the newts.net

I’ve had the installer file for the web browser Opera 9 Beta on my desktop for a few months now. It was only yesterday during a much needed desktop thinning out session that I came across the file and decided to give it a whirl. I downloaded it originally just to have it on my pc for checking the rendering and compatibility of the newts .net. I’ve had older versions of Opera as my default browser before, but for a while now, Mozilla’s Firefox has been my personal browser of choice. For lots of very good reasons.

Since the beta version of Opera 9 installer had been on my desktop for a while, I thought I’d just do a quick check to make sure there were no new releases. Good job I did. Opera 9.0.2 stable release was already available for free download. So I got latest version and whipped it on my pc sharpish.

First impressions are very positive. Vastly more impressive than the bog standard latest release of Internet Explorer, but that’s not saying much! There’s a number of features that Opera 9 shares with Firefox, most importantly the fabulous tabbed browsing, but there’s also a couple of new ideas that look very exciting and useable.

Firstly about tabbed browsing. It’s the ability to have several web pages open in the same browsing window. They line up in tabs along the top of the browser window where you can flick from one to another quickly and easily. It’s all very well me talking about it, but you have to try it to see what it’s like for real. If you have never experienced tabbed browsing you must try it out for yourself. Get yourself a free copy of Firefox or Opera and have a play with it. Tabbed browsing is not yet available in the very bog standard Internet Explorer browser, although I see it’s being written into the new v7 release, and once you’ve tried it, I’m 99% sure you’ll never want to be without it again.

Another feature that’s new to Opera and not in Firefox is called Mouse Gestures. Mouse gestures exist for most frequently performed operations like next page, previous page, fast forward, rewind, home, reload, stop, panning, zooming and many more. Gestures work on the tiniest movement of your mouse in various directions with various combinations of button clicks. For example, hold the right button down and move the mouse a fraction to the left and you go back a page. Similarly, a right click and move to the right moves you on a page. As I described with tabbed browsing, it’s a feature that you need to try out for yourself to fully appreciate it’s ease and usefulness.

Opera 9 is fully customisable, right down to how it looks using skins. There’s also a huge amount of addons, or ‘Widgets’ as they are called in Opera, that add even more user personalisation and functionality. All easily added to your browser with a dedicated widgets button and a few clicks.

And finally, one very inventive feature of the new Opera release is Voice. For the serious web surfers among you who have a headset microphone, it basically means you can talk to Opera and tell it what to do. Sit back, feet up, leave the cordless mouse on charge and talk your way through your sites of choice. Very clever stuff! But it doesn’t stop there. Probably the best and most useable feature of Voice is it’s ability to talk back to you. Highlight any web page or paragraphs of text, hit V on your keyboard, and Opera will read it all back to you!

Innovative? I haven’t seen it in any other browser offering. Clever? Very. Lazy? Quite possibly. Fun? Abso fuckin lootley!

It’s just a shame you’ve had to read all the way to the bottom of this post, because with the new Opera 9, it would have sounded like this.

You can download Opera 9 for yourself by clicking the Opera logo above.

I was shocked and saddened to hear this morning that daredevil reptile-botherer Steve ‘Crikey / Strewth Mate’ Irwin has been killed by a Stingray while filming in the Great Barrier Reef, off the Queensland coast in Australia. After seeing his exuberant and engaging programs on some of the worlds most dangerous animals, who could ever imagine he’d finally be beaten by a relatively harmless Stingray. It seems Steve got too close to the ray, swimming on top of the stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and into his chest and pierced his heart.

Obviously I didn’t know the guy personally, but I loved all his programs and he always came over as an out and out nice guy. I’m so saddened to think that we won’t see any new documentaries featuring Steve and his antics, and I just hope that they have enough footage of this new documentary he was filming up until his untimely death to produce one more great programme in rememberance of one great man.

My thoughts are with Steve’s wife Terri, their 8 year old daughter Bindi Sue, and two-year-old son Bob. How tragic to have such a young family torn appart.

Crocs Rule! And so do you mate.

Happy Birthday to our little mate Ben. He’s the BIG 3 Today. I can’t wait to get stuck into the CAT lego construction kit, Buckaroo, Operation, Tin Can Alley, the Bosch drill set etc. etc. Just so I can explain how they work to Ben you understand ;0)

You may have noticed in the bottom left menu of the newts.net that there’s a link to Geo Visitors.  A cool little site that shows where visitors to the newts have come from in the last 24 hours.  If you click on the link it looks a little like this:

You can click on any of the map pins and zoom in on it to street level with Google map.  You can also view the location in Google Earth if you have it installed on your pc; and if you haven’t, you ought to because it’s fantastic, it’s free, and it’s here.

A spooky thing happened  to me tonight though.  Out of the hundreds of pins on the map I just thought I’d pick one at random and zoom in to have a look where the visitor was from.  I picked a pin in Los Angeles, zoomed in on it, and found:

SPOOOOKY :(