-

IE, even IE8, is installed on most PCs, but most people I know use Firefox. If you consider how often web pages are looked at with IE vs Firefox vs. whatever, I imagine the microsoft slice is hovering around 50%...

"One of which allows me to organzie tab's in a multi-row fashion whereas Opera prefer's an archaic let's just keep making tinier and tinier tabs across a one dimensional plane. Great browser, just inherently flawed by nature. In a user-based, customizability-driven media age, the O lag's behind."
Or your brain does, maybe 'numPTi' more appropriate.
go to the appearances menu (shift+F12) click the tab bar, and choose the wrapping you want. No wrapping, which you think is the only way, with an extender bar (scroll across the tabs) OR to multiple lines. THAT has been in since opera 9 came out at least (around the time Fx 2.x came out), maybe even earlier, that's just the first time I remember seeing it.

Amazing, innit, the people going on about how firefox has all these different plugins, which people love, and yet *shock* already built in to (the much smaller) Opera.

I finally put Firefox 3.5 on my machine the other day to test something. I thought something was wrong, because javascripts were running so slowly. No, it's just firefox, running them slower as the only tab, as chrome and opera do with a few dozen tabs open. One last etst tomorow, and then off comes Fx 3.5. - no need for that bloatware to clog up my system.

Different regions of the world have different browser share. E.g. in Russia Opera has ~30% share, in Ukraine ~50%.

Opera hasn't been adware for many years.

It's Google Chrome that displays adverts, though that hasn't stopped people from using and loving it and praising it to the hilt.

What if Google stop being Mozilla's sugardaddy? If Chrome already displays adverts, there's no reason for Firefox not to follow suit. They'd have to survive somehow, and the company hardly got anywhere in the days of donations. Given that no one ever forks open source software to produce popular alternatives, everyone will be forced to accept adverts in Firefox and do nothing about it, just like they have to dance to the Microsoft beat when it comes to what new versions of IE do.

the fact of the matter is that for ordinary people (non nerds who use but don't really care about the Internet), IE is becoming far closer to what they want from a browser than the ever bloated Firefox. I expect IE9 to contain many new features but the interface will be simpler and more streamlined than any other browser.

That guy must be knackered by now doing all those downloads LMAO

With broadband Microsoft's front loading of IE is way less of a concern. I do not fully dismiss its effect, but I would say way less.

With the little time it takes to download a browser now, people are more likely to experiment. And they have; Firefox would not have had the success it has today with out broadband. The combination of slow connections and frontloading indeed would be detrimentaly to any browser developer.

No Roboform = No go. Also I use 2-3 FireFox plugin's without a hitch. One of which allows me to organzie tab's in a multi-row fashion whereas Opera prefer's an archaic let's just keep making tinier and tinier tabs across a one dimensional plane. Great browser, just inherently flawed by nature. In a user-based, customizability-driven media age, the O lag's behind.

since version 8.5, somewhere in ... 2005.

I use Opera all day, everyday, for many office-related functions including it being my enterprise mail client, so far version 10.0 has been the best one out ;)

raskolnikov

The one and only time I ever looked at Opera was years ago. As soon as I ran the program and saw that it was ad supported I immediately uninstalled it and never bothered to read about it or install it again. So, is Opera still adware?
I value my Firefox add-ons too much to bother with whatever the popular flavor of browser of the month is.

Perhaps Opera's share is artifically lowered by people setting the browser identification string to IE, to stop bad pages from misloading.

I know I use it.

Same ol same ol....new browser, records and fanbois making up lies, damn lies and statistics.
Win 7 comes out, MS still has 70-80% browser market. Fireferret still has 20% and rest split the remains.

Fireferret is like Lib Dems (uk) ...doesnt matter what they say or do there is always a 20% vote for them. Are they ever gonna be in crarge..errmm no but 20% vote so must be good, right?

and btw I use SRWare Iron, if you must know

It's a fine browser indeed. And I don't need to deal with 10+ add-ons, including all their intrinsic problems, only to have anything beyond basic functionality.

It's also the only 100% standards compliant that doesn't break any sites -- except the ones tailored exclusively for Internet Exploder, which are pretty rare nowadays.

Maybe their only fault was choosing Qt framework which is amazing by itself but not very fast for slower CPUs.