Games - Opera

Home > Listing Index > Games > Opera (web browser)

	Games - Opera

Opera is an Internet suite which handles common internet-related tasks, including visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, and online chat.

Opera is developed by Opera Software, based in Oslo, Norway. It runs on a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD and GNU/Linux systems. It has gained a leading role for use in mobile phones, smartphones and Personal Digital Assistants, and is also used in interactive televisions. Technology from Opera is also licensed by other companies for use in such products as Adobe Creative Suite.

Desktop versions of Opera are available free of charge.

History

The browser was, until version 2.0, called MultiTorg Opera and was not available to the public — although online documents show it at The Third International WWW Conference in 1995. It was known for its multiple document interface (MDI) and 'hotlist' (sidebar), which made browsing several pages at once much easier.

1996: The first public release was Opera 2.1 for Windows, released as shareware .

28 June 2000: Opera 4 for Windows was released, introducing a new cross-platform core, and a new integrated e-mail client.

6 December, 2000: Opera 5 was the first version which was ad-sponsored instead of having a trial period.

29 November 2001: Opera 6 released with new features including unicode support, and offering a single document interface as well as the multiple document interface allowed by previous versions.

January 2003: Opera 7 was released and introduced a new layout engine "Presto", with improved Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), client-side scripting, and Document Object Model (DOM) support.

August 2004: Opera 7.6 began limited alpha testing. It had more advanced standards support, and introduced voice support for Opera, as well as support for Voice XML. Opera also announced a new browser for Interactive Television, which included a fit to width option Opera 8 introduced. Fit to Width is a technology that initially utilized the power of CSS, but it is now internal Opera technology. Pages are dynamically resized by making images and/or text smaller, and even removing images with specific dimensions to make it fit on any screen width, improving the experience on smaller screens dramatically. Opera 7.6 was never officially released as a final version.

12 January 2005: Opera Software announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions — a change from the previous cost of $1,000 USD for unlimited licenses. Schools that opted for the free license included Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Oxford, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University. Opera was commonly criticized for having been ad-sponsored, since this was seen as a barrier to gaining market share. In the newer versions the user was allowed a choice of generic graphical banners, or text-based targeted advertisements provided by Google based upon the page being viewed. Users could pay a licence fee to remove the advertisement bar.

19 April 2005: version 8.0 was released. Besides supporting SVG Tiny, multimodal features and User JavaScript, the default user interface has been cleaned up and simplified. The default home page is an improved search portal. The changes displeased a number of existing users since some advanced settings became hidden.

20 September 2005. With the release of Opera 8.50, Opera announced that their browser would be available free of charge and without advertisements from then onwards, although the company still sells support contracts. Enhancements included: automatic client-side fixing of web sites that did not render correctly, and a number of security fixes.

Features

In addition to the web browser, the other main component in the Opera suite is the Opera Mail client, previously known as M2. Opera Mail supports regular POP and SMTP mail as well as IMAP. It also has an Address book. Opera Mail also features a newsreader and a newsfeed reader for RSS and Atom, as well as an IRC client for online chat. The forthcoming Opera 9 will also feature widgets as well as further BitTorrent functionality.

Accessibility

Opera was designed to run on low-end and small computers, and with a commitment to computer accessibility for users who may have visual or mobility impairments.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Opera (web browser) ]

Games - Opera

History

Features

Accessibility

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay