Opera 10 is out this week

[charlie]

Most the improvements are under the hood, such as the newly fine-tuned rendering engine. It promises a 40% increase in speed, and it is indeed faster. It's at least Chrome's equal in rendering GMail and Digg, maybe a little quicker. Opera's a contender for the speediest browser again.

Perhaps the most noticable new feature is the tab bar. It doesn't just show previews when hovering over a tab, the bottom edge of the bar is draggable. Drag it downward and the row of tabs is replaced by a row of preview images. I don't yet know if it's useful, but it's a pretty neat toy.

Opera now lets you specify an online service as your email client. Click a mail link and it'll open the compose window of your webmail provider. Opera joins Firefox and IE in adding this feature (not sure if Chrome or Safari has it).

Maybe the oddest feature is a reprise of an old AOL service: website compression. Opera calls it Turbo. When Turbo is enabled and download speed drops below a certain threshold, fetches are routed through Opera's servers, where they're compressed before being passed on (I can already picture the "why do my images look so grotty?" posts piling up in their forums). Why Opera wants to duplicate what most dialup ISPs already offer, I don't know. Datamining, maybe?

[RoyGBiv]

1. It is pretty nifty ...

The one thing that continues to drive me batty about it is font rendering. This may be a Linux issue. (I wouldn't doubt it ... I have to screw around with system fonts on an initial install before Firefox is to my liking.) I can't make the fonts look the way I want them, and it hurts my eyes. I'd use it more often if it weren't for that.

[struggle4progress]

2. Are you using default webpage fonts or setting the fonts yourself in preferences?

[RoyGBiv]

4. I've done both ...

I tend to make things worse when I set individual font families myself.

It's probably a personal preference thing. A friend uses it on his Kubuntu system without complaint. I just find something off about it and end up with a headache after staring at it for awhile.

[charlie]

5. Yeah, it's Linux

Font rendering is consistent among browsers on Wintels. The odd duck used to be Safari. Odd duck? Wait, no, demented wildebeest. For who knows what reason (wouldn't be surprised if it was one of Jobs' aesthetic fiats) Apple decided webpages were best viewed from inside a fogged shower stall. The gnarliest Linux font was more readable and soothing to the eye. My eyes would ache from involuntary refocussing on letters that had smoothing halos so wide, white pages looked off-gray. Worse, the same rendering was applied to chrome text, too. That decision HAD to come down from on high, nobody with a pair of eyes (and no reality distortion field) would've let that out the door.

Linux is soooooo much more eye friendly nowadays. I used to look at Linux and think, no wonder Slashdot dorks are so crazy. They look at far more text than Wintel users, and every document looks like a cut-up ransom note.

Hope you get those fonts worked out for Opera. It's always been a good browser and now it's a peppy little speedster again, really nice to have around. MS Webcore doesn't fix it?

[RoyGBiv]

7. MS Webcore ...

No, it doesn't, and it should.

Setting up fonts the way I like them on a fresh Linux install now takes about 5 minutes. It used to take me an hour to get them to where I didn't want to punch the screen. All I have to do in Firefox is change what winds up as default when I compile it from source to something from the MS family. The OSS fonts are *better* but still aren't up to par.

This doesn't work in Opera, or it doesn't work in quite the same way.

I must admit, I haven't spent *that* much time on it. Mucking around with fonts is among my least favorite things to do, right up there with diagnosing the paper jam in a printer or fax machine. Yeah, I have naughty dreams that mimic that scene from Office Space. Mmmmm ... a right proper beat down of the fax machine would so make my week.

I may mess around with it this weekend. I'll finally have some time to myself.

[charlie]

9. Yeah, it's probably Opera

The old Netscape browsers used to do their own rendering that was way different than Windows native, made me nuts. Big bloopy letters that were also stretched horizontally. And point sizes that didn't match other apps. Don't like our 12pt Fisher-Price look? Try the 11pt, it's stylishly microscopic.

Firefox on Linux has a glitch that's annoying. I'm a chrome minimalist, get rid of everything and jam whatever's left in a single bar at the top. Works great in Windows. Firefox on Linux leaves an empty expanse just below the top bar, a jumbo overhang that... Won't. Go. Away. It makes me crazy.

