Opera has a development tool, says guy with the company

In response to my item on the Opera Web browser, I received this e-mail from Thomas Ford, communications manager for the company that produces the browser:

Hi Steven,

I read your post about Opera and just wanted to drop a short note to say thanks. We really appreciate the kind words.

You did mention that you use the Web Developer add-on for Firefox. You should also check out our Web dev tool, Opera Dragonfly. It’s just in a second alpha, but you’ll see where we’re going. To access it, just go to Tools > Advanced > Developer tools. This will launch Dragonfly. You can follow development over at http://my.opera.com/dragonfly

Let me know if you have any other questions or comments. If you don’t have an iPhone, you ought to try Opera Mini (if you have a Java-enabled phone) or Opera Mobile (if you have a Windows Mobile smartphone), but that may be a conversation for another time. Thanks again!

Best regards,

That’s something I’ll have to look at. The problem with developing on the Web with Opera is the same problem that Firefox kinda-sorta faces, but not really. That problem is the persistent fact that the majority of the world sees the Web through the eyes of Internet Explorer, and you’ve got to make sure your sites look good and work well on IE before considering Firefox. When it comes to sheer numbers of Web users, Opera doesn’t factor in.

But since Opera seems to be aiming to be a standards-compliant browser, that is very much in its favor as a development platform. If making things work in Opera meant they would be sure to work in IE and Firefox, that would be a point very much in Opera’s favor.

I’ll be exploring Opera further in the days and weeks ahead. Among the features I’ll be looking at:

Mail capability. Like Seamonkey (and Netscape Communicator before it), Opera has a built-in mail client. At the office I use Mozilla Thunderbird for my mail, and I occasionally use Evolution, the default GNOME mail client, when I’m in Debian or Ubuntu Linux. I always use IMAP, not POP, because IMAP lets me leave the mail on the server and allows me to have access to it from different computers at different places, unlike POP, which downloads the mail to a single computer and generally erases it from the server at that point (unless you tell the server not to do that, a choice that presents its own set of problems). But usually when not at my office computer I just use the many Web interfaces that let me access my various e-mail accounts.

I’ll give Opera a try with e-mail to see how it stacks up to stand-alone clients like Thunderbird, Evolution and Sylpheed, as well as to Seamonkey’s mail component.

Chat. Opera has chat capability. I currently rely heavily on Pidgin, which allows me to bring my Google, AOL/AIM and Yahoo! IM accounts into a single application.

Managing bookmarks. I have a lot of bookmarks. Managing them is difficult. Opera automatically brought in the bookmarks from Firefox, not IE. That was OK by me, but the folders are in alphabetical order, and going under “Manage Bookmarks” in the Bookmarks menu didn’t allow me to drag and drop the folders into the order in which I prefer them. I soon figured out that when in Manage Bookmarks mode, you must click on View ahd then choose “Sort by My Order” to do just that. It’s nice to have the choice of custom or alphabetical order when it comes to bookmarks. I’m not sure if Firefox offers this choice or not (it defaults to sorting by the user’s own order), but I’d like to see that. One of the things I like about the GNOME browser, the Mozilla-based Epiphany, is that it defaults to alphabetical order. That was a refreshing change from Firefox. I don’t know yet which way I prefer — presorted by alphabet or custom-sorted, but it’s nice in Opera to have a choice.

Business model. At this point, I’m looking at the Opera browser strictly as a user. The business model of Microsoft (IE) is very well-known, that of the Mozilla Corporation/Foundation less so (hint: it has a lot to do with Google search income). Opera, which isn’t giving its source code away (like Mozilla) nor keeping its browser on a single, owned platform (Microsoft, with the Windows-only IE), must have a business model. I’ll be looking into what it is.

Fat lady sings, and Opera is officially my new favorite browser (this week anyway)

I know that the Opera Web browser is not a free, open-source application — which I almost always prefer — but the browser itself is a free download for Windows, Mac and in precompiled packages for many flavors of Linux as well as FreeBSD.

Question: Why another Web browser? While Windows and Mac users overwhelmingly use Internet Explorer and Firefox, with a smattering using Apple’s Safari, there’s plenty of room for other entries in the browser space.

I don’t know about you, but I’m in a Web browser about 80 percent to 90 percent of the time, both for the traditional task of looking at Web pages but increasingly to use Web-based software.

