Opera

[roberts]

What happened to Opera 10.5x for Linux?
Now I see a 10.60 alpha for Linux. Am using it now.

With the 10.5x and 10.60 no need for Gtk or Qt only fontconfig dependency.
But then along comes flash10 and all of its dependencies.

Still hoping for a smaller, faster Opera for Linux.

[maro]

I've been using the various alpha and beta releases of Opera 10.5x (and now 10.6x) after I posted these remarks. Initially only to see whether the bugs I had lodged were cleared.

It used to crash a fair bit but since the last 2-3 weeks it has become the only browser I ever use with TC (obviously typing this message using "opera-10.60-6347.i386.linux"). So far so good, but the flash dependencies are such a drag that I only load them occasionally. That would be a dream to have a minimal dependency flash plug-in. Surely not from Adobe, the "masters of bloat".

[curaga]

They couldn't finish 10.5x for *nix before 10.6 for the main platforms (Win, Mac) came up.

Thus there's not going to be 10.5 for unix at all, they target the next stable after 10.10 for 10.60.

[curaga]

Any of the replacements aren't that light on deps either; gnash is near identical to Adobe's, and the new lightspark one needs llvm and opengl.

[curaga]

So, 10.60 final is out. Though, based on my and other's experiences it still isn't as stable or usable as 9.64 or 10.10. Thus I recommend not to overwrite the opera10 extension with it, if it gets packaged.

[roberts]

I was so hoping and looking forward to a fast stable Opera. Seems stability has given way to the race to be the fastest. But what good is being the fastest if not stable.

[maro]

Robert, I think you should just give it a try. I started using an early alpha release of 10.5x and that was pretty bad. After lodging a few bug reports I was pleasantly surprised that "my bugs" got resolved pretty quickly. I then used the various 10.5x and 10.60 beta releases as my default browser and things just got more and more stable. I would not state that it was the most stable browser ever, but I had way more crashes using a FF v3.5x than with these Opera beta releases. It was certainly quite usable.

Unfortunately my main laptop is currently undergoing a warranty repair so I'm on a "diet" using TC 2.x on a 10 year old Dell notebook (500MHz Pentium III, 256MB). This is very limiting compared to my default system. I therefore restrict myself to Opera 9.64, and have not yet used the final 10.60 version. But I'm rather confident that it would become my default browser. It only needs the 'fontconfig.tcz' extension, which is not too bad compared to Opera 10.10.

Whilst I'm typically strongly against having multiple versions of the same application in the repository I wonder whether we should (at least for a while) allow both the current Opera 10.10 and the new Opera 10.60. To be honest I'd say that the "heavy" dependencies of the old version alone would be a reason to remove it and replace it with the new one (as long as we keep the Opera 9.64 extension around).

So maybe if a few more Core members would give the latest one a trial we might be able to settle this question rather sooner than later.

[roberts]

Tried 10.60 and still experience not being able to enter text into some text input areas. This is same that I was experiencing with the beta. I am not able to use 10.60. 10.10 is way to bloated for my likes. 9.62 is way too old. So on to another browser for now.

[Juanito]

9.64 is way too old...

..but works fine for me 

[roberts]

I like to watch technical broadcasts from Google and others typically done in flash. 9.62 most often than not does not allow full screen. Pressing the full screen widget often is ignored. I am often asked about such my friends. If one does not use or need flash then basic browsing is OK.

[curaga]

9.64 is still my primary browser as well. I hope they can get a quality release out soon.

[tinypoodle]

Found following workaround for non working fullscreen feature on youtube:

1. On a youtube video click the "Pop out" button.
2. With the popout window being given focus, switch opera to fullscreen mode, e.g. with Alt+V->U.

This works for me with following setup:
TC 2.10, jwm-snapshot, opera-9.64.gcc4-static-qt3.i386, latest version 9 libflashplayer.so

With flashplayer 10 straight fullscreen per se works fine on some sites (incl. youtube), messes up with some others; trying flashplayer 7 patched to version 10 did not work for me at all.

[curaga]

So, Opera 11 is out. Based on my quick testing it's not as buggy as 10.x (x>=5), but it's still ugly as sin on the x11 backend, and the gtk backend handles a dark theme as gracefully as a pig in a porcelain shop.

No Opera 11 for me just yet...

[SamK]

So, Opera 11 is out. Based on my quick testing it's not as buggy as 10.x (x>=5), but it's still ugly as sin on the x11 backend, and the gtk backend handles a dark theme as gracefully as a pig in a porcelain shop.

No Opera 11 for me just yet...

I have two partitions, one is TC3.1, the other TC3.3.  They both run the same version of Opera (10.63) but both look totally different.  On the TC3.1 partition it is quite dark in presentation, fonts are very plain and relatively small, with menus that look very block like. 

On the 3.3 partition it is very different, looking much more modern and polished, almost like a different browser.

As the 3.1 browser is used infrequently, I have never got around to investigating what makes the contrast between them so marked.  Neither are running xorg.  Interestingly both seem quite stable.
   

[curaga]

If you haven't added/changed any themes yourself, the other install has gtk+ and the other doesn't; or one has gtk+, and the other has gtk+ and a theme (gtk-engines).