Opera for Amiga project

[greenboy]

Opera is a great browser. Not perfect but it's one of the winners. People who think otherwise should maybe check out the current version ; }

But Opera the company isn't the puny thang it was a bunch of years ago. They aren't just going to hand over the codebase to some community and hope something gets done. They've already seen where that leads.

So it comes down to PAYING Opera to port to a platform. QNX did that a few years ago, when it looked cheaper and strategically smarter than spending man-years bringing their own browser up to current standards - or getting Mozilla working well.

Genesi has looked into Opera too. It's been discussed with Opera, and the cost is not trivial. It's not an amount of money a company in the Amiga community will willingly part with if it means only putting it on a few thousand machines - at best! - and not even owning the IP.

It begins to make sense if the amount of machines is a lot higher because of bulk sales into other markets entirely (or if several companies can come to terms with splitting the cost and having it ported to a commonly agreed set of standards and APIs).

[AmigaMac]

I wouldn't really push for Opera personally.  It is a fast browser when it works, but if you want a really fast browser, just push for Mozilla/Netscape.  Nothing beats the speed of Gecko!

[Acill]

Sounds interesting, but I rather like Firebird and Thunderbird.  I would much rather see them on the Amiga.

[asian1]

Hello
Other small, fast graphic browsers:
1. Arachne.
2. Dillo
3. Links for Svgalib.
Perhaps someday the above browser will be ported
to AmigaOS 4 or Morphos.

[greenboy]

One of the real drags is that AmigaOS seems to not support a level of portability that makes porting  such apps a little easier on other platforms ; }

[Insanity]

What most of the negative people fail to realise (or just don't care about) is that, in order to commercialise the Amiga platform, the Amiga NEEDS a good browser, and an MS office-like suite of programs.

It is imperative that these problems are solved before the main market will consider this platform.

The best thing for you guys would be if you managed to pull this off,  then make sure that a copy of Opera AOS version is bundled with the retail version of AOS 4.0 (and other versions of AOS that opera AOS  is compatible with)
(and the as of yet nonexisting Office suite)

This would be a great step forward. Someone should talk to Hyperion. They will be interested in increasing their sales of AOS4.0, right?

(OBSERVE! bundle = separate disc and not IE-m$ style)

[opi]

Why AmigaOS user should care for Dillo port? It's worse at HTML rendering/JS support(have non atm) than any decent Amiga browser. Links is kewl for console, but how meany Amigans use thier Amiga with ssh?

[Kronos]

@insanity
No it a "failure to realize" by the people who avtually think that fan-post and
"showing OS4" will be enough for Opera to overlook the (lack of) commercial
value of this community/platform.

[odin]

For a second I thought I was looking at wrongpla.net's bottomright ;-).

[XDelusion]

I believe Opera was born on the Amiga, just never released for it.

 Opera began as an AWSOME web browser, then began to really suck around version 3 or 4, then at version 6 it began to get REAL good again!

 I'd die to see an Opera port to Amiga OS, I don't care if it is commercial I'd DEFINATLY support it, and use Mozilla as my back up brownser "just in case" there is a page or two that Opera does not like.

[Insanity]

@Kronos

You are STILL missing the point and furthermore, you are joining the whiners.

Amiga has a solid user-group, but it lacks the things I wrote about in the last post. To reach these goals, SOMEONE has to try. These people ARE trying.

I have been watching here silently for quite some time, and I have concluded that you know tons of stuff and that you seldom draw poor conlusions. BUT you are ALWAYS whining. Help them by critizising in a creative way instead of just complaining, thereby helping "the cause".

Use your knowledge for good not evil.

 ;-)

[JoannaK]

Insanity: IMHO your nick tells a lot.  Actually it tells all that is need to say about your comments and of this project on getting Opera to AmigaOS.

I'm sure Kronos (and others) would help you if you'd had some realisticly archievable goals... It no point on wasting time/energy on helping some loonies daydreaming of glorious days that's either long gone or never coming.

[stefcep]

I find it curious that people want to approach a commercial company to write a browser for them when we already have a commercial browser ie Ibrowse 2.3 which with abit of work could be every bit as good as anything else on other platforms.  it wasn't that long ago that we had three commercial browsers but only ibrowse is still in active development. the reality is if Amigans really did support(financially) commercial web browser developers, we would have browsers every bit as good.  if you really want a better browser for your amiga you have a far better chance of getting one by buying Ibrowse 2.3 and showing Iospirit that it is worth their while to continue development rather than trying to get someone new on board. Ibrowse 2.3 is,  i would say, ok for at least 80% of sites even banking sites. CSS and better printing is a priority for the next release. the stuff that you can't do as well with it eg realaudio,flash are third party add-ons, and to an extent limited by clasic amiga cpu power.  so our best bet is to support Iospirit by buying ibrowse 2.3 or even support the open source Aweb team..

[Kronos]

@insanity
"solid user-group"  :roflmao:  :roflmao:

Sorry, but all Amiga has is a few 1000 zealots (in all colors ;-)  ) whinning
how great the past was, and spinning unrealistic future plans.

And as I said, approaching Opera without a (finacial) viable plan won't do more
than them having a good laugh. Approacing them with Amidelfs view on reality
(like his claim of millions of Amigas still in use) will do more harm than good,
and may destroy any hope to get the browser ported once (if) one (or all) of the
next-gen Amiga-solution becomes finacial viable.

Bout the whinning. I tell you what, if I'm sick and tired of one thing in this community
than it is the constant whinning "why doesn't port someone this and that" (often
stuff that isn't opensource, or consist of >100 MB source) by people who couldn't
compile anything beyond "hello world".

I did waste my time once for such a futile attempt (OpenOffice), and have learned
my lesson. Now I concentrate on one single project, a project that I can do on my
own, and even within this millenium  :-o

[PPCRulez]

Opera is by far the best browser available. It beats IE, Mozilla/Firebird easily. It's faster smaller, has more features and settings than any other. More importantly it handles almost every site perfectly and is 100% stable. If you haven't used Opera lately you should check out the latest v7.23

What makes Opera so good is all thoose little features that makes surfing so much easier, like mouse gestures, fast-forward, browser-tabs, magic wand etc. In fact a port of Opera would be the only thing required for me to throw out my Wintel box and use AOS for everything.

I would gladly pay US$100 and more for a working port of Opera. Preferably Hyperion should make a port and include it with AOS maybe raising the price for AOS v4 with US$50 or something to cover the costs.

[Kronos]

@PPCRulez
I somehow doubt that Hyperion would have enough time for such a port,
and I also doubt that 50$/per copy would be enough to cover the licence-cost.


It is much to early for such projects.