Voice hasn't worked for about 4 major versions, unless you already managed to download the IBM voice libraries that disappeared off the net before then.
Opera retires Unite, widgets in latest browser cut
Opera made the latest version of the its desktop browser available this morning in a beta release. Old hands may notice a few things missing in version 12.0. Voice-control support in the user interface has been axed, along with Opera Unite and widgets. The browser company wants developers to use the extensions API instead. …
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Thursday 26th April 2012 14:42 GMT Charlie Clark
Nearly right
The more extensions you have the slower your browser is likely to run. And as things stand you don't need many extensions in Opera: content blocking is built-in, as is a great mail-client and perfectly serviceable IRC client and RSS reader. I have just two extensions: NotScripts and YouTube WebM Plus.
Opera's line on extensions, as with so many other things, was to work with a standard to ensure interoperability and avoid vendor lock-in. Extensions, written in HTML and Javascript, are pretty portable between the Webkit crowd and Opera.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 11:55 GMT Charlie Clark
Slight quibble
Out of the box Unite allowed you to share music and photos very easily with other Opera users
As it was browser-based other people didn't need Opera to share and it was data protection heaven. Of course, it was dependent on being connected to the net and your uplink speed.
As extensions of the browser never really made sense - but the widget runtime for standalone widgets lives on.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:18 GMT Lee Dowling
Re: Pull the plug
"Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide."
The Wii's Internet Channel, most phone's browsers, loads of kiosks and that's before you even get CLOSE to desktop use.
Just because YOU and your cynic-friends don't, doesn't mean nobody does. I actually know more people using Opera on their personal machines than using Firefox, and I work with people who are basically tech-ignorant. In corporations it hasn't really caught on, but there are lots of people using it without even realising.
It's like saying we should pull the plug on Linux because you can't see a Linux machine in Dixons or PC World. Ignorant.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:58 GMT Tim Walker
Symbian
For what it's worth, Opera Mobile for Symbian is superb - I would recommend it as one of the first downloads for a new Nokia (Symbian) phone, as in many ways it's the browser that Symbian should have shipped with out of the box.
If they'd done so, who knows if the Elopalypse could have been averted...
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Thursday 26th April 2012 13:08 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Pull the plug
Now that Mozilla (with Firefox 12) has joined Google (Updater) and Apple (iTunes background service) in quietly installing system services to run your machine for you, Opera is probably the only major browser that still believes the end-user owns the machine.
Icon: <the one you should have used>
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Thursday 26th April 2012 15:44 GMT BlueGreen
Re: Pull the plug (@Ken Hagan)
Had enough of Moz/Firefox dickery and as I understand FX 3.6 branch has reached EOL two days ago, I'm considering where to move next. You've convinced me to look at opera. FX 10 LTS will get a look-in but the odds are against it now (still has the same dickhead 'bookmark all tabs' user interface epic fail I've mentioned before, and if they can't even get that right...)
So, thanks.
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Friday 27th April 2012 11:15 GMT Dave Mundt
Re: Pull the plug
Greetings and Salutations;
It appears that the current version of Opera has more or less fixed the ONLY problem I had with the browser - that was a continual drip of memory that would finally suck up every byte on the computer, requiring a restart. From day one, though, it has been smaller, faster, and far more flexible in its configuration than other browsers.
Since I am in a charitable mood, I am going to believe that your opinion is based on reading http access logs, and, noting that there do not seem to be any visits from Opera users. I want to remind you that one of the great strengths of Opera has been the ease with which it can spoof the User Agent ID strings of other browsers. It may LOOK like IE, but, it might well be Opera. This has allowed me to surf a huge number of poorly written websites, apparently created by script kiddies running "pick 2 from column 1, 1 from column 2" page generators that attempt to lock one into one particular browser (yes, I am looking at YOU Microsoft). I have found very few browser specific web pages that Opera cannot render properly - something that I have not been able to say about IE, Firefox, or Chrome. While Firefox has been my "goto" choice for the past year or so because of the memory leak issues, I almost exclusively use Opera now.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
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Thursday 26th April 2012 22:13 GMT Ben 42
I always thought Unite seemed like a good idea in a perfect world without software exploits, but giving all the clueless users a server running on their poorly secured boxes struck me as big trouble. How many would have properly updated it when an exploit was, inevitably, found? Even professional sysadmins can't always be trusted to do that.
Widgets were an odd fit for a browser too IMHO, so I can't say I see that as a bad change either.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:16 GMT W.O.Frobozz
A pity
I am probably one of the few people that actually use Unite. Came in handy for accessing a webcam buried behind a firewall, amongst other things.