[RoyGBiv]

11. Yeah, I've noticed that myself ...

It's one reason I'd *like* to get Opera's fonts sorted out.

I'm rather addicted to Firefox, but I'm not married to any one app for anything. Some sites I visit just don't do well in Firefox on Linux for that reason.

Konqueror's become quite nice. It's too minimalist for my tastes, but I find myself using it more and more, enough so I didn't replace it as the browser associated with clicking links in various apps.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Speaking of crazy Linux people ...

You should have seen (or maybe you did) the default font used in the terminal emulator under KDE when 4.0 was first released. Not only did the developers decide to choose the most obnoxious color scheme (pale gray on black ... what precisely were they smoking?) as default but they chose Misc Fixed (size 6) as the default font. This font looks like a dot matrix printer had a seizure and skipped every 4th bit of data.

It made me want to hurt people.

[charlie]

13. Ooof

No, I didn't get to see that. You've got to wonder sometimes. Was a Wargames/Sneakers double feature on TV when they coded that?

Usability is hard, I know. But, KDE is a fair-sized enterprise, they can't hire someone to at least steer them right when they drive off the road?

Have you ever tried PCLinuxOS? Eeesh. Your avatar would fit the scheme of the bootup screen. The desktop wasn't great, but it was inoffensive... until you started popping menus and windows. Somebody was trying to recreate the essence of a carnival float in Rio. It was so garishly distracting I had to lose it fast. Punched through the included skins and every one looked like it was test driven on MySpace. So, now I had to go find a skin that wouldn't blister a desktop, which I really didn't want to do. Then I noticed I had an ISO of Linux Mint I hadn't tried yet...

It's too bad, PCLinuxOS is well regarded. But they caught me when I just couldn't be arsed to waste time redecorating. I wonder how often that happens.

[RoyGBiv]

14. Probably often ...

This was precisely what turned me off. Several iterations back, it seemed so dead set on being the OS of choice for those crossing over from Windows that someone drank some spiked punch and went a little crazy with bastardized versions of Windows trademark color schemes and icons. It looked like someone put together a Windows desktop while tripping balls on a combo of acid and crystal meth.

Back in the day, it was the *only* distro that was able to figure out my old ATI AIW card for video capture without a ton of mucking around. They'd actually compiled xorg to allow it to do what it was capable of doing. So, I was disappointed.

Oddly enough, this is one thing that turns me off Ubuntu. I loathe the default color scheme. I know it's easy to change it, but I get all moody looking at the install screens and start planning my funeral.

The original problem in KDE4 was simply that the whole thing was nearly an abortion. It was bad. They had no business making it a milestone release. Finally, at 4.3, it's become mostly stable.

Still no native versions kaffeine and k3b, the best disc burning utility I have ever used on any system, though. Ya have to use the KDE3 versions and load those libraries, which of course makes them far less efficient.

[charlie]

17. "...start planning my funeral" LOL

Me. Too. I'm really not interested in that stuff, it's just got to stay out of the way. If the chrome is acceptable -- and I'm always astonished at how... exuberant most skins are -- everything else goes in the trash. Black desktop, no wallpaper. No more than a few desktop icons. Small taskbar and chrome reduced to the smallest fringe on everything. I don't want to notice my environment.

So, you've had the PCLinuxOS experience. I thought maybe I was being too anal about it, I'm glad someone else saw what I saw.

It really highlights the concern for experience that's gone into Ubuntu. They've come really close to finding the sweet spot for wooing Windows users. I guess it takes a millionaire sugar daddy to be able to do that kind of refinement.

If Ubuntu brown isn't your thing, try Linux Mint. It's Ubuntu green. It's not as horrible as it sounds :)

[struggle4progress]

3. I don't think Turbo helps much, when my service gets slow

[charlie]

6. Oh, you've used it?

It actually kicks in at broadband speeds? That seems kinda weird. Even if you're bogging at low hundreds of kbs, it's still fast enough that I can't imagine scrunching even a couple hundred KB off a webpage would make much difference.

[struggle4progress]

12. I don't think it kicks it at broadband speeds: at some hours of the day, my broadband speeds

sometimes drop to miserable sub-dial-up speeds, and it kicks in then -- and doesn't do much good

[Why Syzygy]

10. I love it!

Didn't know about the tab drag. Yes, that will come in handy. It handles gmail! The older version didn't get along at all.

