Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
There are apparently a whole raft of new things in Opera 9.5 and it seems to be one of only two Browsers that pass the CSS3 Selectors Test. Opera 9.1, Firefox 2, Safari and IE 7 all failed about the same number of tests and passed about 2/3 of them. IE 6 only passed about 1/3 of the tests as expected. Supposedly Opera 9.5 with the entirely new rendering engine will pass every one of the tests.
All of these new browsers coming out this summer will give some of us some extra testing fun. [/url]
Opera truly is an impressive browser. I'll agree with that. I am pretty sick of FF eating all of my memory, but I need the web developer extension and firebug, and I'm not nerdy enough to use two browsers. If there were close equivalents, I'd be sold.
EDIT: seems a little strange to release a whole new rendering engine on a version such as 9.5. You'd think they'd call it 10.
There are you jusy have to look for them. There is a developer console that you can just drag the button from the web page to a tool bar in Opera to install it.
Also, if you view the source code for a page in Opera 9.2 you can EDIT the source and apply it. The page will reload with your edited source so you can see in realtime what your changes would look like. I have found that damned useful on sites that have some bad javascript or block certain browsers. I just edit the source in Opera and everything displays fine.
Last edited by AKA Panama Jack on Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:but if we don't all rally together with one browser, maybe IE will smite each of them one by one
The problem therein is that if the choice is limited to two browsers, than neither browser will have a reason to stick to standards compliance. We'll be back in the "this page designed for Netscape"/"this page designed for IE" days. Standards will be thrown out the window, as the two browsers will be designed to keep you from switching to the competition.
With many small browsers, the small browsers are motivated to stick to a standard, as it makes switching to them easier. You don't have to worry about your favorite page not rendering right anymore if you decide that Concert is better than WaterWalrus, or vice-versa.
One of the things I love about Opera is content blocking on a site by site basis. If there are ads showing up on sites you don't want to see you can select Block Content when you right click your mouse button on the page. Things you cannot block will be ghosted. You can then click on images, ads, etc to block them. It has made some sites load much faster because I have blocked all ad content.
The one major hangup for me is that Opera is still not supported in some commonly used sites. Yahoo, for example, is hit and miss with Mail in Opera. That is kind of a bugger for me (though I am ditching Yahoo shortly, so I may be able to start using Opera more).
AKA Panama Jack wrote:it seems to be one of only two Browsers that pass the CSS3 Selectors Test. Opera 9.1, Firefox 2, Safari and IE 7 all failed about the same number of tests and passed about 2/3 of them.
Safari (on Mac - not the PC version) and Konqueror (not the same engines, but forked from the same source) both pass 100%, just as Opera 9.21 will.
Firefox/Mozilla has been working steadily on it since 2001, implementing the most needed/demanded selectors first, and working down from there. Its bug tracking and changelogs are open, so you can track the changes (and even dig in and help if you want): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65133
Its still far from complete, and Opera is definitely doing some great work here. Nice to see standards dominating the 'browser scene' again!
Opera's adblocking still requires far too much clicky to be my primary browser. Adblock + G Filterset means even when I go to completely new sites (virtually half the pages I visit, honestly) - its already been erased from the page before I get there.
Gotta love community driven adblocking.
But must admit, I use Opera more as a secondary browser than I did a year ago. But now I'm tinkering with Safari too.. choices choices..
AKA Panama Jack wrote:it seems to be one of only two Browsers that pass the CSS3 Selectors Test. Opera 9.1, Firefox 2, Safari and IE 7 all failed about the same number of tests and passed about 2/3 of them.
Safari (on Mac - not the PC version) and Konqueror (not the same engines, but forked from the same source) both pass 100%, just as Opera 9.21 will.
I am going to have to call what you wrote into question. I am running Opera 9.21 and it doesn't even come close to 100% passing. That makes me question your mention of Safari Mac. You are right about Konqueror being the first to pass the tests.
The Phoenix wrote:Opera's adblocking still requires far too much clicky to be my primary browser.
Guess you haven't checked out Opera's Blocked Content too closely. You click on the tools menu and select Blocked Content from the advanced menu. This will allow you to enter a URL to block the content from ad servers like http://ad.doubleclick.net/* for every web site you visit that uses them. Just enter the URL with a /* to block everything from that URL. You can get more specific by entering paths or specific file names. This way you don't have to use the Clicky ad blocking per site. Opera offers two levels of Ad Blocking. You can customise on a site by site basis or use global so every site you visit will have ads from certain URLs always blocked.
I still say someone just needs to make a plugin that will render everything correctly. Then it won't matter what browser you use, and if the browser you are using doesn't support the plugin, it will just render it however it wishes to.
If I had the time, the drive and the knowledge to create one, I would do it myself. But I'm off working on other things.
AKA Panama Jack wrote:
I am going to have to call what you wrote into question. I am running Opera 9.21 and it doesn't even come close to 100% passing.
Sorry, meant Kestrel, per the title. (Opera 9.5)
AKA Panama Jack wrote:That makes me question your mention of Safari Mac.
The Phoenix wrote:Opera's adblocking still requires far too much clicky to be my primary browser.
Guess you haven't checked out Opera's Blocked Content too closely. You click on the tools menu and select Blocked Content from the advanced menu. This will allow you to enter a URL to block the content from ad servers like http://ad.doubleclick.net/* for every web site you visit that uses them. Just enter the URL with a /* to block everything from that URL. You can get more specific by entering paths or specific file names. This way you don't have to use the Clicky ad blocking per site. Opera offers two levels of Ad Blocking. You can customise on a site by site basis or use global so every site you visit will have ads from certain URLs always blocked.
On the contrary I did. There are *hundreds* of popular ad sites. The filterset G list is almost 200 lines long, and contains multiple regexes that catch dozens of sites.
Install two addons (adblock and filtersetG updater), and you get those 200+ sites blocked instantly, and it updates with new additions regularly as well.
Or, manually type in 200+ sites in Opera. And add a new line every time you discover a new one. Or right click and manually do it on a site-by-site basis.
astions wrote:I still say someone just needs to make a plugin that will render everything correctly. Then it won't matter what browser you use, and if the browser you are using doesn't support the plugin, it will just render it however it wishes to.
If I had the time, the drive and the knowledge to create one, I would do it myself. But I'm off working on other things.
That presumes that it is even possible to "render everything correctly". Keep in mind that some of the specifications are either vague enough that you can interpret the answer in multiple ways, OR, that they actually *conflict* with each other.
Then also calculate the number of man-hours previously spent across at least 5 major browsers attempting to implement even old, existing standards in a reasonable fashion - which has produced *zero* browsers that even claim to be 100% compliant to existing standards (let alone new ones).
Not an easy task, and not proven to be feasible yet.
And then you want to take THAT imaginary rendering engine, and make it a portable plug-in that can work in multiple browsers.