Opera 10.50 Beta Out, With Competitive JavaScript 143
Opera has released its 10.5 beta (for Windows only; Linux and Mac coming). Opera calls 10.5 "the fastest browser on earth," but the jury is out on this claim. WebMonkey says that the new beta feels snappy in their informal testing. Both CNET and ZDNet ran two quick benchmarks that measure JavaScript performance, SunSpider and V8. ZDNet found Opera beating out Chrome in SunSpider but lagging in V8. CNET found Chrome ahead in both tests. What is clear however is that Opera's Carakan JavaScript engine has made up much of the ground in the performance wars; The Reg estimates that 10.5 is seven times faster in the JavaScript stakes than Opera's shipping 10.1 release.
Vega (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but wont those animations be controlled by javascript? Drawing them fast and *where* to draw them are both important...first being the accelerated graphics, second being programmatic control...javascript.
So, you should be double excited?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Vega (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows only? (Score:1)
Opera, my favorite browser for years just, lost some major credit from me. I find 10.5 to be an exciting release, especially Carakan, but I always admired them for delivering a quality browser simultaneously for most platforms and this time they failed at that. According to a developer's blog post, 10.5 final will also come out for Windows before it comes out for other platforms, and then they are going to shift focus to them.
At least he says that it's only for 10.5.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Windows only? (Score:5, Informative)
They quite clearly explained that this was because the Linux and Mac versions were undergoing much bigger changes than the Windows version. And they will be faster and better integrated as a result. How is that a "fail"?
Re:Windows only? (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of those major changes, they are pushing Windows at the moment because of the EU Vs. Microsoft thing, where in March Microsoft will have to add the "Choose Your Browser" dialog, and Opera wants 10.5 to be on that list, not 10.1.
Re: (Score:1)
They quite clearly explained that this was because the Linux and Mac versions were undergoing much bigger changes than the Windows version.
Could you please point me to where they explained that? In my original post I was referring to this [opera.com] post, where he says that all desktop platforms are undergoing massive changes to platform integration. I can't find anywhere that the Linux and Mac versions are undergoing bigger changes than the Windows version.
Of course, I am not saying that if they have the Windows version ready before the others they should hold it back until everything is ready, but that post seems (to me at least) to imply that the "lar
Re: (Score:2)
Windows ballot screen (Score:1)
Worth a look (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno. It's mostly ok but the way the tab strip works bugs me.
When maximised in Windows, there's a two or three pixel wide strip of title bar between the tabs and the top of the screen, so you don't get "mile-high tabs" like in Chrome. That's really annoying and the devs have done it deliberately - they seem to think that there needs to be grabbable title-bar across the entire width of the window, which I disagree with.
And, if you double click inside the tab region but not on a tab, it spawns a new tab (w
Re: (Score:2)
Proxy issues (Score:3, Informative)
I tried it, and found it still has some irritating issues. For one thing, proxy settings don't work right, which is a real pain in the butt for those of us in a university. I know it's beta software, but that's still a pretty nasty issue, and has been commented on on their forums already.
Otherwise, it seems to be quite nice. I like the new UI, newsgroups and mail features, but I haven't been using it near enough to get beyond that.
Why the obsession with javascript? (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: I do recognize and appreciate the need to make javascript perform better.
Thing is...it seems that for many tech "journalists" hardly anything besides js matters anymore!
Notice how Opera said "the fastets on earth"; which might be still debatable of course, but they did not say "...fastest in javascript". Opera knows that's not the whole story in browser performance. You can see it especially when using Opera on some ancient machine where the difference is most startling. WebMonkey seems to know it too (nah, not reading TFA...)
CNET, ZDNet and The Reg seem to care only about JS...
What is it? Some new widespread fascination with numbers like in 3DMark heyday? "Journalists" taking the easy route by simply running automatic benchmarks? (written "for" Opera competitors BTW...)
