Erik_
Test post from Opera 3.62 on Win 3.11
Wed Jul 06, 2022 1:40am

This is by far the best browsing experience I've had in Windows so far. It loads and displays faster than IE 5.0 and about the same as Netscape. IE tends to run very slow where this pretty quick. It also handles CSS and stuff better than IE 5.0 and Netscape do.

It'd say it's probably on par with Arachne for DOS. Arachne can do 256 colors and handles JS and CSS better but at the cost of speed and also has other oddities to it.

Rambling a bit. Just wanted to test posting on this browser.

  • Test post from my Sega Dreamcast - Erik_, Tue Mar 29 2022 3:22am
    Testing posting from my Sega Dreamcast's Web Browser 2.0. So far, seems like the site works just fine. The only thing I noticed is that on the BBCode board, the buttons don't work and it looks like the log in functionality doesn't work either. Other than that, it seems to work just fine... more
    • Test post from Opera 3.62 on Win 3.11- Erik_, Wed Jul 06 2022 1:40am
      • Erik: 4. Sing Opra - Puckdropper, Thu Jul 07 2022 12:57am
        Computer: 1. Next Screen I remember a lot of people were hot on Opera, saying it's better than Netscape and IE. It had some good parts, it kinda felt like Firefox/Pale Moon a bit. It embraced the tabbed browsing interface, which really is a nice way to go. I used it some but I think it went for... more
        • I heard that screeching PC speaker scale up in my head. lol - Erik_, Thu Jul 07 2022 11:07am
          I used Opera a bit in the mid 2000s. I liked it, but as you said, it wasn't different enough from FireFox to warrant being anything but a 2nd browser. I stopped using it completely by the late 2000s and I haven't touched any newer versions since. The Windows 3.1 version is pretty awesome. It's the... more
          • 3.62, yeah! - Puckdropper, Tue Jul 19 2022 3:15am
            I think that's the version I was using. It's probably running around on a hard drive archive here somewhere. Netscape after 4.8 just kinda jumped the shark. I remember the college had better computers than we did so they had Netscape 6 but I just was never that impressed. (That's from a time when... more
    • Re: Test post from my Sega Dreamcast - Joe, Sat Apr 23 2022 3:18pm
      ::Cues music:: SEGA!
      • "SEGA!" made me think of the old Genesis commericals - Erik_, Mon Apr 25 2022 1:13am
        where they yelled it at the end like:
        • Yeah, I remember that... "SEGA" - Puckdropper, Wed May 04 2022 5:15am
          I liked the "Se-ga" chime singing sounds better. Besides Sonic, what did Sega really have?
          • As someone who owns a whole bunch of Sega stuff... - Erik_, Mon May 09 2022 11:07am
            I can't really give a non-biased response. I sort of collect for it and Atari. haha I have a Genesis, Sega CD, Sega 32x, Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast. Bigger named ones I can think of besides Sonic would be: * The Shining Force RPG series. * Phantasy Star RPG series (more popular once it went... more
            • "DAY-TONE_AH!" That was fun! - Puckdropper, Sat May 14 2022 4:21am
              Phantasy Star Online... I seem to remember someone playing quite a bit of that in college... :-) Wonder if any of your posts still survived? I've just got the Genesis so pretty much all I remember is Sonic. I do remember seeing their logos on Arcade machines, though.
              • I actually have played a bit recently too! - Erik_, Thu May 19 2022 2:42am
                I have the DreamPi set up which allows my Dreamcast to still connect to games and such for a while now. I've played on and off over the years since the mainstream release. I'm not sure what brings me back to it. We used to joke that the loading screens had subliminal messages to tell you to keep playing... more
    • Amazing how well this site works - Puckdropper, Wed Apr 13 2022 4:33am
      Most of the new garbage flummoxes old browsers. How much JS is used on the board?
      • As little as I can get away with. - Erik_, Thu Apr 14 2022 1:21am
        Here's the ones I can think of off the top of my head: There's some JS for the recaptchas The BBCode buttons use it to add the tags to the textarea. If anonymous posting is turned off there's a JS check to make sure the submitter field is filled out (it's also checked server side as well. the client... more
        • Kinda nice to see a site function without JavaScript - Puckdropper, Tue Apr 19 2022 4:52am
          I get frustrated by websites that get in the way with JavaScript. I can't actually use Facebook in some forms, when hitting the backspace key it would move the cursor (!!) to the front of the text box. You can't type anything like that.
