Hi,

I have also tried Opera on my laptop running Windoze 3.1. Personally, I
was not that impressed. I found the interface confusing. In addition, the
installer installed all these different icons such as "Minimal Browser",
"Optimized Browser," and "Full Browser." However, they all seem to run 
in exactly the same way. It does handle frames and most current HTML
though. But I doubt that I would pay money for it.

The real question/problem that Sean is getting at, and I think many others
are wondering about, is "Why isn't there a good web browser for NetBSD/
mac68k?" The simple answer: "Money." In the _NetBITS_ story, the Opera
people are surprised that the Linux people did not come out in support of
Opera.  To me, this shows that they do not understand Linux or UNIX in
general.  I am not surprised at all.

For those who do not know how the Opera scheme works, here it is in a
nutshell. You pay your $35 up front (you are essentially buying
vaporware). The Opera people "promise" that you money will go towards the
creation of a port for Opera for your platform. Now, let's assume that the
nice people at Opera are honest and will really do what they intend to do.
Let's assume out of all the NetBSD/mac68k users out there, maybe 300
decide they would be willing to pay $35 for Opera on NetBSD/mac68k (and
this is being very generous). Now a quick calculation, 300 x $35 =
$10,500. In the world of contract programming, this is not much money to
work with. I doubt that this would be enough to create a NetBSD/mac68k
version of Opera. Certainly not from scratch.

For better or worse, the current market of "personal computers" is
dominated by the Intel architecture. This allows Netscape to create Linux
(and recently FreeBSD) versions of Navigator. Why don't they create a
NetBSD/m68k version or even a MkLinux version? It just doesn't pay for
them to create a port of Netscape that will only used used by a few
hundred or a few thousand people. And that is even if everyone pays. Has
everyone out there paid for thei copies of Netscape?

In general, the "culture" of UNIX (especially the free UNIX) world is to
want source code. This obviously clashes with the commerical software
world where source need to be closely guarded. Producing, testing, and
maintaining various release versions of software like Navigator comsumes a
large amount of human time and resources. Ports to lesser used OSes are
just not likely to happen.

So what choices are out there? It depends on what you want to do:

1) Mosaic -- Personally, I think the 2.7b3 version from the Amiga binary
   archive is a perfectly acceptable browser for searching the web for 
   information. It takes a long time to start up, but once it starts up
   it works fine. It does not support frames (not so bad) or tables which 
   is the biggest problem.

2) Arena -- This holds promise, but has not yet delivered. It is supposed to
   support HTML 3.2. It does support tables, but no frames. I have used
   the beta 2 version found in the Amiga archive as well as the international
   beta 3a version that I compiled on my laptop under FreeBSD. Both version 
   work for a few pages and then crash. If you like populating your HD with
   core files, this is the browser for you.

3) Chimera -- This is actually a nice basic broswer. Like Mosaic, it does not
   support tables or frames, but it does run well. You can find a copy in
   the Amiga archive. Besides not supporting tables, it's biggest drawback is
   that it does not cache pages, so if you keep going back to the same pages,
   it is slow on a modem connection.

4) Lynx -- Let's not forget our old text-based friend. I use lynx for quick
   looks ups and informational searches. I have a csh alias 'bsdfaq' to run
   'lynx http://www.macbsd.com/macbsd/macbsd-docs/faq/'.

5) Netscape -- If you really need to have frames, plug-ins, and all the 
   goodies that go along with Netscape, then get a used Intel machine. You
   can install NetBSD on it and run the BSDI or FreeBSD version of Netscape.
   An added bonus is that you will get color X as well if you get a decent
   video card. Even in Japan, I have seen used P75 machines going for as low
   as $400 with 16MB or RAM and an 800MB HD.

There are also other browsers out there that I haven't tried. I have heard 
that phoenix is not very good. There is also the Amaya project. 

Just one person's opinion. Sorry for the long post.

Mark

On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, T. Sean (Theo) Schulze wrote:

> The latest issue of NetBITS, published by Adam Engst of the Macintosh 
> newsletter TidBITS fame, includes an article about a new web browser on 
> the market called "Opera".  At present only Windoze95, NT and 3.11 
> versions are available, but they are planning on porting Opera to other 
> platforms RSN.  One of the platforms will be the Mac.

   Mark Andres               E-mail: mark@giganet.net
          Running NetBSD, 100% Microsoft Free!
   Me & NetBSD: http://www2.giganet.net/~mark/NetBSD/