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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

History and features

Should we try and stick to the developement of the most unique features in the beginning, and then go along with advocating them at the end in the "notable features" section? I felt I had to split the history section up as it was a mess really..

Also, please try to read the article before adding stuff to it. There is a LOT of duplication in there, mostly as a result of advocacy ad infinitum. Lets not make this part of a browser war shall we? ;-)


Miscellaneous

Source code availiability is now informed in the infobox. Issue resolved.

Furthermore, Internet Explorer was _not_ dominant when development of the Opera browser began. I'm not even sure wheter Internet Explorer _Existed_ at the time the development started. IE had a minimal marketshare when Opera was released, and Netscape was the Major competitor.

And, the relatively low marketshare. Well, heh, its kinda difficult to find out that a person is running Opera, if he doesdn't configure it to identify itself as it specifically. Opera defaults to identifying itself as Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows. You can see the amount of people that _specifically_ has changed the settings, but you cannot see how many actually uses it.

Opera's User-Agent string starts like MSIE's (if the option to identify as MSIE is on, which it is by default), but it includes "Opera" somewhere near the end. So competent studies are well able to distinguish the two. I have removed the misleading paragraph casting the market share numbers in doubt. --Robbe

Limitation of textbox size

I have found I cannot edit large pages with Opera 6.01 -- I think the limit is 128 KB. Today, I tried to edit Talk:List of famous Canadians but Opera deleted the whole page. I had to use MS Internet Explorer to get around this limitiation.

Is this an argument against using Opera, or an argument for refactoring talk pages? You decide. --Ed Poor 14:57 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

If broken web-browsers are damaging Wikipedia they should be blocked from editing. If people want to edit, they should be forced to use a browser that works!

Just for the record, I use Opera 6.05 and have never had any problems with it here or elsewhere. And of course 6.01 users should not be blocked from editing - only a very small number of pages are large enough for this to be a problem, and when something gets deleted, it is easily revertable. --Camembert
I use Opera 6.05 as well, without any problems by now. Is the limit really at 128 KB? Then we should think about splitting articles approaching this mark (for other reasons as well, e.g. loading time). Are there other browsers with limits in text boxes? Where are these limits? Does anybody know about this?
I hope that nobody else will suggest to ban Opera users... -- Cordyph
Browser text box size limits are commonplace - or I should say used to be commonplace, but are fast dissapearing. Netscape 4.x had a smaller limit (was it 64k?) and issues used to pop up with that all the time. I use Opera 6.03 here (because I'm too lazy to upgrade a product that ain't broken) and have never met a problem. It's one of the nice things about Wikipedia, actually: the code is nice and clean and you can use any browser you like. Tannin
I think they fixed it in some rescent version 24.77.246.184

Re: "This differing success can be explained by a variety of factors." for Russia and eastern Europe I think the generally lower CPU speed PCs there may be a reason to choose a less bloated browser. // Liftarn

I went to the Opera site and requested a download. However if I want the English (UK) version, I can only get an old version (6): the latest version (7) is only available in English (US). I would like to know whether I am better to stick to my guns and get the older version with the correct language settings, or should I get the newer version and hope for the best. What is the difference between the various language options? (I should add that I was thinking of using Opera exclusively for Wikipedia use to allow me to stack up loads of pages inside one Window: a mis-step?) Phil 11:41, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

I think the only differences between english versions is spelling. Opera (7.20 at least) has a few small issues with wikipedia - its handling of the layout of R->L fonts (e.g. arabic) makes a few pages (e.g. the homepage) layout funny, and I sometimes have (hard to reproduce) layout problems, which seem to be related to CSS handling. -- Finlay McWalter 14:46, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
From which I infer that you recommend I go for the old version with the "correct" spelling, right? Phil 15:31, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
Well, I use mozilla for wikipedia (I prefer its tabbed browsing to opera's), so I'm in no position to dole out definative advice. For general use, Opera 7 seems to me to be significantly faster than 6, and it fixes lots of page problems and some security issues. For me at least, spelling is not a significant issue. -- Finlay McWalter 15:58, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Downloaded & installed it, now it refuses to work through our proxy server. A quick scout of the Opera Knowledge Base gives the rather unhelpful message that this is because our Proxy Server is demanding "the wrong kind of authentication" (shades of British Rail and the wrong kind of snow). It basically suggests that we replace our firewall with something slightly less demanding. Oh joy. Phil 16:40, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
Methinks that Opera 7 is much better than Opera 6. When I used 6, it used to lag horribly when I tried to open pages much larger than 200 kb (dunno why, it even happened if I saved the site onto my hard drive). But 7.22 (the latest US version) fixes almost all of the problems... except humongous formatted message boards still get messed up sometimes... but by those I mean huge ones like on the board on this site.
(by the way, that was me, awhile ago) ugen64 22:31, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)

