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Opera 10.0 Released, With Integrated Web Server Functionality
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jun 16, 2009 08:49 AM
from the two-way-street dept.
from the two-way-street dept.
sherl0k writes "Opera 10.0, dubbed Opera Unite, has been released. Built into the Web browser is a full-fledged Web server, complete with nifty little gadgets such as a 'fridge' that people can post notes onto, a chat room, a widget to stream your music library anywhere, and a built-in file-sharing mechanism. It also scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test."
Readers fudreporter and TLS point to The Register's report on the new release and a
5-minute video demo, respectively. Update: 06/16 15:18 GMT by T: Roar Lauritzsen of Opera Software writes to point out that "release" isn't quite the right word here; though you can download it, version 10.0 is still in beta, and the version with Unite is a labs (experimental) release.
Related Stories
Submission: Opera 10.0 released, ready to "Unite" the by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Opera Unite is a Hail Mary 260 comments
snydeq writes "Rather than view it as a game-changer, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Opera Unite as a Hail Mary bid for Opera to stay in the game. After all, in an era when even vending machines have Web servers on them, a Web server on the Web browser isn't really that groundbreaking. What Opera is attempting is to 'reintermediate' the Internet — 'directly linking people's personal computers together' by making them sign up for an account on Opera's servers and ensuring all of their exchanges pass through Opera's servers first. 'That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions — not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera,' McAllister writes. In other words, Opera hopes to use social networking as a Trojan horse to put traditional apps back in charge."
[+]
Opera Unite Web Server Benchmarked 227 comments
worb writes "Opera Unite comes with a web server which is supposedly going to 'redefine the web.' But how well does it actually perform? Is it a threat to other server solutions? Someone put it to the test, and published the results. While nginx, one of the fastest web servers available, is 5 times faster, a PHP+Apache+MySQL server is only 2 times as fast. A compiled C++ server, the MadFish WebToolkit, is 6 times faster. He concludes that Opera Unite's server is impressive, and that the others come nowhere close to the ease of use."
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What? (Score:5, Funny)
No kitchen sink?
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
The sink will be available as an Opera Widget.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else seeing graphics appearing midcomment on about 1/4 of the comments?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
On every aspect the title and summary is just so wrong.
To begin with, Opera 10 has not been released. Its in Beta.
Opera Unite is not Opera 10, its a feature in Opera 10.
Opera Unite is not a webserver, its a system where functionality is provided by widgets and other users can access those aswell (kinda like Google Wave)
Opera provided some widgets to begin with, like File Sharing, Web Server, Media Player, Photo Sharing, The Lounge (chat), Fridge (post-a-note wall)
All of these can be separately enabled or disabled.
Atleast in the Opera 10 Beta, Unite and all the widgets were disabled by default.
It makes direct connections when possible, and if user is behind NAT Opera proxy servers will route it (afaik)
Its a great thing for an user who doesn't care or know how to install webservers, dont want to upload their private photos to imageshack or the like or chat via servers. The thing here is that instead of using websites, you can connect to your friends directly. Widgets provide the functionality then (theres API developers can use to make them)
Hopefully that clarifies some about that incredibly bad summary.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd say it is a BAD THING when someone who doesn't care or know how to install a web server winds up installing a web server just because it is part of his web browser. I'd say it is a massive hole through which bad guys can poke at someone's system without the victim knowing that he's installed it.
Why is it a massive hole? You know, its not apache or anything complicated. It doesn't run php scripts. It serves files and only does that. Seeing how secure Opera has been compared to IE/FF I'd say they know how to secure it aswell.
Personally, I don't want my VNC server also running an http demon to distribute widgets to anyone who comes by. I don't want my web browser doing the same thing.
Nor it does, it has a good access police thats easily noticed by the user. Opera's site has some pics in the press section if you dont want to install it to see.
As long as your friends are explicit in wanting you to be able to this, ok.
As said, user access controls and the services/widgets DONT run on by default.
If that were true, it's trivial to set up a real webserver to provide exactly what you want them to get, instead of it being a side-effect of browsing the morning's ration of pr0n.
Internet is not just us nerds anymore. Actually, we're quite minority like in teh real world. Not anyone has interest to learn how to install and configure apache and hell, I would be more worried about someone using apache instead of opera's very basic webserver, if they get it working they most likely dont know what they're doing.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
Firefox 3.0.11
Konqueror 3.5.9
Very annoying
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Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure all seven Opera users will be thrilled.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Informative)
eh, how wrong is the summary. Opera 10 != Opera Unite. Its just a feature in it. Surprisingly, TechCrunch has a good summary http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/that-reinvention-of-the-web-thing-opera-was-talking-about-its-called-opera-unite/ [techcrunch.com]
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Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Informative)
âoeCurrently, most of us contribute content to the Web (for example by putting our personal information on social networking sites, uploading photos to Flickr, or maybe publishing blog posts), but we donâ(TM)t contribute to its fabric â" the underlying infrastructure that defines the online landscape that we inhabit.
Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people â" such as large corporations â" who we depend upon to host our words, thoughts, and images. We depend on them to do it well and with our best interests at heart. We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet.â
This is more of a way for people to communicate, share and do stuff together rather than using websites. You know, P2P. It has developer API so new stuff can be added, opera's own stuff currently include webserver, chat room, note board, streaming and file sharing.
Its quite nice system actually, and you dont need to share your stuff to all of the internet or upload your photos to facebook or similar.
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Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Informative)
You do actually make a direct connection if its possible. If not, then opera will proxy it so that it works for users behind nat aswell.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, I don't want a web SERVER either (in the common parlance)- but maybe a server that just does some quick task for me: I find value in being able to easily share my photos with people with little to know real effort on my part. I currently have to FTP/batch to my webserver and "reindex" the site so thumbnails are generated. I would find value in having an EyeFi memory card dump pictures into a folder and they are immediately available to view- no work done at all on my part.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Informative)
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Alpha! (Score:4, Informative)
Somewhere in the summary you REALLY should mention this is an ALPHA release, not a final release.
Thanks.
using it now. Very, very impressed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:using it now. Very, very impressed. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:using it now. Very, very impressed. (Score:5, Funny)
Me too. Although I couldn't say /. looks very, very good :-(
But at least you can say it's rendered properly.
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Re:using it now. Very, very impressed. (Score:4, Funny)
wait.. there is a "proper" way?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So when was the last time you tried Opera? I still use Firefox for a few things, and even IE, but the vast majority of my web browsing is done in Opera. It's faster, it's cleaner, mouse gestures are installed by default, and I like the way they use tabs better. With 10, the speed-dial tool actually got to be slightly useful, which I hadn't expected. It's been ages since I found a site that just plain didn't work in Opera, except ones that require ActiveX, and those don't work all that well in Firefox, e
Sweet Zombie Exploit Jesus (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a botnet writer's wet dream; a victim that will host your exploit once you've pwned it.
We can only hope that it's secure, or else the two dozen people who actually use Opera will be very unpopular indeed, at least until the RIAA has then rounded up for sharing their tunes with (world + dog).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Try reading the article.
The 'weird' urls are of the form "unite://computername.username.operaunite.com", and routed through Opera's own servers.
Re:Sweet Zombie Exploit Jesus (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that once upon a time the web was filled with "weird" URLs like darthvader.cs.uni.edu/userpages/~mijon96/, web5.hoster.com/m/mi/~mikaelj and the like, right? And that it wasn't unusual to find early web-based companies operating out of websites that could only be reached by typing in a URL like one of those?
I'm sorry but your post sounds a bit too "we need to clean up the web, only allow hosting by well-known corporate entities and require $500 website licenses for anyone who wants to publish a website!!11" for my tastes (yes, I've heard both these two suggestions being made in a very serious manner by people who I know to be knowledgeable enough about the internet to not make suggestions like that without a lobotomy or, more likely, their corporate masters telling them to in exchange for money).
/Mikael
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10.0 still beta and Unite is alpha (Score:4, Informative)
Security (Score:3, Insightful)
Oblig (Score:3, Funny)
Yo dawg, I heard you like surfing, so we put a web server in your browser so you can surf while your surf!
So many features... (Score:5, Funny)
*Runs away*
I wrote this 9 years ago! (Score:5, Interesting)
The "Fishbowl" browser had an integrated web server.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010502014727/chronofish.com/FishBowl/ [archive.org]
-CF
Re:Acid 3 test (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretend for a second that I don't know anything about Acid 3. Pretend I'm just a regular Joe-sixpack web user.
Why should I care that my browser scored 100/100 on the Acid 3 test?
I would pitch Acid 3 compliance in this manner: This web browser is 100% compliant with the proper web rendering standards. The more compliant your web browser is, the less likely your web browser will break. You can take that to the bank. You spend less time with a broken browser, and more time enjoying a cold one.
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Re:Acid 3 test (Score:4, Insightful)
The more compliant your web browser is, the less likely your web browser will break.
I love webstandards, and wish greatly that all browsers supported them well. But I just don't think that quote is factually true. If your browser adheres to webstandards that IE doesn't then it's quite possible/plausible that your browser will fail to deliver websites that look and function like you and the designer expected it to.
People "should" code to standards, but I just don't think that it's (yet) true that they DO.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The more compliant your web browser is, the less likely your web browser will break.
I love webstandards, and wish greatly that all browsers supported them well. But I just don't think that quote is factually true. If your browser adheres to webstandards that IE doesn't then it's quite possible/plausible that your browser will fail to deliver websites that look and function like you and the designer expected it to.
People "should" code to standards, but I just don't think that it's (yet) true that they DO.
However Opera is known to also be subject to many IE bugs at will. Ever since the latest browser wars began with firefox 1.3 and early webkit Opera was best out there since it both adhered to standards and didn't break badly made websites. I don't know how they manage doing this, but they do.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed, there's a ways to go. Fortunatly with IE6 fading and IE as a whole losing market share, we can at least hope the days of the site that proudly proclaims itself to require IE and refuses to even try for anything else are over for good.