I can't find the WAND! Has it been replaced by another tool?
And where do I set it go use gmail?

Thanks, charlie! :toast:

[charlie]

15. Lol!

Happy Opera Fan is happy! :hi:

Wand is now called Password Manager. Tools --> Advanced --> Password Manager.

I know where to set webmail, but GMail isn't included in the defaults. I haven't found where to insert it yet. Tools --> Preferences --> Advanced --> Programs --> mailto --> Edit.

[Why Syzygy]

16. hehe

DE-lighted. Okay, so "Password Manager". Is there a way to get that on the toolbar?
(I've posted the question in the Opera forum.)
I'll look at those mail settings per your map.
... Oh yeah. I looked at that. It wants a protocol and .exe file. ??
... Protocol is "mailto" . but the radio button for "use webmail" is still greyed out.
... Oh I see what you mean. Not in list.

edit 4: What it is is a built in mail client. It opens in browser window and looks like Outlook Express. So, gmail will use it. I set it as IMAP and it works. It would also work as a pop client. The gmail interface just isn't an option.

I forgot to :bounce: about the spell checker! I can uninstall Aspell!

Still doesn't work with amazon reader. Have to continue to launch IE for that. x(

It is so much faster and sharper!

ack! It downloaded all 10k message in my All Mail. ohno

[charlie]

18. I can't find a password manager button

in any of their button sets. I imagine there's a way to add it to the toolbar, but I don't know where it is.

To add GMail to the default set of webmail services, check this out:

http://jamiemart.in/2009/07/make-gmail-the-default-mailto-handler-in-opera-10/

[Why Syzygy]

19. What good is a form filler

if you have to right click each field to fill in? :eyes:
The prior one wasn't great. The only thing it ever filled was email address.

SIGH I'll keep looking.

Thanks for the gmail fix :thumbsup:

[charlie]

20. Ah, password manager is the key icon

Right-click the toolbar. Customize --> Appearance --> Buttons --> Browser. Drag the Log-in key icon to the toolbar.

[Why Syzygy]

21. d'oy

:thumbsup: I'm luvin it.

Thanks, charlie!

[Why Syzygy]

22. Hope you know

you have made yourself the go-to guy for Opera 10 now. :evilgrin:

Any idea why the photobucket edit option doesn't work? It looks like it runs 'flashplane', iirc.

:D

[charlie]

23. Bad javascript

They're browser sniffing, which they shouldn't do.

While you're at PhotoBucket, right-click: Edit Site Preferences --> Network --> Browser Identification --> Mask as Firefox.

If you're already on an image editting page that's blank because it wouldn't load, force a hard refresh: hold Shift and click Refresh. Otherwise, just click the Edit link on an image.

[hunter]

24. It works fine for me in Debian, and it is faster.

The fonts are fine too, and unchanged from what I had. I'm not sure how I got the fonts to please me, but I do remember messing around with them in a previous version.

They moved the cache so I had to rewrite my tools for steal... um... grabbing youtube videos and such, which was no big deal.

What I don't like is the new icon. It looked to me like a red "0" standing in a pile of dirt so I edited it to get rid of the shadow.

I haven't tried the "turbo" function; I don't want my traffic going through Opera anyways.

The spell check is nice too, but my spelling is so bad I need a spellchecker that makes suggestions. Even with suggestions I sometimes don't find the word I'm hunting for.

[Why Syzygy]

25. Suggestions

Right click the misspelled word for suggestions.

[hunter]

26. Ha, ha, I get to tell myself "RTFM!!!"

:blush: :banghead:

Thank You!

(And you were polite too.)

[kentauros]

37. I've tried to use the cache for grabbing videos without much success.

Then I discovered keepvid.com and use it to grab all youtube videos I want to keep. It works great and you can save in flv or mp4 formats :)

Until I read of the place to find the new "wand" here, I was reluctant to get 10. I use Wand a lot and miss it on IE when forced to use that POS at places of employment...

Now, what about when you upgrade; will it keep all of your accumulated notes and autofill info? If not, I better save those files now...

[Why Syzygy]

38. Personally ..

I made a clean install. Removed the old version. Updates make me nervous.

[kentauros]

39. I've done that, too, and still had other problems.

Like the time some redirect program/spyware/virus/whatever wouldn't let me do legitimate searches with google or any of them through the search field next to the url field. That was on my work version (I had to keep it "hidden" as they only wanted us to use IE, yet the IT people personally preferred anything but IE.) I've seen it try to happen at home, but I guess my AVG caught it and stopped that from continuing. A full wipe and re-install on the work version didn't get rid of that problem. Probably something hiding in the System folder that didn't affect anything else...

It's not that I'd lose much if an upgrade wiped my notes or autofill. It's just that it's a pain to re-enter those things.

[Why Syzygy]

40. I saved bookmarks.

The autofill is just a short form as I don't store credit card info, etc.

[kentauros]

42. I store some of my harder-to-remember passwords in it

but nothing more important than that. The adr-files are easy to save and I tend to do that regularly :)

[struggle4progress]

27. Put it on my desktop mac and used debian packages to install it on two ubuntu machines

I'm glad to have it on my ubuntu netbook because I think its a great browser

Just set up Opera mail on the netbook: easy!

[charlie]

28. I've always liked Opera

I'm using it right now, because of a bug in Firefox 3.5.2 where random entries in the DNS cache will fall out and for whatever reason, be irretrievable until a restart. DU became invisible to FF, so rather than shutting it down, I've opened Opera.

Opera is terrific, but one of the big reasons I prefer FF is because it's open source. If FF went into the toilet, I'd probably adopt Chrome as my main browser for the same reason.

[RoyGBiv]

29. That's what it boils down to for me ...

There's the matter of extensibility of FF also, but at the end of the day, it's that FF is open source that causes me to prefer it, given that it is almost equal to other browsers.

There's another level to this. I tend to compile often used applications from source and as a result I haven't had some of the problems with more recent editions of FF that some have had. I like just the idea of having a binary for an application that has been built against my system, and I also like the fact it tends to function better.

[charlie]

33. There you go

Being a Windows user, I hadn't even thought of the advantage of compiling FF for your system specs. Open Source is so blindingly right, obvious, and healthy, that I look forward to the day when not providing source is considered reason for suspicion.

[struggle4progress]

30. Opera seems to be far more customizable than most other browsers

I like, for example, being easily able to turn image loading on or off page by page

[struggle4progress]

31. Have you tried this Firefox hack?

Simple Firefox DNS Hacks To Boost Performance
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/simple-firefox-hacks-to-boost-performance/

It seems to address something like what you describe: by default FF caches at most 20 DNS entries for at most 1 sec each, so if one had a slow connexion or too many tabs open, FF could spend a lot of time doing DNS look-ups to cache but losing them again before they were fully exploited. Solution: hold more cached DNS entries longer

[charlie]

32. Thanks for that

But this is a genuine bug, not a performance glitch. Once the entry expires, nothing can compel the browser to make a new request from the DNS server, so the IP is in permanent limbo. It's random (I can surf anywhere I want to right now, just not DU) and reeeeally annoying.

It's close to what these guys are going through, except no amount of refreshing will make it behave, and it doesn't resolve to a "server not found" page. The status bar will just read "Looking up XXX..." forever. I even put DU in my hosts file weeks ago when I first encountered the problem and it hasn't made a difference:

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=en-US&comments_parentId=427799&forumId=1

[struggle4progress]

34. I typically browse broadband on a reasonably snappy multicore with dozens of tabs open,

so the can't-find-server problem generally shows up only when my internet connection slows at high traffic times of day, when all my browsers tend to behave less than ideally

I didn't see anything in the threads you cited that really clarified the situation for me. Of course, I skimmed em pretty fast -- but a session store interval issue could cause the problem with a short DNS cache time, if many tabs are open, it seems to me

Anyway, I've just recklessly applied the hack, will hope that increasing the DNS cache size doesn't cause some unanticipated corruption, and maybe the increased cache retention time will solve the problem

[charlie]

35. It can cause something similar, but not quite what I'm experiencing

I've left FF open since it occurred about 10 hours ago and trying to fetch DU still hangs at "Looking up..." It says it's making a DNS request, but it's not. I can visit any other site I want, but URL(s) that have fallen to this bug are effectively gone for the rest of the browser session. It's a strange one.

