What's Opera, Doc?

[j4]

So the other day I decided to actually buy a copy of the Opera web browser, because I was annoyed by the banner ads in the free version but even more annoyed by IE crashing my iMac every ten minutes.

Having got the registration code for the new version, I went to download my copy. Quick download, quick install. However, when I came to actually launch the application, it told me "This application requires MacOS 8.6 or higher and CarbonLib 1.5 or higher." Well, I'm running MacOS 9.1, so I went to find out what the hell CarbonLib is when it's at home, and discovered that it's some kind of software development kit for the Mac, and it's freely downloadable. So I download that (which takes about 20 minutes because it's huge) and install it, and reboot the machine, and have another go at running Opera ... only to get exactly the same error message.

Opera's website (which is utterly broken in IE on the Mac) doesn't, as far as I can tell, give any more detailed information about requirements for running Opera 6 than to say what version of MacOS is needed.

Opera's website also, however, doesn't seem to want to give up anything resembling a tech support email address, except to registered users. Who in order to access this service need to enter their username and password, which they get when they register, which they can only do by launching the bloody application.

Anybody have any suggestions? Am I missing something obvious?

Comments

[emperor]

Does netscape or mozilla not work?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Um, I think you've missed my point... I paid for Opera, because I like the way it works, I like the features the new version has, I want to use it, I just don't like its adverts. I want my paid-for copy of Opera to work with the system I'm running, a system that they claim it works on. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

[emperor]

Err, sorry. I meant that one of those might help you get at the bit of Opera's webshite that contained the information you needed.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry... I thought it was a "don't use that, then". :-}

I can pretty much get the content out of the webshite, anyway; it's just that the layout is irritatingly funted, e.g.
entire
para-
graphs
of
text
are
appear-
ing
in
some
kind
of
frame
at the
side
of the
page.

<sigh>

[sparrowsion]

I've been having another look at this, and I think you can get at the tech support without having opera up and running. Certainly from IE on W2K if you go to https://support.opera.com/ and click the "register" button you get a chance to register your email address (which the small print says is your user name) and password, confirmed by your registration code.

People who haven't purchased and just want to try Opera on the Mac to see what it's like appear to be stuffed -- I still can't see anything in the online help which suggests that there might be any issue whatsoever.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info -- I'll have another look when I'm at home & can poke the Mac properly.

Of course if I'd got the free download of the new version first then I probably wouldn't have bothered paying for it because I'd have hit this problem then, but like a fool I assumed that if the old version worked on my machine & I more-than-met the system requirements for the new one, it'd work. <sigh>

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Well, the canned support pages say:

Opera 6.0 was developed for Mac OS X and is supported from Mac OS 8.6 and up (including Mac OS X) To run the Carbon build in classic environments you must have CarbonLib 1.5 or later which is available from Apple. Please note that the CarbonLib requires Mac OS 8.6 or greater. Running 6.0 will require more memory than Opera 5.0 under 8.6-9.2.

None too helpful, really, is it?

I'll poke Opera support myself, later, when I find my registration code... and get back from the interview
.

[j4.livejournal.com]

and get back from the interview

Good luck (again)!

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Er, yes, thanks, I think.
Ambivalence rules, OK?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, obviously from a selfish point of view I would much much much rather you got a job in Cambridge (nothing yet from Amino or ARM?), but

a) some sort of job is better than no job, probably;
b) "it's good interview practice" (not that you need it!); and
c) even if you have NO intention of taking the job, a crap interview is No Fun At All.

So I hope it goes well. *hugs*

[j4.livejournal.com]

Opera 6.0 was developed for Mac OS X and is supported from Mac OS 8.6 and up

Check. Running 9.1.

To run the Carbon build in classic environments you must have CarbonLib 1.5 or later which is available from Apple.

Check. Downloaded & installed CarbonLib 1.6.

Please note that the CarbonLib requires Mac OS 8.6 or greater.

Er, see above.

Running 6.0 will require more memory than Opera 5.0 under 8.6-9.2.

But will still, if I can get the fucker running, probably require less memory than Internet "memory hoover" Exploder. :)

[sparrowsion]

But will still [ ... ] probably require less memory than Internet "memory hoover" Exploder.

Output from top here:

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT LC %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 1103 simon     15   0 36160  28M  7196 S     0  0.0 11.2  71:32 opera
[ ... ]
29045 simon     15   0 23200  22M 12964 S     0  0.0  8.9   0:18 mozilla-bin
                       ^^^^^^^^^^                    ^^^^

That opera process has been my working browser for over a week, currently with eight pages open (including the one I'm editing this in). The mozilla I started this morning, and has one small window with the cricket score in.

[chrisvenus]

So it uses 13 meg more for 7 more web pages doesn't seem that good to me :)

I would be interested in how much a fresh opera and fresh mozilla running the same page would be though. I'm just getting the impression that you are saying one or other sucks from memory usage PoV but I'm trying to tell which it might be from the information given. :)

[sparrowsion]

Um. I was trying to show that an opera that's had ages to build up a pile of cruft has scarcely any more memory footprint than a fresh mozilla. One of my main reasons for switching to opera in the first place was how insanely memory-hungry every other (graphical) browser I tried was. I've just tried a fresh opera with those pages (I didn't want to lose state) and a fresh mozilla with them, and they're comparable. Either opera's got a lot worse in version 7, or mozilla's caught up a lot.

[j4.livejournal.com]

The mozilla I started this morning, and has one small window with the cricket score in.

See, even web-browsers don't like cricket. :-P