Re:Why the obsession with javascript? (Score:5, Interesting)
Web applications. For pages with no to little javascript (and without the flash hog) the speed is just fine in all browsers unless you got an obsession about saving 30 seconds over a day of surfing. But if you are working in web applications for extended periods of time, the speed really matters. Now none of the big corporations has enough guts to publicly stab IE in the back, but IT departments aren't all clueless and web applications are becoming commonplace now that the hype has moved on and "the cloud" is the next big thing.
Re: (Score:2)
As I said I understand the value of better js. But that alone hardly justifies treating it as the hallmark; worse, not under realistic scenarios but...synthetic benchmarks. Yes, "representative ones" - but doing only js nonetheless and also having strong relation to some of the engines they test...
PS. Especially on highly portable machines, with small amounts of RAM, and on slow wireless connections I wouldn't call the experience (not only "speed"!) "just fine".
Re: (Score:2)
What is it? Some new widespread fascination with numbers like in 3DMark heyday? "Journalists" taking the easy route by simply running automatic benchmarks? (written "for" Opera competitors BTW...)
Well, it's partly that, and partly that Javascript used to be the slowest part of a webpage by far.
But now that we have Flash, AJAX with its incessant server queries and broadband ubiquitous enough that web designers feel free to go crazy with the 1 MB images, I'm not sure Javascript alone is the bottleneck anymore. But for what is worth, Opera 9 with its 'ancient' Javascript engine was fast enough to provide a decent browsing experience on my old P1 166mhz laptop (though sans Flash), so I think any perform
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah... Except it isn't.
Re: (Score:2)
It used to be. Unless you have some evidence of the contrary?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It will still suck (Score:1, Interesting)
I've wanted to like Opera for years, but I don't like the way it caches data...for example using the Yuku (old EZ Board) message board. If there are new articles, I have to manually hit refresh to detect them when I navigate back to the page later on. IE, Firefox, and Chrome automatically detect the changes, Opera does not. Maybe there is a setting I could change, but why should I when the other browsers work fine out of the box for this.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a check document frequency setting? I usually set all my browsers to set every time, iirc there was a setting for this in opera. My current job is IE6 internally (where IE8 and Firefox 3.x may be allowed in the next few months). I've pretty much been developing with Firefox + Firebug then cleaning up IE8 (then IE6 issues, wont be sad to see that one go). Usually the browser will respect an if-modified-since header and 304 response, though most web applications aren't configured to respect this
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Prefs > Advanced > History. I think by default it sets to 5 hours for Documents and Images, which is obviously far too long. I've been carrying over a set of preferences since sometime around version 9, so I have no clue what the default is these days. But setting Documents to "every time" and Images to whatever pleases you (mine's at 5 minutes, which I think might be a little much) should solve the issue.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
I've wanted to like Opera for years, but I don't like the way it caches data...for example using the Yuku (old EZ Board) message board. If there are new articles, I have to manually hit refresh to detect them when I navigate back to the page later on. IE, Firefox, and Chrome automatically detect the changes, Opera does not. Maybe there is a setting I could change, but why should I when the other browsers work fine out of the box for this.
Greedy caching is always better. No exceptions. Reconnecting over the web is a waste when your were just here 5 minutes ago, or worse, if you misclicked a link and have to wait for it to reload over a dialup or bad Wifi connection. When you block flash and ads at a proxy or hardware level, and even turn JS off, it is stupid to have a page reload again when you click back.
It is silly to forget that 10 years ago pages were not expected to have new blog posts, breaking news or twit / myspace / facebook garbage
Pretty impressive release (Score:2)
I tried several of the Chrome Experiments on Opera 10.5, and everything ran very smoothly. Good going Opera.
Now if only they'd add an option to make the keyboard/mouse options more like Firefox/Chrome, I could use this as my default browser. It still bugs me that it's very, very hard to make a customizable browser like Opera open new tabs with a ctrl-click like every other browser.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
"Use Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts" wouldn't be a completely absurd option to include.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Would require some big organizational changes though; usually the ideas, solutions flow in the other direction ;)
Re: (Score:1)
There is an option in the Opera Preferences dialog to change Keyboard shortcuts or choose from several different sets of shortcuts. Look it up.
