Opera Update

[SamK]

It seems that Opera now natively supports Flash blocking via On-Demand-Plugin (ODP).
http://www.rarst.net/software/opera-on-demand-plugin/
In my view, this feature alone is worth an update.

[tinypoodle]

It is possible (again, as it used to be up to a certain version with qt static builds) with recent versions of opera to just untar the downloaded .tar.bz2 and simply run it out of the directory. qt is no longer required.

With the versions in repo it is possible to globally disable plugins and then make exceptions in site preferences. In addition, personally I have added a button to status bar to toggle plugins on/off.

When opera10 is in turbo mode the feature with a graphical play button is already implemented.
In order to always get a play button in the versions currently in opera, one could use a third party javascript or .css providing such.

[hiro]

1. My user javascripts don't work if I globally disable javascript

2. enabling plugins per site preferences is the greatest thing I could imagine, but sadly it's way too much of a hassle to click through the menus (minimum of 5 clicks).

3. often I only want one flash element activated (I don't remember having ever wanted to use two at the same page)

[tinypoodle]

1. My user javascripts don't work if I globally disable javascript

2. enabling plugins per site preferences is the greatest thing I could imagine, but sadly it's way too much of a hassle to click through the menus (minimum of 5 clicks).

3. often I only want one flash element activated (I don't remember having ever wanted to use two at the same page)

1. Personally I rarely enable javascript globally and I don't always use user javascript.
However, I think to remember that with javascript globally disabled, user javascript would work on sites which would be excepted by site preferences. I don't think flash content could ever work when javascript is not enabled.

2. That is a bit of work at the beginning, which becomes gradually less with time, and I believe it is an investment which pays off multiply over the long. With a toggle button it is one click.

3. (Dis-)allowing of single flash elements can be achieved in 3 ways:
a. third party flashblocker (.js or .css)
b. in opera 10.tcz native while in turbo mode
c. downloading a recent version, native. see first 2 posts of thread.

[uggla]

Opera 11 is out!

[tinypoodle]

Opera 11 is out!

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6345.msg43665#msg43665

[uggla]

Opera 11.50 is out!

http://www.osnews.com/story/24897/Opera_11_50_Released

[nick65go]

the latest opera-next (alias opera12) is out, I have made an opera12.tcz of 11.62MB (versus opera10 of 11.21 MB);
see their http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

all I did was to delete some locale from the http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/QRESYNC_12.00-1033/opera-next-12.00-1033.i386.linux.tar.xz

in opera12.tcz.dep is only fontconfig.tcz, but it works very fast and is adapted to wide display (netbook) because most of menu and bars could be hided. it seems to me faster than firefox.tcz ver 5.0.1 of 16.42MB, and flash10 works very good; the customization menu of opera12 is as rich as firefox menu;
shame that it is close source, but i could live with it  

[uggla]

the latest opera-next (alias opera12) is out, I have made an opera12.tcz of 11.62MB (versus opera10 of 11.21 MB);
see their http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

all I did was to delete some locale from the http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/QRESYNC_12.00-1033/opera-next-12.00-1033.i386.linux.tar.xz

in opera12.tcz.dep is only fontconfig.tcz, but it works very fast and is adapted to wide display (netbook) because most of menu and bars could be hided. it seems to me faster than firefox.tcz ver 5.0.1 of 16.42MB, and flash10 works very good; the customization menu of opera12 is as rich as firefox menu;
shame that it is close source, but i could live with it  

Will you make it available in the repository for others to use? (I think you should name it operanext.tcz)

[nick65go]

yes; because is my first tcz, I had to read again the:
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:creating_extensions and http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:iconmenuinfo;

EDIT: audited opera-next.tcz (11.53MB) with submitqc, then created the archive and then bcrypt it  (using the password "tinycore"); menu and submenus are working from Applications, icon apears in wbar;
opera-next.tar.gz.bfe sent to tcesubmit_at_gmail_dot_com; enjoy it

[maro]

Hmm, I'm not really sure that we really need such a thing as an 'opera-next.tcz' extension (in particular one that shows on it's own 'about:opera' page that it is only "pre-alpha").

The Opera team is pushing out their "bleeding edge" releases fairly frequently (sometimes multiple times in a week) and announce them via their blog. In my view calling it now 'Opera-next' instead of an alpha or beta release is just the "flavour of the month" following in the trails of Chrome and FireFox with their different "channels" etc.