The body of this article is full of extlink spam. I'm going to clean it up, and cut down greatly on the extlinks section as well, unless someone beats me to it. Arvindn 06:42, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Latest releases?

Is a list of the latest releases of the browser really something that belongs in an encyclopedia entry? I'm a huge Opera zealot, but people can find the download links on their own--I don't think this is something that belongs here. Zaxxon 21:59, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good question. I just cleaned it up a lot, removing loads of overlapping, self-promoting links serving no purpose in getting to know Opera better from an encyclopedic point of view. TomAnd 07:28, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Screenshot

What about a new screenhot? There is now version 7.54 and 8 beta. --ThomasK 11:02, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC) Should'nt screenshots of browsers depict the Wikipedia front page?


Cleanup

!! Wikipedia does not work very well anymore with Opera :

Version 7.11 Build 2887 Platform Win32 System Windows XP

Will be good to update wikipedia so the left menu bar does not fall right at the bottom of each articles !!

Greetings LF


This article need to cleanups. The article is too concentrated into features, and there are too many features listed here... Maybe split into "Features of Opera (web browser)"?. --minghong 07:13, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Minghong: Please DO NOT move things around like you just did without looking at how it makes the article look! Its terrible! Reverting.
Edit - Made a new features page here
I agree minghong. This article does need to be cleaned up. I think it looks better now. Maybe we should take the current version, make a temp page, and improve on it. If we edit the whole thing, I think this has featured article potential. If needed, I'll create the temp page, and i'll just put a link to it at the top of this page, so people can work on it --Zeerus (ETCWFD) 17:07, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

employee blogs

Do we really need an entire section on employee blogs. That information is hardly related to the article itself, and can be found on the Opera website anyway. Besides, there are so many blogs that it would take forever to list them. Pretty much every employee has one. It is just a waste of space, and should be deleted. I suggest getting rid of it and then supplying a link to the Opera.com page that lists them all. --Zeerus (ETCWFD) 17:24, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Agree. --minghong 05:12, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I am going to remove that section, along with any links related to earlier version of Opera. As Opera 8 is the newest version, I don't think we need to include links like # Days to becoming an Opera 7 Lover. There are others too. --texttonic 13:07, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
Yup. But I think there should be a table of release history (which was removed by someone in the earlier edits), like that of Firefox. --minghong 15:47, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The 1 million download challenge

Uh, is it only me or is this a serious POV? I'm one of bigger Opera fans around, but the entire swim thing was pretty obviously a marketing spoof. Can someone rewrite this so it doesn't contain solely marketing-speak? --qviri 23:34, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't know that it would have encyclopaedic merit even when re-written. It was, as you say, just a silly marketing spoof. I'm going to remove it, although if anyone wants to make a case for reverting or rewriting, I'll not re-revert. KeithD (talk) 08:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Gmail Support

Gmail does still not officially or fully support the Opera browser. The rich text-editor can still not be used, and sometime layout issues are experienced. In the official Gmail help pages Opera is listed as a browser for which the plain interface should be used. Sgd 05/09/05

I seem to be able to use Opera 8 ok with gmail, as long as I don't press the "Back" button... but instead use the menus on the left. Fosnez 13:42, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
It seems as far as the newest opera browser (Opera 9) goes Gmail operates just fine. But it seems some of the browsers weekly builds sometimes have problems with opera's own page.[1]
Robert Maupin 22:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

opera download free

It appears the full version is available for free download! opera download Smautf 10:36, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


There should be a section about this. How do they plan on making money now?

