Opera has released an alpha build of their upcoming 9.5 release. “Following the release of Opera 9 last year, we re-wrote Opera’s rendering engine for the coming Opera 9.5 release. As a result, Opera 9.5 contains more than a year’s worth of speed, standards and performance improvements.”
Opera 9.5 Alpha Released
90 Comments
2007-09-04 5:18 pm
2007-09-04 5:24 pm
2007-09-04 5:58 pm
2007-09-04 5:58 pm
2007-09-04 8:59 pm
2007-09-04 9:34 pm
2007-09-05 10:58 am
2007-09-05 11:30 am
Dave_K
Yeah, as I said, it’s a personal preference
And I know I am not one of the majority,
The way you put it, listing it as a problem and describing it as ‘a waste of space and time’, you made it sound like you considered it to be a fault; something badly designed in Opera that could and should be improved.
I’m not happy with the default Opera settings myself and heavily reconfigure it before use. The first thing I do is turn off the tab bar, set pages to cascade rather than maximise, and then use the Window Panel to manage open pages. However, I’d never consider listing this as an Opera flaw.
In fact I’d actually argue against my preferences being made the default. I know that most people would find my configuration unpleasant to use compared with conventional tabbed browsing. I’m just happy that I can easily configure it exactly how I want; something that isn’t true of any other browser I’ve tried.
Opera’s defaults can’t please everyone, so complaining that it doesn’t work exactly how you like out of the box seems unreasonable to me. Especially when your preference is very unusual and has some pretty serious issues and limitations.
but well…In my opinion the best option would be similar to Mac OS X: you’d get the menu bar in the panel. But oh well…
I don’t understand what you mean by this. Mac OS X provides a menubar at the top of the screen and that is used by every application. At least every application that complies with Apple’s user interface guidelines…
That’s arguably a better option than placing a menubar at the top of every window, but it doesn’t really function differently from the one in a Windows app. Especially in a tabbed/MDI app like Opera, where the menubar is shared between multiple documents.
Most Mac OS X applications, including Opera, also provide toolbars and panels; surely that’s the same duplication of functionality you were complaining about earlier? Unlike the Windows/Linux versions of Opera, I don’t believe you can turn off the menubar in the Mac OS version.
Perhaps if you explained exactly what you want from Opera’s UI, someone could suggest how to configure it to better meet your needs.
But I didn’t know you can hide the menubar in Opera. I haven’t browsed through the preferences, but since I haven’t seen that option in ANY app before I just assumed it wouldn’t be in Opera either.
Another option is to replace the menubar with a button on the toolbar that displays the menu when clicked. You can find ready made buttons to do that (and a lot of other things) here: http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#menu
All this does is just saddens me at how far behind IE is, and how the largest portion of users still suffer with it.
If Opera can show just how good a browser can be, it only shows up Microsoft’s complete incompetence and unwillingness in the browser space. If you’re using Windows, even if you’re not using IE, you’re still helping Microsoft keep that status quo.
Since the 8.x series, Opera has been the best browser in all areas (speed, features, security, etc…). Much faster and feature-rich than Firefox or IE for instance. I yet have to see what they could do to improve it!
But yet, Opera has lost the battle because of the ads. People got pissed off having to pay or to see ads. Many people have been mad at Opera since then even if it’s now free of charge and ad-free at the same time. Some ignorants also still think Opera is adware.
Opera Software understands that and now left the desktop and targets the mobile market.
Left the desktop? I think not.
Many people have been mad at Opera since then even if it’s now free of charge and ad-free at the same time. Some ignorants also still think Opera is adware.
There’s still the matter of Opera being proprietary software.
Firefox was not only able to build a stronger brand and a larger extention ecosystem, but embedded developers are using the Firefox codebase to build specialized web environments without paying for Opera. If that wasn’t enough to contend with, WebKit has enormous momentum behind it now that Apple and KDE are reunited.
