All posts tagged ‘Opera’

File Under: Browsers
Jan
13
2012

The Curious Case of Web Browser Names

By

Chances are your web browser is open all day, every day. Whether it’s Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari, the browser is the single most important piece of software most of us use. Given its central place in our lives, some history seems in order. If you’ve ever stopped browsing long enough to wonder why Safari is named Safari or where in the world the word “Mozilla” comes from, we have some answers for you.

Martin Beeby, a developer evangelist at Microsoft, has put together a nice little history of web browser names. Some are obvious — Internet Explorer came about because it was “a name that gave people a clear idea of what the product did” — some are less so, like Opera, which was apparently chosen because, among other things, “the Opera is fun.”

With the exception of Opera and IE, none of Beeby’s name origin stories come directly from the companies behind the browsers, so take all of these with a grain of salt. For instance, no one seems to know the exact origins of “Safari”, though the Beach Boys’ album seems like a reasonable guess — surfing the web, Surfin’ Safari… get it? The WebKit blog is named Surfin’ Safari, which might lend some credence to that story, but the name also nicely ties in with the notion of exploring the wild and connotes some of the same images as “explorer” and “navigator”.

Perhaps the least obvious name in the bunch is Firefox’s parent company Mozilla. Beeby cites a well-known story that the name that was derived by combining the words that were its original goal — “Mosaic Killer.” Webmonkey has heard another version of that story that claims the word “Godzilla” was the inspiration for “Mozilla,” a Godzilla-like force that would destroy Mosaic.

Beeby doesn’t offer any stories for less well-known browsers, like Konqueror, which, as the story goes, was going to “conquer” what IE and Netscape had “explored” and “navigated” respectively. The allusion didn’t really pan out, but, when Apple came along and ported KHTML to form WebKit, the developers did name their early efforts after a famous conqueror — Alexander.

For more details, and to learn where the names Firefox and Chrome come from, be sure to read through Beeby’s post.

Tags: , , , ,
File Under: Web Standards
Dec
12
2011

Is Apple Using Patents to Hurt Open Standards?

By

Opera developer Haavard Moen has accused Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of web standards and block their finalization.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry group that governs and oversees the development of web standards, requires that every specification it approves be implementable on a royalty-free basis, barring extraordinary circumstances that justify an exception to this rule. The specifications can contain patented technology, as long as royalty-free patent licenses are available.

Members of W3C—a group that includes representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Opera—are required to disclose any patents that they hold that are relevant to each specification. Depending on how far the specification is through the standardization process, they have between 60 and 150 days to make this disclosure.

If royalty-free licensing is available, the specification can proceed as normal. Participation in the development of a particular specification obliges W3C members to offer royalty-free licensing for technology used in that specification. Nonparticipants can also voluntarily offer a royalty free license, but they are not obliged to.

If, however, there is no commitment to offer royalty-free licensing for the patents in question, a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) is formed. The PAG will then assess whether the patent is truly applicable to the specification, and if so, how best to address the issue. The PAG might then seek prior art to invalidate the patent, or it might recommend that the specification be modified, to work around the patent. It might even advise abandonment of the specification. Only in exceptional circumstances will it decide that the specification should stand, in spite of the lack of royalty freedom.

Without an appropriate patent grant, browser vendors—whether open source or proprietary—cannot implement the specification without opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Such specifications would be, at best, an extremely risky proposition for anyone seeking to develop a browser, and none of the major browser vendors would even consider implementing a specification with known unlicensed patents.

Haavard identifies three separate occasions, twice in 2009, and again in 2011, where Apple has disclosed patents and not offered royalty-free licensing. In the first 2009 patent claim, Apple said that it had a patent covering W3C’s “widget” specification. A PAG was formed, and determined that Apple’s patent was not relevant. In the second 2009 claim, Apple claimed to have two patents covering W3C’s widget security specification. A PAG was again formed. It decided that one patent was not relevant, and the other didn’t apply. With both 2009 claims, Apple waited until the last minute to disclose its patents.

Touch Events

This time, Cupertino is claiming to have three patents, and an application for a fourth, that cover some of W3C’s touch event specification. This time the disclosure was made with about a month left to go. Again, the lack of royalty-free licensing means that a PAG is likely to be formed.

This in turn will delay the development of the specification and cost W3C members further time and money. The PAG process is not quick; the widget security PAG did not deliver its verdict until October of this year.

