Free Opera!
 

No not the singing variety. Some of you may be aware of the alternative browser Opera. Up to now it was free if you put up with an ad banner in it. Well, now they have decided to put it out as freeware with no ads.

Download from here http://www.opera.com

Why not give it a go , its like Firefox in that it supports tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, better security etc.

Fill your boots!

Ian

Re: Free Opera!
 

In other words they gave up.... Netscape had a really good go at it.. then everyone hailed Opera as the one to take on IE and now Firefox.. But now it would seem firefox is more unsecure than IE and its only saving grace is that hackers prefer to attack MS products.

Opera is good but If you want an alternative then use Firefox IMHO.. But just dont get carried away (like a certain owner of accyweb does about it hehe no names roy.. no names :) )... it will NEVER make more than a slight dent in the browser wars until the monopoly of IE being the only installed browser is broken... until then Firefox or any other browser no matter how fantastic a few percent think it is will never get anywhere..

BTW .. at one time there was over 100 internet browsers to choose from..

Re: Free Opera!
 

Re: Free Opera!
 

Karaoke at the next do?

Kippax ---- YAWN!!!!!!!! I've been around the Net for a very long time and I can't remember anyone saying Opera was the one to topple IE. Netscape at one point was the most prevalent browser. All software has bugs. It was written by humans after all. What seperates Open Source stuff is the speed of resolution. Microsoft are SLOW at releasing patches, OSS normally has critical patches out within a day.

There are still lots of browsers that the vast majority of people wouldn't even know existed. I use two on a daily basis that most Windows users will never of heard of.

If 1 IE user trys Opera and likes it then my post will have been worthwile. In fact, the fact that one IE users learns that there alternatives makes it worthwile.

Re: Free Opera!
 

I made an observation.. conversation.. talked about the subject at hand and here you are having another go at me.. whats your problem? I didnt make any personal remarks.. i wasnt insulting or nasty to anyone.. I talked about the subject... so why are you giving it the childish treatement...

Re: Free Opera!
 

Well that's more likely to happen if more people are aware that there are alternatives.

There are actually people out there who don't even know what a browser is and think it is the same as an ISP.

Just like there are people who don't know the difference between a film producer and a director.

I even know someone who thinks he can get on the internet without either one, but if you knew him you'd understand why it's best not to try explaining to him.

I've just re-read that! rofl - don't anybody tell me that you never knew you couldn't get on the internet without a film producer and director!!

Re: Free Opera!
 

Thats the problem willow... they have been trying to make people aware for over 10 years.. it simply doesnt work.. Poeple ahve no idea why they would want a different browser when IE works (in there eyes) .. advertising, word of mouth.. nothing works... they get a new PC and its internet ready... they dont understand the concept of download or install... by the time they do they are already happy with IE.

Believe me Opera, netscape and firefox have all tried.. obviously.... But even Netscape who tried for years never got more than 10% of the market...

Having firefox or whatever installed on the PC when you buy it and the choice... thats the only way... the www is now what..13-14 yrs old I cant remember exactly.. and ever since IE came with PC it has been the driving force.... because it comes pre installed.. simple as that..

Re: Free Opera!
 

Little History of the Net.

http://www.w3.org/History.html

History of the Browser

http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_browse.htm

Kippax, you may wish to note the following quote "The Netscape browser led in user share until Microsoft Internet Explorer took the lead in 1999 due to its advantage in being bundled with Windows operating systems." This suggests that Netscape had rather more than 10%. You weren't far off with 14 years though :) I reckoned a bit older but was mixing it up with the concept of linked documents(Hyperlinks).

Re: Free Opera!
 

and ?

is that your way of apologising and agreeing wiht me??? its exactly what i have been saying..they ahve the monopoly... as for your history links.. you know where you can shove them dont you.. i wasnt sad enough to go looking for the dates haha you where.... thats why i said i cant remeber...

am i supposed to add letters to your name now in some childish competition... grow up :(

Re: Free Opera!
 

wich was a better system betamax or vhs, betamax far more superior, so why did vhs outlive it because it became the industry standard, and the retailers and video rental stores killed it off, the general public of this fair land will use whatever they are told to use at that moment in time thats gonna be IE, they dont know any better and the majority of light/novice users wont even want to change even if made aware of alternatives, they have enough hassles getting their head round IE and with most of published userguides concentrating soley on IE, me thinks its here to stay

Re: Free Opera!
 

