Post #1,077
7/7/01 10:50:01 PM
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Surfing with Opera/2 !
I'm trying out the beta of Opera for OS/2 and am very happy!
Opera/2 requires ODIN to be installed, and uses the WarpIN installer.
The feature I like best is the zoom - if I head over to Infoworld and set the Zoom to 170%, then the Infoworld site scales up to fit the width of my 1600x1200 display. Both text AND graphics are scaled! Makes it so you can actually read Infoworld on a high DPI display. I'd like to go back to 2048x1536, but I'll have to first figure out how to change ODIN's menu text sizes(the default is quite hard to read at 1600). The Register also correctly scales to the width of the browser(under Netscape the page displays too wide for some reason, have to scroll to see the 3rd column of articles).
I was also surprised to find that the install found my Netscape plugins and configured them to be used by Opera. I discovered that when the background music on my site kicked in with the DSMI/2 plugin. It also comes with ver 5 of Flash - the version I have under Netscape is 4.
The free version of Opera has an ad bar in the top right corner. On a 1600x1200 display it isn't very distracting. However, it might be under a lower resolution. You can register Opera to make it go away, which I plan to do once it's out of beta.
As a beta, there are quirks abound. Cut/Paste does not work(or I'd have links in this message), the background images displays OK, but redraw incorrectly - if you visit my site and right-click somewhere on the page to bring up the menu, when the menu goes away the left-edge of the background is redrawn whereever the menu was at. Probably related, the transparent PNG for the DSMI/2 link shows the left edge of the background image too.
Ah - found something that helps. Under the FILE menu, there's a PREFERENCES option. Under the TOOLBAR section I changed it to "Images & Text", "Border around buttons", "Fixed Width Buttons", deselected the "use system fonts" and selected larger fonts for both "Normal" and "Inactive" text. The toolbar is now useable at 1600(the icons are itty bitty), and all non-menu text(url box, zoom selection, etc) is larger too.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #1,080
7/7/01 11:36:40 PM
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Yeahbut . . .
. . . I used it for a few minutes and it looked pretty good (depite being pre-beta cranky). Then I copied a url from Netscape Navigator to the clipboard, then tried to paste it into the address bar of Opera and it went down hard (illegal operation). Now it won't run at all - "illegals" before the screen comes on. I consider this to be a significant bug.
At 1024x768 that ad bar was so distracting I wouldn't consider using this thing at all until I can buy off the ad bar.
Yes, the zoom feature is fabulous (I used it when the Windows 3.1 version still ran under WinOS2) and I have no idea whatever why other browsers don't have it. I guess it's the old "If Internet Explorer doesn't have it, then we don't need it" thing.
[link|www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #1,529
7/11/01 6:07:38 PM
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Did it start with any options?
I've had a couple crashes. OThe next time I ran Opera it prompted me to see if I'd like to:
1) reopen the pages it was on during the crash
2) open nothing
3) open the default windows
I found this to be a slick feature. I've had many Netscape crashes occur when I'd found a new site but the bookmark didn't get saved due to the crash.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #1,542
7/11/01 9:22:04 PM
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Yeah - that's neat.
All v5 releases of Opera have that. Although it's an admission that our PCs aren't as stable as we'd like, it's also a way of saying "well, if we can't fix this problem, at least let's work around it!"
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #1,586
7/12/01 10:18:54 AM
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Yes, that screen came up.
This screen is well known to me from the days I ran it under WinOS2. All selections work the same, "Illegal Operation" is the next thing you see.
Since I can't use it until they have a sellable version without that godawful advertising bar I'm not going to mess with it. I'll just wait patiently another year or two for the he GA to come out.
[link|www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #1,640
7/12/01 8:08:32 PM
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Did you by chance change the toolbar to TEXT ONLY?
In the opera.os2 newsgroup, on Opera's news server, somebody posted that they changed their toolbar to text only, and that Opera crashed the next time they ran it. They fixed it by changed 'Button Type=1' to 'Button Type=0' in OPERA.INI. It's posted as being a reproduceable problem, and the Opera team replied that they've found and fixed the bug.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #1,659
7/13/01 12:05:32 AM
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Yup, that did it all right.
Probably did that when I was trying to shrink that bar (didn't know it hosted ads yet, it just said "Opera" for quite a while).
[link|www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #1,085
7/8/01 3:29:42 AM
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Cut'n'paste always late.
This is a feature that is a "priority 2" at Opera Software, so early betas on a new platform almost always have faulty or just plain broken cut'n'paste. It will be much better in Beta 2.
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #1,527
7/11/01 6:03:37 PM
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2048x1536 is great with 200% zoom
I tried it out late last night and really liked the clarity of the letters. Rendering a 200% zoom on 2048x1536 yields about the same results as viewing the page rendered with anti aliased fonts on a 1024x768 display.
Only downside where the menus - almost impossible to read. I've posted in Opera's OS/2 forum to see if there's a solution.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #2,170
7/17/01 11:27:36 PM
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ODIN update fixed cut and paste
I just updated my ODIN install to the [link|ftp://ftp.os2.org/odin/weekly/|July 12th archive] and it fixed cut & paste and some other problems.
I found this in the changelog:
Key translation for arrow keys and insert/del, home/end, page up/down added (WM_CHAR message translation)
I suspect my problem was I always use INSERT and DELETE for doing copy, cut and paste. It is very likely that CTRL-X, CTRL-C and CTRL-V would have worked before.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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