Re: (Score:1)
Firefox does not get in my way. I therefore have no interest in trying out other browsers (I have never tried any of Chrome, Safari or Opera...).
Maybe I am missing out, but I don't know it, so it doesn't bother me any.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Netscape/Mozilla is older than IE, but Firefox still changed over to IE-ish shortcuts on Windows in order to be a more comfortable transition.
Also, I'm not asking Opera to shaft their loyal users. Opera is very customizable. There's no reason why they couldn't create a Firefox-ish shorcut set and let users choose that as an option. In fact, right now my biggest gripe is that their customization doesn't allow you to redefine ctrl-click consistently.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry browser that comes along? IE8/Firefox/Chrome/Safari, which are #1-4 in the marketplace, have very similar keyboard shortcuts. You'd think Opera would at least study its competition. Alternatively it could continue enjoying its niche as #5.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a niche everywhere. It is the number one browser (yes, ahead of IE) in Ukraine, is becoming number one right now in Russia. It has generally quite respectable usage share in large part of Europe, often between 5 and 10% (in cotrast to Safari, which typically almost doesn't exist and is in places behind Opera Mini, the j2me one; Chrome is doing better, but still typically noticeably behind Opera, even with all the Google promotion on every Google website)
Check for yourself a slice of regional data:
Re: (Score:2)
If that's suddenly a bug, then submit it as a bug/feature request, instead of, yes, philosophically discussing it here. It's your problem, so you go ask for it to be fixed; we're just telling you how it's not a problem for many.
While doing that - get off your high horse and remember that Opera, among browsers, has one of the lesser problems with unfulfilled promises. How many years FF is plagued with resource hunger? (and why Seamonkey is..snappier?) Where's the link to Minimo release from few years back, r
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It still bugs me that it's very, very hard to make a customizable browser like Opera open new tabs with a ctrl-click like every other browser.
What's wrong with the middle mouse button?
Opera used Shift for that purpose before other browsers even had tabs, and it still works that way (I think - I really don't know, because I've had a mouse with a scroll wheel for many years now).
Re: (Score:1)
> What's wrong with the middle mouse button?
Laptops don't have a middle mouse button unless you buy an add-on.
> Opera used Shift for that purpose before other browsers even had tabs
Do you mean shift-click? That opens a new tab and gives it focus. I'm looking for opening a new tab in the background, which is currently bound to ctrl-shift-click. And of course the biggest oddity is that you can not change this binding easily [blogspot.com].
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Laptops don't have a middle mouse button...
Most laptops don't have a middle mouse button.
Re: (Score:2)
Laptops don't have a middle mouse button unless you buy an add-on.
Try clicking left and right mouse buttons simultaneously.
Re: (Score:1)
Does not work (Opera 10.5, Windows XP)
And what's this obsession with the middle mouse button anyway? Wake-up call: most PCs don't have a real 3rd mouse button. Certainly most laptops don't. The fact that the mouse-wheel can be used as one might appeal to the gamer/geek demographic, but it's really not as comfortable as a, you know, real button (explained here [slashdot.org]).
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
So just buy a mouse where it is a button, just above the scrollwheel?
Re: (Score:2)
My very first scrolwheel mouse (A4tech AFAI remember) had three fullsize buttons. While such form might not be available anymore, I'm sure you won't have much problems with finding IBM/Lenovo Scrollpoint Mouse (ok, not a scrollwheel per se; but similar to how Model M or Thinkpads are made "properly") or...large portion of A4tech line - the have quite prominent button just next to scrollwheel.
Re: (Score:2)
Logitech VX Nano. Clicking the scroll wheel puts in in "free scroll" mode, clicking the button above the wheel defaults to the middle button, but can be configured to just about anything.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts?
Re: (Score:1)
> Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts?
