Opera Browser Beta Adds Voice, More

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, the first public beta of Opera 8 is available for free download. It adds voice input/output and a host of other niceties. Key new features include improved RSS handling, fit to window or paper width, a start-bar for easy access to the most commonly used functions, and automatic update checks. The beta release supports Windows only, but a general release is scheduled for early 2005. Opera and IBM have partnered on XHTML+Voice (X+V) technology for several years, co-announcing a Multimodal Browser and Toolkit early in 2003."

More coverage

[kilogram]

Programmer.no [programmer.no]
ZDNet [zdnet.co.uk]
News.com.com.com.com [com.com]
Original Opera press release [opera.com]
Changelog [opera.com]

Link says Opera 7.54u1

[Alien Venom]

Linked page says Opera 7.54u1.

Opera 8.00 Beta 1 - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe [opera.com]
Opera 8.00 Beta 1 w/o Java - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe [opera.com]

Re:The new beta is awesome.

[beeswax]

The free version does have ads. (2 choices of how they are displayed I believe)

The browser is worth the 39 dollars in my opinion.

Re:Major Version Upgrade Again

[kilogram]

I get a bit tired of paying again just to get a browser that crashes less.

Actually, this update is free for paying Opera 7 customers, and the final version will be too. See this article [programmer.no].

Face it

[vcv]

Opera is the most innovative browser on the market, bar none. This is fact, whether people like it or not. Firefox would be not where it is today without Opera. Why I like Opera better: - Gestures are implemented better, more customizable, and can be used across the WHOLE browser app and not just the browser window. - Tabbed browsing is better, more natural. - Rewind and fast forward - The way Opera handles cache on windows, by cache'ing the GDI objects instead of just the page data. - The start bar - Better and easier customization - Smooth image zoom - Simply faster - Sessions and reloading all my pages after a crash. - MSR/Fit to width/SSR - The option to have the progress bar pop up at the bottom of the window and hide when it's done. - Wand, it's simply better. - Author/user modes - All images/cached images/no images toggle - Native windows skin. With OpusOS, it's great. - Paste and Go - That a page is actually a window and I can break it off from the main window if I want. - Trashcan that keeps track of closed pages. - Reload every - Hotclick And all the little details that aren't features. Firefox simply can't provide all this, even with extensions. And if there were an extension for each thing.. it would use a lot of resources, be slower, and they would not work as well together.

Gmail Support

[vikramrn]

From the Changelog

Support for XMLHttpRequest; Gmail Web mail is fully supported.

Now that should get the attention of slashdotters :)

Re:The new beta is awesome.

[Twinbee]

Exactly, and you can even 'move' the advert so that it appears similar to the way it was in Opera 7.2 (i.e. at the top right). Simply select View > Toolbars > Main bar, and viola (see a PNG shot here [skytopia.com]). That screenshot is from 7.5, but I assume you can do the same with 8.

One of things I love about Opera is how configurable its interface is. For example, Explorer could learn a thing or two from the way Opera allows buttons to be easily dropped onto toolbars.

Plus the email client (M2) rules.

New and improved Licence as well

[zxSpectrum]

What also needs to be mentioned is that the Licence has changed [opera.com] for paid customers. Quoting:

In fact, we've just given all Opera 7 customers a free upgrade, and added to this, we've changed our license terms so that there is only one license for all desktop platforms, which means that you can install Opera on any number of computers in your own home, regardless of the (desktop) operating system used. Yes, that's right. You can install the registered version of Opera as many times as you like with just a single license.

Your feedback welcome!

[ijablokov]

Hi all,

I'm the IBM program director over this product, working in partnership w/ Opera. Some quick comments: The X+V spec unifies HTML & VoiceXML and is currently undergoing the W3C process for standardization. We wrote it together w/ Motorola & Opera and have made it open. We also have an Eclipse-based SDK available at http://www.ibm.com/pvc/multimodal and a prototype one at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/mmtplus that allows you to visually build these multimodal apps.

