Opera (web browser) |
Opera is a computer application for dealing with many of the most common internet-related tasks, including: web browsing, sending and receiving messages, managing contacts and online chat.
Opera is developed by Opera Software, based in Oslo, Norway and is designed to run on a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It has gained a leading role for use in mobile phones, smartphones and Personal Digital Assistants, and is also used in Interactive televisions. Technology from Opera is also licensed by other companies for use in such products as Adobe Creative Suite.
Desktop versions of Opera are available free of charge, and trial versions are available for mobile phones.
=History and development=
Around 1992, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy were part of a research group at the Norwegian state phone company, then known as Televerket. The group took part in developing the now-defunct Open Document Architecture, a standards based system for storage and retrieval of documents, images and other content. Not satisfied with Mosaic (web browser), and inspired by the ODA project, the group proposed to build a new document browser from scratch. The parent company agreed to the project and by late 1993 the first prototype was complete.
With the Norwegian telecommunications market heading towards full deregulation in 1998, Televerket was unsure whether a browser development fitted into the company s plans. In 1994 it became a state-owned stock company, and von Tetzchner and Ivarsøy were allowed to continue development on their own in the offices of Televerket. By the end of 1995 Televerket was renamed as Telenor, and the company Opera Software was created, still in the same offices. Their product was initially known as MultiTorg Opera and was known for its multiple document interface (MDI) and hotlist (sidebar), which made browsing several pages at once much easier.
In January 2003, Opera 7 was released and introduced a new layout engine Presto , with improved Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), client-side scripting, and Document Object Model (DOM) support.
In August 2004, Opera 7.6 began limited alpha testing. It had more advanced standards support, and introduced voice support for Opera, as well as support for Voice XML. Opera also announced a new browser for Interactive Television, which included a fit to width option Opera 8 introduced. Fit to Width is a proprietary technology which combines the power of CSS with internal Opera technology. Pages are dynamically resized by making images and/or text smaller, and even removing images with specific dimensions to make it fit on any screen width, improving the experience on smaller screens dramatically. Opera 7.6 was never officially released as a final version.
On April 19, 2005, version 8.0 was released. Besides supporting Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Tiny, multimodal features and User JavaScript, the default user interface has been cleaned up and simplified. The default home page is an improved search portal. The changes, however, were not welcomed by a number of existing users, as some advanced settings are now hidden.
On January 12, 2005 Opera Software announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions — a change from the previous cost of 1000 USD for unlimited licenses. Schools that opted for the free license included Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Oxford, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University.
With the release of Opera 8.50 on September 20, 2005, Opera announced that their browser would be available free of charge and without advertisments from then onwards, although the company still sells support contracts. Enhancments included: automatic client-side fixing of web sites that did not render correctly, and a number of security fixes.
On July 6, 2005, Opera 8.02 technology preview release included a simple BitTorrent client, but Opera 8.02 does not include support for the BitTorrent.
===Latest release versions===
Note: The latest version number may differ between languages; these numbers are for the original English (US) version.
===Latest preview versions===
Early test versions (internal Development stage#Alpha versions) of Opera are tested only by Opera employees, before Internal Development stage#Betas for the desktop platforms (Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) are tested by a select number of people called [http://my.opera.com/community/dev/elektrans/life/ the Elektrans] . Technical preview versions are released in Opera s beta newsgroup, [http://my.opera.com/forums/forumdisplay.phps=&forumid=31 forums] and the mailing-list, so the public can test and discuss new features. Opera s download page only offers release versions and public betas. [http://snapshot.opera.com/]
=Features=
: Main article: Opera browser features
The Opera suite consists of:
==Accessibility==
Opera has always been designed for low footprint and very high browsing speed to make it more suitable for low-end computers. computer accessibility has always been important, for users who may have visual or mobility impairments. Interestingly, J.S. von Tetzchner is the son of professor Stephen von Tetzchner (University of Oslo), who specializes in children s development, language development, and communication disorders.
Opera was the first browser to integrate mouse gestures as a way to navigate pages. It is also possible to control every aspect of the browser using only the keyboard. The default keyboard shortcuts can be modified to suit the user. Since version 7.0, Opera also supports access keys.
Opera s extensive keyboard shorcuts make websites more accessible for laptop users. Users are able to customize their keyboard to their likings. With a default configuration users are able to control and browse an entire website from their keyboard.
Voice control was codeveloped with IBM and introduced in version 8. Voice control lets you control the browser with the same commands and customizability as the keyboard or mouse. It can also read pages and marked text. IBM has a based on Opera.