That said, Opera 9.5 seems to be somewhere in between Firefox 3 and 4 in terms of core technology. It doesn’t have the offline application functionality of FF3 or the high-level scripting support slated for FF4, but the ECMAScript virtual machine is probably more comparable to the latter.
Opera is great technology. But a web platform certainly qualifies as a basic commodity these days, and that doesn’t bode well for a proprietary software vendor with a marketshare problem. You have to wonder whether Qt-style dual-licensing is inevitable for Opera.
>Opera is great technology. But a web platform certainly qualifies as a basic commodity these days
Depends: average web platforms such as Firefox are a commodity yes, but Opera is much better.
I really wonder how could Firefox spread so much even though unless you use extensions (which few do) it’s really inferior to Opera (sluggish).
My only grip with Opera is its UI which has some annoying warts that prevent it to be truly great: for exemple Opera can reflow a webpage so that it fits your window’s width which is really nice but you have to do it page per page, there’s no way to toggle a switch ‘fit width’ to have it permanently: a great feature spoiled by a poor UI choice (and that’s not the only one).
My only grip with Opera is its UI which has some annoying warts that prevent it to be truly great: for exemple Opera can reflow a webpage so that it fits your window’s width which is really nice but you have to do it page per page, there’s no way to toggle a switch ‘fit width’ to have it permanently: a great feature spoiled by a poor UI choice (and that’s not the only one).
Tools > Preferences > Web Pages > Check “Fit to Width”
Please do research first.
Thanks a lot!
Now, they only have to:
– allow unclosing a window (not possible yet I’ve looked).
– making possible than when you close a tab with the mouse it goes to the next tab on the right (as FF does, it’s customisable for the keyboard, but not for the mouse AFAIK)
– disable the scrolling when you click and miss a link (I’ve not really looked for this).
and I’d be happy with Opera’s UI.
– allow unclosing a window (not possible yet I’ve looked).
Yes it is.
– disable the scrolling when you click and miss a link (I’ve not really looked for this).
Not sure what you mean.
>>- allow unclosing a window (not possible yet I’ve looked).
>Yes it is.
Uh? It’s a feature that will be integrated in 9.5, currently with Opera you can undo the closure of a tab, not of a window.
>>- disable the scrolling when you click and miss a link (I’ve not really looked for this).
>Not sure what you mean.
When you middle-click on a webpage, the browser goes into an annoying ‘auto-scroll’ mode, that I don’t know how to disable permanently..
It’s a feature that is integrated in 9.5. This is a thread about 9.5, I can only assume you are talking about 9.5 unless you specify otherwise (you didn’t).
When you middle-click on a webpage, the browser goes into an annoying ‘auto-scroll’ mode, that I don’t know how to disable permanently..
You can disable that via your mouse settings in your OS, not via Opera.
>>When you middle-click on a webpage, the browser goes into an annoying ‘auto-scroll’ mode, that I don’t know how to disable permanently..
>You can disable that via your mouse settings in your OS, not via Opera.
Well I haven’t found this in the mouse settings and this doesn’t happen in Firefox, so I’m not convinced that this is an OS setting (on Windows).
If you know how to disable this on Windows could you tell me how (the smooth scrolling is already disabled yet the middle click scrolling still happen)?
I’ve googled for a solution, but without luck.
Thanks.
It’s not built-in, but there is a custom button to close a page and move to the next page to the right, instead of moving to the previous page.
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons
See Page & Window Control Buttons > Close Page & Switch to Next One, just drag it up to one of your toolbars.
You have a gripe. Get a grip.
>> I really wonder how could Firefox spread so much even though unless you use extensions (which few do) it’s really inferior to Opera (sluggish).
It also has proper marketing team on it, it’s almost like a virtual company that even makes profits! Opera could use the same too…
But none of those matter to the general user. Firefox got momentum because geeks of all stripe and by whatever means pushed it out to friends, and friends of friends, and so on.