Haavard’s conclusion is that there is a pattern of behavior here; that Apple is trying to disrupt the standards process with its patent claims. He references the touch specification in particular—this is plainly an area where Apple has lots of expertise and interest in the technology, but the company opted out of working on the specification. If Apple had worked on the specification, it would have had to disclose sooner and offer licensing, and Haavard believes that avoiding this commitment is why Apple refused to work on the specification.

Apple’s is acting within its rights. W3C obliges members to disclose patent claims, and Apple is duly disclosing them. However, it’s easy to be sympathetic to Haavard’s argument. The two prior PAGs that resulted from Apple’s refusal to offer royalty-free patent licenses delayed and inconvenienced W3C, but ultimately on both occasions the groups decided that Apple’s patent claims were irrelevant. If Apple was hoping to keep some technology to itself, it did not succeed.

Moreover, W3C doesn’t require patent-holders to give up their competitive advantage. It’s acceptable to W3C for the royalty-free patent licenses to only cover implementations of the W3C specifications; if Apple wants to permit the royalty-free use of its touch patents in HTML5 browsers, but nowhere else, this would be an option. Such terms would allow browsers to implement the standard but still keep the technology off-limits to, for example, Android. But Apple did not offer such terms before, and so it seems unlikely that it will offer such terms this time.

Further, the only likely result of this is that Apple’s patents simply get worked around. W3C’s aversion to royalties means that it’s unlikely that it would accept any non-free license (should Apple even offer one), and the importance of touch input to phones and tablets means that W3C is unlikely to abandon the specification altogether. There’s no win possible for Apple—just wasted time and money for those seeking to make the web a more effective, more open platform.

Indeed, the result might even constitute a loss for Apple; the prior art that PAGs can uncover could jeopardize the patents themselves. The PAG subjects the patents to a certain amount of scrutiny—scrutiny that could be avoided through provision of a suitable license.

Apple has thus far not responded to our request for comment.

Apple’s work on WebKit and with W3C has undoubtedly helped the web community. But actions such as this show the company’s approach to standards and intellectual property is, at best, inconsistent, and and worst downright unhelpful: if open standards and Apple’s IP interests conflict, it’s the IP interests that win out. This may be good for Apple, but it’s bad for the open web.

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news.

Tags: , ,
File Under: Browsers
Dec
6
2011

New Opera 11.60 Is Faster, Uses Less Memory

By

Opera software has released Opera 11.60, the latest update for the company’s flagship desktop web browser.

If you’d like to take Opera 11.60 for a spin, head on over to the Opera downloads page and grab a copy.

Originally Opera had planned to make Opera 12 its next release (see our review of the Opera 12 alpha), but the company decided to add the interim 11.60 to get some of the already completed new features out to users while work continues on the hardware acceleration in Opera 12.

The full speed boost of hardware acceleration isn’t here yet, but Opera 11.60 is still no slouch when it comes to speed. Opera says 11.60 is faster on secure pages and uses less memory on what Opera calls “advanced web applications.” Presumably that’s another way of saying JavaScript-intensive pages like Gmail or Facebook. While I didn’t notice a dramatic memory-use reduction in my testing, opening the same 15 tabs in both Opera 11.52 and 11.60 required about 30MB less memory in the latter. Not earth shattering, but a reduction nonetheless.

Even better, Opera 11.60 is considerably faster in starting up and shutting down than its predecessor.

This release features a new HTML5 parsing engine under the hood. In addition to all the new elements for developers, HTML5 specifies new rules for how browsers should handle incorrect code. Previously browsers decided for themselves what to do when something was wrong in a page (and most still do, but eventually that will change).

Among the slight visual tweaks in Opera 11.60 is a new star icon in the address field that can be used to bookmark sites or add sites to add them to your speed dial page. It looks and behaves much like what you’ll find in both Firefox and Chrome.

Opera’s often overlooked built-in e-mail client gets a makeover in 11.60. The new layout looks cleaner, is a bit easier to navigate and will feel more familiar to anyone coming from mail apps like Outlook, Mail or Thunderbird.

The revamped mail interface in Opera 11.60 (image by Opera)

One thing to note with the new mail client is that once you upgrade to 11.60 you won’t be able to downgrade if you don’t like the changes. I suggest making a backup of your Opera data folder before you upgrade.

Opera 11.60 is worth the upgrade for the speed boost and slightly reduced memory footprint. It’s also worthwhile if you use the built-in mail client. That said, it’s clearly a minor update. The next big changes for Opera won’t be along until Opera 12 which will bring full hardware acceleration and (possibly) support for the new Paged Media standard.