Next step is for IE to become the bastard stepchild browser that gets the reduced functionality page while the other browsers get the full capability (to the extent that they comply with standards).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Talking of banks, will it work at https://www.nwolb.com/ [nwolb.com] or https://www.rbsdigital.com/ [rbsdigital.com] ? They are the world's largest bank, and don't have a good reputation for supporting alternative browsers.
Re:Acid 3 test (Score:5, Funny)
You spend less time with a broken browser, and more time enjoying a cold one.
Dude, necrophilia is wrong.
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Re:Acid 3 test (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To paraphrase that to fit what Generic Joe will hear:
"You'll have to grin and bear it as you use an internet that wasn't written to use these standards, BUT, if you and lots of other people start using Opera then those websites will be written to comply with those standards and that'll be great!"
Not sure that's a terribly compelling argument to Generic Joe. Some will certainly go for it, willing to bite the bullet to advance humanity a little bit, but a lot of people just want to use the internet.
Re:OMG! That bug is coming back! (Score:4, Insightful)
something sitting in the back of my head telling me that i would trust Opera to do it FAR more better than Netscape - if not for the reason that when Netscape did it.. no one thought people would be evil with it.. second Opera is by far one of the most secure browsers out there, let alone the fastest (although chrome is giving it a run for it's money on that front).
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, no, Opera is not one of the fastest browsers out there as This, on Mac OS [kent.ac.uk], and this on windows [kent.ac.uk] show -- note, what is showing as opera 9.8 is 10.0 beta, I've yet to test the final release of 10.0, but you're of course welcome to try to duplicate my results.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OMG! That bug is coming back! (Score:4, Informative)
Fractional horsepower web servers [scripting.com] are not a new idea, but baking them into the browser is
Not even remotely true, I'm afraid. The early WWW papers describe the browser and server being integrated, with the browser UI containing a simple editing tool for editing pages on your local server. It wasn't until later, when dial-up users became common that the two components were separated. The every-client-is-a-server model was at the core of the early Web.
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Why does a web browser have FS access (Score:4, Insightful)
Building a firewall-piercing file server into a browser, a program which typically has full network and file system access, is going to cause many incidents of accidental file sharing.
Why does a web browser have full access to the file system, other than read-only access to its own "program" and "files to upload" folders and read-write access to "user profile", "cache", and "downloaded files" folders?
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File chooser service; copy to shared folder (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does a web browser have full access to the file system, other than read-only access to its own "program" and "files to upload" folder[...]
It has filesystem access because, even without a file server component, users want to upload files
Uploading a file doesn't need file system access; it needs file chooser access. In the Sugar toolkit used by OLPC's XO laptops, for instance, apps that let the user select a file send a request to the file chooser service [laptop.org], which then opens the file and passes the equivalent of a file descriptor to the app. (In fact, a Sugar app's installer doesn't even let a single program request both directory listing and network connection privileges; the user has to apply them manually after the fact.) Another way to do
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
10.0 has auto updates, but as other commenters have pointed out- 10.0 is in beta and seperate from the "Opera Unite" stuff of the article. You can learn more about auto update and try it out on the beta page [opera.com]
Re:Mac version (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately, it still looks completely out of place.
It's highly functional. Of course it looks out of place on a Mac.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now it seems that they are following MS lead by providing proprietary bloat instead cross platform functionality.
Huh? I run Opera on Windows, various Linux distros, Mac and Open Solaris, you can also find it in use on Wii, Symbian, FreeBSD, Windows Mobile, Nintendo DS. That's not enough platforms for you?
Re:bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
Opera PPC OS X is just 12 MB, the actual executable is way below it.
In fact, if you dig deeper, you figure the amazing fact. Core renderer is below 1 MB. Yes, 1 MB of ultra portable pure C is the "Opera". Rest is done via the functionality it already has. E.g. lsof when you use the "bulky" IRC function of Opera, you will see the thing you see as "IRC" is actually a web page along with CSS!
Same with the "Web server". It must be amazingly tiny, even less than the rendering engine since it is clear that they are heading to mobile with this.
Opera and Firefox has different development models, concepts and even targets. Ask Firefox developers if they will remove 80% of code just because they want the exact same binary to run on my horribly outdated, OS dead UIQ3 Sony Ericsson P1i. That is what Opera does.
With Google, Google Backed Mozilla, MS Backed IE, Apple backed Webkit, I really don't think Opera dreams about "World Domination!". Look at these silly people, they want to boycott Opera because MS backed blogs called for it. Why? EU judicial system investigates MS (did you see IE icon's size on Win 7?) and MS pulled one of "I am taking my toys and going home" tricks again by not including IE in EU Windows. So, it is all Opera's fault now (as they can't mess with Google/Firefox) and they want to boycott Opera (as if they ever used!).
I mean, as ordinary user, I can see the stupidity but they can't? I bet they do and they never dreamed of being some 20-30% market share browser because of these facts which aren't really too technical.
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