But none of those matter to the general user.
Agreed. The average joe doesn’t know what open-source means. Heck, most people I know think Windows came free when they bought their computer. IE is also “free”, LOL.
Joe User:
Hold on, Joe… A brand new desktop version finally released after more than a year of active development means that Opera has now left the desktop?
Where’s the logic?
Hold on, Joe… A brand new desktop version finally released after more than a year of active development means that Opera has now left the desktop?
Where’s the logic?
Ask on the Opera forum. Opera Software ASA doesn’t count on the desktop anymore for the core of their profit. They are on the desktop just “to be present”, but they don’t count on money generated by desktop market.
@Joe User
This is complete baloney.
You produce one single quote which supports your point! In fact, the question has been asked, and the answer has been clear: You are wrong.
Opera Software has clearly stated that the desktop is a key product which they expect to make good money from.
Never has anyone at Opera stated that they are on the desktop “just to be present”. Never has anyone at Opera stated that they don’t count on money generated by the desktop market.
On the contrary.
More than a quarter of their revenue comes from the desktop product. In the second quarter of 2007, desktop revenue increased more than 160 per cent (compared to a growth of about 140 per cent the quarters before that).
You didn’t even answer the OP’s question about how a product that has been in active development for more than a year means that they have “left the desktop”.
Please stop making baseless claims and completely bogus statements.
Edited 2007-09-05 18:11
Be wary of installing this over existing installs and if you do, for pity’s sake back up your Opera Profile folder first.
However I’ve found it to be noticeable faster and the interface slicker.
And for me the (in particular in-URL bar) history searching is just fantastic.
The 64-bit support is pretty sweet, too. About time.
Everything else keeps getting better and better, but Epiphany doesn’t seem to improve at all whatsoever… I just tried Opera and it’s pretty sweet!
As someone who uses multiple windows, the ability to restore closed windows makes it an essential upgrade.
It was always too easy to accidentally close a window and lose all the pages that it contained. Unlike other browsers Opera didn’t have the option of displaying a warning when a window was closed. It’s nice to have a safety net to protect against that kind of mistake.
If I close a firefox window full of tabs, when I start firefox again it ask me if I which to restore my session or start a new one… Is that what you’re talking about?
Nah; Opera has had the ability since 8 I think to let you re-open TABs you closed.
With this they are letting you re-open Windows (full of TABS) you have closed while you are using Opera.
Say you have 3 windows open, one with News websites, one with tech sites, one with personal fluff and you accidentally close your News one, you can now get it to reopen it, including all the pages you had at the state they were at before.
Beforehand one you closed a *window* you could not retrieve that from another window.
If you close Opera by mistake, simply re-open it and all your tabs go back to the state they were in when you closed it.
This may be a setting you need to adjust (although I thought it was the default behavior), but the feature is still there.
I’m not talking about closing Opera completely.
If you only ever have one Opera window open then Opera’s session saving will restore the windows, but that doesn’t work when you have multiple windows open and just close one of them.
If you have more than one Opera window open, each displaying multiple pages, there’s no warning when you close one of those windows. Prior to Opera 9.5 there was no way to restore the lost pages if a window was closed accidentally.
This was my main complaint about previous versions of Opera, one of the few things that even IE did better, so it’s very nice to see it fixed.
I would have thought the marketing team would have taken advantage of the re-write Opera’s rendering engine and used it to launch version 10.
I think they will rue the missed maketing blitz….
Guess Opera isn’t as hype-happy as MS or Apple. Besides, they give away the desktop version now with no ads, so the only way marketing would help is in the mobile version.
While Opera is much faster and more efficient that Firefox (no having to re-download stuff you already have in cache if you save to disk, for instance), I have to admit I got used to FF’s interface quirks and extensions. Opera 10 vs. Firefox 3 should be an interesting match-up.
Merlin is the current 9.2x browser.