As of Opera 8, Opera has supported a Fit to Window feature that relied on technology similar to their mobile small screen rendering. These features allows any website to fit into a smaller screen without the requirement of horizontal scrolling.
==Sessions==
Opera allows the user to save a collection of open pages as a session management. This set of pages can then be opened later in a new Opera window, or inserted into the current one. Opera can also be set up to start with the pages that were open when the browser was last closed. A saved session includes the independent history of each page and the settings each page had, such as scrolling position, images on/off, etc.
Each session is saved in a file that can be transferred to another computer via mail or otherwise.
==MDI and Tabs==
Opera supports tabbed browsing and has a true multiple document interface. This means multiple Web pages can be opened within the same application window and resized, moved, tiled and cascaded like normal application windows in the operating system.
In subsequent years MDI has lost favour, with applications such as Microsoft Office abandoning MDI model, and with version 6.0, offered users the choice of three modes: MDI, single document interface (SDI) Mode, and tabbed browsing (made popular by Mozilla-based browsers).
==Pop-up blocking==
Opera lets the user control whether Web sites can open Pop-up_ad windows. By default Opera blocks all unrequested popups, but can work in a variety of different ways, such as opening a pop-up as a background window, or only blocking pop-ups when they do not result from a user action like clicking on a link.
==Download manager==
Allows the user to queue, pause, resume or restart the downloading of files.
==Standards==
Opera has supported CSS since version 3.5, and one of the inventors of CSS is an employee at Opera. Up to 6.0 Opera supported most common web standards, Netscape plugins and some other recent standards such as WAP and Wireless Markup Language for wireless devices, but its implementation of ECMAScript with the HTML Document Object Model always left a bit to be desired, especially on highly dynamic pages.
This completely changed with version 7.0, which introduced the Presto layout engine: Opera introduced a completely new browser, which not only supports all standards the old Elektra layout engine did, but also has nearly full support for the HTML DOM and other standards. Additionally, since Presto s first release the ECMAScript ( Javascript ) engine in Opera has been the fastest in any web browser.
Opera has a presentation mode called Opera Show, which allows the use of a single HTML or XML document for large-screen presentations, and web browsing. The appearance of the web-page in full screen is changed with CSS when specific code for projections is in place.
==Messaging and online chat==
: See the main M2 (email client) article
==Mobile devices==
Opera can dynamically reformat any webpage for narrow tall viewports, such as smartphones and PDA displays. This can also be used with Panels. The technology is based in part on CSS which means both web-page authors and Opera users can affect the formatting.
Opera is available on a number of smartphones and PDAs including those produced by Nokia, BenQ, Sony Ericsson, Sharp Corporation, Sendo, Kyocera, Motorola, and Psion.
===Opera Mini===
Opera Mini was unveiled on August 8, 2005 in Norway in a pilot project with Norwegian television channel TV_2_(Norway). The browser is currently available in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, with broader availability planned. This version of Opera runs on almost any mobile phone that can run Java platform MIDlet and comes in two versions, a low Computer storage version for mobile phone with a limited amount of Computer storage and a high Computer storage version for mobile phone that are not so cramped for memory.
As Opera Mini is targeted at mobile phones not powerful enough to run Opera s existing mobile versions, requested Web content is first compressed and adapted for viewing on a mobile phone by external servers before being sent to the phone. The technology used is Opera s Small Screen Rendering (SSR). The content is transferred from the server to Opera Mini via a proprietary protocol, Opera Binary Markup Langauge (OBML).
=Other uses of Opera technology=
The core layout engine of Opera, Presto (layout engine) , is licensed by business partners such as Adobe Systems and is integrated into Adobe Creative Suite.
=Criticisms=
==Advertising==
Opera was commonly criticized for having been ad-sponsored. In the newer versions the user was allowed a choice of generic graphical banners, or text-based targeted advertisements provided by Google based upon the page being viewed. Users could pay a licence fee to remove the advertisement bar. Since version 8.50, however, Opera is available for free without ads.
==Compatibility==
A common problem online is that many websites are not based on standards, but either use outdated browser sniffers ,a popular method for addressing different browsers bugs and quirks including Opera, or use nonstandard or simply incorrect code. These essentially broken websites are often only tested in Internet Explorer. The intended display therefore relies on undocumented complex error recovery methods used by Internet Explorer, methods which have been proven to be nearly impossible to emulate perfectly in other browsers. Impatient and uneducated users may falsely believe it is Opera s fault that a certain webpage is not rendered as they expect, even though the most common cause of site incompatibility problems in Opera is browser sniffing.