True.. its not only the users you have to convince. A lot of companies go for IE only and don't even want support for any other browser because most developers will (wrongly in my opinion) charge more for cross browser or backward campat sites.

I think IE is the lesser browser. But I use it all the time because I have to see what the majority see. IE isn't going to lose its lions share of the market IMHO

Re: Free Opera!
 

Are you capable of reading? IE was not the dominant broswer for the first 8 years and only a change in chargeing model brought it a market share with no effort. Sad enough to go looking? Nope, actually interested as a normal inquisitive human being would be.

You also seem to think the whole of this thread and my answers are for your benefit. In fact you couldn't be more wrong. So much so you are to be congratulated as the first person to ever make me consider using the bozo bin. As for those people who may actually want to find out how the Internet and WWW came about they will find those links useful.

WTF? Who asked for anything from you. I grew up a long time ago thanks.

Re: Free Opera!
 

no need to swear.. deary me we all know what WTF means.. tut tut

You keep printing my name as kippax... its childish...

go and have a lie down mate.. your getting confused and upset I can tell... maybe some fresh air or something. a valium perhaps.... anything but calm down... ranting raving and swearing you will ahve a short life.... have a wine gum ....

Re: Free Opera!
 

Having worked in the AV industry the reason we in the UK ended up with VHS where as a lot of teh world used Beta was commercial. During development at Sony teh first system developed was what we know as VHS. The developers weren't happy with the quality of picture so continued and eventually came up with Betamax. Sony therefore made Betamax video recorders under their name. At the time JVC and ferguson came togther and bought the license for the inferior VHS system from Sony. They started making video recorders under their own names. As the price of these monsters was high(£1K+) the majority of the public couldn't afford to buy them and so tried to rent them. The big players in the rental market(Granada, Radio Rentals etc) approached Sony to buy their better quality recorders. The only thing was that they wanted to rebrand the machines under their own names. Sony didn't want this so refused. They then approached JVC/Ferguson who were only too happy to sell them anything they wanted no matter what name was on the box. This way they majority of machines out there were VHS. As such the rental shops stocked more VHS tapes than Beta. New customers who were thinking of buying/renting a machine would go into the shop and see 3 walls of VHS and 1 wall of Beta tapes. They would then go and get a VHS machine as there was more choice. Hence we are were we are.

Now who can tell me why it is called Betamax? I'm not a rich man but 50 Ackers to whoever gets it.

Ian

Re: Free Opera!
 

Re: Free Opera!
 

The "Betamax" name is said to derive from the Japanese phrase beta gaki (raw + write)

Re: Free Opera!
 

i remember as a kid having a sony C7 betamax, far superior to anything VHS that was around at the time, brilliant bit of kit, oh those where the days, might go and try buy one on ebay for nostalgia sake

Re: Free Opera!
 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sony's ßetamax is the 12.7 mm (0.5 inch) home videocassette tape recording format derived from the earlier, professional 19.1 mm (0.75 inch) U-matic video cassette format. Like the video home recording system VHS introduced by JVC in 1976, it had no guard band, and used azimuth recording to reduce cross-talk. The "Betamax" name is said to derive from the Japanese phrase beta gaki (raw + write), however, as a pun, the designed trademark incorporated the Greek letter "beta"; Sanyo marketed its version as the "Betacord", but it, too, was referred to as "Beta". As well as Sony and Sanyo, Betamax video recorders were also sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Aiwa and NEC. The Zenith Electronics Corporation and WEGA Corporations contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product lines. [Department Stores like Sears in the US and Quelle in Germany sold Beta format VCRs under their house brands as did the Radio Shack chain of electronic stores. Sony introduced the Betamax home video system in 1975. The format failed to gain significant market share and was nearly completely replaced by VHS.

Re: Free Opera!
 

Had it for a while now and has the best bits of Mozzilla based browsers and IE. And you can make it very colourful for the kids.

Re: Free Opera!
 

That's where I found it, but I just kept the relevant bit and left out the rest!

Re: Free Opera!
 

Now the story I got was different. There is a type of Japanese writing called Beta. this involvees filling the brush with ink to almost overflowing. The writing is very bold and full bodied. If you look at the way information is put to tape, it is layed down in diagonal stripes. On VHS there is a diagonal band of 'space' between each stripe of information. On Betamax that band is almost non existant. hence the tape is 'full' of 'ink'. This came from one of the Jap development engineers that came to a trade show back in the mid 80's. He was a very interesting guy to chat to. We got more info on what was coming out for the next 3/4 years from him in 10 minutes than the rep could tell us for the next 18 months! We knew about the initial devlopment of Hi8 4 years before it hit the market.

