Opera (browser)

Opera is a cross-platform software suite consisting of a web browser, e-mail/news client, address book, newsfeed reader, IRC chat client and download manager. It is in active development by a Norwegian company, Opera Software. The source code is not available to end users, but the "Presto" layout engine (identical across platforms) is used by business partners Adobe and Macromedia for previewing webpages in GoLive and Dreamweaver. Opera is a leading mobile browser for Smartphones and PDAs with its Small Screen Rendering technology. Additionally, Opera is available for the iTV platform, and a special voice controlled modal browser is in co-development with IBM.

Table of contents

1 History of Opera

1.1 Opera and MSN

2 Analysis of Opera's growth
3 Notable Opera features
4 Opera for mobile devices
5 Criticism of Opera

5.2 Google adwords

6 Version History
7 Latest release versions of Opera
8 Latest preview versions of Opera
9 External links

9.3 Official Opera Software links
9.4 Other external links

History of Opera

Opera 7.23 displaying the Wikipedia website using the "Fresh" skin

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsoey from Telenor (the Norwegian phone company) developed the Opera browser in 1994 for the company's Intranet. By the end of 1995, Opera Software was created after Telenor had allowed the pair to continue development of the browser on their own. This was first known as "MultiTorg Opera". It features the world's first multi-document browser, and the first ever browser with a sidebar.

Opera has been developed with different priorities from other browsers. Specifically, it has been designed for low footprint and very high browsing speed. It is also designed to launch quickly. Opera has also been designed with accessibility in mind, for users who may have visual or mobility impairments. Voice control over Opera is present in the IBM modal browser, and is expected shortly in the standard version.

Opera has pioneered many new features later copied by more mainstream browsers. For example, Opera was the first browser to integrate mouse gestures as a quicker way to navigate pages. Opera also has several other original features, including multiple page 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 (i.e. you can close the browser and re-open it with all the opened pages automatically restored). Also, if Opera crashes, it is possible to resume browsing exactly where you left off.

Opera became famous (and somewhat notorious) for its Multiple Document Interface (MDI); that is, all browser windows were opened in the same parent window. This was later complemented with a taskbar that showed the currently opened windows. 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 interface (similar to Opera's MDI+taskbar, but without assigning individual window sizes to each page) to make navigation of multiple pages at the same time easier. 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, OperaShow, which allows the use of a single source document for large-screen presentations and web browsing (document parts relevant for the presentation are marked up in a special fashion).

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 offers a new layout engine "Presto" with greatly improved CSS, scripting, and DOM support, a rewritten skinned user interface and a new and radical email and news client called M2. By February 2004, Opera 7.5 also includes a newsfeed reader and an IRC chat client.

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 lock out most non-Microsoft browsers, shortly after the launch of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. 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. This issue also affected other browsers in similar ways. Microsoft backed down after being confronted with proof showing that, if anything, other browsers were better at rendering XHTML than Internet Explorer.

See:

CNET news story
The Register 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 style sheet sent to Opera users, a generic 'site.css', contained the style rule ul {margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;}, which created a 30-pixel negative left margin, causing content to appear overlapping other content. The Internet Explorer style sheet did not contain this rule.

This gave the impression something was wrong with Opera. The Netscape 6 style sheet also specified the same -30px margin, to work around known bugs in that browser (bugs not present in Opera). This same code was present into the supposedly generic style sheet, which was served to Opera by a Javascript checking routine which specifically detected Opera. This was either a deliberate decision by a programmer to make Opera look bad, or was simply the action of someone who was aware of Opera's existence, but unaware of its CSS capabilities (which are in fact better than those of Internet Explorer), and hence chose to send the browser a generic (albeit badly coded) style sheet.

Regardless of the truth behind the story (which only the Microsoft programmer who wrote the code could know), Opera went public with the story, and created a joke "Bork" edition of their browser, which "translated" the page into the speech of the Swedish Chef to show how easily a website's appearance could be distorted.