Kestrel is the 9.5 that has just been released in alpha (and as the basis of the OperaMini4 rendering and Wii Browser)
Peregrine is being worked on as the next version which will probably become v10 some time down the track.
Maybe they should have v10ed it but given they had publically said already that Peregrine was going to be the 10.x version they’d no doubt get hammered by some *yawn* types if they changed with with Kestrel.
according to a blog 9.5 is transitional on
the way to 10.0
If I remember correctly, starting with qt4 KDE style will be used for pure qt4 apps (please correct me if I’m wrong). So say hello to Kopera and sKype
.
If I remember correctly, starting with qt4 KDE style will be used for pure qt4 apps (please correct me if I’m wrong). So say hello to Kopera and sKype
.
Pure Qt apps can already use the same style as KDE apps within the same revision, ie Qt3 apps can use the same style as KDE3, so naturally one can expect Qt4 apps to be able to use the same style as KDE4. That would be nothing new.
Regardless, it is irrelevant as far as Opera is concerned, since Opera uses their own custom cross platform widgets. The only part of Linux Opera that can obey a Qt style is and will be the menu bar.
Your only hope for fitting in just right is with painstakingly made Opera skins like http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=3336 or http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=1717
Better get to hoping someone makes an Opera skin to match the Oxygen style.
Edited 2007-09-05 00:41
opera is an excellent brower. much more intelligently designed than firefox. tabbed browsing is flawless. only gripe i have is you cannot change background colors and text colors efficiently. i want to use my colors instead of page supplied but it messes up in opera. i tried through preferences and style sheets but not effective. Firefox works better in this area.
I love Opera but theres a few niggles I have with it:
1) fonts look ugly in Slackware 12. This may well be my set up, but every other app has nicely AAed fonts.
2) No Flash support. As much as I dislike flash, it would be nice to have the option to run flash plugins from time to time.
3) it’s a little bit too resource hungry.
I’ll give this update a try tonight though because, as i said before, i do love Opera.
Opera’s fonts have always been fine for me on Gentoo and Arch, so it must be something missing on Slackware or your particular setup.
Flash has always worked for me too, but not always perfectly. I used to be unable to play embedded flvs in Opera, but they work fine for the most part now. It’s still a little buggy with flash on multiple tabs.
I dunno about resources… In the past when I’ve compared it to Firefox it used a lot less, but I never really pay attention these days since it doesn’t seem to affect the rest of my system when I run Opera.
I suspected that may have been the case.
Flash 7 or 8 used to work, but I can’t seem to get Flash 9 to work. Maybe some tinkering will fix it. Not really had the time to properly investigate the issue.
This used to be the case for me too but FF2 seems much nippier on my system than Opera. Again, this might just be down to Opera’s defaults not being ideal for my system.
1) fonts look ugly in Slackware 12. This may well be my set up, but every other app has nicely AAed fonts.
For me they look just great on OpenSUSE.
2) No Flash support. As much as I dislike flash, it would be nice to have the option to run flash plugins from time to time.
Maybe check your path to Flash? How did you install it? From the package or from the Adobe web site? Works fine here also.
3) it’s a little bit too resource hungry.
Here it uses 13MB or RAM. Firefox uses 52MB.
On the Solaris static build its only consuming 6.5MB memory for two tabs (osnews.com and neowin.net).
I don’t know where the poster was getting off claiming it was bloated because both you and I demonstrate how slim Opera is compared to firefox.
No way 6.5Mb of ram, besides if you have plenty of ram it’s not a problem, even 52Mb for firefox is nothing and it gets freed anyway when closed.
You say no way, I say way:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v420/kaiwai/screenshot5.png
I have 2gigs of memory but it doesn’t give application writers a green light to allow their applications to let it ‘all hang out’.
Bullsh*t. All you’ve demonstrated is how slim Opera is on /YOUR/ system. Opera is more memory hungry than FireFox 2 on my slackware build. However, unlike you, I (“the poster”) was not paraiding my personal experience as fact – I was only pointing out a few niggles I had with an otherwise exceptional webbrowser.