Tags:
File Under: Browsers
Nov
10
2011

Opera 11.60 Beta Offers ‘Double Rainbows’

By

Get your double rainbow on with Opera 11.60

Opera software has rolled out the first beta release of Opera 11.60, a coming update for the company’s flagship desktop web browser.

If you’d like to test the new beta, head on over to the Opera beta downloads page and grab a copy. Note that, unlike some early Opera releases, this beta will overwrite your existing copy so be sure to make a backup of your user data before testing.

The last time we checked in with Opera was to look at the Opera 12 alpha. It would seem logical to assume the next release would be Opera 12 beta, but it isn’t. Opera is reportedly still working on version 12, but in the mean time the company wanted to go head and release the features that were ready today. As such much of the focus in this release is on new HTML and CSS support.

For example, Opera now supports the new HTML5 parsing algorithm. In addition to all the new elements for developers, HTML5 specifies new rules for how browsers should handle incorrect code. Previously browsers decided for themselves what to do when something was wrong in a page (and most still do, but eventually that will change).

There’s also support for the HTML5 custom protocol handlers in this release, which means you can tell Opera to open email compose windows in Gmail or other webmail clients. Opera is also now the first browser to officially support HTML5 microdata. Developers can now query microdata attributes like itemprop or itemscope via the JavaScript interface.

Opera 11.60 expands Opera’s already strong CSS support by adding CSS 3 radial gradients. Bruce Lawson, Web Evangelist at Opera Software, put together a whimsical little double rainbow demo page to show off the new CSS radial gradient support in 11.60. Just view source to see how the code works (note that Opera is the only browser that supports radial gradients, so you won’t see anything if you’re using something else). Also new on the CSS front is support for the CSS 4 image-rendering property, which allows you to tell the browser what scaling algorithm to use for background images, canvas elements, or border images.

Under the hood Opera claims that 11.60 will bring a slight speed boost, particularly on JavaScript heavy sites like Gmail. I didn’t notice anything too significant in my brief testing this morning, but then Opera was already the fastest browser around by most measures.

See Also:

Tags:
File Under: Browsers, CSS
Oct
24
2011

Opera 12 Swaps Scrolls for Swipes With New ‘Opera Reader’

By

Alice in Wonderland gets the fancy paged-layout treatment in Opera 12

Opera software has released an experimental labs build of Opera 12 with support for what the company is calling Opera Reader.

Håkon Wium Lie, Opera Software’s CTO and creator of cascading stylesheets, previously proposed a new set of CSS tools that transform longer web pages into a more book-like experience, where the reader flips from page to page instead of scrolling down one long screen.

The new Opera Reader feature in Opera 12 is the first implementation of Lie’s proposed Generated Content for Paged Media standard. To try out the new Opera Reader and its book-like browsing experience, head on over to the Opera Labs site and download the latest build of Opera 12.

At its core, the Paged Media standard would offer web developers a way to paginate content — that is, take a single webpage and break it into multiple “pages,” with each page automatically fitted to the screen size of the device you’re using. For example, this article might be two “pages” when viewed on an iPad. However, because the pagination is done with CSS and the HTML remains as it is, there’s no added load time when you flip to the next page. So it’s not a tool that can easily be abused by publishers to mine extra pageviews. It adds all the good things about multi-page layouts and none of the bad.

If you’ve got Opera 12 installed, visit the new Opera Reader demo site where you can see some early experiments including the Alice in Wonderland demo shown above (note that the previous link only works in the latest build of Opera 12).

Keep in mind that this is an early version and so far the demos (and the browser support) are still very limited. Still, if you’d like to dive right in and learn how you can create book-like websites using the new Paged Media layout tools, check out the Opera Labs blog, which walks you through all the new CSS rules and how to use them.

See Also:

Tags: , ,
File Under: Browsers
Oct
17
2011

Opera 12 Alpha Adds Hardware Acceleration

By

Opera software recently cranked out a new alpha version of its upcoming Opera 12 web browser. Opera 12 has been in development for a little while now and recently added full hardware acceleration for WebGL graphics.

If you’d like to take Opera 12 for a spin, head on over to the Opera Next downloads page.

Before you consider taking it for a spin though be aware that the new hardware accelerated WebGL features work best with “modern graphics cards and up to date drivers.” The Opera blog also notes that “testing Opera 12 alpha can trigger bugs in your graphics card and in worst case blue screen your computer.”

The new hardware acceleration features mean that every element on screen in Opera 12 — not just, say, the canvas element — is now handled by your graphics card (provided it’s up to the task). Right now the acceleration only works with an OpenGL backend though Opera plans to add support for DirectX (and more graphics cards) as Opera 12 progresses.

