Opera is a cross-platform internet suite consisting of:

• Web browser
• E-mail/Newsgroup Client
• Address Book
• Newsfeed Reader
• IRC Chat Client
• Download Manager

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

Contents

1 History and development 2 Features 2.1 Accessibility 2.2 Sessions 2.3 Tabs 2.4 Standards 2.5 Mail 3 Analysis of growth 3.1 Opera and MSN 4 Mobile devices 5 Criticisms 5.1 Google Adwords 5.2 Branding 5.3 Perceived incompatibility 6 Release history 6.1 Latest release versions 6.2 Latest preview versions 7 See also 8 External links 8.1 Official links 8.2 Other external links

History and development

Around 1992, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy were part of a research group at Televerket (the Norwegian state phone company now called Telenor). The group took part in developing ODA, a standards based system for storage and retrieval of documents, images and other content. The ODA system never got any wide-spread usage despite its effectiveness and has since died. The research group also established the first Norwegian Internet server and 'home-page' in 1993, but they felt the current Mosaic browser had a too 'flat' structure for it to be used effectively in browsing the web. In the light of this, the group took interest in building a new document browser from scratch. Inspired by the ODA project, they saw potential in building a browser better adapted to the many-faceted structure of the web. The mother company Televerket gave the group a green light, and by late 1993 the first prototype was up and running. Televerket faced a challenge though: The telemarket was destined for full deregulation in 1998 which meant they would have to prepare for competition. They were not sure if this browser program would fit in with their core business. In 1994 Televerket became a state-owned stock company, and J. S. von Tetzchner and G. Ivarsøy were allowed to continue development on their own in the offices of Televerket. By the end of 1995 Televerket was renamed Telenor, and the company Opera Software was created, still in the same offices. Their product was initially known as MultiTorg Opera and was quickly recognized by the Internet community for its multiple document interface (MDI) and its 'hotlist' (sidebar) which made browsing several pages at once much easier.

Since version 8.0, it supports SVG Tiny and allow the user to create his own JavaScripts to run in any page.

Features

Main article: Opera browser features

Accessibility

Opera has has always been designed for low footprint and very high browsing speed to make it more suitable for low-end computers. Accessibility has always been important, for users who may have visual or mobility impairments. Interestingly, J.S. von Tetzchner is the son of professor Stephen von Tetzchner (University of Oslo), who specializes in childrens development, language development, and communication disorders.

Opera was the first browser to integrate mouse gestures as a way to navigate pages. It is also possible to control every aspect of the browser using only the keyboard. The default keyboard shortcuts can be modified to suit the user. Since version 7.0, Opera also support access keys .

Voice control over Opera is present in the IBM multi-modal browser, as well as in Opera version 8.

Sessions

Every time you start Opera it starts a Session. A session is saved in a file periodically while running, so that whenever you close Opera (or it crashes), it is possible to resume browsing exactly where you left off the next time. Sessions can also be saved separately for recall later, even on a different computer. This feature also preserves the history of each window.

Tabs

Opera became famous for its multiple document browsing, and at the same time somewhat notorious since it wasn't always easy to keep track of all the windows without pulling up a separate menu. A task- or rather window -bar was later (version 3?) introduced to make this easier. Version 6.0 brought a change on this front, introducing the choice of surfing with either MDI or single document interface (SDI) Mode. Ironically, this happened at a time when many other browsers like Mozilla and Galeon, started using the (limited) tabbed document interface. Opera 6.0 gave the user the choice to use either MDI, SDI or tabbed mode and became the first browser to support all three modes.

Standards

Opera also has a presentation mode called Opera Show, which allows the use of a single HTML or XML document for large-screen presentations, and web browsing. The appearance of the web-page in full screen is changed with (CSS) when specific code for 'projections' is in place.

Opera has supported CSS since version 3.5 [1]. Up to 6.0 opera supported most common web standards, Netscape plugins and some other recent standards such as WAP and WML for wireless devices, but its implementation of ECMAScript with the HTML DOM always left a bit to be desired, especially on highly dynamic pages.

