Opera 9 will support Widgets
Published February 1st, 2006 1:08 PM EST By Daniel GoldmanEXCLUSIVE
Back in November there was speculation that Opera 9 will add widget support. At that time (and now) an Opera spokesman wouldn’t confirm anything to Opera Watch. However, multiple sources familiar with the development of Opera 9 have confirmed to me that Opera 9 will in fact have Widget support.
It’s not entirely clear to me whether the widgets, which are small programs that use Opera’s rendering engine, will run in the browser (sort of like Firefox’s extensions) or whether they can also be run on the user’s desktop outside of the browser. From the screenshots (see one of them below) that I have seen, it appears that the widgets will run inside of the Opera browser.
Is widgets Opera’s answer to Firefox’s popular extensions?
Screenshot of Opera 9 with the widgets option
Update (2/6/2006): Opera spokesman Thomas Ford told Opera Watch that the next technical preview of Opera 9 will launch with approximately 12 widgets. Some of those will be general tools and others will feature third-party content.
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This is cool. I personally feel that “extensions” is why Firefox is so popular. Without those, it’s just a very plain browser. Hopefully Opera will now get some great widgets for it’s community.
I’m anxious!!
This makes me drool with excitement.
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Whoops! Kind of new to Blogger, and accidentally deleted that last post. Anwyway, I think that widgets will be both inside the browser and on the desktop, since desktop widgets are becoming more popular and Opera needs something to counter Firefox’s widgets.
If devices do support “desktop” widgets, I see no reason why the desktop version couldn’t.
Although, that may be a matter of opinion if the desktop version should support them. You know … security holes, extensions in general … and the like. I’m pretty sure anyone know what I mean.
I’d personally like to know more about widgets, and whether they will have strict separation of abilities (like userjs does).
I’d also like to see (if they are actually anything like what we think they might be) how they will deal with the security issues - I have yet to see any implementation that was secure by design.
I’d hate to see BHO spyware style widgets, or even greasemonky style exploits for Opera.
However, what also would be awesome would be some sort of attempted compatibility with firefox extensions (not sure if this is at all possible, but greasemonky scripts to some extent can be eaisly converted to userjs so…).
But the security aspect still bothers me.
Of course, this all assumes that this is any sort real extension mechanism (which still seems counter to Opera’s design goals).
Maybe they use code signing like they do for browserjs, and only they have the private signing key, and only sign widgets they vett? Though, how is that any better than just including them in the main browser I don’t know…
I don’t care. I have widgets in OS X.
I’d prefer preview 2 sooner and widgets… maybe later.
Wow, a “Show widgets” menu item… That shows a lot! -.-
Finally some real news here
The shortcut is F8 right?
Then how can we go to the address bar using keyboard…
yuku, it won’t be the first time Opera has changed keyboard shortcuts
F8 is also the button used to bring all your widgets to the foreground if you’re using Konfabulator (now called the Yahoo Widget Engine)… coincidence?
F8 will be Show Widgets by default?! They really need to include couple keyboard profiles. More about that issue here.
That’s good. The main complaint I hear about Opera is that it doesn’t have extensions. I don’t see any reason why it would need them but it would definately be a bonus in bringing more people to the browser, especially since there are a lot of Firefox users that are having problems with its memory leaks and WOULD switch to Opera but stay with Firefox just because of the extensions capability. Not that Firefox isn’t a good browser, but I would really like to see Opera get more users than it has now, and I think Opera has more of a chance with Firefox users than IE users, just because they tend to care more about the capabilities and features of their browser.
this is the feature that i have been looking for in a long time in opera.
yes, this will give some good competition to firefox’s extensions (if this actually is what it sounds like).
secondly, changing user javascript’s name to something else might do the trick too, but i don’t think people use opera for its technological prowess. rather, its for its ease of use, and features. for any coding and programming addons, people still look to firefox. ofcourse, all that could change if the word spread fast and wide that extensions … oops! widgets are coming to opera. this should bring in coders, and by a trickle down effect, bring attention to the javascript front as well!
but no matter what, things are looking good for opera! the browser wars refuses to calm down, don’t they?