[struggle4progress]

36. I may not have described the process accurately: you may be correct

that once something falls from the DNS cache, it is not automatically looked up again, so my fantasy about multiple look-ups may be just a fantasy

This reminds of a problem I've experienced with many browsers, that I might call "tab staleness": tabs seem to get old and die. I reuse tabs a lot, and in many browsers the oldest open tabs may eventually stop working: sometimes when a page times out, I get no further functionality from the tab. Something like this might be expected if the local DNS caching was somehow associated with particular tabs, so that DNS cache expiration (or the expiration of some related table entry) irrevocably lost some reference to the tab. My solution is usually to open the desired resource in a new tab and close the stale one; this often works, but not always -- if it doesn't work, I frequently find that closing many old tabs, and reducing how many pages I try to load at once, helps

Usually if I can't get access to a website at all, I suspect something related to external DNS: apple's Leopard apparently caused access problems some time ago by defaulting to IPv6. So maybe check your network.dns.disableIPv6 setting?

[charlie]

44. Well, it's been a week

I haven't restarted Firefox and am still using Opera just for DU. FF still won't get beyond "Looking up..." if I try to raise DU (and DU only).

I've experienced the "tab staleness" you mention, and like you, can fix it by opening another tab. This problem is weirder in that it's only occurred with DU -- this is the 4th or 5th time -- and cannot be fixed without a restart. I can only assume it happens to the most heavily used URL in a session. Either that, or I've uncovered the fact that Mozilla is a secret subsidiary of the GOP...

[Why Syzygy]

41. How does one use Java in Opera?

I'm still having to launch IE for a Java site I frequent.

(Hope you don't mind me using "one" :rofl: )

[charlie]

43. Assuming one has the JRE installed

one would be best advised to see if it enabled:

Tools --> Preferences --> Advanced --> Content --> Enable Java.

[Why Syzygy]

45. I have the JRE installed

as it works in IE. It does not work in Opera. Java enabled, check. In the prior version, there was talk (on the forum) of having it installed independently or something... I never had it working. Does it work in your Opera?

edit: okay, now I'm getting an error message, which will at least give me something to go on.
"MSVCR71.dll not found"

[charlie]

47. Couldn't say if it works or not

I loathe Java and never install it.

This looks like a dumb standoff between MS and Sun. You have msvcr71.dll, it's just not in Java's path where it can find it. The quick fix is to copy it to a location where Java will see it when it launches, namely JAVA_HOME\bin or JAVA_HOME\bin\client... but Sun wants you to know that that's wrong, it's not a bug, and if it was, it's MS's fault. Or something like that. More here:

http://www.duckware.com/tech/java6msvcr71.html
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6509291

[Why Syzygy]

48. Both copies I have are in the Java

folders.
C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin
C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\new_plugin

There is no "JAVA_HOME". The program folder is Java and Java/jre6. I'll read the docs you posted.
Mkay. I'll read it, but don't know that I'll 'get it'. argh! IE calls it just fine, although there is something wrong with the rendering, as the photo that should be displayed does not match what is actually showing.
Ironically, Java support documents are WORD.rtf.


The MS site indicates that this file can go missing if you have a certain XP configuration (which I don't) and .Net 1.1 is installed (it isn't).

btw. I hate it too. But I really want to use this one particular website.

Thanks for your help, charlie.

[charlie]

49. All caps and underscore

is a convention used to denote an unspecified location. Rather than say C:/Program Files/Java, which wouldn't be correct for someone who chose to install it at E:/Java, JAVA_HOME is used as a stand-in for the base path.

You already have msvcr71.dll in the bin and bin/new_plugin folders? Try dropping a copy into bin/client.

Under Tools --> Advanced, there is a Java Console selection. Try raising a console. If it can do that, Opera can at least minimally interface with Java.

I'm fishing in the dark here. Maybe someone with Java will notice this subthread and give you real hands-on advice.

[Why Syzygy]

50. Opera has a

Java folder. It has a java exe file there "opera.jar". Could I just copy the .dll file into that folder? I read something about having to register .dll files. I think I can find instructions to do that.

[Why Syzygy]

46. Lots of google stuff

re: MSVCR71.dll . I wonder if installing .NET would resolve the missing file?

[clear eye]

51. From Opera site

http://www.opera.com/docs/browserjs/#fixDisabled