• FT: Please tell us something about yourself and RamJam Consultants Ltd. What have you done before getting in touch with Opera Software?

• TC:I'm a software engineer with 17 years industrial experience. I've worked in a variety of positions, from programming to project management, mostly specialising in the development of compilers and related tools. A little over 5 years ago I established Ramjam Consultants in order to allow me to do more of the things I enjoy, and less of the administration that is necessary in the large companies I used to work for.

  I've been a keen Amiga user since the A500 was released in the UK. Until Commodore's collapse, I was a registered Amiga developer. I still use Amigas to run Ramjam - we have a ethernet network of 3 A3000s, and an A4000.

  When I needed parts to keep our A3000s running, I discovered that it was hard to find suppliers. I was so impressed at the AmiFAST 3000 ZIP-to-SIMM adapter that I decided that Ramjam should sell this in Europe. We also sell a few other items, but our main business is in software development.

  We started "adopting" good orphaned Amiga freeware a couple of years ago, and we support programs such as tcpdl - a program that can download web sites very quickly.

  When I saw Opera I immediately thought what a good Amiga application it would make, and I wanted Ramjam to do the port.

• FT:How did you get in touch with Opera Software?

• TC:Initially I just e-mailed them. Since then I've been to Oslo to talk face to face with them.

• FT: Will Opera Amiga have full functionality compared to the original Opera for Windows(e.g. Realaudio, Javascript, Java(in V4))?

• TC: Javascript certainly. We're aiming to have the functionality as close as possible to the W95 Opera, but there may be some licencing issues to be resolved for some things - these often take longer than the technical work.
  

  We'd very much like to port V4, but we have to get V3 done first!

• FT:Will you use MUI for the Opera GUI?

• TC:No. The choice of GUIs is something that divides the Amiga community. Not everybody likes MUI, and it is also a little resource hungry. We're basing the interface on gtlayout, with some custom extensions. It gives a good compromise between speed, size, and appearance.

• FT:There are already three fine browsers available for the Amiga. Do you think Opera has a real chance in the Amiga market?

• TC: I like the existing Amiga browsers, but they are weak in a couple of important areas
  1) stability - whan you run a business on your Amiga you can't afford to have it crash when you're browsing.
  2) yesterday's features - since the development teams are small (often 1 person working in their spare time) there is no way that the existing browsers can incorporate new features as fast as they arise.

• FT:Which features does Opera offer, which no other Amiga Browser has?

• TC:I think that the really important feature is the size of the development team. With a large team developing Opera, and a team of 4 working part time just to port it to the Amiga, new features should arrive on the Amiga much sooner.

  Of course, having Opera available on a number of different platforms will be an advantage too, especially for people that need to use other machines.

• FT: When will Opera Amiga be released?

  The official date is December - although the exact date will be determined by Opera Software. There will be updates on the Project Magic web pages whenever there is any news.

• FT: How much will Opera Amiga cost?

• TC:Again, that's up to Opera Software to decide, but I'd expect it to be around the same price as Opera currently sells for, i.e. $35.

• FT: Will there be a PPC version of Opera Amiga(e.g. for image decoding)?

• TC: We'd like that, but we'll have to see how development goes. Also, the PPC user base is still very small (around 4000 users) so we'd have to be careful about the effort we expend.

• FT: What is your opinion on the Amiga OS 4.0 developer machine? Is this an interesting perspective for you?

• TC: Absolutely. Although of course it is only a bridge to the even more exciting OS 5.0 machines!

• FT: What is your opinion on the future plans of Amiga Inc.? How do their plans influence your plans on future developments for the Amiga?

• TC:I must admit the announcement at WoA wasn't what I was expecting. However, I think that AI's plans are very exciting, and I don't think everyone has realised the impact that the new generation of Amigas could have in 18 months. We're now even more determined to increase the Amiga developments that we're involved in over the next year or two.

• FT:Thank you for answering our questions.

(Das Interview führte Mat Colton)