opera (web browser)

Opera is a cross-platform Internet software suite consisting of:

Opera is in active development by Opera Software of Oslo, Norway and its core layout engine ("Presto") is licensed by business partners such as Adobe and is integrated into the recently announced Adobe Creative Suite. Opera has gained a leading role in browsers for Smartphones and PDAs with its Small Screen Rendering technology. Opera is also used in iTV platforms, and a special voice controlled multimodal browser is in co-development with IBM.

History and development

Around 1992, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivars?y were part of a research group at Televerket (the Norwegian state phone company now called Telenor). The group took part in developing ODA, a standards-based system for storage and retrieval of documents, images and other content. The ODA system never got any wide-spread usage despite its effectiveness and has since died. The research group also established the first Norwegian Internet server and 'home-page' in 1993, but they felt the current Mosaic browser had a too 'flat' structure for it to be used effectively in browsing the web. In the light of this, the group took interest in building a new document browser from scratch. Inspired by the ODA project, they saw potential in building a browser better adapted to the many-faceted structure of the web. The mother company Televerket gave the group a green light, and by late 1993 the first prototype was up and running. Televerket faced a challenge though: The telemarket was destined for full deregulation in 1998 which meant they would have to prepare for competition. They were not sure if this browser program would fit in with their core business. In 1994 Televerket became a state-owned stock company, and J. S. von Tetzchner and G. Ivars?y were allowed to continue development on their own in the offices of Televerket. By the end of 1995 Televerket was renamed Telenor, and the company Opera Software was created, still in the same offices. Their product was initially known as MultiTorg Opera and was quickly recognized by the Internet community for its multiple document interface (MDI) and its 'hotlist' (sidebar) which made browsing several pages at once much easier. Opera has always been developed with different priorities from other browsers, the mentioned adaptation to the big Internet being the most noticeable. It has also been designed for low footprint and very high browsing speed to make it more suitable for low-end computers. Accessibility has always been important, for users who may have visual or mobility impairments. Voice control over Opera is present in the IBM multi-modal browser, and is expected later in the standard version of Opera. (Interestingly, J.S. von Tetzchner is the son of prof. Stephen von Tetzchner, University of Oslo, who specializes in child psychology, more specifically mentally challenged children and computer programs/systems that make their lives easier.) Opera has pioneered many new features later copied by more mainstream browsers. For example, Opera was the first browser to integrate mouse gestures as an easier way to navigate pages. Opera also has several other original features, including multiple document browsing (as well as the more limited tabbed browsing), background loading of pages, batch opening of bookmark folders, fast forward and rewind functions which predict where you would surf next, notes, skins, and session management (save groups of pages to be opened later). Opera saves one of these session files periodically while running, so that in the event of a crash, it is possible to resume browsing exactly where you left off. This feature also preserves the history of each window. Opera became famous (and somewhat notorious) for its MDI; that is, all browser windows were opened in the same parent window. A taskbar was later (version 3?) introduced to make managing them easier. Version 6.0 brought a major philosophical change for Opera, with the addition of a single document interface (SDI) Mode. Ironically, this happened when many other browsers, like Mozilla and Galeon, started using a tabbed document interface (different from MDI in that it isn't multiple actual windows). Opera 6.0 gave the user the choice to use either MDI, SDI or tabbed mode and became thereby the first browser to support all three modes. Opera also has a presentation mode, Opera Show, which allows the use of a single source document for large-screen presentations and web browsing. Opera uses this mode when specific code (CSS) for presentations is in place. Opera 6.0 supported most common web standards (including CSS), Netscape plugins and some other recent standards such as WAP and WML for wireless devices. However, its implementation of ECMAScript with the HTML DOM left a bit to be desired, especially on highly dynamic pages. In January 2003, Opera 7 was released. Opera 7 offered a new layout engine "Presto" with greatly improved CSS, scripting, and DOM support, a new skinned user interface and a new and radical email and news client called M2 using a database approach to storage. In May 2004, Opera 7.5 was released, which included a newsfeed (RSS) reader and an IRC client. In August 2004, Opera 7.6 began limited beta testing, which included more advanced XML support, and introduced voice support for Opera, as well as support for Voice XML. Opera also recently announced a new browser for iTV, which ties in to the new fit to width option in Opera 7.6: pages can now be dynamically resized to fit on a certain screen width, which is more suitable for the more limited resolution of TV screens and integrated kiosks. Opera 7.6 final was never released in its early form, and instead an open beta only called Opera Beta was released. The next major version, only known now as Opera Beta but internally called Opera 8, is due to be released soon, as announced in a press release http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/12/23/ from Opera Software. Purchasers of Opera 7 will be entitled to a free upgrade. After the recent hype surrounding the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0, Opera appeared to be heading for the sidelines, so a version upgrade will also serve to reinvigorate interest in the browser.