See:

In May 2003 another incident occurred, when an apparent coding error with MSN caused people who had specified their own languages to get a "server error" message. Although this error affected people using Internet Explorer as well, Opera users were especially affected, as Opera makes it easier for users to change languages than Internet Explorer. Opera Software and others saw this as attempt by MSN to make Microsoft's competition look bad. In fact the error affected a small number of Microsoft users as well. This, combined with the history of errors with Microsoft's websites such as frequent downtime on Microsoft's Passport and Hotmail sites, make it impossible to discern the true cause of this issue.

See the CNet news story.

Opera Software have used the above incidents to claim that Microsoft has a specific anti-Opera agenda, because Opera Software, as publishers of the Opera web browser, are a competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Analysis of Opera's growth

Since its first release in 1996, the browser has been met with limited success. Its availability on many platforms has given users access to a highly functional browser where this choice did not previously exist. Opera Software was one of the first companies active in the area of mobile devices, where it has gained significant market share.

On the Microsoft Windows platform, Opera has not been able to gain significant market share over its gratis competitors, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. 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. Although this has led some counting measures to fail in identifying Opera, one must assume that this detection has improved in the later years.

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 crackss 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 certainly in part be attributed to the fact that the browser 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, whereas Netscape and IE include neither permanent animated advertising banners, nor do they have to be paid for.

The fact that nearly all operating systems, in particular Microsoft Window, where the largest potential market exists, bundle a web browser (in the case of Unix variants either Netscape, Mozilla or Konqueror, for Mac OSX, Safari, and for Windows Internet Explorer) as part of the package, most users see no need to look for an alternative.

Notable Opera features

Zoom: when viewing a webpage not only the font size but also the images and most other line- or vector-based content, such as Flash and SVG when rendered through web browser plugins can be enlarged or decreased in size.
Panels: any web page can be turned into a Panel, a narrow window in the sidebar. Panels can take advantage of Opera's Small Screen Rendering (SSR) feature and eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling. No Javascript is required.
[SSR or Small Screen Rendering: 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.
User stylesheets: 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 7 includes many stylesheets that the user can enable, among them a funny Commodore 64 emulator designed to show the power of CSS.
Quick preferences: Common preferences like turning on and off Javascript, Java, Plugin|Plug-ins 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.
Keyboard navigation: everything in Opera can be controlled with the keyboard only. Navigating inside a web page is very easy with Shift + Arrow keys.
Customizability: almost everything in the browser 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.

Opera for 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.

Most sites are written for, and tested exclusively on desktop computers with large color monitors. Mobile wireless devices typically have much smaller screens, and until today, it has been a challenge to present Web pages on these. Opera's Small-Screen Rendering™ technology intelligently reformats today's Web sites to fit inside the screen width, thereby eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling.

As an example, most news sites have a center column where the main article text is located. This column is usually 468 pixels wide (due to the standard ad-banner sizes) and the text is set to fill this width. This means that to read an article, you would have to scroll back and forth for every line of text.

With Small-Screen Rendering™, the page is reformatted to fit inside the screen width and eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling. All the content and functionality is still available, it is only the layout of the page that is changed. This innovation is the key enabler for surfing on a mobile device.

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

Opera is available on a number of Smartphones and PDAs including those produced by Nokia, BenQ, Sony Ericsson, Sharp Electronics, Sendo, Kyocera, Motorola, and Psion.

Criticism of Opera

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

Google adwords

In December 2000, Opera changed from a 30-day demoware business model to offering a freely downloadable version of the browser that displays banner ads. The banners can be removed by paying a registration fee. Google Adwords, contextual text-based ads were added with the introduction of Opera 7.20. When Opera is in fullscreen mode (F11), neither banner ads nor Adwords are shown. Adwords display content targeted to the current page. For example, a user browsing a page about pianos may be presented with a link to a Google sponsor selling or servicing pianos. To ensure a secure browsing experience, Opera filters out and will not send these kinds of information when using Adwords:

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)

Other protocols than HTTP (FTP, NNTP, etc.)

Internal IP addresses according to RFC 1918 (E.g: 10.*, 192.168.*, 172.16-172.31.*)

To improve Google's database, when Adwords are enabled Google will index the webpages visited and any URLs contained within them. Although Search engines, including Google, will not index a page if a Robots.txt file is used, many feel this is not an appropriate method for securing confidential pages, as anyone can access the robots.txt page for a site and use it to find a list of confidential pages. However, listing individual files in a robots.txt file is never secure, because of the above reason.

