Opera Unite
Ivan | Tue, 2009-06-16 08:28Today the new browser of Opera is finally unveiled. It features a new technology called Opera Unite, which extends what we are able to do online. Nothing radical, but if adopted on mass scale it would certainly be a game changer. Just like P2P was to file sharing or Skype was to telecom. Opera 10 allows you to share websites, files, notes and introduces a framework for even more.
With IE8 finally becoming a modern browser, Firefox 4 including more web services, Chrome soon available on all platforms and Opera 10 the browser war is ON.
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Apple has just launched a new Safari, which allows users much more freedom of fonts, CSS generated transparency and over 150 new features. (I merely browsed at the three pages of features and of course have missed the core technologies, but what the hay, it's the first day of release.
www.apple.com/safari/
ya, you failed to mention Safari 4 which proved to be the faster more efficient browser during bench mark tests.
(http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/ scroll down to 'faster, more powerful safari for a link to their bench mark tests)
Yes. Of course. I didnt mention it as i think of it as the default browser. I use it on my mac and iphone.
I've always felt the phrase "browser wars" sounded pulp-y. Like something from an old Doctor Who episode. Kinda cheesy. Frankly, I've always felt it was less representative of the competition between the browsers than a competition against Internet Explorer and its lack of standards support.
Safari 4 is great and exceptionally fast, but truth be told, I prefer not to have my browser tied directly to the company that produces the operating system - updates and innovation occur infrequently at best.
This isn't me speaking, but the deep baritone of history. Compare the number of innovative updates (to say nothing of security patches) between a company that exclusively creates a browser (i.e. Opera, Mozilla) vs. either Apple or Microsoft. Where's the innovation? Where is the focus? Where are the priorities?
Fact is, Safari (and Apple in general) is a walled garden, so technically, it can't be as flexible as either Firefox or Opera.
The speed argument is becoming increasingly difficult to make since how much faster can you get than near-instantaneous? Sure, speed's important, but there are other factors to consider here - extensibility, openness, usability, etc.
I believe this Opera release is a fantastic, user-centric approach to browsing.
Make no mistake, even if the general public doesn't initially see it, Opera Unite is a game changer.
Craig Michael Patrick
http://cmpatrick.com
"The speed argument is becoming increasingly difficult to make since how much faster can you get than near-instantaneous?"
I understand where you are coming from, but I feel that instantaneous is not the right word to use. If you reference the speed charts published by apple, it is a difference of almost 2 seconds between safari and its completion, so with that logic, for every 30 webpages you open you can save almost a minute! Yea Safari!
On a side note: I am also very excited to see how the internet community excepts Opera Unite. After all most people don't even know what a browser is....lol
- Ron Sper
I stand corrected - instantaneous was a poor choice of words.
Ah, by the way, I spent the better part of yesterday testing the Opera Unite build. It's fast (as you'd expect from Opera), but it is evident it is not a final build. On my machines it still had some problems with JQuery (and javascript, in general).
The features specifically aimed a serving data worked well, though. I turned a few friends on to it as an alternative to using the less-than-stellar chat built into Facebook.
Craig Michael Patrick
http://cmpatrick.com