And for something so important, choice is key.

Users of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems are used to having lots of browsers to choose from, among them Firefox (and its non-copyrighted Iceweasel offshoot in Debian), Epiphany (the GNOME browser created from Mozilla’s Gecko engine), Konqueror (the KDE browser/file manager from which Apple took code to create Safari), Seamonkey (the Mozilla-created Web suite that’s modeled after the now-dead Netscape Communicator, offering browsing, e-mail and Web design in one application), Dillo (a very lightweight browser), Netsurf (also lightweight), a few more that I’m probably forgetting, plus text-only browsers that include Elinks, Links, Lynx and W3m.

I’d never used Opera before, mostly because of its closed-source status, although I have been “forced” to use Internet Explorer — also closed source (hey, it’s Microsoft — what do any of us expect?), and besides, IE runs only in Windows and not in Linux (without difficulty, meaning use of WINE or a virtual machine) or Apple’s OS X.

And our main Web application insists on IE not for all, but for the most “advanced” operation.

Imagine my surprise a few weeks back when I saw staff artist and Flash guru Jon Gerung using the Opera browser for the very task that usually demands IE.

Since then, I’ve downloaded Opera and have begun using it to work on Dailynews.com — and for everything else, too.

There are a few instances where the CSS drops out, one situation where a link won’t open, but for 99 percent of my work on this task, Opera does it as good as IE, often times better — and always much, much faster.

That’s the best thing about the Opera Web browser — it’s very fast. And that matters a great deal when doing Web-intensive work. You want to wait as little as possible for the software to do its thing so you can … do your thing.

The company that makes Opera — called Opera Software — provides versions for many platforms. It’s a pity you can’t get the source and compile it yourself for Linux/Unix, but the speed and functionality of Opera is too good for me to pass up at the moment.

I’ll still use Firefox — probably a lot — since it’s the go-to browser for just about everybody out there, and I need to use the Web Developer add-on, but there’s no denying that Opera is simply one of the best applications I’ve seen lately.

Internet Explorer 7 is all right … unless you have to use it

I don’t mean to be a hater. I’d love to say that Internet Explorer 7 isn’t as bad as advertised and that it’s a perfectly fine application that holds its own with Firefox 2.

But it doesn’t. And Internet Explorer pales in comparison to Firefox by every measure, metric and anecdote I can muster.

Here’s the deal: I’m pretty much “forced” to use IE by a single, albeit important, work-related task, and I’ve taken to using it a bit more just to acclimate myself.

But IE 7 is slower — a lot slower, crashes more and generally sends me running back to Firefox.

That’s it. Mini-rant/review over. Go back to what you were doing.

Why I barely use Internet Explorer 7, even though I was a big fan of IE6

Let’s get to it: I have one Web site that I work on infrequently that requires Internet Explorer, but since I barely have to do anything on it, I am free to use IE, or not.

And I waited at least a year to “upgrade” my IE6 to IE7 on the XP box at work. Yeah, it’s an upgrade because now IE has tabbed browsing — a feature Firefox has had for years, and which IE probably would’ve never added had FF not had it first.

I like IE6 because it was a fast program — it opened fast and did the rest of its thing fast. And I could use it as an FTP client.

Now that I have IE7, sure there is tabbed browsing, and it looks a little better, but it’s way slower than Firefox, and I pretty much only fire up IE for ONE Web site because it’s at the top of my IE favorites and the bottom of my FF favorites.

IE loads more slowly, the favorites come up slower — basically it gets beat by FF in performance by every measure. (I’m running a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM.)

And I can run Firefox in Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X … and I do (though I’m partial to the Mozilla-derived Epiphany in the GNOME desktop, as well as the Seamonkey browser/e-mail client/HTML editor suite — also based on Mozilla).

Truth be told, if it really bothered me, I’d try to roll the box back to IE6, if that indeed can be done. Since IE7 installs over your IE6, I think it might be a problem to “go back.”

Note: While I can’t get the same FTP functionality out of IE7, I have a Windows workaround: Open up My Computer from the Start menu, and type your FTP address in the search bar. The window functions pretty much like IE6 — it’s the same “Explorer”-like interface Windows uses to let you examine your own files, and it does FTP just like IE6. Thanks, Microsoft!

