Opera gives away ad-free browser

[spinynorman]

Read about it at The Register. B)

[Qchem]

I grabbed a code at their recent give-away, certainly an interesting browser.

[blackhat101]

Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today's milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.

 

What makes Opera's web browser unique

The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera's groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse.

Download link for Mandriva Edition:

http://www.opera.com/download/linux.html

[spinynorman]

Sorry blackhat - beat you to it.

[blackhat101]

Thanks for moving it to yours. I got so excited that I didn't

check. Great deal from Opera.

[mystified]

I bought Opera but my license ran out when it went to the 8.0 version. So I was quick to take the offer when I heard about it a couple of weeks ago. I've been using Opera almost exclusively for several years. It's a great browser. Hopefully without the ads more people will try it out.

[blackhat101]

I love the paste and go feature.

[johnz]

the last hour iv been using this browser for the first time and it has to be said its faster than the mozilla suite and of course IE.

[mystified]

Opera used to advertise as being the fastest browser on earth. I don't know if they still make that claim but you're right. It is fast.

[theYinYeti]

I tried it. I like it.

 

I still prefer Firefox for everyday usage because of (IMO) a better job with W3C standards.

 

However, Opera is really good enough when it comes to standards, and I might come to prefer it for as a developer tool. It has those nice features:

- small viewport (like a PDA or a phone) with ShiftF11,

- page transformation options for testing the versatility/accessibility of the layout and presentation.

 

Yves.

[AussieJohn]

This is only musing on my part.

Since Opera is still a proprietary product and since Free Firefox is killing both Opera and Internet Explorer worldwide, could this be a temporary measure on Operas part to try and kill off the free upstart Firefox and get people back in to locked-in browsers ???.

After all until Firefox, users who hated the instability and insecurity of IE really had no option that they knew of other than Opera since Netscape was regarded as a joke.

IE does not lose money because of Firefox but loses what little remaining prestige it still has. On the otherhand Opera has been bleeding severely dollar wise and would gain the most if it could present itself as the new but mature standard for browsers and when Firefox was seemingly sidelined it could move back to charging again.

Maybe not. Just a thought though.

 

Cheers. John.

 

For my part, I will continue to support (by using them) the Linuxs browsers, Firefox, Galeon and Konqueror in that order. JB.

Edited September 21, 2005 by AussieJohn

[eric.proctor]

I'm using opera, and I like it a lot. Very happy with this browser. Probably going to be my primary. Very nice as free.

[theYinYeti]

I think John is right. So even *if* I come to also prefer Opera for everyday usage (which I doubt), I'll still use Firefox.

 

And for development, I'll have to download and test this extension, someone brought to my attention:

http://chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/

 

Yves.

[aRTee]

John, Opera is not trying to kill off FF, they are just changing their strategy.

 

It's actually one of the few closed source/proprietary products I like, it just works great.

I use Konq, FF and Opera in that order at home, and FF, IE in that order at work (100% FF if I can help it..).

 

One reason to like Opera is that it is fast, has a mailclient and is crossplatform - you can easily get people to use Opera on win, then move all to Linux and have them continue.

I know this was true for Mozilla, but now you need 2 apps for mail and www, and it's not so fast.

[AussieJohn]

Hello Artee. I am still not convinced on your first point.

Sure it is a different strategy. They are in the game of making money and at the moment Firefox has drastically reduced that potential income. Just look at the independant polls that try to quantify the % use of different browsers and you see Opera near the bottom and that was not the situation 6 months ago.

On your second point about speed I don't know because I have never used it. But even if it is fast, it seems to me that the obsession for speed in saving a few seconds is mostly pointless. A bit like feeling you MUST have a FERRARI that can do 200+mph when every freeway limits to 100mph max and so you can also save a couple of seconds between traffic lights .

Like, what tha ????.

On your third point, I can see no personal advantage to having mail in the browser. I can see one big practical advantage in having them separate and that is if for some reason one crashes then it doesn't take down the other as well. And yes yes, I know it is claimed that Opera never crashes but the principle still applies.

 

You like Opera and that is great for you and Opera, at least now thanks to Firefox we have REAL choice nowdays.

 

Cheers. John.