Perhaps next time, instead of posting meanless self-benchmarked statistics, you could actually post something constructive to help streamline my install (like the other replies managed to in varing degrees)
Hey, firefox is hungrier here as well… about your comments relating ugly fonts, are you using static-qt or shared-qt build? If you use shared-qt, you will get nice fonts and I think that Opera will also be lighter, it will use slack’s qt lib.
Static i believe. I will investigate.
thank you mate
I find it interesting that you’re abusing me on the forum for the exact thing what you did. You posted here your experience based on your ‘meanless self-benchmarked statistics’.
I never made an attack on your personal itegrity, I jjust find it interesting how there can be such a large disparity between the reported memory usage that I and the previous posted reported and what you claim.
Also, just to add to my previous reply – Bloated was your words, not mine.
Next time show a little respect and read peoples posts properly before putting people down for them
You actually said:
If you didn’t want that interpretation mangle beyond what intended then you should have stated something to the effect, “I, however, do not mean that Opera is bloated, but I am surprised as to the amount of resources which Opera consumes ” – I assume you’re making the statement with no comparison to an existing browser.
To me, it sounds like you were complaining that Opera was bloated. If that wasn’t your intention then should you clearly state it in your post – that you’re not saying it is bloated, just that resource usage seems a higher than what one would expect.
Or perhaps maybe you just shouldn’t jump to conclusions?
I just find it highly irritating that usually i’m the one leading the advocating for Opera on this site yet the one time i post a couple slight annoyances i’ve recently come across, I get jumped on by yourself rather than given constrictive advice to improve my expeience
Edited 2007-09-05 09:31
Solutions!
1) Opera will not respect your qtconfig or Kcontrol font settings but can change the font face and size under Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Fonts. Also make sure you are using a “shared” QT version of Opera, not a static one (Slackware should be packaging the shared version).
Here is a screen shot of the new Opera 9.50a1 amd64 build on my Gentoo/Gnome desktop so you can see what can be achieved:
http://rs178gc2.rapidshare.com/files/53443019/opera950a1.png
2) Flash will work on Opera provided Opera can find the flash plug-in library, which is probably somewhere in /opt. You really should file a distro bug for this since it’s a packaging issue. You can also point Opera to the correct location in Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Content -> Plugin Options
3) …but a lot more snappy than Firefox!
Because you’re using a CRT?
No! TFT here.
So where is that quote from Opera saying that Opera has given up on the desktop market?
Still issues with applets:
http://lwjgl.org/applet – applet stalls downloading.
Wisth they would use the proper java plugin instead of their own.
I have an issue with your applet. Namely, it eats every resource imaginable framecounting three 3D rendered gears turning so your employer can tell whether their game engine is viable or not.
I’d also like to know why your game library needs special permissions.
BTW, the loading isn’t “stalling,” it’s an issue with your libraries needing individual permissions unlocked. Reload the page and you’ll see the thermometer move further then the browser asks a final time for permissions. Given that Opera is a codebase designed for both desktop and embedded applications, it’s understandable that it doesn’t hew to the one platform which requires plugins to access Java.
Edited 2007-09-06 16:26
Let’s hope Opera fixed the zoom rendering bug where fonts get screwed up.
Opera is a great little browser, but I’ve had problems with some sites. It’s stable and quick and I like the speed dial feature. I use it at work to avoid the buggy/dangerous/bloated mess that is IE. I’ll try 9.5 when it comes out and consider replacing Firefox at home, depending on how it performs.
Uhm, what zoom rendering bug?!? Opera flat out handles zooming of content BETTER than any other browser.
I installed the alpha version of Theora-playing Opera several months ago. Unless they’re going to include it in their upcoming beta release, I’ll wait.
>> I really wonder how could Firefox spread so much even though unless you use extensions (which few do) it’s really inferior to Opera (sluggish).
