2005 September | When minds collide

Opera -also known as the worse drunk idea since Lynx-, is now free, meaning you no longer have to see the banners ads in the browser or pay for it, while you smash your head against your monitor in mental agony.

As to WHY they are no longer showing banner ads or asking money for their software, Opera.com had this to say:

Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.

Translation:

Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee because so many idiots were using it, our customer support center was being flooded with complaints about how crappy our software is, it would simply have been immoral to ask money for software this bad. We don’t offer support for the free version anymore, but “premium” support is available if you’re foolish enough to pay for it.

What does this mean for developers and publishers?

There will be more misguided users out there, running around with Opera.
Web developers and authors will have to do more to educate users to use browsers that actually work.
For corporate publishers in some cases, this could mean redesigning or adjusting their websites to also accommodate Opera users next to Mozilla, Firefox and IE users.
For bloggers and personal website publishers (like I) in some cases, this could mean war.

How to tell an Opera user to get a real browser:

If you’re using Apache Web Server
- If you have access to your .htaccess file, open it and add the following somewhere at the top.
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Opera.*$ RewriteRule ^/* http://errors.0xtc.com/message_for_opera.html [R,L]Write a nice message in “message_for_opera.html”, upload and you’re done.

If you’re using Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
- Shame on you! Put your head down in shame and walk into the server room, close the door behind you, look at your web server and scream in rage over your poor judgement!