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from the I'm-NOT-going-to-click-it...YOU-click-it dept.
Emoji web addresses are now a thing (on Opera, anyway):
The humble browser address bar just got an emoji-forward glow up.
Opera announced Monday that it has fully integrated with Yat, an emoji-based identification system that involves people buying and selling emoji. The latest version of the Chromium-based browser now lets users enter emoji in place of standard domains in the web address bar.
If the string of emoji corresponds to an existing Yat, the browser will take users to the associated website. For example, instead of typing out the URL of digital asset management firm Arrington XRP Capital, an Opera user could, if so inclined, enter 🚀🌕 into their web address bar.
"All Opera browsers have, in partnership with @whatsyouryat, become the first and only web browsers to enable emoji-only based web addresses," wrote Opera. "Give it a try by visiting ⛓🕸👀!"
[...] Opera's desktop web browser essentially now integrates with Yat's API.
That people can even buy emoji in the first place might come as a surprise, but Yats aren't themselves new (and to be clear: Yat users are paying to have Yat, a Nashville-based private company, associate them with its emoji; and crucially not claiming the emoji as their own in any context that doesn't involve Yat or the Yat API). Emoji strings have sold from anywhere from a few dollars to, in rare cases, hundreds of thousands. And, since July of 2021, people have been able to use emoji in the web address bar of the mobile Opera Browser on Android and iOS.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday February 16 2022, @03:36AM (10 children)
I seem to recall a time when they were a really good, stable, and most of all performance oriented browser. They were a browser I used frequently and could look down on my less enlightened friends for not using. They had serious engineering built by serious people for serious people.
Now they're doing crazy emoji stuff and being "the crypto browser" with a built in wallet and stuff. and it seems like there's no bandwagon they won't hop on. Did the browser wars scar them so badly that this seems like good ideas? Is this the just the corpse twitching? Or do they really expect these kinds of things to raise them from the dead?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 16 2022, @04:01AM (6 children)
You've got to bear in mind that everything has changed, including the leadership, the developers, the office people, everything. You might want to look at Vivaldi. https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/01/vivaldi/ [infoq.com]
No, Vivaldi isn't a return to the old Opera, but they have brought some of Opera with them. The following article from 2015:
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday February 16 2022, @05:39AM (4 children)
Vivaldi is my backup browser, which I use when Pale Moon breaks. Pale Moon often breaks, especially with the various blockers I run with, and is also very slow but I still prefer its interface over Vivaldi. If Pale Moon continues to be slow and crunchy I may end up switching to Vivaldi full time. Fwiw I no longer user Firefox for anything and I have never used chrome or edge (or Opera for that matter).
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday February 16 2022, @09:33AM
That was my setup until last year, when Pale Moon's developers mimicked the old Firefox team by first blocking almost the entire existing extensions library (openly admitting it wasn't necessary, partly just a way to "motivate" people to port them), then responding to complaints by essentially saying "if you don't like it, feel free to leave; we don't need anyone who isn't contributing to the codebase anyway."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday February 16 2022, @09:40AM (1 child)
To be slightly clearer:
I used Netscape from its early days, switched to the earliest iteration of Firefox (Phoenix? Firebird?) when it came out, and stuck with that (aside from a few side trips to the original Opera browser) all the way until the Australis & extensions mess pushed me to Pale Moon. After Pale Moon's devs went down that road last year, I switched back to Firefox briefly until Mozilla killed off its RSS/Live Bookmarks functionality, then gave Vivaldi another try and ended up switching to it full time.
I now have Firefox installed just for troubleshooting when Vivaldi runs into issues of one sort or another. It's not perfect by a longshot, but it's more adequate than the alternatives for how I use my system these days.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday February 16 2022, @10:50PM
You and I seem to have followed a similar pathway: I too had noticed the change in extension policy at PM and yes, it's a factor in considering moving to Vivaldi. I'm deathly allergic to ads of any sort, so when my favoured adblocker stopped working for a while I had serious consternation. Thank you for your comments!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 17 2022, @02:29PM
Give LibreWolf a try. Firefox fork minus the Mozilla.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 16 2022, @07:15AM
I'll second Vivaldi. It takes an initial bit of getting used to, but it's solid, let's you tweak lots of stuff, and gets rid of most ads without additional plugins.
The main think missing, imho, is a universal "no autoplay" setting. But then, I don't know any browser than manages that - apparently HTML/5 videos are hard to stop.
Re emojis in domain names: I suppose it was inevitable, as soon as we allowed non-English characters in them. Mind, I live in a non-English-speaking country, and the need is real. However, with the characters that can masquarade as English characters, the trustworthiness of domain names was already down the toilet. Now we can click on poop icons, WCGW?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Wednesday February 16 2022, @04:45AM
Opera has been dead for years. Opera ceased being a browser company years ago and at present is some commercial trash like those “browser bars” that used to be all the rage. It’s Spamware all the way and needs to be avoided at all costs. Sad end to something that once had great potential.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 16 2022, @10:10AM (1 child)
They were, but they ended up having to abandon Presto and switch to Blink. A few years later, they sold to a Chinese private investment company. Now that they can't compete with the big browsers anymore, they have to compete with the niche market with stuff like this.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 16 2022, @10:30AM
That's 100% correct. Here's some more gimmicky stuff:
Opera Launches its Opera GX "Gaming Browser" for Smartphones [soylentnews.org]
Opera announces beta of its new Web3-focused ‘Crypto Browser’ [cointelegraph.com]
With Vivaldi being the spiritual successor to Opera (although still not using Presto), Opera should go further down this path of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]