GPL compatible license ==> included in most distros
So what your saying is that, similar to IE, the popularity of Firefox is not due to technical excellence but to the fact that it’s bundled with just about every linux distro? Oh the irony!
All joking aside, Firefox is a simple, easy to use browser. It obtained “critical mass” while Opera was still an ad-supported browser and I think that’s the real reason it became so popular.
Personally, I prefer Opera (I even paid for it before it became free)for it’s speed, configurability, and its great features (gestures, ad-blocking, tabs, session saving, etc.). It’s exciting to see it moving forward.
Does anyone know if Opera’s RSS reader can take an OPML file and get all my RSS feeds?
File > Import > Feed List (It doesn’t get much simpler than that!)
Good call
And yet it still doesn’t support Flash/External.interface
See: http://www.warpdesign.fr/warp_css/test.html
>> I really wonder how could Firefox spread so much even though unless you use extensions (which few do) it’s really inferior to Opera (sluggish).
=> Google putting $50M every year in Mozilla, huge advertising campaigns in big newspapers,…
That’s just how it works
People criticized Microsoft for doing that, but Firefox isn’t different in any way.
That’s the only thing missing to Opera
I dont use opera for desktop, but the mobile version is just amazing, almost like surfing in a pc, I can even see you tube videos on my pocket pc.
People running Solaris might come accross a rendering bug:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v420/kaiwai/Screenshot.png
I’ve lodged a bug with OpenSolaris; the bug relates to Freetype, if you download and compile the latest version of Freetype and add LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the new freetype library, it will fix it up.
Firefox is indeed pretty fat these days…I sorely miss the days where it was meant to be lean and fast…bring phoenix back!
Hihi *giggle* I jus switched over to Opera from Epiphany, for several reasons: even though Opera uses Qt it loads up just as fast as Epiphany, it’s a whole lot smoother, it has got several features I simply LOVE (speed dial!), and it just seems to consume less resources, both RAM and CPU…Firefox doesn’t differ that much from Epiphany since they both use the same engine. The only wish I have is that Opera would blend more seamlessly in my existing GNOME environment. And well, I have a gripe against any apps using BOTH menubar and toolbar since they duplicate same functionality. But well, considering how much features Opera boasts it’s kind of understandable. I would appreciate anyway that apps would start choosing EITHER a menubar OR a toolbar, not both.
I don’t really understand this gripe. Toolbars and menubars are designed for different purposes, and as such don’t really duplicate the same functionality.
A menubar stores virtually every option in the application, categorised in a (hopefully) logical way to help the new user discover all those features. In most complex modern applications there can be dozens (or even hundreds) of menu options, far too many for a clutter free toolbar.
With the menu storing all those rarely used options, the toolbar can simply hold a handful of the most commonly used options. Options that you access so regularly that the extra time taken to open a menu would become significant.
Without a toolbar you’d lose that quick access, making the application slower to use. Without a menubar you’d have to clutter the toolbar with many rarely used options, again making it slower to access them.
To me it makes perfect sense to have both a menubar and a toolbar in the default GUI configuration. Of course if you don’t want one or the other (or either of them) then they can quickly be turned off. There are plenty of people who just browse with mouse gestures and contextual menus, especially people who like to browse full screen.
I kind of think that a simple “Advanced options” button would be a lot more funtional than including both. For example, “Reload” button DOES indeedn duplicate funcionality. Why not make the user select the most commonly used buttons on the first run and then make the less used ones useable under an another button? Yes, I might be one of the few, but I personally hate apps that duplicate functionality by including both menubar and toolbar. It’s a waste of space and time. Toolbar is a better choice in the sense that brains remember figures and images better than meanings of a series of figures (a series of characters, for example).
And yes, I still wish Epiphany would improve even just a LITTLE BIT, but there doesn’t seem to be happenin anything at all!
How would such an option work?