Please, show me how to open a new tab in the background with ctrl-click, like Firefox/Chrome/Safari/IE8. I have tried and it's been a bit difficult [blogspot.com] so far.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I use FF/Chrome/Safari regularly. I'd love to use Opera more. But I can't because of a limitation in their keyboard customization system. And it's hilarious to see Opera fans defend Opera by saying "they don't see" why a particular industry-standard shortcut is important.
When the top 4 browsers in terms of market share all use ctrl click, Opera can either play ball or be the browser that has the dorky 'different' shortcuts. With the latter strategy, I see its market share going down, not up.
Re: (Score:2)
Please, no. Either A) Use those browsers or B) request those browsers to be more like Opera.
Re: (Score:2)
GP is absolutely correct. Opera is already a browser that lets you do complete customization of all keyboard shortcuts, and a lot of mouse shortcuts - it's one of its major features, and it's worth it. But the fact that, for all that, something like Ctrl+click on a link is not customizable, is just stupid. And I say this as someone who's been using Opera as a primary browser since 2001.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using Opera for some time now but I've become very attached to many of their other shortcut keys.
Most indispensable is going forward/back by holding left click and right clicking and vice versa. It's just so intuitive. I catch myself trying to use it constantly in file explorer.
That's what I want. Customizable Windows shortcut keys. Why not?
Re: (Score:2)
hmm. it's ctrl+shift-click in opera, that i'm very used to. given that ctrl and shift ar one above the other on most keyboards (yeah, i know smaller laptops like eees have it a bit different), that's hardly an issue.
as an opera user since versions... hard to recall, but version 5 was definitely my primary browser - i have two large issues with opera right now :)
1. i can't add a field in ui that would take value entered, add it to an url and open that url in a new tab. that's very limiting - bet i could get
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't #2 generally a good thing, considering potential security implications? (and Opera does rather well here, I prefer to keep it that way)
Re: (Score:2)
it is... if i configure it that way. if i have it set to most aggressive caching and have option "always reload https pages" switched off, i want the damn software to obey the configuration. if it's not, i'm annoyed.
Re: (Score:2)
Hm, switching off "always reload https pages" is not the same as instructing it to not reload them under any circumstances. Could it be possible that those htpps pages you frequent trigger reloading somehow?
Re: (Score:2)
that's an interesting idea, actually - i suspect that could be done by javascript then ? ;)
thanks, i'll try to test this theory, if it indeed is some other method causing this, i'll scream at webapp developers instead
Re: (Score:1)
Ctrl-click allows you to open a number of pages in the background, quickly. Give it a try in Chrome/Firefox/IE8/Safari, on a link-rich page like news.google.com [google.com]. Opera is alone in making it shift-ctrl-click. And no, this isn't something you can edit the .ini for -- at least, I've not been able to find a way so far. I'd be very grateful if you could point out a solution.
Shortcut to download the beta (Score:2)
Go to http://www.opera.com/browser/download/?os=windows&ver=10.50b1&local=y [opera.com]
to download as navigating from the info page on the features in 10.50 Beta returned an error
Looking forward to seeing how this performs as i've been using Opera for 10 years but FF have been my go-to browser
for the last 3.
Z1-Glass (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations, you have successfully melted the PC of the unfortunate author of that skin by Slashdotting.
(if it's you, then you should check yours ASAP!)
LOVE this new version (Score:1)
Still fails at trivial CSS rendering/1.5yr old bug (Score:3, Interesting)
Love the new UI, and really appreciate the option of another well done browser. But they still refuse to fix a trivial CSS bug which has horrible consequences for AJAX apps.
Just go to this page, and resize your browser with the vertical (not horizontal) handle.
http://echo.nextapp.com/content/test/operacss/ [nextapp.com]
(This is very hard/impossible to do on a mac, as they don't really have one).
Unfortunately the bug is not limited to resizing with the vertical handle...it manifests itself in other ways. It seems the browser is incorrectly measuring/reporting the vertical size of elements, and sometimes uses this data internally (as in the case of this test).