===Hotmail===
For a period Opera users could not empty their Hotmail trash can, due to buggy server-side browser sniffing.
===Gmail===
When Google released Gmail in April 2004, Opera was not supported. Gmail employs the use of XMLHttpRequest, a non-standard protocol implemented in some web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Opera 8, released a year (April 18, 2005) after the initial Gmail launch, now almost fully supports Gmail. There are still some problems with Opera and Gmail, though, such as the rich-text editor built into the compose form which cannot be used due to the lack of rich-text editing capabilities in Opera.
===Yahoo Mail===
There have been numerous problems with Yahoo Mail, the first of which was the broken Move button (caused by browser sniffing). After Yahoo Mail upgraded to a newer look, those problems vanished, but the Move button was a lot bigger than in other browsers. Other problems have included what is arguably a bad presentation, and has been attributed to the different style sheet Opera receives.
===MSN===
The Microsoft-owned MSN website has caused several problems for Opera users:
In October 2001, the MSN web page was altered shortly after the launch of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 to exclude other browsers, including Opera and Mozilla. Users were told to upgrade to Internet Explorer 6 in order to view the page. When asked why Opera was excluded, Microsoft claimed it was because Opera did not support the latest XHTML standard. Opera responded that their browser did indeed support the standard, and following the controversy MSN made their page accessible to all browsers.
In February 2003, Opera Software employees discovered that the MSN home page sent a different style sheet to Opera users than it sent to Internet Explorer. The two most popular browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape each got a style sheet tailor made to them. Opera on the other hand was served a generic style sheet that worked only in older Netscape browsers. Because Opera did not have the same coding, the page did not appear correctly.
The code to blame for the faulty rendering is this, which is a hack to fix an old Netscape bug. :ul {list-style-position: outside; margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;}
Testing showed that Opera was served with this old style sheet only when it was possible to discern that it was Opera being used to fetch the page. If one used a user agent like oprah , one would get a more up to date stylesheet. Opera claimed that this was a deliberate action to discredit the browser. Microsoft denied the claims, blamed it on a coding error, and fixed it.
Regardless of Microsoft s claims, Opera went public with the story, and created a Bork edition of their browser, which garbled www.msn.com into the speech of the Swedish Chef. Opera says that this was a joke to show how easily a web-page can be changed if one actually wants. In the press-release, they reiterated its mantra that the web should be open to all.
Yet another incident occurred in May 2003, when MSN s servers caused users who had altered their preferred languages for websites to get a server error message. Although the error also affected users of Internet Explorer, Opera makes it easier for users to change languages, so Opera users were more likely to be affected. Opera supporters once again claimed that it was an attempt by Microsoft to discredit Opera.
Opera Software have used the above incidents to claim that Microsoft has an anti-competitive agenda because Opera Software, as publishers of the Opera web browser, are a competitor to Microsoft s Internet Explorer.
In May 2004, an unknown entity made a 12.75 USD million payment to Opera Software. Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie said the settlement Resolved an issue close to his heart , but no admission was made regarding who payed this money, or why. Many speculate that it was Microsoft paying to avoid embarrasement in court over the MSN issues.
=Market adoption=
: Statistics reference: Usage share of web browsers
Over the years, the global usage share of the Opera browser was believed to be around 1%. But it is known to be more widely used in the European countries. For example, according to Gemius (the biggest stats provider in Poland), Opera has around 6% of the Polish browsers market (around 500 000 users). Due to Opera s aggressive caching, it does not make as many requests to servers as many other browsers, which means that browser stats may be misleading if they count hits (web pages, images, style sheets, and so on) rather than visitors.
==Early days==
Since its first release in 1996, the browser has been met with limited success. However, Opera Software was one of the first companies active in the area of mobile devices, where it has gained significant market share. Its availability on many platforms has given users access to a highly functional browser where this choice did not previously exist.
On the Microsoft Windows platform, Opera was not able to gain significant market share over its competitors, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape (web browser) and Mozilla Application Suite. StatMarket is the primary source for international browser usage statistics. On December 4, 2001, StatMarket released data assigning a global usage share of 0.67 per cent to the Opera browser. However, the press release states:
:Although still far behind Microsoft and Netscape, Opera s global usage share has more than doubled since January 2001, when it was less than 0.3 percent.
