The much awaited Opera v 9.0 is here. Currently, Opera’s desktop market share is very small, compared to Internet Explorer, Firefox or even Safari. With v9 Opera hopes to turn things around. With the release of v8.50 on September 20th, 2005 Opera got rid of the tag “Ad-Supported Freeware”. Since then it has been downloaded by millions of users, yet there has been no significant increase in the market share. According to Daniel Goldman Opera is gearing up for a serious marketing campaign. Hopefully, it will make some headway.

Opera has always been an innovator. Each of it’s previous builds were ahead of it’s time, and had something to offer that none of it’s competitors had. You can have a look at the comprehensive list of Opera’s Innovations over here . Version 9 also maintains that tradition. Lets have a look at the major new features that has been introduced in this version.
i ) Torrent Support : Many novice users find the concept of torrents confusing. Terms like torrent client, tracker, seeders only baffle them more. Opera has tried to simplify torrents for them through it’s torrent dowloader. It makes downloading torrents as simple as downloading a .exe file. However, it is not intended to replace a full fledged torrent client. So advanced users will probably give this feature a miss.
ii ) Site Specific Preferences : This is my favorite new feature. It allows you to set a specific set of rules for a given website. You can choose to allow pop-ups/block all pop-ups from a site, you can change the way cookies are handled, the useragent that opera uses and a host of other options including applying custom stylesheets. You can now disable javascript at certain malicious sites. Overall, this is incredibly useful
iii) Widgets : This is another feature that has grabbed a lot of attention. These are similar in functionality to the Konfabulator ( now Yahoo Widgets Engine ) or the Dashboard widgets in Mac. They act like tiny web applications. They use HTML, AJAX, JavaScript and CSS, and can use other technologies such as SVG. However, their functionality is limited, and are not Opera’s answer to Firefox’s extensions. There are some very usefull widgets available in the official widget gallery.
iv) Content Blocker : In it’s simplest form it is just an image blocker (ad/vulgarity blocker). Opera provides a very simple interface to block unwanted content. However, it fails to work on embedded flash content, which is very disappointing. Content blocker can be used to block any type of content, but you will need to find out it’s url from the source viewer.
v ) Search engine editor : This is another feature that was due for a long time. Now, adding new search engines to the search tab is a matter of few clicks. All you have to do is to right click in the search box and select “Create Search” option (don’t forget to add a keyword ). A simple yet functional UI is provided for managing the search.ini file.
vi) opera:config : In an attempt to simplify the user interface for a new users, Opera has removed all not so frequently used options from it’s preferences. Instead it has put them in he opera:config ( you need to type that in the address bar to access them ). This feature is obviously inspired by Firefox, but Opera’s one looks prettier.
vii) Thumbnail Preview of Tabs : If you hover your mouse pointer over the tabs, a thumbnail preview of that page will pop-up. This is a nice feature, but hasn’t been executed very well. The thumbnails are rather small and the preview pop-up is cluttered by unnecessary information like Encoding and MIME Type.
Opera has added another small feature to it’s tabs. You can now lock tabs, so that you don’t accidentally close them.
viii) Source Viewer : Opera has added an internal source viewer which highlights known syntaxes. One very weird thing is that if you switch to the Source viewer, Edit–>Find option becomes unavailable. You have to use Ctrl+F to bring up the Search Box.

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A broken screen does not necessarily mean you need to buy a new computer, with a laptop repair service you can save your current notebook pc. Whether you need a laptop battery, power cords, or laptop memory, find everything on the Internet.

Ever since Opera became a freeware, there has been a huge splurge in the number of downloads. More and more people are becoming aware of the fact that a better alternative exists.

People are switching to Opera from Internet Explorer as well as Mozilla Firefox. I often see new users of Opera asking questions like �Where can I find more plugins/extensions/addons for Opera?�. Although there are several usefull add-ons/plugins available for opera, unlike with Mozilla Firefox they are spread all over the web and can be difficult to discover. That is what prompted me to cobble together this guide. This guide is broadly divided into 7 sections and lists some of the modifications which I found worthy enough.

