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As is frequently the case, I would give credit to Opera. They didn't have a central list but the browser had an easy-to-use element blocker that was suitable

As is frequently the case, I would give credit to Opera. They didn't have a central list but the browser had an easy-to-use element blocker that was suitable for blocking many obnoxious ads of the era. The central list ideas I've seen come out of projects built on squid proxies with known-advertiser black holes. ABP may have packaged things up nicely, I dont remember that evolution of history. And they may have other good will now to balance out the "acceptable ads" monetization. But the tools to "fight back against abusive advertising" should be credited elsewhere, IMHO.

Fnoord 9y ago
Interestingly, Opera was proprietary with its own rendering engine (Presto) and you could buy a license or you could run it for free with an ad showing (back then, ads were more profitable as well). Bummer they never open sourced Presto. Maybe that inspired Brave. Though you can't "buy" Brave.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  There is also Vivaldi, funded by the same guy that formed co-founded Opera back in the day. https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/ Sadly it is not much more than a reskinned Chrome, same with current Opera and Brave. BTW, Opera offered "tabs" before it was a thing by making use of MDI. And it carried forward until they scrapped Presto. Similarly Vivaldi right now offers to split the viewport into multiple areas to show tabs side by side.
  - Ndymium 9y ago
    Vivaldi is much more than a reskin of Chrome though. It has customisable UI (with color themes), vertical tabs, tree style tabs, tiled tabs, tab stacks, mouse gestures, tab hibernation, session saving for later, reader mode (and a bunch of others) builtin, speed dial, custom history page, web panels (a docked website on the side of the browser). Haven't used Chrome in a while though so not sure if some of those have been added there. Cons are that it's slower (not that noticeable for me anymore since latest stable) and doesn't have sync (is coming in next version).
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      I call them reskins because they can't really affect anything beyond the UI. For example Google has implemented a more restrictive policy regarding Flash in recent Chrome releases, and it has found its way into said browsers basically unmodified.
      - Feniks 9y ago
        Yep. On paper we have a LOT of different browsers. In reality everything relies more or less on Chrome and Firefox.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    MDI was awesome, and split view was innovative. Especially once you mastered the shortcuts. You can compare it to splitting windows in Screen or Tmux. Nowadays, we're in a different world though. Multiple monitors is pretty much default for web development on PCs (not laptops/ultrabooks/tablets/smartphones though). Although newer Android versions also contain splitview.
- rasz 9y ago
  Someone did it for them and published last Opera 12.x snapshot https://blogs.opera.com/security/2017/01/legacy-opera-presto-source-code-appearance-online-sharing-sites/ https://blogs.opera.com/security/2017/01/legacy-opera-presto... there are people on Russian Opera fan forums still developing patches and improvements to that code base.

Fnoord 9y ago

Interestingly, Opera was proprietary with its own rendering engine (Presto) and you could buy a license or you could run it for free with an ad showing (back then, ads were more profitable as well). Bummer they never open sourced Presto. Maybe that inspired Brave. Though you can't "buy" Brave.

digi_owl 9y ago
There is also Vivaldi, funded by the same guy that formed co-founded Opera back in the day. https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/ Sadly it is not much more than a reskinned Chrome, same with current Opera and Brave. BTW, Opera offered "tabs" before it was a thing by making use of MDI. And it carried forward until they scrapped Presto. Similarly Vivaldi right now offers to split the viewport into multiple areas to show tabs side by side.
- Ndymium 9y ago
  Vivaldi is much more than a reskin of Chrome though. It has customisable UI (with color themes), vertical tabs, tree style tabs, tiled tabs, tab stacks, mouse gestures, tab hibernation, session saving for later, reader mode (and a bunch of others) builtin, speed dial, custom history page, web panels (a docked website on the side of the browser). Haven't used Chrome in a while though so not sure if some of those have been added there. Cons are that it's slower (not that noticeable for me anymore since latest stable) and doesn't have sync (is coming in next version).
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    I call them reskins because they can't really affect anything beyond the UI. For example Google has implemented a more restrictive policy regarding Flash in recent Chrome releases, and it has found its way into said browsers basically unmodified.
    - Feniks 9y ago
      Yep. On paper we have a LOT of different browsers. In reality everything relies more or less on Chrome and Firefox.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  MDI was awesome, and split view was innovative. Especially once you mastered the shortcuts. You can compare it to splitting windows in Screen or Tmux. Nowadays, we're in a different world though. Multiple monitors is pretty much default for web development on PCs (not laptops/ultrabooks/tablets/smartphones though). Although newer Android versions also contain splitview.
rasz 9y ago
Someone did it for them and published last Opera 12.x snapshot https://blogs.opera.com/security/2017/01/legacy-opera-presto-source-code-appearance-online-sharing-sites/ https://blogs.opera.com/security/2017/01/legacy-opera-presto... there are people on Russian Opera fan forums still developing patches and improvements to that code base.