:[...]
:Opera usage share has been growing at a faster rate in certain European countries since January 2001. For instance, its usage share in Russia as of November 29, 2001 was 5.88 percent, up from about 1.5 percent at the beginning of the year, StatMarket reported. And in Germany and Sweden, Opera was at 3.37 percent and 1.8 percent respectively, having grown from a 1.3 percent and .5 percent usage share in January 2001.
With regard to Europe, the differing success mirrors the development of other browsers, for example, according to StatMarket, in October 2001 Netscape Navigator still held about 20% usage share in Germany, whereas its global usage share was about 13%.
Opera can identify itself as Internet Explorer (the default setting) and various versions of Mozilla/Netscape. This has led some counting measures to fail identifying Opera and an under reporting of market share.
This differing success can be explained by a variety of factors. A skeptical attitude toward Microsoft, maker of Internet Explorer, is likely to be relevant. Also, in countries with less copyright enforcement, the wide availability of software crackings and serial numbers to remove Opera s banners may increase the adoption of the browser by end-users. (Note that by version 8.5, Opera is offered for no pay, without ads)
The generally low rate of adoption can in part be attributed to the fact that almost all users have a competing browser on their desktops as soon as they acquire a computer. Even the small minority who do not use Windows, and hence do not have Internet Explorer, have browsers provided by Mac OS X (Safari) or by Unix variants (Netscape, Mozilla, Konqueror, and others). Against this competition, Opera was at first only available in trial-versions and commercial versions, and only became available in an ad-sponsored version as of version 5.0 — and finally in a charge-free ad-free version on September 20, 2005.
=Notes=
# [http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/ User Javascript], retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://portal.opera.com/ Opera search portal], retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/04/get-back-old-preferences-dialog.html Get back old preferences dialog], retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/01/12/ Students surf safely with Opera: Opera site license free for educational institutions], 12 January, 2005, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/09/20/ Feel Free: Opera Eliminates Ad Banner and Licensing Fee], retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/07/07/ Official Opera press release] announcing the inclusion of a BitTorrent client in a preview release, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.opera.com/announcements/en/2005/07/28/ Official Opera press release] for version 8.02, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/ IBM article] on multimodal technology, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/articles/webrev/199906.html CSS: If not now, when], Eric Meyer, June 1999, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.cjas.org/~leng/opera.htm Better branding for Opera], 9 January, 2005, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dmlid=53067 Javascript error in MSN Hotmail], 3 May, 2004, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://nontroppo.org/wiki/TextAreaEditor document.designMode is here!], retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://news.com.com/2100-1023-274944.html MSN.com shuts out non-Microsoft browsers], 25 October, 2001, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/msn/ MSN, Opera, and Web Standards] by Hakon Wium Lie 9 November, 2001, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://people.opera.com/howcome/2003/2/msn/ Why doesn t MSN work with Opera] by Hakon Wium Lie, February 2003, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://news.com.com/2100-1023-983500.html Opera cries foul against MSN--again], 5 February, 2005, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/ Opera releases Bork edition], 14 February, 2003, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1008869.html Opera wails about MSN problem], 21 May, 2003, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://news.com.com/Microsoft+behind+%2412+million+payment+to+Opera/2100-1032_3-5218163.html Microsoft behind $12 million payment to Opera], CNET, 24 May, 2004, retrieved on 25 October, 2005 # [http://ranking.pl/ Ranking.pl], retrieved on 25 October, 2005
=See also=
*Microbrowser *Information appliance *List of web browsers *List of email clients *List of news clients *List of IRC clients
=External links=
==Official links==
*[http://www.opera.com Opera Software Homepage] *[http://www.opera.com/download/ Opera download page] *[http://www.opera.com/docs/ Opera Documentation] *[http://my.opera.com/community/ My Opera Community] – includes discussion, customisation, blogs and fan-sites *[irc://irc.opera.com/opera #Opera] – Opera Internet Relay Chat channel
==Unofficial Opera links==
*[http://userjs.org/ UserJS.org] – User JavaScript files for use in the Opera browser *[http://nontroppo.org/wiki/ Opera Wiki] – Tips, Customization, and Technical Details *[http://operawatch.blogspot.com/ Opera Watch] – A Blog covering the latest Opera-related news. *[http://secunia.com/product/4932/ Secunia.com Vulnerability Report on Opera] *[http://www.markschenk.com/opera/history.html Opera Version History]|
|