I used to think IE was the best browser for OS X, too — that final version of IE5 for the Mac was a masterful, innovative application, and I’m sorry Microsoft abandoned it. Safari doesn’t have enough critical mass to cut it — many Web sites don’t look so hot in it — so Firefox is pretty much the browser of record for the Mac, too.

And Mozilla is making hand-over-fist money by getting a cut of the Google searches made through the browser. All it means is more money that Microsoft isn’t making.

Hope you’re happy, Microsoft!

As Gutsy dies, Feisty rises from the ashes

The Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy install on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) performed admirably for its first few months, but after a couple weeks of inactivity I had trouble during a software update. Everything slowed to a crawl. Apt and Aptitude worked, but any other kind of package management (Add/Del Programs, Synaptic) slowed the system to point that the only way to regain control was a hard reset.

So I reinstalled Gutsy from scratch. Gone was the Feisty-era kernel that expertly managed the $0 Laptop’s CPU fan, and this install started exhibiting the same sludgy symptoms almost immediately.

Did a recent update break Gutsy?

I found no evidence to support this from the Ubuntu forums, nor anywhere else.

But I wanted to install wine and Internet Explorer the easy way, and even that wasn’t working in Gutsy.

Then I broke my vow to stop dual- and triple-booting and put Slackware 12 in my last available partition. I purposefully installed LILO, and could boot Slackware from the $0 Laptop for the first time. And while I got X working with the frame-buffer version of xorg.conf, resolution was way less than optimal. It was probably running at 16 colors. Still, Slackware — even in KDE — was very, very fast. Had I been able to get X right, I would’ve been tempted to turn the entire laptop over to Slackware.

I tried every xorg.conf that Slackware had in /etc/X11. I tried both the whole file plus the monitor portions of xorg.conf files from Ubuntu 7.10, Debian 4.0 and Puppy 3.00. Nope.

Then it was time to reinstall Ubuntu. I did the only reasonable thing. I put Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty in the No. 1 slot. That brought back GRUB, and I was able to boot Ubuntu — running fine now — and Debian. But the GRUB entries for Slackware? None of them work. Kernel panic on all. Then I replaced references to sda with hda. Two got farther than that, but I was left with blank screens and no login prompt. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to set GRUB to successfully boot Slackware 12.

Here’s what I had:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.21.5 root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.21.5-smp root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-2.6.21.5 root=/dev/hda5 ro vga=791
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.21.5-smp root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

Next thing I’ll try: adding initrd lines to see if that gets it going.

I’m not ready to give up on Slackware via GRUB yet, but does it have to be so damn hard?

When you absolutely, positively must have Internet Explorer in Linux

Here’s the deal. We’ve got a Mac at home … and my two Linux-equipped laptops. This Old PC in the Back Room has no Internet connectivity at present. And the university where Ilene teaches changed their online administrative portal from one that works in Firefox to one that … does not. It requires Internet Explorer, version 5.5 or greater. That even leaves out the last version of IE that Microsoft deigned to produce for Mac’s OS X.

I returned to the easiest way to get Internet Explorer (and the Wine tools required to run it and many other Windows apps). That would be IEs4Linux.

By following the Ubuntu-specific instructions, I was able to get wine, cabextract and all the relevant files to install IE 5.5 and IE 6 on my Gutsy setup. Yep, Gusty is still giving me trouble with any package-management program that isn’t apt or Aptitude, but since I have those two at my disposal still, I’m sticking with this install for awhile.

Anyway, even though the process involves changing the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list, then downloading, unpacking and installing from a tarball, it’s all laid out. My advice: go to the page and use copy and past to get the exact code into your terminal window.

There are also distro-specific instructions for: Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS.

In short, if you need IE, this works. And you now have Wine, with which you can experiment with other Windows apps on your Linux box. It’s trial and error (mostly error) in my limited experience; for heavy duty use of Wine, I recommend Code Weavers, which costs money but is probably well worth it.

As I’ve previously written, my first “experiment” will be getting IrfanView running under Linux. Sadly, there is nothing — NOTHING — on Linux to equal IrfanView when it comes to image editing — or at least the kind of image editing I do.