Ooh, ooh widgets!!!111 This will be the killer feature in Opera 9!!! - Not.
Daniel posted a screenshot of a menu item for Show Widgets - OK, so we know they’re something you can enable and disable. Are we supposed to see anything else in that screenshot?
Who said this is going to be even remotely related to Firefox extensions? Daniel just asked the question. The only bit in the post that states what they are is “…small programs that use Opera’s rendering engine.” There are lots of small programs that use Opera’s rendering engine which work right now. They brand themselves Web 2.0 applications.
Lets not get too excited until we know what widgets are.
Whatever it takes to get such obvious additions to Opera as Roboform and the Google toolbar is great, and I hope this finally allows that.
yuku, try ctrl+l.
And speaking of changed shortcuts, Quick prefereces doesn’t have one?!
I need F12. A lot.
I hope they didn’t change the menu rendering and v9 won’t show the shortcut for submenus.
Great Work !
I can only hope that this will open the door for Adblock and Filterset.G for Opera. The newest version of Firefox is so much slower and crashes all the time on me! I’m using privoxy, but I would rather have the adblocking built in.
Go Opera!
Extensions exist in Firefox because of its lack of functionality.
Widgets for Opera will help users who want to enhance the already near-perfect browsing experience.
davegould you moron. extensions are for fine tuning the browser, you install only the needed extra functionalities. it’s distributed development with flexibility which monolithic browsers never have, dumbass.
aah another feature copied by opera 9
Why does Opera need another interface for extensions ?
So a programmer writing a useable
extension has to chosse between Opera, IE or FireFox ?
That’s awfull. I would say they should merge the extension API with the FireFox guys (like the plugins are also useable).
Only if there is an (open) standard the majority supports, things do flourish well (-> html, c++, sql).
I just hope they are compatiable with Konfabulator (or yahoo widgets or whatever they are calling them), or Apples widgets. They could just piggyback on the 1000’s of prebuilt widgets, plus we don’t need a third standard.
I agree with the others.
Firefox (Mozilla), Opera and Yahoo along with Apple must create a standard so that all developers need is like a little line in install.rdf
Install.rdf is used in Firefox. With this it can add compatibility to Netscape, Flock and Sea Monkey etc.
We should do something like that except more universal than browser centric
Apparently we’ll be able to start playing this tomorrow when Opera 9 TP2 is released: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6035227.html
Except for an easy to use AdBlock extension, Opera is almost complete. Opera should not allow badly written widgets to spoil Opera’s lean and clean reputation. Even if the widgets are ran in-process with the browser, there should be stricter sandbox security model imposed on them.
Loving opera!!
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Adblock and Filterset.G Firefox extensions… Include something like this into Opera and I’ll make it my default browser for good. These two extensions together are AMAZING!
From what I’ve seen and messed with, widgets are just toys. They don’t integrate into the browser like FF extensions do, and they provide meager functionality. Often times the widgets have absolutely nothing to do with browsing, like what does Tetris have to do with the Internet?
Now don’t get me wrong, I love Opera, but it seems like they’re adding on a lot of stuff that is completely unnecessary. The mail client is ok I guess, but not needed. The IRC chat I don’t think is implemented that well and I believe it has no business being in an Internet browser. BitTorrent downloads are kinda cool, but there are other programs much better suited to handle torrents, and I’m not gonna leave Opera open for hours on end to download a large torrent.
I do agree with Vinod Ponmanadiyil. One of the best extensions I’ve seen for Firefox is the Adblocker. Opera has the ability to block ads using a filter.ini file, but it doesn’t automatically reclaim the space on the website like FF’s Adblocker does. I think the Opera team should create a UI for these filters and improve the ad blocking capabilities. This is somewhat similar to the search shortcut keys. Before Opera 9, you had to customize the search keys manually through a search.ini file, but now you can edit the search engines within the Opera 9 GUI.