Already much of their income does not come from the Desktop. Much of their advantage is in the mobile/small-screen market where they have corporate arangements; also integrating their rendering engine such as in their Adobe deal. See the market adoption section for a little detail. --jnothman talk 08:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
This article from The Register claims that 45% of their income was from Google advertising. ~~helix84 11:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Opera license

To prevent edit war, I put a discussion here. I'm not against Opera,

Roger: That is your first lie in this text. You are a Firefox fanatic.

but Freeware is not a type of software license.

Roger: That is the second lie, freeware is for all practical purposes and in the minds of the public in general a type of license. For reference take a look at the types of licenses the pricelesswarehome.org site describes. We who help to maintain that site are the participators of the newsgroup alt.comp.freeware, and we are experts on what a license is.

  1. "Freeware" does not in any way describe the license -- merely the price charged for the right to use the software.
  2. Explain why the license used by opera is not proprietary.
  3. Word of advice: Lay off the insults and ludicrous accusations, they aren't going to help your case and are seriously frowned upon here. - Motor (talk) 00:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It should be changed back to proprietary, which is the most suitable one for this moment. The current infobox doesn't show the price of a software, so this is the problem of the infobox. Discussions and changes should go to Template:Infobox Software and Template:Infobox Software2. --minghong 01:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

"Proprietary" is already covered by the freeware description: "Freeware is typically proprietary, distributed without source code, and carries a restrictive license." On the other hand, "proprietary" doesn't (and shouldn't) say anything about whether or not something is freeware. As such "freeware" is an accurate and correct description of Opera's license, while "proprietary" would be misleading. Not to mention the negative connotations of the word "proprietary". -edit1 20 Oct 2005
Why is proprietary misleading? As I've explained on the template talk page, adding a "cost" field is not a good idea. I don't see a problem with having the license as "proprietary" and mentioning that it is a free download in the article introduction. - Motor (talk) 22:21, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
It is misleading because it doesn't give the reader a correct and useful information about the license. The software type is proprietary, the license type is freeware. By the way, a guy working for Opera said yesterday that the Opera license is freeware, when he heard about this discussion.
"Mentioning" that it is a "free download" is another way to badmouth Opera, because that is the so much hated expression for payware which poses as freeware. When people see that they immediately think payware. The addition of that line is definitely intended sabotage. It cannot be explained in any other way. Roger4911 00:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
First of all, you haven't said why "proprietary" is misleading, you've just defined the word "misleading". Second the "software type" for Opera is a browser/mail etc etc, not a license. You start off by accusing people of "lies" and being "fanatics", then vandalism, and now "badmouth", "sabotage" and now you're on my talk page accusing me something barely coherent to do with having a discussion *about the infobox template* on the infobox template page. I've think wasted enough time with you already. - Motor (talk) 08:19, 21 October 2005 (UTC) Just one more thing: if you wish to change the wording of "available for free download", in the article copy then do so, let's see what you can come up with. However, I don't see how "free download" and "freeware" are any different. I've had self-described freeware before now that's loaded with spyware and crippled. But let me restate this: if you start on about sabotage/vandalism again, I will simply ignore your talk contributions in future. - Motor (talk) 08:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
"Proprietary" is misleading because:
1. It has negative connotations
2. It does not mention the fact that Opera is freeware
3. It's irrelevant to most people, as in normal computer users who we would presumably want to use Wikipedia as a source of information. They want to know whether it's freeware or not, and couldn't care less about open or closed source. -edit1 21 Oct 2005
  1. This is a meaningless catch-all statement. Arguably "freeware" has negative connotations too -- most things classed as "freeware" are worthless junk in my experience. I'll repeat myself: Freeware does not describe the license, merely the cost.
  2. The article mentions *VERY* clearly that Opera does not cost anything. This isn't a matter of not mentioning it, it's about "freeware" not being suitable for the license field.
  3. Normal people reading this article *do* know that it's free, since it is clearly mentioned in the INTRODUCTION section of the article, where only the most important and relevant information belongs. In fact, it is broken out into its own paragraph especially so it cannot be missed. Perhaps we should put it in 30 point bold right at the top? - Motor (talk) 09:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with both Minghong and edit1. The infobox should cover its license and its cost (and I'll raise this at the template talk in a minute), but that if there's only one category at the moment, then freeware is the more informative. Proprietary software may or may not be gratis, whereas freeware (according to our article) is "typically proprietary". I would favour the infobox for Opera saying freeware, but then changing it when the infobox is (hopefully) updated. KeithD (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Freeware is typically proprietary, distributed without source code, and carries a restrictive license. For example, a license might allow the software to be freely copied, but not sold, or might forbid commercial, government or military use. If we are to change "Freeware" to "proprietary", then all other software which is Freeware, Shareware, etc. should be changed to "proprietary" as well. --LBMixPro(Speak on it!) 05:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Internet Explorer currently says: proprietary EULA, and that's also "free" in the same sense as Opera. I personally don't think the license field adds anything when talking about proprietary software -- it's only meaningful for open source software. Ideally the "license" field would be optional. The exact nature/terms of a proprietary license should be discussed in the text because they are different for virtually every piece of software in that category. - Motor (talk) 08:19, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
IE is not free. It is part of Windows, which you pay for.
Splitting hairs. - Motor (talk) 09:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Also, "proprietary" still doesn't mention the fact that Opera is freeware, while the freeware definition does include "proprietary".
I don't care. "Freeware" is not a license. It's the cost. Did you read the discussion? Someone suggested adding "Cost" to the infobox, which, IMO, is a very bad idea for reasons explained on the infobox talk page. - Motor (talk) 09:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Also, you cannot ignore the fact that "proprietary" has negative connotations, which is why I guess it is so important to some to make a point that Opera is "proprietary" rather than "freeware".
Here we go again... same thing applies to you as it does to Roger. If you start making wild accusation I will simply ignore your talk page contributions. - Motor (talk) 09:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
And finally, most people don't care about whether something is proprietary or not. The relevant information Joe Blow needs is whether it's freeware or not.
Which is quite clearly stated in the article introduction. - Motor (talk) 09:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
If Wikipedia is going to be a decent source of information it needs to take normal people into account and not become a tool for religious zealots to wage ware against licenses they disagree with, and only include information which makes certain types of software look good at first glance. -edit1 21 Oct 2005
Right, thanks for letting me know quite clearly how you are approaching this article and other editors. I'll know how to view your contributions in future. - Motor (talk) 09:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that before we can decide one way or another with the specifics of Opera, we need to deal with the wider issues of the template. The conflict we have here could/should be negligible with a template that is appropriate to all types of software.

