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I have just been a little surprised at the direction this took.
I think this is testament to the view most LQ members hold, which is to look beyond the members questions for other concerns. And for good reasons I see.
While there are provisions to be made for disclosure of bug tracking information, even without completely up to date information it should become clear that when it comes to vulnerabilities some browsers are created more equal than others.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gezley
Opera 12.0 was a beta release in my opinion. Very, very poor. Too many problems to list.
If you can't quantify and won't clarify then I call that spreading FUD. So please do, please be as verbose as possible and please make a distinction between security issues, major usability issues crippling functionality and minor nuisances.
Thanks for providing the link to the testthread in General, I've now bookmarked it.
I'm aware that there are several sites where I can check my useragent, but I was not aware that the useragentswitcher sets the UA for every tab. Sorry for polluting the forums.
I also use Opera on occassion - I think I am using 10.x now - thanks for your part with that! Maybe I'll update that while it is on my mind as well - what is the latest?
The latest 12.00. Though I should point out that 10.x tells me very little. We released 8 versions of 10 (10.00, 10.01, 10.10, 10.11, 10.60, 10.61, 10.62 and 10.63). Some of these changed significantly. It is not unusual for an Opera .1 release to be a far bigger update than a major release of other browsers. Out small/security releases are those which bump on the second minor number. The 10.XX series also included the biggest change that the *nix version has ever experienced. Between 10.11 and 10.60, not only did we include a truly massive update to our rendering engine (including a brand new JavaScript engine, Carakan) we rewrote most of the interface and stripped out our Qt dependency.
Quote:
Originally Posted by astrogeek
While I am security conscious, it seems to me that any given upgrade is about as likely to introduce some new security hole as it is to fix an existing one.
Unfortunately I have to completely disagree with you on this. Whilst I'll agree that updates often introduce new bugs (hard to avoid given that browsers are horribly complex, e.g. Opera is many millions of lines of code), I don't have a single doubt in my mind that Opera 12.00 is more secure than any of our browsers from the 10.x line. If you think otherwise perhaps you should have a look at what we actually fixed in terms of security issues between now and then.
Otherwise, by now there would be very few security holes left!
That would seem to make sense but it simply isn't true. All of the browsers have to move forward and add new code all the time, as we add support for new standards. Sure, we could say "hey let's forget about HTML5" but in reality if we did this our user base would drop to nothing within a year or two and we would be considered irrelevant and quite likely out of business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by astrogeek
I am paranoid about many things, but browser security on a Slackware box is not one of them.
Then I think you are making a truly serious mistake. The browser is probably the single biggest attack vector for those wanting to cause harm to your PC when using it in a desktop configuration. By navigating to any given website, you are instructing the browser to render completely unknown code on your machine. When else do you just download random code, run it (without checking it) and just hope for the best? Add to that the complexity of the HTML and JavaScript standards and it is no wonder that all of the browser manufacturers are pushing out updates on a very regular bases.
To me, for a machine configured for desktop use, ensuring your browser(s) are up to date and running supported versions is more important than just about anything else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gezley
Opera 12.0 was a beta release in my opinion. Very, very poor. Too many problems to list. Very disappointed but it doesn't happen too often, although rumours about a Facebook takeover of Opera fill me with dread.
Don't bother with version 12.0 - wait until an update comes out.
Keep in mind that with any given release there will be some breakage. I wish this wasn't true but sadly it is. Often, specifically for security reasons we have to push a browser out sooner than we would ideally like. We can't and won't just leave our users with an insecure environment. However, with any code change you always introduce the chance of making something else worse.
Rather than say that 12.00 is worse, I would argue it is worse for you but better for many other users because some bug or other that affects you may not have any impact on another user (or may be relatively minor). It really depends on how you use your browser day to day and what sites you visit. What problems are you facing exactly? It would help if you listed them and I can then make sure we are aware of them and working to fix them.
I may also be able to give you a work around or link you to a development build that fixes the issue(s).
Getting back to astrogeek. If I were you I would try 12.00. You might find it works for you, even if that was not gezley's experience. If you are truly concerned about breakage, back up the ~/.opera directory. This stores your profile. That way if 12.00 causes you issues, you can always downgrade and not have to worry about your profile being upgraded into a new format that is not supported by older Opera releases. I would also add that if 12.00 does not work for you, consider using the most recent version you can and read the security links I sent you above to see which, if any, you can work around. If they seem too severe and not something you can work around, I would personally prefer you used an up to date rival browser than take a risk. In that case however I would ask that you report any issues you had with 12.00 and be kind enough to consider Opera again in the future when these are resolved.
Regarding facebook. It is a rumour at this stage. Nobody has confirmed anything. Sure it could happen but you shouldn't base decisions at this stage on rumours. Wait and see. Otherwise I could start a rumour that PatV was going off to work for Canonical and cause havoc in the Slackware community. :P
Rather than say that [Opera] 12.00 is worse, I would argue it is worse for you but better for many other users because some bug or other that affects you may not have any impact on another user (or may be relatively minor). It really depends on how you use your browser day to day and what sites you visit. What problems are you facing exactly? It would help if you listed them and I can then make sure we are aware of them and working to fix them.