Some sample scenarios proposed by these concerned users where the Adsense spidering may present privacy issues include:

An Instant messenger user sends a link to an embarrassing personal photo. This user neither knows nor cares about security, but assumes a bare link sent to a friend is 'safe'. However, the receiver uses an unregistered version of Opera and is using the Google ad model. The photo will be then be indexed by Google, and appear in relevant searches in Google Images.
An executive sets up a confidential company report on his home PC for temporary collaboration purposes. This link is to be deleted the next day. One of the executive's colleagues uses an uregistered version of Opera, and ten minutes after their visit to the page the content is indexed by Google, and will appear in search results for the company long after the original temporary URL was deleted. Although Google will always purge a result from its cache if asked to do so, the danger is that the discovery of unwanted content in a cache is usually the result of some previous embarrassing situation.

These privacy issues are a direct result of the way Google uses its adwords: as soon as a new site URL is sent to Google in combination with adwords, it will spider the site to index it. While the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer is probably secure, some third-party toolbars also exhibit this behaviour, including the Alexa toolbar. A registered version of Opera does not use the adwords and therefore does not trigger the Google Mediapartners bot, nor does Opera when set to use graphical banners instead of Google ads. This demonstrates the importance of properly securing confidential information, as assumptions about the person on the receiving end can never be made, especially with the modern prevalence of spyware.

For more information on how Adwords are used in Opera, see: http://www.opera.com/adsupport/index.dml. For some users' concerns about Ad words, see details on Adsense spidering.

Version History

Series Time Frame Summary

1 1994-1995 Though not publicly released there are screenshots of the then-called MultiTorg Opera, including many features that are still present in Opera's current form. In weblogs across the web evidence of a Multitorg Opera 1.0b4 can be found.

2 September 1996-February 1997 The first public version of Opera was version 2. The oldest version found is a Norwegian demo version of Opera 2.0 which was included with a PC Magazine. It will only load local pages but many of Opera's key features are already visible.

3 September 1997-December 1999 The Opera 3 series saw Opera evolve from a marginal browser to a powerful browser, with the peak reached in version 3.62. This version is often taken as a the standard to which future version of Opera are compared. It featured good CSS1 support and this browser can still view the web in a surprisingly good way, considering its respectable age.

4 March 2000-June 2000 Opera 4 was the first browser based on a new cross-platform core (QT), which facilitated the release of Opera for different Operating Systems and thus speeding up Project Magic. The core supported more standards such as CSS1, CSS2, HTML4, XML and WML and a new integrated e-mail client was included. The O4 browser was meant as the leap towards the larger public. Unfortunately the earlier versions were very unstable and buggy and didn't do Opera's reputation much good, though the later maintenance release 4.02 is generally seen as very usable.

5 December 2000-July 2001 The 5 series saw a change from a paid-only to an optional new ad-sponsored version instead of the 30-day trial period. Furthermore Opera 5 was more stable than Opera 4, and during the maintenance releases it gained new features such as the integrated Instant Messaging, mouse-gestures, hotlist panels and the integrated search. The 5 series ended with the 5.12 release which is still used by many today.

6 November 2001-October 2002 The Opera 6 series introduced the long-awaited Unicode support (although not yet bidirectionality). Also a new SDI/MDI interface was introduced, facilitating the transition from the SDI-browsers to Opera's MDI-interface, and allowing Opera to be ported to the Macintosh operating systems. During the later bugfix releases the kiosk mode was enhanced, the integrated searches became editable and a lot of printing problems were solved.

7 Novemeber 2002-Present Opera 7 was released in early 2003. It features a brand new rendering engine under the name Presto, which has enhanced and expanded support for standards, and now includes support for the W3C DOM. Also new is the Small Screen Rendering technique for handheld devices and other narrow screens. The entire interface was redone, making use of a custom cross-platform skinning system which significantly reduced resource usage compared to version 6, and the entire UI is now configurable. The combined SDI/MDI interface and features such FastForward, Notes and Slideshow are also new to this version, many which have since been copied by other browsers. Also new is the second generation mail and news client, called M2. Based on a powerful filtering system with mail organizing abilities it aims to make managing of mail easier than with any other browser. Since the interface as well as the rendering engine are now native to Opera, Opera 7 can be delivered identically to all operating systems.