Not sure what is up with Opera these days. Unite and the widgets have been moribund for a while now, but they can't seem to get Opera Mobile working reliably on Android of late...it's been almost unusable since early March. A real pity...I still prefer Opera to Chrome.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:18 GMT Chris 171
@anon 11:55
Im guessing you dont use it from that comment. You take care now...
Unite was interesting & tested it a few times but found no use for it with a web accessible NAS in place. Widgets too seemed not to fit properly, extensions should still fill the gap nicely though.
Above all, its still the fastest page rendering browser by a country mile, with the best bookmark / speed dial sharing across every web connected device I own. I also trust Opera as a company far more than every other browser provider out there.
I aint changing - Opera ftw!
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Thursday 26th April 2012 19:39 GMT Bronek Kozicki
Re: support for color profiles?
I browse photo galeries, not facebook. Many photo amateurs have calibrated monitors, it's mass-market (under 100 quid for good calibrator) just like DSLRs are. I know of 2 mass-market browsers with support for color profiles: Firefox and IE. Shame Opera does not want to compete with those.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:59 GMT Andy The Hat
I've used Opera since I retired Netscape 6 ... Opera version 2 or early 3 I believe which had various issues. Fortunately the company seemed happy to listen and change things for their users unlike certain others who would simply describe them as 'features' or 'our implementation' (eg *allow me to turn off 'Faces' in iphoto Apple!*). I've used Opera almost solely since version 3.5 and use it as default wherever possible. For those heathens that don't realise, most browsers copy with 'add-ons' or 'extensions' what Opera implements natively ...
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Thursday 26th April 2012 14:49 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: No dont take Unite Away
Unite is still part of 12 just disabled by default. Opera Dev currently has an article about porting from Unite to Extensions so I suspect that any Unite apps you were using will be reborn as Extensions. However, if you are talking about sync then you may be thinking of Opera Link which is not going away.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 13:59 GMT Joe Drunk
Opera for PC lost me at around V9..
Became too bloated and certain websites just wouldn't render properly. Firefox lost me after V3 because of bloat. Chrome is ok is definitely aimed at noobs - you can tell because as someone else here mention they go out of their way to make it unconfigurable. These days I don't really care, a browser is a browser. Security and speed is all that matters and they all do it much the same..IE9 is starting to look good, we'll have to wait and see...
For handsets it depends. Opera mobile doesn't offer any advantage on Android 2.2+ devices over the stock browser with wrappers (most android browsers Dolphin, Miren, etc are just wrappers for the stock browser). Opera Mobile 12 doesn't render some pages correctly, Flash websites are choppier and changing from mobile to desktop view often has no effect. Still in development so I'll keep an eye on it.
Opera Mobile however was the best on my Windows Mobile 6 handset and most of the J2ME feature phones I've owned.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 23:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Opera for PC lost me at around V9..
Too bloated? That doesn't even make sense. Opera became SMALLER, not bigger. Unlike other browsers.
You are inventing nonsensical claims about bloat for some reason. I have no idea why.
As for Opera Mobile not offering advantages over the stock browser, that's nonsense too. For example, it has Opera Turbo.
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Thursday 26th April 2012 22:12 GMT gujiguju
Tail wagging dog
Nice to see Opera 12b going public. It's a great update.
Their Vega software backend is fast enough that they've decided to turn-off HWA until they can tweak it further with all the combinations of graphics cards, OpenGL, WebGL, DirectX. It is blindingly fast w/o HWA still -- as long as web devs don't browser-sniff and send the wrong code (Google, Flickr, *ahem*). Changing the user-agent string usually fixes any hanky-panky.
Opera has 250+ million users, and continues to innovate (in terms of speed per watt).
http://www.7tutorials.com/test-comparison-which-browser-will-make-your-laptop-battery-last-longer
Opera market share is #1 on mobiles, while their smaller desktop/tablet share is just a bludgeon used by the others to discredit.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201104-201203
It's really worth trying for a week. (And don't forget to enable "On-Demand Plugins" for even faster browsing.)
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Saturday 28th April 2012 14:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Tail wagging dog
Agree with all that.
Operas killer feature is content blocker sync. Whilst Firefox use a sledehammer to break a nut approach with ad blocking, which breaks LOTS of websites. Opera's approach is MUCH better.
Find somethimg annoying on a page? Right click, Block Content. It will then apply to any other installation of Opera too (assuming you are using the supurb OperaLink).
In short, Opera has all the good extensions that Firefox and Chrome NEED, build right in, no version compatibility problems, they just work.
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