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Yes.Expect something big soon.Opera’s community news section has been updated to announce that Team Opera has planned a big event to mark the New Year.Daniel Goldman has revealed that the major event will be held in New York City.However other community members would not also be left out. More details should be available on this Monday ( December 12th ).As of now one lucky member can win an Opera T-shirt everyday for answering a simple question.You can participate here
A part from that expect a lot of new features in the future releases of Opera.I had mentioned in one of my earlier articles that there are reports that final release of Opera v9 would support widgets.Today Opera employee Olafur Arnason aka Olli has revealed that some more new features has been added to Merlin ( codename for Opera v9 ).Also it would include a much easier way to add search engines to the search bar.So now you wont need to download the search.ini editor or tinker with the search.ini file manually.It would now be possible to have site specifit settings.Check out his blog for more info.
Update: Opera has revealed what the big surprise is.For details see http://my.opera.com/newyears

In a browser faceoff ABC News has revealed some interesting new facts about the yet to be released Opera v9 final build.Currently Opera v9 is in Technichal preview 1.
This is what ABC News had to say :-

The upcoming version 9 does serve up a few tasty tidbits for the Opera aficionado, however. Although we were unable to test these features, the company says the final version will include support for widgets, small external programs that use Opera’s engine and can run on the desktop. Existing widgets for other programs can display the weather, show Webcams, and much more. Users will also be able to choose which Web sites can run JavaScript or display images. And the impressive built-in RSS feed handler, which we tried in the beta, now supports Atom 1.0 (a newer protocol similar to RSS).

You can read the full article here

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax seen a huge splurge in popularity in the last few months.More and more webdevelopers are starting to use it.The new Yahoo mail beta also uses Ajax extensively.However, only very few people from the US have got the oppertunity to test it.However, it is possible to implement Ajax even in the classic Yahoo mail with the help of addons made by Vivek Jishtu.
You can download them from here.
Direct Download Links:
For Firefox.
For Opera.
[For installing the userjs follow this guide.]
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http://www.smileygenerator.us/ is the leading clean smiley sites.It has made few thousand smileys so far.Smileygenerator has all of a sudden it has started blocking Opera and Firefox.
If you try accesing the site with Opera or Firefox you get a message saying :

We have determined that you are using some sort of ad-blocking software or using a leech enabled browser that downloads our site to your machine.

The webmaster (balamm) doesnt stop there.

The banned software currently includes Firefox and Opera browsers

As long as these “compliant browsers” and harvesters developers continue to promote theft and fraud,
or allow blocking banner ads or other advertising which allow me to pay for this site and earn a meager living,
I have no choice but to limit their access or close this site entirely.

For those who complain, keep in mind that this site is designed using “Proprietary Creativity”.
I don’t care about opensource standards or w3c compliance and neither should the average web user! We’re here to have fun!

.

Being stunned on seeing this, I joined their forum to file a complaint and was greeted by the webmaster with the choiciest of words.The following are his grudges against firefox and opera.

Problem is, Firefox now prides itself on being Leech enabled. Even adverstises that it can strip an entire site, harvesting all links. It’s looking less like an opensource alternative and more like a way to bring an end to the free internet.
Banner blockers, ad stoppers, leech extensions, what next? Hacking and password cracking extensions?Oh, right…. It’s already has those doesn’t it.
Opera is just as bad but even worse for the crappy way it handles site layout and “drag and drop”. WTF is that crap?
When IE comes with blanket ad and banner blocking and integrated MS sponsored leech plugins, then I’ll block it too.

Firefox and Opera browsers are both designed to either fake their identity or just not supply it. They are also designed to circumvent site features and block images, banners, text based ads, etc.
Not a very friendly or cooperative software from a webmaster’s point of view.
They are the reason more and more sites are being forced to switch to a subscriber system rather than provide free, ad sponsored content which users just take for granted.
Unfortunately, their designers took a good idea (blocking pop ups) and turned it into an anti webmaster, antisocial, anti “free internet” tool that blocks everything and hurts everyone.

It would be pretty clear to you that his complaints doesnt hold any ground al all.Both Opera and Firefox don’t support ad-blockers inherently.Opera Software has made is very clear that they wont include an adblocker in future either.Hoever there are addons available that can block ads.But, it is exactly the same with Internet Explorer.Actually there are more ad blockers available for IE compared to Firefox and Opera.

Now coming to faking user agents.Opera has been pretty much forced to do it.This is because of all those sites using browser sniffers to send broken code on detecting Opera.Not only that there are many old scripts that dont work if Opera’s ua is detected.Havard - an Opera employee had written a very nice article about this sometime back.You can read it here.And smileygenerator itself has become an example as to why such a feature is needed.If you dont want to edit the ua.ini file manually download this handy addon from myOpera forums.If you are using Firefox you can grab the useragent switcher extension from here.
And even after thinking a lot I just couldnt understand what he meant by a leech browser.

