Opera 8 Browser - free anniversary offer [ended]

[LTR12101B]

http://my.opera.com/community/party/reg.dml

For 1 day only, tough luck if you miss it!

[LTR12101B]

Extended offer until midnight CET (GMT +1) on Wednesday 31st of August.


http://my.opera.com/community/party/

[LTR12101B]

Party's over!

I guess if you want a free alternative browser now, you could get Firefox - or annoy friends and visitors by begging them to click an affiliate link to get you a free licence for Opera

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Interesting results - and while, as they say, the "default browser" of Internet Explorer is under-represented, the other results are interesting.
The fade away of IE5 is clear.
With the identification of Firefox seperately from Mozilla (suite), it takes a clear second place here - the rest are also-rans - and on that basis, it's more important not to break compatibility with older versions of IE, than to support new browsers.

It also suggests that people need a lot of convincing to PAY for a browser, when they get one with the operating system and can have an alternative one free (and while you can use Opera in "sponsored mode", and maybe relatively harmless compared to most ad/spyware, it's not something I'd choose).



I know I shouldn't turn round and bite the hand that's been giving out free licences for their browser, but I'm amazed that Opera survives against the current maturity level of Firefox - mind you, the Mozilla project wasn't originally intended to lead to a "final" public release browser, but to serve as the core for the new Netscape browser and others...

http://www.beonex.com/ - Beonex Communicator - at one time, a "polished" version of Mozilla, but it's been in limbo for some time as the focus moved away from the suite that it's based on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey - for those who prefer the Mozilla Suite, it is to be hoped that SeaMonkey (taking over the development name that was used for the suite) will carry it forward.

[scarecrow]

The proof will be a comparison against Firefox 1.1, when it comes out, which will use the new Gecko engine, with many optimizations and tweaks compared to the current "sane" Firefox performance...

[VIPER_1069]

to be honest ANY BROWSER that isnt I.E. has to be good! even if its BAD lol

[LTR12101B]

With a reasonable degree of restriction, I believe you can "sanitize" Internet Explorer to a reasonable degree - but ONLY if you use prompts for anything that may be undesirable, and most importantly, have a good nose for trouble.

It is not possible to secure Internet Explorer without compromise...

Activex is the biggest problem - signed is not a measure of safety, just a proof of ownership - there is some really scummy stuff that is SIGNED, so never go above "prompt" to download it, and use due caution.

Common sense and a good degree of mistrust is the best defence you can get, but the number of open proxies spewing spam proves that many users do not even have the most basic level of security, or fiddle with tools they do not understand.