In January 2003, Opera 7 was released and introduced a new layout engine "Presto". This had greatly improved CSS, scripting, and DOM support.

In August 2004, Opera 7.6 (now skipped to version 8) began limited beta testing. It had more advanced XML support, and introduced voice support for Opera, as well as support for Voice XML. Opera also recently announced a new browser for iTV, which included the fit to width option Opera 8 introduced. Fit to Width is a proprietary technology which combines the power of CSS with internal Opera technology. Pages are dynamically resized by making images and/or text smaller, and even removing images with specific dimensions to make it fit on any screen width, improving the experience on smaller screens dramatically.

Mail

Opera 7 also included rather original email and news client called M2 using a database approach to storage (You can show the same mail in multiple folders etc). In May 2004, Opera 7.5 was released. It included an (RSS) reader and an IRC client, both tightly integrated with the M2 mail and contact system.

While M2 is able to display HTML mail, unlike other popular e-mail clients it is not capable of composing mail with HTML formatting. - In the Opera community, one has the understanding that Opera Software considers HTML mail as being an unnessecery evil since HTML mail are a) Not readable by all mail clients, and b) fill more than twice the room on a disk compared to regular mail. (This stance is loudly discussed in the community from time to time, not everyone agreeing with Opera...)

Analysis of growth

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

On the Microsoft Windows platform, Opera has not been able to gain significant market share over its free competitors, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox. StatMarket is the primary source for international browser usage statistics. On December 4, 2001, StatMarket released data assigning a global usage share of 0.67 per cent to the Opera browser. However, the press release states:

Although still far behind Microsoft and Netscape, Opera's global usage share has more than doubled since January 2001, when it was less than 0.3 percent.

[...]

Opera usage share has been growing at a faster rate in certain European countries since January 2001. For instance, its usage share in Russia as of November 29, 2001 was 5.88 percent, up from about 1.5 percent at the beginning of the year, StatMarket reported. And in Germany and Sweden, Opera was at 3.37 percent and 1.8 percent respectively, having grown from a 1.3 percent and .5 percent usage share in January 2001.

With regard to Europe, the differing success mirrors the development of other browsers, for example, according to StatMarket, in October 2001 Netscape Navigator still held about 20% usage share in Germany, whereas its global usage share was about 13%.

Opera can identify itself as Internet Explorer (the default setting) and differing versions of Mozilla/Netscape. This has led some counting measures to fail identifying Opera and an under reporting of market share.

This differing success can be explained by a variety of factors. A skeptical attitude toward Microsoft, maker of Internet Explorer, is likely to be relevant. Also, in countries with less copyright enforcement, the wide availability of cracks and serial numbers to remove Opera's banners may increase the adoption of the browser by end-users.

The generally low rate of adoption can in part be attributed to the fact that almost all users have a competing browser on their desktops as soon as they acquire a computer. Even the small minority who do not use Windows, and hence do not have Internet Explorer, have browsers provided by Mac OS X (Safari) or by Unix variants (Netscape, Mozilla, Konqueror, and others). Against this competition, Opera was at first only available in trial-versions and commercial versions, and only became available in an ad-sponsored version as of version 5.02. As noted below, recent free (advert supported) versions of Opera have offered more static Google Ads as an alternative to their animated banner ads, reducing screen space in a bid to win more users. Still, the browsers bundled with operating systems do not have ads at all (at least, once the user chooses a home page other than the default).