Full thread is here:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=250572 [opera.com]
And one of the Ajax apps that experiences more serious failures as a result: http://demo.nextapp.com/ [nextapp.com]
Re:Still fails at trivial CSS rendering/1.5yr old (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
for the record, 10.10 resizes the area when decreasing it vertically, but not when increasing.
UI lead designer also created FF's icon (Score:1)
SunSpider means very little to most people (Score:2)
SunSpider is a "core JS benchmark". It does not focus on interaction with the renderer (which is what JS is used for in >95% of web pages), it basically tests JS performance as a computing platform. While this is likely to become more relevant in the future, it's still not a good measure of how a browser's JS performance impacts user experience.
Opera 9 was quite slow at running SunSpider and yet reacted faster than any browser of its time to user interaction in most pages, simply because it was faster "w
Re: (Score:1)
And by cynical you mean someone who understands that in the business world, dirty tactics often work and by you realizing this, call yourself a cynic rather than someone who can see what's really going on.
But... (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is silly, any language, whether it is action script or perl or c or whatever, that is embedded into a web page will have to be translated by the browser somehow or maybe compiled even into something resembling bytecode or maybe even native instruction set (unlikely, given the security problems around that.)
So who cares what language it is? Javascript is fine. I would not mind having other options but even then, you can always write in something else and then run through a translator from your languag
Re: (Score:2)
you are an idiot. I said base 64 so that binary bytecode could be transfered as part of an ascii page if necessary, that is all.
Re:Let's just ditch JavaScript. (Score:5, Informative)
roman_mir, It would have been clearer if you referred to it as base 64 *encoding*, rathern than encryption, since it has nothing to do with cryptography.
On an unrealted note, with regards to the V8 performance test, the reason Chrome's V8 engine works well with the V8 benchmark is because the tests themselves are bias towards the specific optimisations that the Chrome developers have chosen to include in their V8 engine.
Carakan, on the the other hand, has, for various reasons, been developed to optimise for different cases. There are trade-offs here which, as a result, affect the performance of Carakan in some of the tests included in the V8 performance test.
Disclaimer: I work for Opera the on Carakan team. I cannot go into specifics about what optimisations and trade-offs have been made.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
VBScript is nothing to tout as a positive. Certainly not as a potential replacement for Javascript.
Maybe you should spend more time with IE.
Please don't say that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If history had proceeded differently, and Netscape had incorporated Python instead of jscript, everybody would be whining about how terrible Python is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
JavaScript is a de facto standard supported by all browsers. Unseating it would be as hard as migrating from GIF to PNG. And, unlike GIF, it doesn't have any patent problems, and in general it's just "good enough". Furthermore, there's no clear single replacement - quite a lot of people are actually very happy with JS, but even of those who are not, some would promote Python, some Ruby, etc.
Don't fix what's not broken badly enough.
Re: (Score:2)
You say that like language diversity is a bad thing. HTML's SCRIPT [w3.org] tag has supported multiple languages for some time. The only problem being that the only alternative to JavaScript was something only IE supported.
Assuming some, if not all, of these new-fangled JS virtual machines, operated via an intermediate 'bytecode', support for multiple dynamic languages shouldn't be too hard if enthusiasts of Ruby, Python & others do the
Re: (Score:2)
You say that like language diversity is a bad thing.
It is a bad thing when portability matters. In this case, language is part of the larger standard (HTML), so, yes, it is definitely bad. If I have to guess whether the end browser supports language X out of 20 various scripting languages in active use, or if browser writers have to support all 20, it's an epic fail of any standardization effort.
Assuming some, if not all, of these new-fangled JS virtual machines, operated via an intermediate 'bytecode', support for multiple dynamic languages shouldn't be too hard if enthusiasts of Ruby, Python & others do the legwork.
It's rather tricky to come up with a reasonably high-level bytecode that can be shared between all scripting languages. Their semantics are rather different.
On the o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is a bad thing when portability matters.