Thanks Ruarí (Irish name?): this isn't the place but I'll mention two briefly. First, starting up offline - I get a dialog-box flood asking me if I want to go online for each tab I had open in the last session. I usually start up with multiple (too many to count) tabs so as you can imagine this one is driving me nuts. Second, the status bar randomly appears half-way up the web page!
And the move from skins to themes didn't appeal to me either.
Quote:
Regarding facebook. It is a rumour at this stage. Nobody has confirmed anything. Sure it could happen but you shouldn't base decisions at this stage on rumours. Wait and see. Otherwise I could start a rumour that PatV was going off to work for Canonical and cause havoc in the Slackware community. :P
LOL! True, but look what happened Nokia after that ex-Microsoft guy took over! I do wish corporate America would resist the urge to buy out all those niche products they're not able to develop themselves. I would HATE to see Opera lose its distinctive identity and become just another bland browser.
Thanks to everyone who replied - I'll respond to things that come to mind here in order to not generate many more posts.
BTW - I am writing this through my new, improved, updated Firefox 13.0.1 browser! I hope they do not release another one later today!
@unSpawn - Thanks for the helpful response and the cve links and "how-to" tips. One problem with chasing browser updates is that I neither know nor for the most part understand what actual threat many of the vulnerabilities represent. As such, I am back in the boat of having to implicitly 100% trust the browser makers to absolutely improve with each version - a mental leap that I cannot make! Hence... see my previous comments... I'll try to learn to make effective use of the cve data within my available time.
@ruario - Thanks for the thoughtful and in depth reply, and the links on Opera updates. I will put as much effort into reviewing it as it must have taken for you to write it! I am interested to see the new javascript and rendering engines in Opera and will give 12.0 a try. I have always liked opera on some level, but never found it suitable for my primary browser for whatever reason. My main use of it has been to validate UI implementations on various projects. Perhaps Opera 12 will reset my perspective - I'll let you know!
I also would like to "correct" a comment I made earlier, about not being concerned about browser security on a Slackware box. That made it seem that I think the somehow Slackware magically protects against browser vulnerabilities, and is certainly not the case!
What I had in mind when I typed that line was something like, "After all, this is NOT Internet Exploder on Vista! This is Firefox on Slackware!". While I think that is a very important distinction, it is not really relevant to the current discussion - apologies.
Thanks to all who replied! In future, I'll try to update my browsers in a manner worthy of the name, "Slacker"!
At the very least, I will never again mention my browser version in a casual post!
Testing my user agent from my shiny new Opera 12.0 browser...
[EDIT]
Looks like it worked!
Thanks ruario. I installed using SBo script (on Slackware 12.1).
I like the improved rendering but find a few things a little confusing on first look. I just need to find my way around.
Loaded my Firefox bookmarks - is there a way I can put those one-click away instead of down the Menu >> Bookmarks >> Firefox Bookmarks >> Bookmarks tree?
The Opera menu icon upper left corner seems to be cut off by my window title bar too. Not sure if that is intended.
But first impression overall is OK! Thanks.
[/EDIT]
I use the old school menu bar so then it's just ALT+B or clicking on "bookmarks". You can also use CTRL+1 (panel, focus bookmarks) but that view isn't as useful to me as ALT+B. Then there's the "manage bookmarks" CTRL+ALT+B key combo and if that ain't enough you are free to bind any key combo you can come up with to make Opera show bookmarks.
Testing my user agent from my shiny new Opera 12.0 browser...
There are some really nice features native to Opera but you have to dig around to find them. Here's one of my favourites: go to a website - slackbuilds.org, for example. Right-click inside the search box and "Create search ... " Give the search a name and a shortcut - sb, for example. Now you can search slackbuilds directly from any web page, or you can put the search box in your bookmarks bar. Another feature which comes in handy with some of the barely-legible websites around is accessibility layout. Another great feature is mouse navigation - press left shift and navigate through links on the page with the arrow keys.
I'm sure you can do all of this with other browsers if you get plugins but to my mind plugins are a security risk. Who knows what vetting goes on?
I too have had issues with Opera 12.0, and it's a shame, because otherwise it would be my default browser on my netbook. The most irritating thing is that the way it positions page elements seems off to me. For instance, in the LQ Slackware forum main page, the titles of the threads are all squashed up on the left and the "Main Menu" and "My LQ" boxes on the right take up a full third of the page. In Firefox, they are nice little small side panels the way I think they should be. If there were a way to change that, I would certainly like to know.
Also, my theme downloads will not complete, which is a minor annoyance.
I also have ads on LQ while logged in on Opera, which I don't on Firefox.
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