Forum Moderators: open
ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/700/beta1/
Features / interface is a little buggy, but it's a beta, so that's to be expected.
Loads some web pages a little faster for me than Opera 6. But then, I've never noticed Opera 6 as being significantly faster than Mozilla or IE, so I wonder if my install of Opera 6 is bad (or if 768Mb of RAM makes any browser fast).
DOM support much better, but still not perfect.
Overall, it looks like a significant improvement. Now to test it on the firewall at work tomorrow...
[edited by: moonbiter at 6:19 am (utc) on Nov. 13, 2002]
Many of the weird CSS and JS quirks are gone!
It's performing very good for an initial beta!
Anyway, it seems there are lots of changes. Means more work for us guys with browser specific files.
3.11MB not bad size.
Animated icons I dont like really, they are nice the first time you see them and annoying thereafter.
All just my opinions of course.
>Anyway, it seems there are lots of changes. Means more work for us guys with browser specific files.
No, I think it is definetely *less* work. I just changed one of my site to valid HTML with pure CSS layout (ok, I needed one table for layout reasons), but now, MSIE >= 5, Netscape >= 7, Mozilla >= 1.0 and Opera 7.0 show all the same.
Finally, they got it all. Forget about Netscape 4, get your users to use a browser of the fifth generation.
There are definitely still some DOM bugs, but it's much better. For a beta, I'd say they did a darn good job!
I like the look too. Very "mac-ish".
Initial worried reaction, why do the sponsored links in google have absolutely no background color when i'm using opera? is that normal with this browser?
[nevermind, i was in author mode]
I really hate the Bookmark manager and all that other stuff being stuck into the hotlist. It makes it difficult to find. I hit Bookmarks...Manage Bookmarks, and nothing happens, unless you have that toolbar turned on!
Email support seems more of an afterthought than a feature. Again, stuck in the hotlist.
Only decent thing so far: I found out you can move the icons around in the main button bar(home, back, new, etc).
Still, a fantastic start.
Big fan of Opera since i switched over last year, and have followed it from v5 on win and v44 on linux.
This is smooth, the drop down options on the Google search, is useful, specially if they customizsable, this time round. The UI is pretty impressive, and i am glad that it did not take on from my other opera browser, emails - bookmarks - contacts, etc. Just in case is does start playing around. I think until it is in its post-beta stage, i will just use it for viewing site's, and visiting here.
Chris.
And why would you do something stupid like browser sniffing in the first place? I've been at this game since 1998, and I've never once had to use browser detection *and* I can get Netscape 4 (tested as early as 4.07, which isn't even y2k compliant) to play nice with CSS layouts *and* validates as (X)HTML 1.0 (Transitional)/CSS-2 compliant.
I have a love/hate relationship with the mail client (I used o6's mail client). I HATE how all of the mail from my 5 different email accounts is dumped into 1 folder and symbolic links them to my filtered folders (that I had to set up myself!) for each account. Though, the "spam" filter seems to be working to some extent, except I don't see a way to teach it that a particular email that wasn't caught *is* spam (but I guess you can teach it that a particular captured email isn't spam).
I like most of the improvements (minus all of the bugs, of course), but the biggest thing that pisses me off is the fact that I was stupid enough to purchase a license to o6. When I purchased my license, I distinctly remember it saying that I would receive a free upgrade to the next released version, but that appears to not be the case. Apparently, only the people that bought during the "special" promotion get the free upgrade (read: not me).
There seems to be at least one bug in the javascript/DOM, though. I haven't looked too closely at it yet, but I have a little test page with DHTML drop-down menus on it that crashes O7. Hopefully they'll fix that before they declare it a release version.
Outside of sending 'this post field' halfway over the screen, my computer just locked up while trying to do something, could'nt CTRL+ALT+DEL, with the net conn running full blast. will keep an eye on this. Can't honestly say its nothing to do with the computer, but this computer has not had any problems since i built it 5 months ago.
I just can't see a compelling reason to try to switch to it full time. I like v6 much better yet. That, and I spend the majority of my day in forms - a glitchy browser is not a possiblity in that environment where a browser screw up has cost me money before.
Slade, the new email client is quite a bit improved. There is a nifty feature that allows you to classify an email into categories instead of just folders (contact, call back, to do, etc). That would be very handy.
Apparently, only the people that bought during the "special" promotion get the free upgrade (read: not me).
Yeah, I'm a little disgruntled about that too.
Even at beta, it should'nt be going out. Will have another look once it is more stable, but as it stands i'm happy with 6.04.
Word of warning: I'm seeing some serious stability issues with it on my machine. It doesn't crash the OS, but the program itself crashes a lot. Don't know if anyone else has had the same problems or not.
Apparently, only the people that bought during the "special" promotion get the free upgrade (read: not me).
Isn't it possible that you haven't gotten the free upgrade because it's not a release version yet? I don't think they would immediately tell everyone that bought o6 to upgrade to a buggy beta version the day it comes out.
V6 is solid here - best browser I every used. I uninstalled 7. Can't see any reason to use it.
Ya, the upgrade fee is $15 if you didn't reg during the special promo.
I was also surprised whilst visiting this site:
[freebsd.org ] making further use of <link rel... - I'm not aware of it being used like this in any other browser? Potential for overuse?!
Was using Opera Mail in 6 but finding 7's(new?) mail client a bit weird and un-intuitive. Will stick with it.
key points I noticed in my ten minute playaround:
- nice print preview feature
- they've written their own <select> dropdown boxes so they should obey z-index order properly, yeah (yes, I know Moz has been doing this a while, maybe MS will get the idea)!
- daft form buttons that highlight when you mouse over them, a little carried away for the normally super reserved Opera team I would have thought
- silly animated buttons at the top should go (by default)
- a distinct lack of tooltips on all the buttons
I am impressed though and genuinely excited about the full release.
J
