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Random thought:

Browsing with Opera

Microsoft's browser remains the king,
but Opera's fat lady is preparing to sing.

This is yet another clear illustration of why I am not (and should not be) a poet. That notwithstanding, I'd like to call your attention to the latest browser from Opera, version 7. It's free, if you don't mind a few small ads on the screen; or you can pay a few dollars and the ads will go away.

Opera has attracted a loyal group of users, many of them on Linux and Unix machines. And because it's available in dozens (at least) of languages, Opera has become a popular choice in countries where languages that are not supported by the "big" browsers are spoken. Despite the addition of numerous new features in this version, Opera remains the "small" browser. If you already have Java installed on your computer, you can download the version of Opera without the Java virtual machine. It's just 3.2MB. That's a tenth of MSIE's or Netscape's download size. If you need the Java files, the download is still a modest 12.6MB.

Click the image at the right to see a larger version.

Opera 7 has all the nifty, new features -- like tabbed browsing. Open half a dozen websites and jump from one to another with ease. Those who have seen tabs on other browsers will realize instantly how helpful this can be: Instead of having to keep several copies of the browser open, you have just one.

This version has a new heart and soul. The rendering engine supports the World Wide Web Consortium document object model (W3C's DOM for short) level 2, non-standard dynamic HTML (DHTML), CSS1 and CSS2, and ECMAScript. The rendering engine also has improved support for HTML 4.01 and complete support for WML 1.3 and 2.0. If that sounded like so much gibberish, here's what it means in English: Opera will display most website pages correctly.

Unlike the browser I told you about last week (Safari for Mac OS X 10.2 and higher) Opera is available for nearly every operating system that has more than 100 users: Windows, Linux, Mac, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, QNX, and Symbian.

Features for developers

Website developers have had less that perfect relations with Opera. On one hand, they like it because Opera's designers have insisted on sticking with the W3C's standards. That's a good thing. But sometimes websites designed for Netscape for Internet Explorer didn't display properly on Opera because both of the big browsers, while saying nice things about "standards", have occasionally ignored any standards but their own. Microsoft's browsers have been increasingly standards compliant since version 5 and Netscape/Mozilla browsers have mainly followed the rules since version 6.

One of the more useful new features for developers whose websites will be seen on hand-held devices in addition to computer screens is small-screen rendering (SSR). Press Shift-F11 and the page will be reformatted to fit smaller screens, while maintaining all functionality.

To see a larger version of any of the images, just click the image.

Opera 7 has M2, a new e-mail client and news reader. I've seen nothing that will drag me away from The Bat, but M2 is a well designed e-mail application. It can categorize and sort messages by contact name. Additionally, there's a built-in spam filter. As with most e-mail readers, M2 has a list of messages and a preview panel. At the bottom of the page is a clever new feature called QuickReply. To reply to a message, you don't have to open the message. Just type something in the QuickReply text box and press the QuickReply button.

By the way, M2 supports IMAP and ESMTP in addition to POP3 mail protocols, standard news servers and news servers with password authentication.

Opera 7 includes a new way to navigate pages. The Hotlist offers a Links panel that shows all the links in the current page. That makes selecting a link for viewing or download is faster and easier than with other browsers. A page's panel can be locked to keep its list available when you move to another page. A Google search, for example, would allow you to move from site to site without having to go back to Google's summary page.
Another Opera plus is easy keyboard navigation. If you press the Down key, Opera scrolls down. Press PgDown and Opera scrolls down a lot. This is exactly what you might expect the browser to do, but it's not the default response for a lot of browsers.

And, shown at the right is a view that shows style sheet, script, and HTML elements. This is handy for times when you need to figure out why a page isn't working right, but it's also helpful for those who want to understand how things work behind the scenes.

For more information, or to download Opera, visit http://www.opera.com/. The browser is available free of charge with a sponsored advertising banner in the top-right corner of the user interface. To remove the advertising banner users must register their version for $39. Until March 1, users can also enjoy 14 banner-free days from the day they download Opera.

Webmaster in a Nutshell

Seems like just last week I was telling you about how good O'Reilly's Webmaster in a Nutshell is. Wait, it was just last week I was telling you about how good O'Reilly's Webmaster in a Nutshell is. Already there's something better: O'Reilly's Webmaster in a Nutshell (Third Edition).

Version 3 isn't quite as thick as version 2, but it contains 50 more pages. How does O'Reilly do that?

O'Reilly's description of who needs the book is spot on: "First, there was HTML. Then along came JavaScript. Close on the heels of JavaScript came CSS and before you mastered that, along came XML. Behind every successful web page is an overworked and underappreciated webmaster with a big pile of books about various web technologies spilling out across their desk.

"That collection of books is a valuable resource for delving into the topics at depth (and at leisure). But when you need an answer fast, the dog-eared book you'll turn to again and again is the new third edition of Webmaster in a Nutshell.

"This concise and portable quick reference distills an immense amount of information on several languages and technologies into one compact reference book. This is one book that will pay for itself a thousand times over in time saved and increased productivity."

I can put it no better than that.

Changes at Technology Corner

The website is on a new hosting service this week. We' had a little problem getting the DNS pointers everywhere to point to the new server, so you may see some odd things for the next few days.

Occasionally pages with images don't display the images. This is being fixed. Mail delivery has been a bit sporadic, but that's being worked on, too.

It's far better than where the site had been hosted for the past three months. When you call for support and you get a message from the "new president" of the company saying that the company is not in danger of going out of business, watch out! That was followed by a total lack of support. Instead of receiving a reply in 1 or 2 days (which had become the norm), there were no replies. The phone wasn't being answered. The on-line "chat" sessions were never answered. Faxes were ignored. E-mail to the "new president" went without response.

Unfortunately, some website hosts can put up a fancy front, make all the right promises, and that utterly fail to deliver on any of those promises. And many hosts want to be paid a year in advance. Well, nonsense! My current website host is paid month-to-month. That's the way it should be.

Also this week, I moved the Technology Corner mailing list from Topica to Ezine Manager. Subscribers will no longer have to put up with ads for questionable products and services at the tops and bottoms of Technology Corner messages.

The Columbia Crash

Another shuttle crash -- or "disaster" as the broadcast folks are describing it. "Disasters" get better ratings than "crashes".

I hopped over to cnn.com and read what little was there. About 11:30, I finally turned on the TV, watched for about 5 minutes, and shut it off. Watching won't change anything and all the news shows can do now is show the flames and vapor trails (seeing it once was enough), describe what happened (a 22-year-old shuttle crashed with a crew of 7), and then start guessing about the cause and looking for other things to fill the time so it's not so obvious that they don't have any real information to impart. It's that last part that bothers me. The guesses are often understood as facts and anything heard on one network is repeated on the others, which exacerbates the "guesswork and fiction as fact" problem.

There are some days that I'm really glad I'm out of day-to-day broadcast journalism. Saturday was one of them.

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley --

Joe
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