An 'Opera' I just might live with...

Metas,

Since we've had a lot of reason to bellyache about Yahoo lately, I thought I would share the following...

Besides the big crash and assorted other nonsense, the thing that seems to bug most people are the intrusive ads. And on a separate issue I decided to take another look at the open source browser project, Opear - http://www.opera.com/

If you aren't familiar, it is an open source browser that works on many platforms. Last I gave it a good spin was back around v4.0, but it lacked a lot of standard support (javascript, css, etc.). But I downloaded 6.01 (for Windows) and it really is quite nice. Very fast, very small footprint, very configurable, not M$ <g>. But one of the many nice little features are a couple of little icons, one of them a camera. Click on it once, and it completely disables graphics!

No more ads! Yahoo messages come up with just the little 'advertisement' word!!

Want to go back to a site and use graphics? No need to delve into a preferences menu, just click the icon again.

Lots of things I'm finding, like they've mapped a lot of usage to the mouse with "gestures": hold the right button and move the mouse to the left? Moves back one page (like the "Back" button) - right button and 'gesture' to the right? Move to the next page in the history.

To purchase is $39, but as far as I can tell the only thing about running it free is one rotating banner ad in the tool bar. It is worth looking at, if you want to see a possible alternative browser.

Cheers,
Jon

In-Reply-To: <a64fhl+44p8@...>
jonszanto wrote:

> Lots of things I'm finding, like they've mapped a lot of usage to the
> mouse with "gestures": hold the right button and move the mouse to the
> left? Moves back one page (like the "Back" button) - right button and
> 'gesture' to the right? Move to the next page in the history.

Other browsers are copying that now.

> To purchase is $39, but as far as I can tell the only thing about
> running it free is one rotating banner ad in the tool bar. It is worth
> looking at, if you want to see a possible alternative browser.

If you have to pay or view adverts, that should be a clue that it isn't
open source, contrary to what you said before.

Graham

--- In metatuning@y..., graham@m... wrote:
> Other browsers are copying that now.

I stopped at IE 5.5 and Netscape 4.7. I believe they've both only had one upgrade since then, so maybe I missed them.

> If you have to pay or view adverts, that should be a clue that it
> isn't open source, contrary to what you said before.

Hmmm. I maybe am misremembering, or maybe Opera started in the 'open source' development mode. In any event, my prime points were an easy way to avoid the big, inline ads in Yahoo, a fast rendering browser with a small footprint, and a lessening of the IE monopoly.

Other than that, not much more to say...

Cheers,
Jon