As I've stated at the template talk page, I now agree with Motor that tracking the specific cost of software isn't appropriate for Wikipedia, but I still stand by my earlier thoughts here that the infobox should state whether something is freeware, shareware, and so on. With proprietary software, this information is often of more relevance to people than its license type. With open-source software, the license type is more appropriate, as that's where the variable is. Hopefully we can solve this on the template talk page.

I think what I'll do is be bold, and go for a lily-livered compromise here, for the meantime. I'll change the license type to "proprietary freeware". I know it's not perfect for a number of reasons, and is a fairly clunky phrase, but hopefully it balances the need for accuracy against the need to quickly provide the information that users are looking for in the infobox. If we can all live with the downsides to that phrasing temporarily, it should free us from this very specific conflict here, and allow us to find a way to resolve the wider issue. KeithD (talk) 10:42, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, comparing other browser infoboxes, IE has "Prop. EULA", which is close enough to what Keith wrote. Dillo says GPL, not "Open Source". Open Source is a distribution method, and GPL is the licence to the distribution method. That's what Freeware is! It's not a licence, it's a distribution method. I agree Proprietary is the best thing for the licence. About the cost in the infobox. It should instead be "distribution method". (Unsigned comment by User:Lbmixpro).
"Open Source" is not a distribution method, it's a class of software license (or, if used in other contexts, a method for creating software)... so is "Proprietary" -- whether you think "propreitary" has negative connotations is another matter, it is a valid entry in the license field. "Freeware", on the other hand, is simply a word invented to describe stuff that's given away for nothing. It tells you nothing about the license, and its presence in a "license" field is nonsense. It's no more valid than putting "Spyware" or "Malware" in there. I've left the current compromise as "Proprietary freeware" (even though it is just as inaccurate as "freeware" alone) because, at this moment discussions/actions are happening in the template itself to try to find an answer to the larger problems... and leaving it as-is will hopefully quiet things down while a broader solution is found. - Motor (talk) 15:39, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think Proprietary has any negative connocations, instead of it's inability to edit the source code. Open-source software is more of a set of licences which allow modifying the source code. Would "Freeware" be to proprietary software, as the Sun Public License is to Open-source? --LBMixPro(Speak on it!) 18:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