Some of you may wonder why you should voice enable your Web content. First of all, one of my lead researchers is blind, and it's quite amazing to see how much he can accomplish today. Given that, in the future, I'm hoping a lot more content will be open to people with various disabilities.

Secondly, how useful is your cellphone for accessing the Web? It has a small screen & limited input. Now imagine just speaking into a multimodal portal: "weather forecast", "my portfolio", "eBay bids", "any high priority mail?", "am I free tomorrow at noon?", etc. The portal understands your input & fetches relevant info, which may also be tied into location based services. 50% of you will use multimodal services by 2010; this is intended as the replacement to WAP.

Warm regards!

Igor Jablokov

Changed licence conditions

[ironfrost]

They changed the licence conditions too for version 8. Instead of having to buy Opera for Windows and Linux, you now buy one licence for "Opera for desktop", which allows you to install it on as many computers as you like within your own home.

Re:Summary, Opera vs. Firefox

[vcv]

This is a little more fitting..

Opera - $$$
Firefox - Free beer, Free speech
Firefox: 1 Opera: 0

Opera - Fast
Firefox - Not as fast
Firefox: 2 Opera: 1

Opera - Very small footprint
Firefox - Tiny footprint as well
Firefox: 3 Opera: 2

Opera - Sometimes a long wait between major updates, but always major features added.
Firefox - Updated more often since they load all of the features off onto people writing extensions.
Firefox: 3 Opera: 2

Opera - Little setup required on first install
Firefox - Plugins and configuration needs to be done before you get all the functionality you want
Firefox: 3 Opera: 3

Opera - Blocks popups and with adblock css file, everything else you don't want to see
Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see
Firefox: 4 Opera: 4

Opera - Rendering problems on some pages
Firefox - Fewer rendering problems than Opera but more than IE (bad microsoft), and more support for IE's propietary non-standard code
Firefox: 4 Opera: 4

Opera - 3.5MB download size!
Firefox - 4.7MB before extensions
Firefox: 4 Opera: 5

Re:And the countdown begins

[Lotharjade]

T minus 4 till someone points out Opera is better than Firefox. T minus 6 till the bonehead at T minus 5 is corrected and told Opera can be had for FREE, and T minus 11 till someone points out that Opera isn't bloated, it just actually has useful features.

Ive used Opera for years without paying a dime. You don't have to pay if you don't want to, you just have a small ad at the top (which I have set to play google relavent text adds on mine). As for bloated, thats a bunch or crap. For a few megs I have a complete browser/email/chat package with wonderful features like popup blocker (WHICH ITS HAD FOR YEARS!).

Re:Summary, Opera vs. Firefox

[obeythefist]

Except you forgot the 11Mb Java download that is mandatory when you install Opera. Firefox just works. I'll add that in. You also forgot to award points to Firefox for having fewer rendering problems than Opera. Sneaky. Is this typical of advocates of closed source software?

Opera - Closed Source
Firefox - Open Source
Firefox: 1 Opera: 0

Opera - $$$
Firefox - Free beer, Free speech
Firefox: 2 Opera: 0

Opera - Fast
Firefox - Not as fast
Firefox: 2 Opera: 1

Opera - Very large initial footprint (> 11MB inc Java)
Firefox - Tiny footprint
Firefox: 3 Opera: 1

Opera - Very long time between updates and releases
Firefox - Fixed and updated with the speed of the open source communities non-sleeping programming hordes
Firefox: 4 Opera: 1

Opera - Little setup required on first install
Firefox - Plugins and configuration needs to be done before you get all the functionality you want
Firefox: 4 Opera: 2

Opera - Blocks popups
Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see
Firefox: 5 Opera: 2

Opera - Rendering problems on some pages
Firefox - Fewer rendering problems than Opera but more than IE (bad microsoft)
Firefox: 6 Opera: 2

Opera - You must have Suns Java installed for it to work
Firefox - Doesn't need Java at all, on Windows or Linux or anything else you might install it on.
Firefox: 7 Opera: 2

Re:Gmail Support

[Anonymous Coward]

GMail was the only missing feature from Opera that decided me to install FireFox. Now FireFox is good, far far better than IE, and it has a lot of similarities with Opera, but it lacks the extra features, speed, smoothness and general ease of use of Opera.