Opera and MSN

The Microsoft-owned MSN website http://www.msn.com/ has caused several problems for Opera users:

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

See:

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

In February 2003, Opera Software employees discovered that the MSN home page sent a different style sheet to Opera users than it sent to Internet Explorer. The two most popular browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape each had their own specific complex style sheets. Opera on the other hand was served a cut-down generic 'site.css', which was presumably intended to be generic style sheet for older browsers. This and the Netscape style sheet both included this code: ul {list-style-position: outside; margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;} coined at an old Netscape parsing error. Without this code, Netscape would show unordered lists (used for lists of items) with a 30px offset to the right. -30px made these lists look normal in Netscape. Testing showed that Opera was served this [generic] style sheet only when it was possible to discern that it was Opera being used to fetch the page. Opera claimed that this was a deliberate action to make them look bad, Microsoft denied the claims, putting it down to a simple coding error, and fixed the bug.

Regardless of the truth behind the story, Opera went public with the story, and created a "Bork" edition of their browser, which "translated" the page into the speech of the Swedish Chef. This, says Opera, was a joke to show how easily a web-page can be changed if one actually wants. In the press-release, they reiterated its mantra that the web should be open to all.

• Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie presents the problem, CNet news story
• Opera press release: Opera releases "Bork" edition

Yet another incident occurred in May 2003, when an apparent coding error at MSN's servers caused Opera users who had altered their preferred languages for websites to get a "server error" message. Although the error also affected users of some old versions of Internet Explorer, Opera makes it easier for users to change languages, so it was speculated that this was another attempt by MS to make Opera look bad. One can of course argue that since it is so hard to change the settings in Internet Explorer, MSN had overlooked this in the testing of its servers. See the CNet news story.

Opera Software have used the above incidents to claim that Microsoft has an anti-competitive agenda because Opera Software, as publishers of the Opera web browser, are a competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. (It is easier to step on small players than bigger ones like Netscape and get away with it.)

In May 2004, an unknown entity made a USD $12.75 million out-of-court settlement with Opera. No details of the settlement were released and no liability was admitted, but Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie said the settlement "Resolved an issue close to his heart". In the light of things and by rumour circulation [2], this was interpreted as proof that the settlement was a result of the before-mentioned MSN case(s) and that Microsoft was the entity paying the money. If true, this must be most expensive payout for a developer/testing error in the history of computing.

See the CNet news story

Mobile devices

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

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

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

Opera can dynamically reformat any webpage for narrow tall viewports, such as Smartphones and PDA displays. This can also be used with Panels. The technology is based in part on CSS which means both web-page authors and Opera users can affect the formatting.

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

Criticisms

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

Google Adwords

With version 5.0 in December 2000, Opera changed from a 30-day demoware business model to offering a freely downloadable version of the browser that displayed banner advertisements in the top of the browser window which were removed when paying a registration fee. Google AdWords, contextual text-based ads were added with the introduction of Opera 7.20. Adwords display content targeted to the current page by use of Google's relational databases.

When browsing with "Relevant text ads" enabled, Opera will send to Google the address of the page visited so that Google can return a related advertisement. For example, a user browsing a page about pianos may be presented with a link to a Google adwords customer selling or servicing pianos. If the page is not already in Google's index, it will attempt to index the page. Like all Search engines, google will not index the page if it is listed in the Robots.txt file.

This automatic indexing of pages visited by Opera leads to privacy issues when you do not want anyone to know about a page. To ensure that genuinely private pages are not known to Google, Opera will detect and not send these kinds of information:

• Usernames and passwords in the format http://user:[email protected]
• URLs with CGI arguments (E.g: http://www.example.com/?formsdata)
• Forms data in POST requests
• Secure pages (E.g: https://bank.example.com)
• Protocols other than HTTP (FTP, NNTP, etc.)
• Internal IP addresses according to RFC 1918 (E.g: 10.*, 192.168.*, 172.16-172.31.*)
• No ads are downloaded when in fullscreen mode

As mentioned, pages that should remain "secret" may be indexed by Google when the URL of the page is sent to Google for retrieval of ads. However, it is unclear how and if pages indexed in this way appear in the public Google index, but it is certain that Google visits the page minutes after the Opera user has been there, although not with its normal spider. For more information on how AdWords are used in Opera, see Opera Browser Google Ads [3]. For some users' concerns about Ad words, see details on Adsense spidering [4].