I'll give the Ackers to Vorlon purely for knowing how to use WikiPedia


Ian

Re: Free Opera!
 

Duly banked - cheers Ian!

Re: Free Opera!
 

The "Betamax" name is said to derive from the Japanese phrase beta gaki (raw + write), however, as a pun, the designed trademark incorporated the Greek letter "beta";

Re: Free Opera!
 

I think firefox is more popular than a lot of peole will admit. however opera doesn't crash, seems more stable, and loads wap pages without an extension.
I sometimes use the old opera 6.06 which has pages in pages as well as tabbed browsing.
Firefox is still incompatible with many sites, esp banking sites hsbc and nationwide for example, I don't know if opera is as I just revert back to IE by right clicking in firefox and clicking open in IE.

Re: Free Opera!
 

Firefox has more han 10% of the market share at current.

Re: Free Opera!
 

Hey, hey, hey ... just done this and guess WHAT !! You know I was not getting the Avatars to move, well they have suddenly arisen from the dead ... sooooo excited .. am going to spend the next hour looking at everybody's now to see what I have been missing ... mmmm some I may not wish to know about that have been sent me :rolleyes:

Is a little jerky though when changing pages.

Re: Free Opera!
 

Course you can get on the internet without browser or ISP.. but usually with Windows installed..cos Win has the browser already on, then you can connect(with dail up) from connect wizard and choose your ISP

Re: Free Opera!
 

you still need an isp though driller although you don't need a browser, you can use windows browser. Not very sensible to do that though nowdays with all these loons out there.

Katex Thats the first thing I noticed and it put me of for a while but you do get used to it.

Re: Free Opera!
 

I wrote 10% in September 2005 and you reply in March 06 saying its more than 10% .. well waddaya know.. of course its more than 10% 6 months later!!!!!

But it aint much more and never will be until it comes pre installed with the computer you buy.

Re: Free Opera!
 

technically you don't need a browser at all(Windows 'browser' uses IE as its rendering engine), you can telnet to the httpserver and use a get command to retrieve raw html code. or you can use many other tools (wget for example). Then there are all the command line browsers (Lynx etc)

Re: Free Opera!
 

then there are command line browsers? arnt they browsers?

i started life using Lynx and made my first website for that... atari st half meg of memory and 720k disk drive (no HD) use a shell account for news and email then when the www appeared used Lynx .. all that on half meg of memory and a disk haha and I was recently asked if a celeron this that and the other.. 20gig hd and hundreds of megs of memory would be enough to get onto the internet ... hahaha oh dear :) i ressisted the temptation to tell them no... :)

Re: Free Opera!
 

I know what you mean Kipax but lets be honest, put a modern user in front of lynx and they would have a heart attack! :)

Yes its a browser but not in the sense of the word that people today would recognise.

Re: Free Opera!
 

Take away all there pretty buttons and colours and they will think the world has ended :) thig is.. even home computer users where aware of DOS and setting up sound cards for games etc... they dont even have to do that now ..

Saying that.. I had a belly full of shell accounts, command lines and two colour screens... I have to use ssh a lot for work and crave a few buttons and mouse :)

Re: Free Opera!
 

I think your all talking jibberish!!!

Re: Free Opera!
 

Ian looks at the 16 SSH shells he has currently open :(

You do get used to it and as you know, its much more powerful :)

Re: Free Opera!
 

16 then there on your own internal system yes? I have various ssh accounts but couldnt envisage needing them all at once.. mebbe a couple ... if watching live error logs

i aint a sys admin and only use ssh to get down to nitty gritty problems or handle stuff like mysql that are too big for phpadmin to work on. some other bits but using less and less now thank goodness.

nowerdays I have to have my static IP as a lot of sys admins wont let you ssh in otherwise.. so i pay the couple of quid extra for static

Re: Free Opera!
 

Ian I bet you go to the linux meetings eh?

Re: Free Opera!
 

16 is quite low amount tbh, We have 8 build/test enviroments across ~30 boxes with multiple workloads(partitions) on each each with virtual IPs I can be working on most of these at the same time. If things are going pear shaped then it gets rather crazy.

PS, I haven't managed a meet yet :)