When you absolutely, positively must have Internet Explorer in Linux

Here’s the deal. We’ve got a Mac at home … and my two Linux-equipped laptops. This Old PC in the Back Room has no Internet connectivity at present. And the university where Ilene teaches changed their online administrative portal from one that works in Firefox to one that … does not. It requires Internet Explorer, version 5.5 or greater. That even leaves out the last version of IE that Microsoft deigned to produce for Mac’s OS X.

I returned to the easiest way to get Internet Explorer (and the Wine tools required to run it and many other Windows apps). That would be IEs4Linux.

By following the Ubuntu-specific instructions, I was able to get wine, cabextract and all the relevant files to install IE 5.5 and IE 6 on my Gutsy setup. Yep, Gusty is still giving me trouble with any package-management program that isn’t apt or Aptitude, but since I have those two at my disposal still, I’m sticking with this install for awhile.

Anyway, even though the process involves changing the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list, then downloading, unpacking and installing from a tarball, it’s all laid out. My advice: go to the page and use copy and past to get the exact code into your terminal window.

There are also distro-specific instructions for: Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS.

In short, if you need IE, this works. And you now have Wine, with which you can experiment with other Windows apps on your Linux box. It’s trial and error (mostly error) in my limited experience; for heavy duty use of Wine, I recommend Code Weavers, which costs money but is probably well worth it.

As I’ve previously written, my first “experiment” will be getting IrfanView running under Linux. Sadly, there is nothing — NOTHING — on Linux to equal IrfanView when it comes to image editing — or at least the kind of image editing I do.

Internet Explorer 7: Day 2

Microsoft kills FTP functionality in IE7 … but I found a solution

(Note: the “f” word was removed — by the author — several times from this post. If you wish, please think of it where appropriate.)

If Steve Ballmer appeared before me right this minute, I’d punch him in the stomach. Hard. More than once.

That’s for screwing up the brilliantly simple FTP functionality in Internet Explorer 6 by pretty much gutting it in Internet Explorer 7.

Between home and work, I use Linux, Mac OS X and Windows — bet you can guess what my “official” work box is running. Yes, I finally decided to upgrade from IE6 to IE7 on my company’s Dell Optiplex GX520. I try to never upgrade anything when I don’t have to, but I figured that it’s been OVER A YEAR since IE7 made its debut. Surely they’ve “improved” whatever they screwed up in the upgrade. I’ve been using Firefox (on Windows, Mac and Linux) a lot because of tabbed browsing, and I’d like to have the same feature in IE.

I use IE as my FTP client because it’s so easy and intuitive. You open an FTP site and get a bunch of folders, just like in your own directories. You can click them open, create new folders, drop stuff in them, delete stuff out of them.

So I install IE7 and go about my day.

When I have to do some FTP work, I open IE7. It looks different. I have a list of files. I can open them, but I can’t create new folders or upload new files.

What the hell? Ballmer — you and your ilk are IDIOTS. Your browser has an advantage over Firefox, and you have to ruin it?

Turns out you can use IE7 for FTP. Here’s the “official” way:

Here’s a shortcut for getting an FTP directory listing within IE7:

Open Internet Explorer 7

In the address bar, type the following command:

ftp://username:password@domain

IE 7 will display a list of files and folders from the FTP domain

To quickly save a file locally, right-click the file and select “Save Target As…”

To manage the remote and locals files more completely, click the ‘Page’ menu button on the right-hand side of the IE 7 browser window and select the option, “Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer”

you can now drag-n-drop the files from remote FTP server to local file system easily

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 has some great enhancements over IE 6; however, with these enhancements comes a loss of some basic and useful functionality. I don’t expect Microsoft to rest too long before they update IE 7 with an easier way to FTP – but – for now you have a hack. Enjoy.

This “worked” for me on one FTP site, but it DIDN’T WORK on another — meaning the one I use most of the time.

So here’s a WAY BETTER SOLUTION:

I wanted to use FTP to help someone out with transfering files and rather than worry about using a proper FTP client, a web browser can usually do the business, I tested to make sure it would work.

For Internet Explorer you have to do surprising things to log in to a password protected FTP server. Like this in the address bar

ftp://myname:address.hidden.to@non.subscribers.com

And off you go.

This NO LONGER works with Internet Explorer 7, is ok for 6 and below.

Turns out there is a crazy solution, good to know tip. (yeah you all knew!)

Open a normal file browser/explorer as you would for the local file system, yes that one, not Internet Explorer.