Analysis of growth

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 has not been able to gain significant market share over its free competitors, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox. 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 differing 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 cracks and serial numbers to remove Opera's banners may increase the adoption of the browser by end-users. 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 5.02. As noted below, recent free (advert supported) versions of Opera have offered more static Google Ads as an alternative to their animated banner ads, reducing screen space in a bid to win more users. Still, the browsers bundled with operating systems do not have ads at all (at least, once the user chooses a home page other than the default).

Opera and MSN

The Microsoft-owned MSN website http://www.msn.com/ has caused several problems for Opera users: In October 2001, the MSN web page was changed to serve different HTML to different browsers while maintaining the same web content, shortly after the launch of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Since the pages were only tested with Netscape and Internet Explorer, Opera users received broken pages. According to initial statements by Microsoft, this was because other browsers did not support XHTML correctly, and users should therefore 'upgrade' to its own Internet Explorer. As usual, the press assumed that Opera browsers were intentional served broken pages. According to inside sources, this was a development/test error which was subsequently fixed. This issue also affected other browsers such as Mozilla in minor ways. Opera issued a press-release describing the problem, coded in perfectly valid XHTML; Internet Explorer was not able to show this press-release. Confronted with proof that Opera in fact supports XHTML, whereas Internet Explorer can only display XHTML in HTML compatibility mode, Microsoft subsequently fixed the site. See:

CNET news story
A List Apart story (web standards discussion website)

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 had their own specific complex style sheets. Opera on the other hand was served a cut-down generic 'site.css', which was presumably intended to be generic style sheet for older browsers. This and the Netscape style sheet both included this code: ul {list-style-position: outside; margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;} coined at an old Netscape parsing error. Without this code, Netscape would show unordered lists (used for lists of items) with a 30px offset to the right. -30px made these lists look normal in Netscape. Testing showed that Opera was served this generic style sheet only when it was possible to discern that it was Opera being used to fetch the page. Opera claimed that this was a deliberate action to make them look bad, Microsoft denied the claims, putting it down to a simple coding error, and fixed the bug. Regardless of the truth behind the story, Opera went public with the story, and created a "Bork" edition of their browser, which "translated" the page into the speech of the Swedish Chef. This, says Opera, 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 an apparent coding error at MSN's servers caused Opera users who had altered their preferred languages for websites to get a "server error" message. Although the error also affected users of some old versions of Internet Explorer, Opera makes it easier for users to change languages, so it was speculated that this was another attempt by MS to make Opera look bad. One can of course argue that since it is so hard to change the settings in Internet Explorer, MSN had overlooked this in the testing of its servers. See the CNet news story. 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. (It is easier to step on small players than bigger ones like Netscape and get away with it.) In May 2004, an unknown entity made a USD $12.75 million out-of-court settlement with Opera. No details of the settlement were released and no liability was admitted, but Opera CTO Ha*kon Wium Lie said the settlement "Resolved an issue close to his heart". In the light of things and by rumour circulation http://news.com.com/Microsoft+behind+%2412+million+payment+to+Opera/2100-1032_3-5218163.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news, this was interpreted as proof that the settlement was a result of the before-mentioned MSN case(s) and that Microsoft was the entity paying the money. If true, this must be most expensive payout for a developer/testing error in the history of computing. See the CNet news story

Notable features

Tabbed browsing

Opera supports a Tabbed Browsing/Multiple Document Interface meaning multiple Web pages can be opened within the same application window. These pages can be resized, moved, tiled and cascaded much like the application windows on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The "Page bar" contains a list of the currently opened pages inside a window and clicking on a page's tab will bring it to focus.

