Opera 8 Beta 3

[dbdg]

AZ,

Regarding your first post. If I want to move over to OperaMail instead of OE, (interested in a change) is it worth moving over yet or not, the whole IMAP thing.

On the development thing.

I'm a php developer and I do have to admit that at first I was not too keen on using anything but IE as I really didn't see the point. For the last year or so I have however made a point of making sure that all the sites I build are compliant, XHTML, CSS etc, not IE compliancy. It got to the point where it was just easier for me to use Opera whilst developing, checking with the validation services is very easy as well as the fact that Opera doesn't appreciate sloppy scripting, what you can miss in IE is ridiculous.

* I always have the three latest version to test with, Firefox, IE and Opera but have to admit that I have never got on with Firefox, too flaky for me.

* I am only a PHP programmer, I can't comment on developers that have to code sites heavily reliant on javascript, java or any other web technology.

* At home I view all but two websites with Opera, "identified as Opera". Fileplanet and Hotmail. Hotmail doesn't like showing the formatting tools and the download manager on Fileplanet only works in IE, both these issues are annoying but hey.

[Sasq]

dbdg, the problem with opera is, as its a paid for browser, unless your willing to to write a version matrix check, you have to go for the lowest common denominator - I personaly refuse to push opera sales by only coding for the latest version.
do go check out the bindows site, see what you can do with a fully working DOM on the client side, I have a few work test sites I can point you to, but they are all in J

[VJ]

For the last year or so I have however made a point of making sure that all the sites I build are compliant, XHTML, CSS etc, not IE compliancy. It got to the point where it was just easier for me to use Opera whilst developing, checking with the validation services is very easy as well as the fact that Opera doesn't appreciate sloppy scripting, what you can miss in IE is ridiculous.

Amaya could be useful for developing as well:

http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

While I agree it is good practise for coding websites, when browsing you don't have control of the coding of the sites you are visiting. So in practise, while having a strict browser is good for coding, it looses out on practicality in the real life (IMO).

I guess that is the difference between the defined standards, and the de facto standards.



Jörg

[az]

If you need IMAP, I'd wait. Even if you connect using POP3/SMTP, the Opera mailer is a great concept but still has a few rough edges/bugs, so I cannot really recommend it, despite using it myself. The two most annoying bugs are: Sometimes the search index doesn't find all mails anymore. You can access them from any access point they're in, but if you search for them, the search won't find them. The other bug is if one of your contacts has more than one email address and you send to them, Opera will send a copy of the mail to ALL their addresses (this is really ridiculous, and should be easy to fix). The IMAP fix is supposed to be the ground upon which the mail client will be improved, so my recommendation is to wait. The concept is great, but the implementation is still lacking.

Sasq, you'll get your answer in a bit

AZ

[VJ]

actually, there are checks for ver 7, on some instances for the wysiwyg editor, it checks if the user is using ver7 of opera or ver 4.0 of IE...

they did do their homework. there are just some things that the older engines of opera can not do, go to www.bindows.net with a non beta version, change your User Agent and see for yourself.

Esp. check out the forums... Very cool, they don't look like a browser window anymore (at least, with a browsers that supports it ... ahem....).


Jörg

[VJ]

If you need IMAP, I'd wait. Even if you connect using POP3/SMTP, the Opera mailer is a great concept but still has a few rough edges/bugs, so I cannot really recommend it, despite using it myself.

Perhaps it is me, but I never understood why people want to read mail with their browser. I mean, if I am to write a text, I won't load up my photo editing software...

No swiss army knife will outperform a bunch of properly selected, individual tools.

Just use a proper mail client ( Thunderbird), and be done with it.

(just my 2c)



Jörg

[az]

The new IMAP back-end won't be in Opera 8.0 unless there are other things that delay 8.0, since there are still some nasty bugs that need sorting out. It will come, though, and hopefully will be even better than it would have been had it come as early as in 8.0.

BTW, Beta 3 is the feature freeze, so no new features will be added, and all that happens from now is sorting out bugs (though obviously things like the new preferences will see some tweaking). This means we're pretty close to final release.

AZ