- Motor, you really need to calm down and stop attacking people... (Unsigned comment by User:Fixxif).

User created who has only edited the opera article Ah... smear tactics. I haven't attacked anyone -- quite the opposite. If you care to read through this talk page you'll find that I've refused to respond to that sort of thing. User Minghong was called a liar for trying to start a discussion, and rather than have a reasonable discussion there have been wild accusations about other editors being zealots or involved in religious wars, with no apparent justification.
There is a discussion going on right now on the infobox talk page about how to solve this general problem (Note: Opera discussions here, infobox discussions there) and improve the infoboxes. - Motor (talk) 10:01, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

New Infobox

As per discussion on the software infobox page, this is a trial of the new template for proprietary software. The old infobox contains an entry for "license" -- which is an important attribute for Free/Open Source software... but not when using an infobox for proprietary applications, such as Opera. For example: OpenOffice (license=LGPL) is important information. Microsoft Word (license=Microsoft EULA V6) is pointless -- though that doesn't mean "unimportant", it just means "a complex subject not suitable for quick delivery in an infobox". I have used the old infobox as a template for this new one... which means the removal of the complex and unwieldy template-based versioning. This one only tracks the stable release version -- on the grounds that it is simpler, more friendly to newbies and preview releases are not appropriate information in an infobox. - Motor (talk) 19:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Just to make myself absolutely clear: I deliberately did not based this new infobox on "infobox software 2". For two reasons:
  1. Preview releases don't belong in an infobox. Infoboxes are there to provide the basic information as a summary. I don't personally think Wikipedia should be tracking preview releases anyway, but lots of people want to -- and there's nothing stopping them doing that within the article itself.
  2. The "Infobox Software 2" template solves no real problems while making editing more confusing and difficult for newbies and completely different from normal wikipedia editing. - Motor (talk) 07:53, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The only difference between Template:Infobox software and Template:Infobox Software2 is the preview release. What's the use of software2, if preview releases don't belong in an infobox? Also who else says preview releases don't belong in an infobox? We must come up with a consensus before we go further with this. I believe preview releases are valid, because it shows the developer is actually doing some work with the app. I've seen infoboxes which use special WP templates in order to optionally display information, such as Template:pwstatbox. Maybe we should bring the idea of using a template similar to it software, so we don't need 5 or so templates which serve generally the same purpose. --LBMixPro(Speak on it!) 08:12, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
"Infobox Software2" uses templates within templates to create an awkward and complicated scheme for editing the version number that solves no problems and makes the simple act of updating a version number radically different from editing anything else in the article. I've expressed my concerns several times about this (and its effect on newbies... as if templates weren't confusing enough for them already), and I reverted the addition of "Infobox Software2" from the OpenOffice.org article a while back. As for the "preview release" field, I'm willing to be convinced, but I don't see why a preview release is important enough to be in the infobox. The infobox is not for "showing that the developer is still working on an app"... it is just to give a very short and standardised version of the most important and relevant information across a block of related articles. There's nothing stopping anyone from discussing preview releases, forthcoming uber-technologies, or how fast the developers of the application can code... or, in fact, anything else at all, in the article itself. - Motor (talk) 08:46, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The reason for another template to be edited for the version numbers is because that template is being used on other articles such as Comparison of web browsers. In contrast, the template simplifies matters, so one doesn't have to update both the article's infobox and the other articles which depend on an accurate version number for the app. If we are to scrap the preview release, we should scrap the stable release as well.--LBMixPro(Speak on it!) 20:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Motor. That template is getting "template bloat". --minghong 12:30, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
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