I guess this one beats environmentalchemistry episode by a mile(in case you are wondering what I am talking about please see this and this).I am angry with smileygenerator, but even more than that I am dissapointed to see such immature behaviour from them.Actually now if you want to use smileygenerator you would either have to use ua.ini or else fake your useragent using Proxomitron(whose principal task is to block ads and pop-ups).Not only that Maxthon is a webbrowser that comes with an adblocker included.But you can acces that site without the ads on Maxthon.Ironical.Isnt it?

Visit Smileygenerator
Visit their forums

Update 1 (5/11):It seems that smileygenerator.us is redirecting to a different german site called smileygenerator.com

Update 2 (11/11): Smileygenerator.us is no longer blocking Opera or Firefox.However the webmaster has made the following comment:

pallab.net noise
Pallab.net has been making a lot of noise lately. Seems he’s very desperate to have his site appear on the opera home page so he’s decided to challenge me. He doesn’t want you to know what he’s really about so I’ve asked a friend to ensure there’s an unedited version to keep him honest. When he restores the original, I’ll have this deleted. http://snipurl.com/nquq

It should be pretty obvious to any sensible person that his first accusition holds no ground.Neither am I challenging him.Smileygenerator is his website and he may do whatever he wants.However, this is my blog and I have the right to post my observations and comments on his website.And, in this article wasnt written to challenge him, but I merely pointed out the flaws in his argument for blocking Opera and Firefox.
I have no idea as to what he means by “He doesn’t want you to know what he’s really about”!I dont delete or edit comments posted only blog unless they are blatant comment spams,have abusive/racist comments.Sometimes I edit comments just to correct the formatting.He has put up a copy of this page here.If you scroll down you would notice that there is a comment there by the webmaster which isnt on my blog.It does make it seem like I deleted the comment.But the fact is that the comment was never posted on my blog.If I didn’t delete his earlier comments why would I delete that either?Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
He says:

“Guns don’t kill, people do!”Same with firefox and opera. It’s the people using it that give the software a bad name and a foul smell.

Does that mean that people using internet explorer don’t use adblockers?
The comment he makes in the last paragraph is really hillarious :))

Your fanatacism is very usefull. I didn’t have to do much at all to make it into thousands of sites where other fanatics like yourself plot the overthrow of MSN or Microsoft, or IE.

And yet he calls me a fanatic

Oh, by the way palab,your CSS is NOT valid!

I know it very well.I never claimed to be an expereinced webmaster.I am an ameteur.But even an ameteur like me can tell that with the current design the click through rate at smileygenerator would be lowe than it deserves.Smileygenerator is one of the few sites still using almost extinct frames.But heck, this article wasnt supposed to be about webdesigning.

There is a bad news as well as a good news.

Lets start with the bad news first.
Macworld has done a review of various Macbrowsers.The scores were as follows
Firefox : 4.5/5
Safari : 4/5
Opera : 3.5/5
Omniweb : 4/5
Camino : 3/5

The review was appaling to say they least.Tim Luoma has written an excellent review of the Macworld review.You can read it here

The good news is that the leading German technology news site Chip Online has written an article comparing the features of three different browsers and Opera emerged as the clear winner here.More details available at my.opera.com

It may seem that I am calling the Macworld article as appaling only because Opera looses out in the review.It is not true.If you read Tim’s article then it would become clear to you how biased the author was.

Channel Register also wrote an interesting article titled Opera tunes up to overtake Firefox.Check that out too.

Team Opera is working very hard on the next major upgrade.Opera v9 would also be using the new engine which has been the subject of a lot of speculation.Although nothing much is known about v9 at the moment, but more and more details are slowly emerging.Olafur Arnason aka Olli has revealed that the new version would have significantly improved standards support.It would support XSLT, a selected selection of CSS 3 selectors and WebForms 2 among others.The biggest improvement is support for Rich text editing.A part from that Opera v9 is expected to pass the Acid2 test.

Interestingly Opera has codenamed v9 as Merlin which is the name of a small falcon. Tim Altman has written an interesting article regarding the use of acronyms by Team Opera.You can read it here

Keep it up Opera :>>