          • I feel like we got out of popup hell and we're going back in - Erik_, Thu Apr 21 2022 12:51am
            Back in the day you'd get bombarded with popups and stuff but then browser security and such improved and that practice died out. Now, I feel like sites are doing this again except that it's a popup within the same page so it's not technically a "popup". GDPR "Accept all cookies" is annoying enough... more
            • I hate those sites. Subscribe to our newsletter! - Puckdropper, Fri Apr 22 2022 6:00am
              They also wait a bit to pop up just to maximize their annoyance. I wonder if user testing involves a camera and a timer. They look for the time when the reader looks most annoyed at the popup and set the timer to that. Usually I don't even read the dialog box, I just hit back and go somewhere else.... more
              • I'm sure there's all sorts of metrics on it... - Erik_, Mon Apr 25 2022 1:18am
                to help make it as annoying as possible. I'm sure BI reporting and marketing are working in step to maximize the amount of user interactions and sign ups. If that equates to annoying the ever loving hell out of the users to the point that they get the most sign ups, they'll do it. Bleh. I wish uBlock... more
                • The web is pretty much unusable without uBlock. - Puckdropper, Wed May 04 2022 5:19am
                  I get that things cost money and that ads give them money to pay for things, but throwing those things in my face and hopefully under my mouse click (would they be that evil? Slide an ad right under the mouse? Yep.) I wish that Google would derank sites that behaved so poorly. I'm usually gone... more
                  • Completely agree. - Erik_, Mon May 09 2022 11:16am
                    I get that pages get paid x amount for ad clicks they display, but how many people that accidentally (or the very few on purpose) click on an ad actually then proceed to spend any money on the sites they get sent to. What's worse, it's sometimes just a pyramid scheme of ad sites. Ex: start at one... more
                    • There's a few ads that require someone to do something - Puckdropper, Sat May 14 2022 4:17am
                      like actually make a purchase before they pay out. They pay a lot per action because the action is so rare. Most are per-click, though. I'm just not sure I'd even trust a site I go to because of clicking on a banner ad. They just seem so sketchy. It's kinda interesting how there's all this money... more
                      • I wonder how much money these sites actually rack up? - Erik_, Wed May 18 2022 5:46pm
                        Or is it one of those things where they just host SO many pages that even if each site only gets them a small amount of ad money, the number of sites makes up for it. Also, I wonder if you get paid for a click done by a web crawler? I get those on this site clicking buttons and links all the time. Maybe... more
                        • That's a good question, and I wonder if that's how it works - Puckdropper, Tue May 24 2022 4:21am
                          Maybe the ads and clicks are so cheap they can't make any money with just one thing, so it takes a whole host of them to make things work. It's kinda like phone and e-mail scams, the message is so cheap they don't lose any money but if they just get one sucker it pays for annoying hundreds of thousands... more
                          • The downvote / "useless" tagging could still work on... - Erik_, Tue May 31 2022 1:20am
                            search engines that use logged in accounts to help mold searches for you. They could then take the total data of all the user's input to give a general trend to everyone. It would need some sort of down vote spamming/brigading correction/prevention which I'm sure would be possible given that Reddit does... more
                            • I like it, I might actually sign in to a search engine - Puckdropper, Sun Jun 05 2022 3:26am
                              if I knew that the hideous results could be downvoted into extinction. I can't find any information because of all the sites that have SEO'd themselves into the top position.
                              • I wonder if some sort of wrapper around an existing search.. - Erik_, Mon Jun 13 2022 12:42pm
                                engine would work. Like how DuckDuckGo uses Bing and others user Google. Same idea, but just implement the upvote/downvote/block system on the results. Doing it that way might actually be simple enough to throw together a proof of concept depending on home easy it is to "borrow" the actual search results... more
                                • It would take quite a bit of tuning - Puckdropper, Mon Jun 20 2022 1:08am
                                  as there's a lot of sites vying for that top spot. I've seen entire pages of search results that are rip offs of each other. Might still be worth it, though. Especially for things where you need to go more in depth on.
    • *Ah it also does that weird line break thing like Arachne - Erik_, Tue Mar 29 2022 3:28am
      Interesting...