Type in the FTP address in the location bar
ftp://anftp.site.com

And off you go. It prompts for the login details. You can use drag and drop etc.

Should work for web site uploads to your web server too.

I’m glad the solution is so easy. I use FTP clients in Linux, and I even downloaded and installed FireFTP for Firefox, but it’s not as good, easy and fast as the IE (and now just “Windows”) solution.

At this point, I’d prefer to “go back” to IE6, but what are the chances of that working — and of keeping my nearly 1,000 bookmarks in the process?

Hey Ballmer, can you maybe try some things that won’t drive people away from your products? Why don’t you stop threatening to sue the makers and users of Linux and other open-source software over shadowy intellectual-property violations and JUST MAKE STUFF THAT’S BETTER?

Microsoft kills FTP functionality in IE7 … but I found a solution

(Note: the “f” word was removed — by the author — several times from this post. If you wish, please think of it where appropriate.)

If Steve Ballmer appeared before me right this minute, I’d punch him in the stomach. Hard. More than once.

That’s for screwing up the brilliantly simple FTP functionality in Internet Explorer 6 by pretty much gutting it in Internet Explorer 7.

Between home and work, I use Linux, Mac OS X and Windows — bet you can guess what my “official” work box is running. Yes, I finally decided to upgrade from IE6 to IE7 on my company’s Dell Optiplex GX520. I try to never upgrade anything when I don’t have to, but I figured that it’s been OVER A YEAR since IE7 made its debut. Surely they’ve “improved” whatever they screwed up in the upgrade. I’ve been using Firefox (on Windows, Mac and Linux) a lot because of tabbed browsing, and I’d like to have the same feature in IE.

I use IE as my FTP client because it’s so easy and intuitive. You open an FTP site and get a bunch of folders, just like in your own directories. You can click them open, create new folders, drop stuff in them, delete stuff out of them.

So I install IE7 and go about my day.

When I have to do some FTP work, I open IE7. It looks different. I have a list of files. I can open them, but I can’t create new folders or upload new files.

What the hell? Ballmer — you and your ilk are IDIOTS. Your browser has an advantage over Firefox, and you have to ruin it?

Turns out you can use IE7 for FTP. Here’s the “official” way:

Here’s a shortcut for getting an FTP directory listing within IE7:

Open Internet Explorer 7

In the address bar, type the following command:

ftp://username:password@domain

IE 7 will display a list of files and folders from the FTP domain

To quickly save a file locally, right-click the file and select “Save Target As…”

To manage the remote and locals files more completely, click the ‘Page’ menu button on the right-hand side of the IE 7 browser window and select the option, “Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer”

you can now drag-n-drop the files from remote FTP server to local file system easily

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 has some great enhancements over IE 6; however, with these enhancements comes a loss of some basic and useful functionality. I don’t expect Microsoft to rest too long before they update IE 7 with an easier way to FTP – but – for now you have a hack. Enjoy.

This “worked” for me on one FTP site, but it DIDN’T WORK on another — meaning the one I use most of the time.

So here’s a WAY BETTER SOLUTION:

I wanted to use FTP to help someone out with transfering files and rather than worry about using a proper FTP client, a web browser can usually do the business, I tested to make sure it would work.

For Internet Explorer you have to do surprising things to log in to a password protected FTP server. Like this in the address bar

ftp://myname:address.hidden.to@non.subscribers.com

And off you go.

This NO LONGER works with Internet Explorer 7, is ok for 6 and below.

Turns out there is a crazy solution, good to know tip. (yeah you all knew!)

Open a normal file browser/explorer as you would for the local file system, yes that one, not Internet Explorer.

Type in the FTP address in the location bar
ftp://anftp.site.com

And off you go. It prompts for the login details. You can use drag and drop etc.

Should work for web site uploads to your web server too.

I’m glad the solution is so easy. I use FTP clients in Linux, and I even downloaded and installed FireFTP for Firefox, but it’s not as good, easy and fast as the IE (and now just “Windows”) solution.

At this point, I’d prefer to “go back” to IE6, but what are the chances of that working — and of keeping my nearly 1,000 bookmarks in the process?

Hey Ballmer, can you maybe try some things that won’t drive people away from your products? Why don’t you stop threatening to sue the makers and users of Linux and other open-source software over shadowy intellectual-property violations and JUST MAKE STUFF THAT’S BETTER?