If it displayed the ‘advanced options’ as a list then it’s essentially just a menubar in a different form.
If it added a load of extra buttons to the existing toolbar, or added a massive new toolbar with those buttons, then (compared with pulling down a menu) it’s adding extra steps every time you need to access one of those options.
Rather than simply pulling down the menu and releasing the mouse button over the option you want, you’d have to click the advanced options button, find the particular button you’re looking for (not easy if you don’t recognise a rarely used icon), then click the advanced options button again to remove all those unwanted buttons afterwards.
It seems to add extra complexity and waste time, while reducing the discoverability of the UI, without really improving anything.
Only in a very superficial and unimportant way. Reload is a very commonly used option; placed on a simple toolbar it’s quick and easy to access. Hidden away in a menu, or placed on a cluttered toolbar, it would be a lot slower to use.
Many other options, for example browser configuration options that are rarely changed, would be nothing but clutter on most people’s toolbars. The menubar provides a place to store them for the rare times when they do need to be accessed.
Personally I don’t see the problem with duplicating functionality if it allows you to access that functionality more quickly.
Opera in particular has a lot of duplicated functionality; many options can be accessed using multiple different methods. Along with the the toolbars, menubar, keyboard shortcuts and contextual menus found in most apps, it also offers mouse gestures. All those methods can be used to access options like reloading a page.
Personally I think that extra choice is a good thing. Everyone is different and choice allows the user to find the method that’s right for them.
Forcing the user to make that kind of choice when they first run the application is a very bad idea.
A totally new user wouldn’t know what specific options they’d be using often, they may not even know what a lot of of the options were for. A new user could easily end up with a virtually unusable configuration that might put them off the browser.
You’re also ignoring how impatient people are to get started, I’ve seen plenty of people click through installation dialogs without reading them. Always selecting the default configuration, rather than looking at custom installation options.
Providing users with a default configuration that’s familiar (i.e. not to different from other apps), provides the most commonly used options, and is easy to configure after installation, seems like a better option. That’s basically what Opera provides now.
To me an overloaded toolbar that tries to contain every option would be a huge space and time waster. It’s not like the thin slice of screen space taken up by a menubar is that significant.
Based on my experience I think that you probably are one of very few people who are bothered by this. The combination of a toolbar and menubar has been a standard feature of most GUI apps for the last 15-20 years, yet I’ve never seen anyone else complain about this perceived ‘duplication of functionality’.
It’s certainly not something that should be changed as the default just because you have a personal issue with it. Especially when it’s so quick and easy to change and configure exactly how you like.
Is that still true when it’s overloaded with different options?
Bear in mind that with many applications you’re talking about 100s of options, all having to be displayed as recognisable buttons.
More often that not I cut down on the number of toolbar options from the default, just keeping those that I use all the time. I find that simple toolbar, combined with a menubar for less commonly used options, much more efficient than just one or the other.
Yeah, as I said, it’s a personal preference
And I know I am not one of the majority, but well…In my opinion the best option would be similar to Mac OS X: you’d get the menu bar in the panel. But oh well…
But I didn’t know you can hide the menubar in Opera. I haven’t browsed through the preferences, but since I haven’t seen that option in ANY app before I just assumed it wouldn’t be in Opera either.
“but since I haven’t seen that option in ANY app before I just assumed it wouldn’t be in Opera either”
Without meaning to sound too fawning, there are not many applications out there that are as configurable as Opera is.
I know that sounds trite, but in my experience it is true.
What keeps me with Firefox is the extensions, especially Adblock. Yes Firefox has it’s quirks, but being able to kill the obscene in your face ads is what keeps me with it 😉
Most people that I see complaining about Opera are linux users, and for good reasons – it is hard to get everything working with opera in the fragmented linux environment, and most people will answer ‘just use FF, it’s open-source and it’s better!’. It’s like IE on windows – distro maintainers only go for the majority of users, which means you need to navigate yourself to get some plugins working with opera. (if any arch users are reading this, the AUR has a opera-mplayer package which saves tons of time).
