Opera 4 beta 4 for Linux

Mon, 01/08/2001 - 15:40 | admin

Email:

satyap@satya.virtualave.net

Good download capability, shows enough information to be useful but not

too much, so doesn't overwhelm the novice user.

Fonts and font sizes are completely customizable.

Appears to have a quick startup and a small memory footprint -- always

good.

Negatives

For some reason, the http://localhost/ address was unavailable, though

lynx and Netscape could see it easily enough. Opera seems to have trouble

with localhost -- ftp was unavailable, as well. Maybe it's in the DNS

code, as the IP had no problem.

The help system is not yet implemented. It's not really necessary, but one

would like to have some help at certain points. For example, how does one

add plugins? Say, for Java and Flash? The Enable Java option is itself

disabled.

The registration fee is another put-off for Linux users used to freebies.

The download manager could use some work -- support for resumes and

aborting downloads in progress.

Why is the "Set as home page" option a menu item instead of being in

preferences? The menu system needs some work.

There doesn't appear to be a way to change key bindings -- this is

important to Linux power lusers. For that matter, where is the list of key

bindings?

Overall

Don't be put off by the negatives, remember this is a beta release.

Very good browser. Slightly quirky, but they all are. I'd give it a 4

out of 5. I'll definitely use a stable version regularly -- maybe

even make it my default browser.

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