GMail under Opera 8 is okay. Some small display artifacts will need to be worked out, but it's 100% usable and working.

As for the rest, new RSS is very good, some new goodies are okay, some other are a bit weird and/or buggy (fit to width...), but all in all, it should have been called 7.6. It seems to be a bit slower, but I suspect it comes from the beta release.

Conclusion : Opera is and remain my browser of choice.

Re:Your feedback welcome!

[ijablokov]

Forgot to include feedback links. :)

Be sure to post your questions to Opera here:

http://my.opera.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=e4 7b 2a7f796603541134f9feaae4a8e1&forumid=95

or to IBM here:

nntp://news.software.ibm.com/ibm.software.speech .m ultimodal/

Thanks!
Igor Jablokov

Re:The new beta is awesome.

[Belisarivs]

Those "ads" (only in the free version) constitutes a single banner matched to fit in the otherwise vacant space in the right side of the toolbar at the top of the browser. An ad for UserFriendly.org isn't (at least I think UF still has ads with Opera) isn't worthy of your desktop, but white pixels are?

I paid for the full version not because the ads were annoying (I never noticed them), but because I wanted to support what I thought was a great browser. Opera ads are about the least intrusive ads I have ever seen.

Re:And the countdown begins

[bhtooefr]

MODERNIZING it? WTH does that mean? OK, so it's not open source. And, it IS free, you just have to have ads. No, it's not Free. Still, it's damn good, and I've heard that 8.0B1 changes the license terms to allow one license to work on any computers you own - no matter the OS.

Shouldn't be feeding the trolls, but...

[hkmwbz]

"Except you forgot the 11Mb Java download that is mandatory when you install Opera. Firefox just works."

Wrong. Firefox uses the exact same Java environment as Opera does. Opera just offered a download with Java as a convenience. Without Java installed, neither Firefox nor Opera will be able to show Java applets.

Opera 8.0 doesn't offer Java anyway, since it's installed only when needed.

"You also forgot to award points to Firefox for having fewer rendering problems than Opera. Sneaky. Is this typical of advocates of closed source software?"

Your FUD and lies are typical of certain Firefox zealots, and that is why I am more and more hesitant to use Firefox. I simply can't stand many of the users that keep trying to shove Firefox down people's throats with misleading statements, FUD and lies.

Rendering problems - Firefox can't even render Slashdot correctly. How's that for "rendering problems"?

Re:And the countdown begins

[bhtooefr]

For Windows users, Konqueror needs either Cygwin+KDE or a Linux distro with KDE (can be added) to run. I said Firefox was 4.1MB, but I was wrong - it's 4.7. However, while Opera's download size is huge for the Java version, keep in mind - Firefox and Seamonkey don't come with Java either. Here's the sizes of the various browsers:

Opera 7.54u1 (Java/None): 16.7/3.6MB
Opera 8.00b1 (None/Voice): 3.5MB/6.0MB (note: voice is a download AFTER the beta is installed)
Firefox 1.0: 4.7MB
Mozilla Suite 1.7.5: 11.0MB

Functionality of the above:
Opera: Web, mail, news, RSS, notetaking, chat, (8.00b1) voice
Firefox: Web, RSS
Mozilla Suite: Web, mail, news, chat(?), web development

Re:The new beta is awesome.

[zerocool^]

To be honest, I think a lot of the open-source faithful have gotten so caught up in the philosophy that they've forgotten the pragmatism. Open source isn't important, open formats are.

I think rather that you may not understand how some of us feel about open source. It's not the pragmatism of the always availability of my data that makes me use open source. Not by a long shot. It's simply that the software is better.

And after a while, you start to think that so much closed source software has a better, free, open source counterpart. And this evolves into the belief that all code should be open. Many sets of eyes and many people collaberating can make software better.