While the hardware acceleration is definitely the big news in this release there are a few other new features as well, including a new HTML5 engine, some improvements for Opera themes and a revamped address bar.

Also due to eventually make its way into Opera 12 is experimental support for the new CSS Paged Media proposal, but regrettably that’s not part of the alpha release.

I played with the Opera 12 alpha over the weekend and found that it was indeed a bit snappier, but unfortunately it also seemed to add almost a 100MB of RAM when loading the same dozen tabs that I had open in the current release, Opera 11.51.

Of course it’s still early in the development cycle, and, assuming Opera can bring the memory overhead back down to match that of Opera 11.51, and improve the range of graphics cards supported, Opera 12 looks to offer quite a speed bump over previous versions.

See Also:

Tags: ,
File Under: Browsers, Web Basics
Jul
21
2011

Bad Browser, No Donut

By

The Monkey is back from an extended vacation spent surveying the state of the internet around the world. I’m happy to report that things are, well, things are good, but far from perfect. Having spent the last eight weeks with unreliable, often very slow, internet connections we’d like to tell you about something we now consider evil — rapid release cycles for web browsers.

Why? What’s wrong with getting the latest and greatest out to users as fast as possible? When it comes to security, nothing. When it comes to so-called features there are two annoying things about the release cycle that both Google and Mozilla have adopted for the Chrome and Firefox web browsers.

First and foremost the web browser has turned into a version of Windows XP — constant updates continually sap your bandwidth. In Chrome’s case that means surreptitiously downloading new versions in the background. For most that’s no big deal, but when you’re on a tiny island in Indonesia, and have waited hours for the clouds to clear so the line of sight wifi link to the larger island works, it’s annoying to have your limited bandwidth choked further by an updating browser. You might even curse the local internet some more before you realize, oh, it’s just my browser choking my internet connection so it can update itself. Isn’t that helpful. I mean why would I want to access the web when I have this awesome web browser to play with?

So I ditched Chrome and moved on to Firefox. Firefox is slightly better behaved, at least asking if I wanted to download the latest update. But Mozilla plans to do away with that in future updates. And frankly they might as well, it gets annoying to have dialog boxes flying open every time you start up your web browser.

For most people the bandwidth concerns might not be a big deal, but I can assure you that outside the bandwidth-rich countries most of us call home, bandwidth constraints remain a very real problem. There’s nothing quite so annoying as waiting for your web browser to update so you can load a website, which is really the only reason you have a web browser.

The second major annoyance about the constant update model is that — particularly in the case of Firefox — it means constantly breaking add-ons. What’s doubly galling about this problem is that often the add-ons work just fine, they just haven’t updated the version string to match the latest Firefox release. The user is left with a choice — don’t update, don’t get whatever security fixes might accompany the flavor of the month UI redesign; or, update, but be left with a browser that can no longer do the things it did moments before (thanks to now disabled add-ons).

Imagine trying to build a house and your hammer decided to re-invent itself every couple of weeks, sometimes disabling your screw driver in the process and other times adding a pair of pliers you don’t need. That’s pretty much where web browsers are at today.

I was somewhat heartened to find, on my return to the States, that I’m not the only one to have grown thoroughly disenchanted with the new “let’s update every day” approach of browser makers.

Software development veteran Dave Winer calls Firefox’s new approach a form of corporate suicide, and neatly sums up what a web browser used to be, should be:

Browsers should be like the lens in my glasses. If you’re thinking about it, your attention is in the wrong place. You use a browser to look through, at other things.

Can I get an amen? Web browsers have, as Winer points out elsewhere in his post, approached where text editors were 10 years ago, namely, feature complete. Done. Nothing more to add.

What’s interesting on the web these days is not the browser, but the web. The browser is just a window into the web. It’s already feature complete — you can see the web. The browser doesn’t need new features, it needs to be faster and support new standards. What most of us want to do is look through the window at the web and interact with people inside the web. Unless you’re really into productivity porn you probably don’t care about yet another way to order and sort your tabs.

With decent HTML5 and CSS 3 support available in all the latest releases from the major browser makers, the browser is, at least for now, done. Will browser makers one day create some feature that blows us all away? Perhaps, but in the mean time could you please stop screwing with our window, we just want to see the web.

For the curious, I must report that somewhere in my travels I became a huge fan of Opera. Opera doesn’t want to update every time I open it, it has all the features I use regularly and, perhaps more importantly, Opera Turbo really does vastly improve browsing on a slow connection.

