Opera 5 released - better than Netscape 6?

Submitted by aardvark on December 6, 2000 - 20:14.

I've put the 5.0 non-Java-enabled version in the browser archive, but that's it for now. You try downloading, and then FTPing over a wonky 33.6 connection. Anyway, I think the darn browser looks pretty sweet. It renders my pages as I would expect, which is good since my personal pages, as well as my company site, validate to HTML4 and CSS1, so they had better render correctly. It still doesn't do everything I expect a browser to do, but that's probably not a bad thing.

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Submitted by sforbes on December 6, 2000 - 20:25.

Well, they still do not have Hebrew support, and with NS6 out the door, that makes them the only browser that does not support my mother tongue. Sad, since this is from a browser that has a reputation of being standard compliant (I guess this part of HTML4 wasn't important enough)

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Submitted by wolf on December 7, 2000 - 01:20.

I forget to mention that Opera 5 also supports XML. Another fine feature is that you can easily decide in your preferences if it should declare itself as Opera or another browser like IE 5 or for example NS 3. Shoshannah, did you try to write them at translate@opera.no or ahv@opera.com? (let us know what they say, please) There is a news forum about that very topic at: news://news.opera.no/opera.translate I think there are good chances that this happens, as according to Opera's mission, "Opera Software will make every effort to promote cultural diversity, and make its products available in as many languages as possible.". This seems to be not only sales talk, as they already work to offer Opera also for less spoken languages then Hebrew, in fact with lesser used languages as Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh (if any of those languages is more used then Hebrew then I beg your pardon). See more at DART - Opera for Minority Languages

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Submitted by sforbes on December 7, 2000 - 07:06.

Yesterday I filled out the form at there site with my question. From the answer I got (that I need to install Hebrew on my system and choose a Hebrew font from my preferences- which does not work in order to enable Opera for BiDi) it seems like they didn't really understand my question. I emailed them again, this time with a link to my article about the Netscape Hebrew enabling, and I noted that right now the level of Hebrew "support" in Opera is equivalent to what Netscape had before the enabling. I am now waiting for a reply- and will post what they will say.

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Submitted by wolf on December 8, 2000 - 08:03.

some other things I noted: First, ad supported software is controversial to many -understandable. I do not want to go into detail -that could make a whole article and discussion I guess- just tell what I noted. It took more then 24 hours till I realized I am looking at the ad sponsored browser. The ad is in the right upper corner, a place where my eyes obviously seem not quite often to look. The ads are not interfering with the display of sites in the browser. Also, if you use full screen mode (very cool) you will never notice an ad anymore, just use your scroll mouse and remember some short cuts. Contrary to other ad sponsored software, it does not keep on begging for personal life details, with lame excuses why you profit from giving away personal info. The plugin finder is really cool. The browser itselfs searches your system for plugins and uses them. Flash worked perfectly. The "normal user" (you know those who I mean) will not even notice how the plugins are also used at Opera, no interaction is necessary. A very good thing, as those plugins already spread by other browser distributions are kept without any work on user site. Btw, so far I had no crash, no big display problem whatsoever. Java and Javascript worked perfectly so far. The context menue has some interesting options I think. Additionally to a normal Reload, one has a extra options to do customize reloads, individually or per presets (5 seconds to half an hour), so that the displayed site will be reloaded after the time which has been chosen passed. I can see some sites, where this option really makes sense. You can either copy the address of the site or the text marked within per the click of a button (though certainly one can do with address bar what one like, contrary to some browser manufactors). You can choose to either reload the page or all images. The background can be reloaded, copied, saved or the address of it copied. Of course viewing the source is enabled, but there is also an option to validate the page against W3C.. Maybe some of this things have been in other browsers and I only have been too blind to see, but the validation service is something I can not remember that a previous browser had build in. Of course one could maybe use Bookmarklets to achieve the same. Which brings me to the next quest.. how will Opera 5 do with bookmarklets? Which browser version will fit better? ;)

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Submitted by wolf on December 8, 2000 - 12:33.

Best shortcut to know with Opera btw is CTRL - B - gives you a list with all shortcuts. Very useful, works also with older versions.

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Submitted by sforbes on December 9, 2000 - 08:34.

OK, I got another response from Opera: ---- Hello Shoshannah. The answer to BiDi is more or less: Yes, probably. We're still working on Unicode, and it is now in our post version 5 planing. Please don't remove old text for future references/communication. -- Howard Gittela Customer Service Department Opera Software AS Web site: http://www.opera.com

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Windows update for Opera available - Opera 5.01

Submitted by wolf on December 19, 2000 - 00:57.

At Opera Software there is a new version for Windows available with some changes.

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