The one trap of open source is the deisre to be too many things to too many people. There are a handfull of opensource projects out there that have pretty much peaked with a perfect or near-perfect product, and then gone back and started adding everything that anyone and everyone suggests. This leads to bloated software.

But, hey, Opera is already there, and it costs $39 and isn't free. Plus not enough people are using it to justify serious security audits, and since it's closed, who knows what's wrong with it. Firefox is open and has millions of users, so people are constantly looking at it's code and finding / fixing problems. IE at least has 86% of the internet's users using it, so the holes in it eventually come out by sheer dumb luck. But, I wonder how many holes go unpatched in Opera?

Also, aside from the philosophy of open-ness, there is my version of pragmatism. The time for paying for browsers has come and past. Oh, wait. That time was never. From gopher to lynx to mosaic to netscape to IE to mozilla to firefox, web browsers have always been free.

And the ad-supported version that you can get... does not have "text based, unobtrusive ads". Here's a screenshot [skytopia.com] from a fellow slashdotter. Here are the facts about the ads:

1.) not text based. That's an image up there.
Text based would be like google i-frame ads.
2.) the full size of that browser window is 800x535 pixles. The ad is 312x60 pixels. Thus -
full browser = 428000 pixles
ad in browser = 18720 pixles

Percentage of ad as part of browser window = 4.37%.
BUT WAIT, when you add in the portion of the browser window that is now unusable because of the ad's existance (the blank spot to the left)...
Unusable space: 488x29 = 14152 pixles.

So. Unusable space + ad space = 32872 pixles
Percentage of opera wasted with ad? 7.68%

I'm not going to give up 7.68% of my browser to an ad! And I'm damn sure not going to pay $40 for a browser.

There's your answer on Opera.

~Will

Re:The new beta is awesome.

[Taladar]

1) You can switch from graphical to text ads

2) I tried to switch from Opera to Firefox more than once but was back after a few days because Firefox clearly is inferior, the integration of the plugins is far worse than the corresponding features in Opera and the Browser is often unresponsive for several seconds.

3) I use Closed Source Software when it is clearly better and at the Moment Opera is although I use Open Source Software for anything else

4) I started with the Ad-Supported version, then I cracked it for a few months but since it is the Software I use most and I now earn money I thought it was worth to buy it so I did even though I did not get any advantages over the cracked version simply because I wanted to support the Development of my favorite Browser

5) Opera uses very little Screen Real Estate now as I use a minimal theme, deactivated the big button bar and the Panel Selector on the left. the only things I have left are the Tab Bar, the Address Bar, the Menu Bar and one bar with my favorite Bookmarks (and the Scroll Bar on the right). Combined with the Ratpoison Window Manager that does not use a Window Bar I can use over 90% of the Screen for the current Webpage.

Opera is available elsewhere for free? Where?

[hkmwbz]

"it is hard to justify $40 (or ads) for something that is availible elsewhere for free."

Is Opera available elsewhere for free? Ah yes, if you use the ad version.

Oh, you meant completely free, without ads? Is there an Opera version which is free and without ads? News to me.

Oh, I get it! You think anything else can compare? Like Firefox? Sorry, Firefox doesn't cut it. It's a bigger download with far less functionality. To get more functionality, you have to wade through buggy and untested extensions, and it takes forever to even remotely resemble Opera functionality. I'll gladly play money for the convenience of a tiny download with smooth integration between everything, in a well tested package, rather than a basic browser which is tested well, and then a bunch of hobbyist extensions that break every time I upgrade.

And the Mozilla suite? Please. It's slow and bloated, and isn't even half as elegant as Opera. Sorry, it simply can't compare.

So the bottom line is that you can't get the equivalent of Opera for free. Opera is a unique product. Remember, Firefox is a stripped down browser, while Opera is a full Internet suite, with mail and all that. And Opera offers everything fine-tuned and smoothly integrated, and that is very convenient.

I don't want to build my own browser. I just want something that works. Opera works out of the box. Firefox requires hours of tinkering to even approach Opera's level of integration, functionality and polish.