Series	Time Frame	Summary
1	1994-1995	Though not publicly released there are screenshots of the then-called MultiTorg Opera, including many features that are still present in Opera's current form. In weblogs across the web evidence of a Multitorg Opera 1.0b4 can be found.
2	September 1996-February 1997	The first public version of Opera was version 2. The oldest version found is a Norwegian demo version of Opera 2.0 which was included with a PC Magazine. It will only load local pages but many of Opera's key features are already visible.
3	September 1997-December 1999	The Opera 3 series saw Opera evolve from a marginal browser to a powerful browser, with the peak reached in version 3.62. This version is often taken as a the standard to which future version of Opera are compared. It featured good CSS1 support and this browser can still view the web in a surprisingly good way, considering its respectable age.
4	March 2000-June 2000	Opera 4 was the first browser based on a new cross-platform core (QT), which facilitated the release of Opera for different Operating Systems and thus speeding up Project Magic. The core supported more standards such as CSS1, CSS2, HTML4, XML and WML and a new integrated e-mail client was included. The O4 browser was meant as the leap towards the larger public. Unfortunately the earlier versions were very unstable and buggy and didn't do Opera's reputation much good, though the later maintenance release 4.02 is generally seen as very usable.
5	December 2000-July 2001	The 5 series saw a change from a paid-only to an optional new ad-sponsored version instead of the 30-day trial period. Furthermore Opera 5 was more stable than Opera 4, and during the maintenance releases it gained new features such as the integrated Instant Messaging, mouse-gestures, hotlist panels and the integrated search. The 5 series ended with the 5.12 release which is still used by many today.
6	November 2001-October 2002	The Opera 6 series introduced the long-awaited Unicode support (although not yet bidirectionality). Also a new SDI/MDI interface was introduced, facilitating the transition from the SDI-browsers to Opera's MDI-interface, and allowing Opera to be ported to the Macintosh operating systems. During the later bugfix releases the kiosk mode was enhanced, the integrated searches became editable and a lot of printing problems were solved.
7	Novemeber 2002-Present	Opera 7 was released in early 2003. It features a brand new rendering engine under the name Presto, which has enhanced and expanded support for standards, and now includes support for the W3C DOM. Also new is the Small Screen Rendering technique for handheld devices and other narrow screens. The entire interface was redone, making use of a custom cross-platform skinning system which significantly reduced resource usage compared to version 6, and the entire UI is now configurable. The combined SDI/MDI interface and features such FastForward, Notes and Slideshow are also new to this version, many which have since been copied by other browsers. Also new is the second generation mail and news client, called M2. Based on a powerful filtering system with mail organizing abilities it aims to make managing of mail easier than with any other browser. Since the interface as well as the rendering engine are now native to Opera, Opera 7 can be delivered identically to all operating systems.

Original version of table adapted from: http://www.markschenk.com/opera/history.html

Latest release versions of Opera

Note: Versions may be slightly different between languages; these numbers are for the English (US) version. Language versions only differ by the language file. Release versions are available at: http://www.opera.com/download/

Microsoft Windows: (Windows 95 and later): 7.23; (Windows 3.x): 3.62
Mac OS X: 6.03; Mac OS: 5.0
Linux: 7.23
FreeBSD: 7.23
Solaris: 7.23
OS/2: 5.12
BeOS: 3.62
QNX: 5.2.1
Symbian OS: 6.20

Latest preview versions of Opera

Early test versions (internal alpha versions) of Opera are tested only by Opera employees. 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 newsgroups, forums and mailing-list, so the public can test and discuss new features. Opera's download page only offers release versions and public betas. Test versions are available at the beta testing forum: http://my.opera.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=31

Microsoft Windows: (Windows 95 and later): 7.50 Beta 1
Mac OS X: 7.50 Beta 1
Linux: 7.50 Beta 1
FreeBSD: 7.50 Beta 1
Solaris: 7.50 Beta 1
QNX: 6.0 β1