Also, some webmasters perceived Opera's displaying of Google ads as a threat to their possible revenue - that users could click Opera's ad and ignore the webmaster's ad, and the webmaster would be out of revenue. As a result, some webmasters took to blocking Opera users outright, or forcing them to register Opera (a method that was not fool-proof and was blocking even registered users). Racoon on the MyOpera forums posted a long discussion about the whole issue [5].

Branding

While Opera may be considered technologically superior, the software did not gain as much attention as other "alternative browsers", noticeably Firefox. An Opera fan, Lawrence Eng, has written an article that suggests improvements of the current Opera branding, like the use of a mascot and a change of their slogans [6]. In fact, several Japanese artists then created Øpera-tan shortly after knowing Lawrence's suggestion.

Perceived incompatibility

A common problem online is that many websites are not based on standards, but are in fact either using outdated browser sniffers, or use nonstandard or simply incorrect code. These essentially broken websites are often only tested in Internet Explorer. The intended display therefore relies on undocumented complex error recovery methods used by Internet Explorer, methods which have been proven to be nearly impossible to emulate perfectly in other browsers. Impatient and uneducated users may falsely believe it is Opera's fault that a certain webpage is not rendered as they expect, although it is solely the webmaster's fault.

When Google released Gmail in April 2004, Opera was essentially locked out. Gmail employs the use of XMLHttpRequest, a non-standard protocol implemented in some web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Opera was essentially forced to include XMLHttpRequest, and since Opera 8, Gmail is fully supported.

Release history

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

Latest release versions

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

• Microsoft Windows: (Windows 95 and later): 8.0; (Windows 3.x): 3.62
• Mac OS X: 8.0b; Mac OS: 6.03
• Linux: 8.0
• FreeBSD: 8.0
• Solaris: 8.0
• OS/2: 5.12
• BeOS: 3.62
• QNX: 6.0.1
• Symbian OS: 6.20

Latest preview versions

Early test versions (internal alpha versions) of Opera are tested only by Opera employees, before Internal betas for the desktop platforms (Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) are tested by a select number of people called 'the Elektrans'. Technical preview versions are released in Opera's beta newsgroup, forums and the mailing-list, so the public can test and discuss new features. Opera's download page only offers release versions and public betas. Preview versions are available at: http://snapshot.opera.com/

See also

• List of web browsers
• List of email clients
• Comparison of web browsers
• Comparison of email clients
• Microbrowser
• Smartphone
• Information appliance
• Øpera-tan, personification of Opera.

External links

Official links

• Opera Software Homepage
• Opera Documentation
• My Opera Community
  • Opera Beta Testing Forum
  • Developer's Corner
• Newsgroups on GoogleGroups
• Mailing list
• #Opera @OperaNet

Other external links

• Opera Wiki - Tips, Customization, and Technical Details
• A test to compare speed of Opera and other browsers
• Additional Google Adwords info
• Operatic - Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer comparison
• 30 Days to Becoming an Opera7 Lover
• 30 Days to Becoming an Opera8 Lover
• ILoveJackDaniels.com: Opera user mode style sheets and colour schemes.
• Opera Watch: The Unofficial Opera Blog
• Secunia.com Vulnerability Report on Opera

• Weblogs by Opera Employees:
  • Daniel Lehtovirta, Software Engineer
  • Eirik Stavem, QA
  • Gerður Jónsdóttir, Software Developer
  • Haavard Moen, Support
  • Hallvord R. M. Steen
  • Ian Hickson, Technology and Research
  • Jorunn Danielsen Newth, Documentation
  • Olafur Arnason, Windows Test Manager
  • Peter Karlsson, Software Engineer
  • Rijk van Geijtenbeek, QA
  • Stephan B. Nedregaard, Information Systems Manager
  • Tim Altman, QA
  • Trond Werner Hansen, Developer
  • Wilhelm Joys Andersen, QA