Or maintainability. Microsoft were proud when .Net was new-ish that 50+ languages apparently targeted the CLR/CLI, so that a Haskell component can use an Eiffel library.
But what do you do the day your only Haskell programmer decides to leave? And the app he wrote needs to be maintained?
No wonder Microsoft in reality pushes C# despite this abundance of languages.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny you should mention Scheme... (Score:3, Informative)
Python, Ruby, or some dialect of Scheme
"The key design principles within JavaScript are inherited from the Self and Scheme programming languages." [wikipedia.org]
Javascript is almost already a dialect of Scheme [schemewiki.org]. Are you sure you know Javascript as well as you think you do? What would you want from a Scheme Variant you do not have today?
I can't find the reference, but on a StackOverflow podcast it was stated by one of the initial designers that the syntax initially even was very much like Scheme, but at the last moment t
Re: (Score:1)
The only thing about JavaScript that is a quick hack is its name. JavaScript is the world's most misunderstood programming language [crockford.com] (funny how this link finds its way into every Slashdot story that mentions JavaScript) as well as the first (only?) functional language accepted by maistream.
You might argue that most of the JavaScript code on the Internet is a quick hack (or at least was, before frameworks like Prototype and jQuery became popular), but that doesn't make it a bad language.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you an alt for BadAnalogyGuy? Trains actually do something useful you can't do as well with horses. Javascript does nothing you can't do better with either plain HTML, or a native app. If you want to display a document, HTML is great and javascript adds nothing useful. If you want to write an app, there are any number of portable languages and toolkits that will perform much better than javascript.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, browser based apps can be updated on a limited set of servers, without the need to update clients you don't control. Compiled apps need to be distributed, updated, etc. Automatic updating is troublesome and doesn't fit into the way many OSes are configured where administrative access is needed to install software. They allow for applications to be updated rapidly, and seamlessly.
Without JS HTML alone would not be enough. HTML allows for limited communications to/from a server refreshing a portion
Re:stop speeding up javascript (Score:5, Insightful)
Flush out your headgear, new guy. The days of HTML- and CSS- only websites are over. Even though those sites still exist, there's an entirely new category of "websites" online: web applications. The application I've been working on for the last 3 years or so is composed of about 60% Javascript, 30% PHP, 8% CSS, 1% HTML, 1% "other". With the recent push in Javascript engines, I've actually been able to watch the performance of the application improve by a substantial amount through no effort of my own, just because the application uses Javascript for the entire interface and browsers have focused on that aspect.
Nearly all of Google's services other than search are powered by Javascript, from Maps to Mail. Javascript (or any widely-supported client-side scripting language) is here to stay, and frankly it's the future of anything that's going to be online other than your basic informational sites. Even sites which are taking advantage of all of the new features in HTML5 will continue to take advantage of Javascript as well. The difference between IE6/7 and any very recent (< 3 months) browser is staggering.
I'm glad to see Opera catching up again, they're my browser of choice. They were among the fastest of the "first generation" JS engines, but nearly everyone else other than Microsoft pretty much beat Opera to the punch in the next generation of Javascript. It's nice to see them catch up. I hope Microsoft is able to make better strides with IE9, if not before.
Even the fancy but legitimately useful UI toolkits (e.g. YUI, jQuery) are invasive because they are so often served from third party sites (Yahoo or Google) instead of directly from the app site.
You can't say that the libraries are invasive because they're included from third-party applications, the application developers are invasive. My chosen framework (ExtJS in this case) is served from the same domain as the rest of the application, all gzipped and everything.
HTML is not a Language.... (Score:1, Offtopic)
It's a document format.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Another similar feature is "Fit to Width" (on Status Bar lately, I think...unless I chnaged something; also in View menu)
Makes what it says, and typically manages to do it without breaking the layout. Usefull on, say, netbooks.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using Gmail since it came out. Except for a few short periods in history, Opera has worked pretty well. For the last...I don't know how many years, it's worked without me noticing a single issue.
What exactly are you missing when trying to use Gmail in Opera? It certainly isn't just reading your mail.