      • *Think they borrowed that code? (nm) - Puckdropper, Wed Apr 13 2022 4:34am
        • I'm guessing they both handle line wrapping the same way... - Erik_, Wed Apr 13 2022 6:18pm
          In message bodies I replace all "\r"'s with "<br>"'s. They both must place a \r (maybe \n too but I don't check for those) when the text reaches the edge of the textarea to keep the text from overflowing where "modern" browsers handle the word wrap automatically without introducing new return... more
          • The software has to create its own wordwrap because - Puckdropper, Tue Apr 19 2022 5:00am
            the system doesn't. Usenet readers used to do that, and if someone set the wrapping to say 85 characters rather than the standard 80 it'd mess up the wrapping.
            • Makes sense on older stuff. - Erik_, Thu Apr 21 2022 12:56am
              Just interesting it didn't just keep track of where the line breaks were in the string while filling out the form and then remove the auto-generated ones on form submit. I guess that would be extra bloat and overhead though on browsers were every Kb is needed. Did the Usenet readers let text run... more
              • It depended on your reader - Puckdropper, Fri Apr 22 2022 6:05am
                Some would do exactly that. The one I use, Xnews, does it when I tell it to. You'd have to scroll horizontally to keep reading or if your reader was advanced enough make it rewrap the post. I miss those days where every kB was important. It seemed like it kept things much more focused.
                • Just checked out Xnews. Last update was 2005? - Erik_, Mon Apr 25 2022 1:24am
                  is that right? I guess that could make sense, not many Usenet things probably going on these days. One thing I hate with bandwidth being cheap is that everything is a YouTube video these days when it doesn't have to be. Looking up music transcriptions has become bad with this. I just want to see... more
                  • Wow, it was that long ago? - Puckdropper, Wed May 04 2022 5:30am
                    I think I've got the latest version? Man, I wish more software was like that! I sure don't miss making sure I'm running the latest version just so I dOn'T mIsS oUt On ThE lAtEsT fEaTuReS. (That I don't use anyway and think the software is better off without. I've only upgraded because it's internet... more
                    • Updates can be a double edged sword sometimes too... - Erik_, Mon May 09 2022 11:34am
                      My main computer is getting old.. or is old... I think it's like 7 years old now. Updates are good like you said for patching security things that are internet facing but not all applications need to be auto updated. For example, The IntelliJ IDE I use for Java on my laptop seems to get auto updated... more
                      • Sometimes it's time for a new thing - Puckdropper, Sat May 14 2022 4:31am
                        That's when you want to upgrade and update. I'm running Sketchup version 8 because Sketchup Make 2017 is not different in any important way. It seems to still have all the same problems and just takes more resources to use. I'd have upgraded if it really WAS an upgrade (it was free after all), but... more
                        • Some apps want to restart after the update.. the OS updates. - Erik_, Wed May 18 2022 5:35pm
                          seem to require a computer restart when the come. I tend to push them off for longer than IT would probably like due to me usually keeping 5 million things open and it being a pain to have to reopen everything after the update finishes. That's a good point about the text vs video. Usually, I'm just... more
                          • How hard would it be to do things like restart without - Puckdropper, Tue May 24 2022 4:27am
                            disrupting the user's environment? Sometimes I get my 4-5 apps open and a restart just kills things. It also destroys my short term memory of where things were and how they were. Sometimes I don't want to save *yet*, I'm trying something and don't want the clutter on my disk. (How many people have... more
                            • My Mac tries to reopen things as they were on reboot... - Erik_, Sat Jul 02 2022 12:42am
                              it never works right. It basically just reopens some of the apps that were open when the OS rebooted.
                              • Windows does some of that too now. - Puckdropper, Sat Jul 02 2022 5:11am
                                They're also trying to somehow preserve your documents if a reboot is necessary, kinda like tablets do.
                                • I have to say, I do like the autosave feature in a lot of pr - Erik_, Thu Jul 07 2022 1:16pm
                                  now. When using stuff like IntelliJ or VS Code, I don't even think anymore of having to manually save. I wonder how much disk IO that generates? Even if it's small, it must be a lot of writes. I feel like I haven't had an issue where even a word was missing. I'm not using spinning magnetic disks anymore... more
                                  • It's good on a case by case basis... - Puckdropper, Tue Jul 19 2022 3:22am
                                    Yahoo! Mail used to automatically save drafts, it was really handy. Groups IO automatically saves drafts, and it's just annoying. Both message sending websites and the same behavior works nice on one and terribly on the other. (I know, we're talking about programs but you get the point.) Code/Design... more
"Forces act when not restrained" - Puckdropper