[No donut image by kabelphoto/Flickr/CC]

See Also:

Tags: , , ,
File Under: Browsers, JavaScript, Programming, Web Basics
May
5
2011

Opera Dragonfly a Worthy Addition Your Web Development Toolkit

By

Dragonfly's color picker utility in action

Opera Software has released the first official version of Dragonfly, the company’s web developer toolkit which ships with the Opera web browser. Previously a beta release, Dragonfly is now ready for prime time and offers several features you won’t find elsewhere.

If you’d like to give Dragonfly a try, just download a copy of Opera and then right-click on any element within a page and select “Inspect Element.” That will bring up a panel at the bottom of the page that looks very much like what you’ll find in Firebug or the developer tools in WebKit browsers.

While Dragonfly looks like similar tools it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, like a very nice zooming color picker and color palette feature, a network inspector that allows you to write custom requests and a revamped JavaScript debugger that can monitor specific expressions or variables in your code.

There’s also a new feature that allows remote debugging through Opera Mobile. If you want to debug your site on a mobile device running Opera, just turn on remote debugging in the Desktop app. Opera Dragonfly will then connect to Opera Mobile and allow you to debug directly on the device. The remote debugging features work with any device that can run Opera, including tablets, phones and TVs.

When it comes to testing your websites there’s no such thing as too many developer tools. For example, we routinely test sites in both Firebug and WebKit’s developer tools. True, they’re very similar, but there are enough differences to warrant using both. In that sense Dragonfly might not feel like anything new. But now that Dragonfly has reached 1.0 status, the color picker and remote debugging tools make Dragonfly well worth adding to your testing toolkit.

See Also:

Tags: ,
File Under: Browsers
Apr
12
2011

Speed Improvements ‘Turbo’ Charge Opera 11.10

By

Opera 11.10

Opera software has pushed out the final version of Opera 11.10, an upgrade to the company’s flagship desktop web browser. Opera 11.10 brings a significant speed bump for Opera’s Turbo browsing mode, new Speed Dial features and some more HTML5 support.

You can download Opera 11.10 for Mac, Windows and Linux from the Opera website.

Opera’s Turbo mode has been around for several years now and allows you to download sites faster over slow connections. Turbo works by proxying your connection through Opera’s servers and compressing websites before you download them. The latest version compresses sites even more, making it up to four times faster than previous Turbo releases, and 15 percent faster than Opera without Turbo, according to the company.

Turbo’s new compression tricks now take advantage of Google’s WebP image format to shrink photos and graphics before you download. WebP is Google’s effort to improve on JPG, making images smaller without degrading the image quality. Thus far only Opera and Chrome support the WebP image format.

WebP does an impressive job of making images smaller in Turbo, though in my testing there were still some compression artifacts visible, particularly with larger images. Still, for those times you find yourself with a slow internet connection, Turbo makes Opera significantly faster than the competition, and that alone makes Opera worth having around, even if it’s not your primary web browser.

The other big news in this release are the chanes to Speed Dial, which shows frequently visited site thumbnails in the new window or new tab view. Several other browsers have since copied Opera’s Speed Dial, but Opera keep tweaking it with new features. Speed Dial in Opera 11.10 is more customizable and allows you to set how many thumbnails you’d like to see.

Opera has long been a leader in web standards support and the latest release continues that transition adding partial support for the HTML5 File API. Unfortunately the “partial” File API support does not extend to the drag and drop file uploading used by some websites (notably Gmail).

Other new features in Opera 11.10 include automatic updates for plugins like Adobe Flash, and some IMAP improvements for Opera’s built-in mail client. For a complete list of everything that’s new in Opera 11.10, check out the full changelog.

See Also:

Tags:
File Under: Browsers
Mar
15
2011

Opera 11 Preview Shows Off WebP Image Format

By

Opera software has released a new developer build of its Opera Desktop web browser with support for Google’s WebP image format. The WebP format is part of Google’s self-imposed mission to make the web faster, and promises smaller images with no visible loss of quality. Currently Google Chrome is the only web browser that supports the WebP format.

The latest development build of Opera now supports WebP as well, though bear in mind that this is an unstable, not-for-everyday-use release. If that doesn’t scare you off you can download the latest version from Opera.

This release of Opera also includes support for linear CSS gradients (using the -o- prefix syntax) and Opera’s new Declarative UI for developers building tools on top of Opera’s extensions platform.

For web developers though, the big news is support for WebP, which should arrive in final form with the release of Opera 11.1 later this year.

See Also:

Tags:
« OLDER POSTS