Looking at the repository where I can spot an outdated 'firefox-beta.tcz' (of v4.0rc1) whilst the (stable) 'firefox.tcz' is v5.0.1 just shows (at least IMHO) how futile it can be trying to chase more than just a current stable browser release.

My suggestion would be to remove the outdated 'firefox-beta.tcz' and not include an 'opera-next.tcz' in the repository. I could see the point in having something like "FF-beta" when the development cycle was considerably longer (e.g. 13 month between FF 3.6 and FF 4.0), but nowadays in the current climate of much shorter "gestation" periods, I'm not so sure about that.

I'm aware that there exists a "hidden" 'opera11.tcz' extension in the repository. As far as I can tell it is hidden as it lacks an 'opera11.tcz.info' file (which prevents it's inclusion in 'info.lst'). That is not a big loss in my view as it contains the already outdated release 11.11 as the current stable release is 11.50. It might be worthwhile to create a "proper", up-to-date 'opera11.tcz' extension.

On that note I wonder why the latest stable release should not be called 'opera.tcz' and the (trusted) old 'opera.tcz' (i.e. v9.64) be renamed to 'opera9.tcz'. I'd like to think that would be more reasonable, as it might surprise some users that something that is more than two years old pretends to be "fresh". Furthermore I don't really see a need for keeping a 'opera10.tcz' extension around, as that was IMHO anyway not such a great effort.

For those (presumably few) users that want to trial the Opera alpha or beta releases this process has since about a year been pretty simple: download, extract, (install the one or two dependencies like 'libxft.tcz') and just run it (e.g. in the extraction directory). Sure that is not automatically persistent, but there were quite some "dud" releases that did not quite work, so who wants those to be an extension? Plus the overhead for the repository maintainers with that sort of churn might not really be required.

OTOH, for users that want to create a (private ?) extension I'm attaching here a script that could be used to create such. It just requires to either change some variables at the top of the script or call it with a suitable URL (for downloading a new release) as parameter. It should then be able to create an appropriately named extension (plus a '*-locale.tcz' one).

Note: It has been successfully tested against the current stable (i.e. v11.50) and 'opera-next' releases, but I'm not sure for how long that will be the case into the future.


EDIT 1: As I tried to upload a 2834 bytes script I've received a The upload folder is full. Please try a smaller file and/or contact an administrator. message back from the SMF system. So I'm going to attach the script later ...

EDIT 2: The script has now been attached and a silly misspelling corrected.

[uggla]

Maro, I think you are right. Personally I would prefer an updated, stable Opera.tcz. I've now installed Opera11.tcz and it seems to work fine, thanks for letting us know of its existence.

Regards
/Uggla

[nick65go]

it is OK for me to do not send/update anymore opera-next.tcz; It was fun to try my hand at creating menu/sub-menu in flwm Application menu, as the wiki is incomplete  about submenu tricks

I did this because opera10 was old, and not know about opera11 existence;
I would like that your newer operaXX.tcz to have proper working submenus, take out the bloat from it (locales, not 48x48 icons, personalized/better default speed dials, etc) if it is not too hard for you to assemble such a script.
thanks for your feedback.

[Jason W]

maro-

Where is the firefox-dev.tcz extension?  I don't see it when I log into the server, nor in appbrowser.

I also agree that I don't like the "opera-next" name, I would prefer an opera-beta instead.  But if they release an update to it even once a week, then it would be futile to try to keep it current, which would defeat the purpose of a beta version.

And since I maintain firefox, current minefield, seamonkey, icecat, as well as keeping the older 4.0.x, 3.6.x, and 3.5.x firefox builds at their latest point release (some folks like older versions, more memory efficient and less feature creep), I would rather spend my time keeping those up to date than to keep beta versions around, so firefox-beta I dropped from the repo. 

[maro]

Where is the firefox-dev.tcz extension?  I don't see it when I log into the server, nor in appbrowser.

A pretty silly mistake at my end, I meant of course 'firefox-beta.tcz'.

Jason, any thoughts about a re-naming exercise where for example 'opera.tcz' would reflect the latest stable release and not the oldest (which could be possibly extended to the 'minefield*.tcz' as well)?

Furthermore, the promised script has now been added to reply #10.