Two big announcements in the world of computer technology today. First, Opera Software has made their Opera desktop web browser free (as in beer). Second, Microsoft has splintered … sorry, “reorganized” their corporation. One is a very smart move, the other is not. Read on …
First, the Opera announcement. I used to use Opera back in my BeOS days. While their BeOS product at the time was not a paragon of stability, it was still eminently usable and a far better browser for late 90’s surfing than Be Inc.’s NetPositive. Opera, until today, had always been a commercial or adware product. You could download it for free, but ad banners were displayed unless you paid. With today’s announcement Opera makes itself as free to the casual user as is Firefox or other Mozilla products. Safari and Internet Explorer are only free if you pay for the OS, and both are platform specific.
Now I say “as free to the casual user as …” because Opera did not open the source to their browser. But really, how many people are going to download Firefox and immediately start making significant contributions to the codebase? Not many. I will not deny that open source means more eyes on the playpen, but even that has not stopped Firefox from having some pretty bad security bugs recently. I think that time will tell whether a closed, paid developer staff can keep pace with, or outpace, a larger volunteer staff. It will be interesting to watch.
In any event, this was a smart move for Opera. People these days are not willing to pay for browsers, as so many free and viable alternatives exist. It will also act as a tractor for their embedded browser products, which means more revenue. Some might see this as a last ditch effort by Opera, and they may well be right. I don’t sit in board meetings. But I think it’s merely a recognition that they aren’t going to get rich selling a desktop browser, they need more press, interest, and therefore users, and that the more people that embrace the desktop browser the better it is for their more commercially viable embedded solutions.
I have downloaded and installed Opera, have the Flash and Java plugins working well, and am giving it a test drive. Here are my initial reactions:
- It is fast. Faster than Firefox by a good margin. Very nice.
- The rendering engine adheres to standards nicely. Well coded sites work. Broken ones are usually broken in Firefox as well.
- I actually enjoy having a mail, IRC, and NNTP client in my browser. Opera does this well. Mozilla does not.
- Much of the Opera online documentation needs to be updated. The instructions for installing Java just simply do not work. The UI has changed.
- Speaking of the UI, while I’m aware that Opera is written in QT, Opera needs to make a serious effort to provide their own skins to mimic the look and feel of the platforms they support. There is an Opera-supplied Windows skin, I’d like to see the company provide top-shelf skins for GTK+, KDE, and MacOS X users.
- Tabs should be the last toolbar before page content.
- Toolbar bookmarks should not have to be stored in the main bookmark repository as well as the toolbar.
I must say, on the whole my Opera 8.5 experience has been very positive. I may well switch from Firefox if Opera shows themselves willing and capable of delivering bug fixes, UI tweaks, and general quality updates and support. Try Opera. If it’s not your cup of tea you’ll know pretty quickly. If it is, you’ll love it, not just for the speed alone.
And from the “Dumb Business Decisions” desk we have the Microsoft reorganization. Do they really think chopping a turd into pieces makes it not a turd? Do they think this will positively impact their ability to deliver secure, standards-compliant, user liberating (as opposed to user emprisoning), and fault tolerant products? Do they think this will enhance creativity and innovation rather than add more layers of bureaucracy that stifle innovation? Does anyone think this? Granted, I do not like Microsoft. It’s hard for me to see much that they do in a positive light. But I think this reeks of desperation and corp-think to even the most unbiased person.
Today Opera Software executives acknowledged a change in business climate and moved the tiller to compensate. Microsoft desperately clutched at straws. Or, that’s my take on it. Time will tell.