Pop-up blocking

Opera lets the user control whether Web sites can open pop-ups. By default Opera blocks all unrequested pop-ups, but it is possible to allow all pop-ups to open. In version 8, Opera will display a blocked pop-up notification and clicking it will open the pop-up.

Newsfeed reader

Opera supports both Atom and RSS newsfeeds which can be added to the "Feeds" menu to display the latest headlines.

Download manager

The Opera Download Manager allows for downloads to continue between multiple browsing sessions.

Spell checking

If your computer has Aspell with one or more dictionaries installed, Opera will recognize this on startup and let you spell-check any input to an e-mail message or other text edit field in Opera. http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/spellcheck/

Page zooming

Not only text but also images and other line- or vector-based content, such as Flash and SVG can be increased or decreased in size through the + and - keys. You can also set a default zoom for all pages.

Sessions

Opera lets you save a collection of open pages as a session, allowing for retrieval on later start-ups, or in the middle of another browsing session. Opera can also be set up to start with the pages (complete with scrolling position and history) you had open when the browser was last closed. At normal startup and after a crash there is a choice of resuming at your previous browsing state, opening a saved session, or starting at your homepage.

Keyboard navigation

Everything in Opera can be controlled with just the keyboard. Navigating inside a web page is very easy with Shift + Arrow keys. Opera comes with a default set of keyboard shortcuts for most browser operations. http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/nomouse/

Mouse gestures

Opera supports mouse-movement recognition, allowing users to perform certain movements with their pointing device in order to access commonly used features. These gestures can be completely customized. http://www.opera.com/features/mouse/

Voice interaction

The voice feature allows you to control the interface by talking and to have documents read aloud. The voice feature is customizable and adaptive according to your needs. Voice is currently offered in English and runs on Windows 2000 and XP. http://www.opera.com/voice/

IRC chat client

An user can now use Opera to connect to IRC servers and chat in rooms or privately, send files to other users, and so forth. The chat panel lists previously visited chat rooms and contacts that are on line.

User stylesheets & user JavaScript

Users can add multiple custom stylesheets to leverage the power of CSS, as opposed to only one in the other browsers. These stylesheets can be individually enabled or disabled. This feature can be used to enhance accessibility, or to add the ability to format custom XML on the fly. Opera includes many stylesheets that the user can enable, among them a funny Commodore 64 emulator designed to show the power of CSS. Opera version 8 introduces the ability to execute Javascipt code in every page before it is loaded, similar to the browser stylesheet. This makes it possible to make any adjustments necessary to websites whether to correct problems or add new functionality. http://nontroppo.org/wiki/UserJS

Quick preferences

Common preferences like turning on and off JavaScript, Java, plugins and pop-ups can be toggled from one quick menu by pressing F12. This menu also lets the user choose which browser Opera should identify itself as when visiting web-sites.

Opera email client

Opera's built in email client allows Mail, newsgroups, and newsfeeds to be sorted in database-like views instead of typical folders. The full text of messages are indexed to allow for speedy searches. There is a built-in spam filter that learns as you add and remove messages from the junk mail list and custom filters are possible. http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/mail/

Customizability

Almost everything in Opera can be changed. Mouse and keyboard shortcuts can be changed with an internal editor, and toolbars can easily be changed by using the 'customize toolbars' dialog. Any button or field can be placed on any toolbar. Menus are defined by simple text files, and can be installed with a single click if the server is set-up correctly.

Standards support

Opera supports all major Web standards currently in use, including CSS2, HTML4, XHTML1, HTTP1.1, DOM2, JavaScript, PNG, Unicode, and the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/

Mobile devices

Mobile phones are becoming more data-centric and evolving into what the industry calls "smartphones", while PDAs are becoming commonplace among business people and students. The two categories are converging into a new hybrid, providing powerful computer power and a phone in your shirt pocket.

Equipped with Opera's Small-Screen Rendering™ technology, these small Internet devices can display full HTML-enabled Internet without any horizontal scrolling.

Quotes from: http://www.opera.com/products/smartphone/

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.

Criticisms

Opera is commonly criticized for being ad-sponsored, whereas most browsers are available for free. This has different concerns with users.

Google Adwords

With version 5.0 in December 2000, Opera changed from a 30-day demoware business model to offering a freely downloadable version of the browser that displayed banner advertisements in the top of the browser window which were removed when paying a registration fee. Google AdWords, contextual text-based ads were added with the introduction of Opera 7.20. Adwords display content targeted to the current page by use of Google's relational databases. When browsing with "Relevant text ads" enabled, Opera will send to Google the address of the page visited so that Google can return a related advertisement. For example, a user browsing a page about pianos may be presented with a link to a Google adwords customer selling or servicing pianos. If the page is not already in Google's index, it will attempt to index the page. Like all Search engines, google will not index the page if it is listed in the Robots.txt file. This automatic indexing of pages visited by Opera leads to privacy issues when you do not want anyone to know about a page. To ensure that genuinely private pages are not known to Google, Opera will detect and not send these kinds of information:

Usernames and passwords in the format http://user:pass@www.example.com
URLs with CGI arguments (e.g: http://www.example.com?formsdata)
Forms data in POST requests
Secure pages (e.g: https://bank.example.com)
Protocols other than HTTP (FTP, NNTP, etc.)
Internal IP addresses according to RFC 1918 (e.g: 10.*, 192.168.*, 172.16-172.31.*)

As mentioned, pages that should remain "secret" may be indexed by Google when the URL of the page is sent to Google for retrieval of ads. However, it is unclear how and if pages indexed in this way appear in the public Google index, but it is certain that Google visits the page minutes after the Opera user has been there, although not with its normal spider. For more information on how AdWords are used in Opera, see Opera Browser Google Ads http://www.opera.com/adsupport/. For some users' concerns about Ad words, see details on Adsense spidering http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/archives/000267.html. Also, some webmasters perceived Opera's displaying of Google ads as a threat to their possible revenue - that users could click Opera's ad and ignore the webmaster's ad, and the webmaster would be out of revenue. As a result, some webmasters took to blocking Opera users outright, or forcing them to register Opera (a method that was not fool-proof and was blocking even registered users). Racoon on the MyOpera forums posted a long discussion about the whole issue http://my.opera.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35902.

Branding

While Opera may be considered technologically superior, the software did not gain as much attention as other "alternative browsers", noticeably Firefox. An Opera fan, Lawrence Eng, has written an article that suggests improvements of the current Opera branding, like the use of a mascot and a change of their slogans http://www.cjas.org/~leng/opera.htm. In fact, several Japanese artists then created ?pera-tan shortly after knowing Lawrence's suggestion.

Perceived incompatibility

A common problem online is that many websites are not based on standards, but are in fact either using outdated browser sniffers, 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, although it is solely the webmaster's fault. When Google released Gmail in April 2004, Opera was essentially locked out. Gmail employs the use of XMLHttpRequest, a non-standard protocol implemented in some web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Although XMLHttpRequest support was added with Opera 7.60 Preview 3 (which was further developed into the new Opera Beta), some users were still irritated, as there was still no solution for the release version. A workaround for this version known as Andrew Gregory's Gmail Fix http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/opera/gmail/ is available. As often happens with new features, the only long-term solution available now to users who do not wish to use a beta is to wait for the release of the next version, or use a different browser instead.

Release history

Table of Releases: http://www.markschenk.com/opera/history.html

Latest release versions

Note: The latest version number may differ from language to language; these numbers are for the original English (US) version. Release versions are available at: http://www.opera.com/download/

Microsoft Windows: (Windows 95 and later): 7.54u2; (Windows 3.x): 3.62
Mac OS X: 7.54u2; Mac OS: 6.03
Linux: 7.54u2
FreeBSD: 7.54u2
Solaris: 7.54u2
OS/2: 5.12
BeOS: 3.62
QNX: 6.0.1
Symbian OS: 6.20

Latest preview versions

Early test versions (internal alpha versions) of Opera are tested only by Opera employees, before Internal betas for the desktop platforms (Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) are tested by a select number of people called 'the Elektrans'. Technical preview versions are released in Opera's beta newsgroup, 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. Preview versions are available at: http://snapshot.opera.com/