That being said, opera rocks. There are some features that firefox just doesn’t have (like keyworded search from the address bar – why move your mouse all the way to the side of the screen to search?), and others are mimicked by plugins that can’t match opera’s responsiveness (or integration, but that’s only nitpicky).
Please, however, no comparisons to FFFour, because that is more than slightly ridiculous. This launch puts Opera 9.5 in a more solid state than even Gran Paradiso at the moment, especially because the FF community (which the browser is worth almost nothing without) is still on FF2.
And if my favorite extension can no longer make toast, there will be hell to pay…
My main gripe about Opera is it’s interface – it doesn’t “blend in” at all on any platform. By this I mean that the widgets, icons and the file dialog look, feel and behave different than the platform’s native ones.
Firefox is a bit better in this regard (esp. in widgets), but nowhere near perfect and with version 2 it became worse (e.g. the look of tabs).
Now, please don’t tell me about skins. They’re not a solution to this problem (or problems). They’re actually the source of this problem (at least partly).
I know there are native browsers like Konqueror, Epiphany, Kmeleon and Camino, but these just don’t cut it. None of them have anywhere near the features and/or usability you get with Firefox or Opera.
As I’m mainly a KDE user, I have high hopes that Konqueror in KDE4 will be a truly great browser. Unfortunately it will still not have anything comparable to Firefox extensions (AFAIK).
Edited 2007-09-04 17:18 UTC
Actually, on Windows it does blend in – the default setup include a Windows Native skin that uses standard elements. I even used to use WindowBlinds to skin it!
Edited 2007-09-04 23:30
Actually, on Windows it does blend in – the default setup include a Windows Native skin that uses standard elements. I even used to use WindowBlinds to skin it!
Yeah, but don’t those widgets look like the ugly Windows 95 widgets even on Windows XP? So, you still have to skin it
Edited 2007-09-05 05:51
Actually, Opera and Firefox both integrate nicely in Windows. The problem is in Linux (obviously). Opera integrates nicely in KDE, and doesn’t in Gnome. Firefox integrates beautifully in Gnome but even with the gtk-qt-engine, it doesn’t look that well in KDE. The worst in Firefox on Linux are the widgets. “Submit” and “Radio” buttons are so jagged and ugly. There’s a fix, I have told the Firefox team about it a few years ago when I started with Linux, but as usual, the request has been discarted. Some one also found a fix:
http://osnovice.blogspot.com/2007/05/firefox-controls-are-ugly.html
Actually, Opera and Firefox both integrate nicely in Windows.
Yes, both do it better on Windows, although I’m looking for even better integration.
The problem is in Linux (obviously)
The problem is not in “Linux”. It *can’t* be actually. The real problem is that both browser’s main development/target platform is Windows.
Opera integrates nicely in KDE, and doesn’t in Gnome.
Maybe better, but not nicely because a) even during the install it complains that it’s keyboard shortcuts conflict with KDE’s, b) it is almost fully skinned –> doesn’t look like a KDE app and c) the file dialog is nothing like the native one. And more…
Firefox integrates beautifully in Gnome but even with the gtk-qt-engine, it doesn’t look that well in KDE.
Yes, it integrates better (than Opera) in Gnome but also better in KDE because a) well, IMO the gtk-qt works very well with the widgets, b) there are quite qood themes to get the KDE icons for Firefox and c) it’s possible to use the *native* KDE file dialog in Firefox. And more…
However, it’s rare that a distribution has done all these tweaks for you so it’s a PITA.
Here is a good howto for integrating Firefox in KDE:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Integrate_Firefox_with_KDE
The worst in Firefox on Linux are the widgets. “Submit” and “Radio” buttons are so jagged and ugly. There’s a fix, I have told the Firefox team about it a few years ago when I started with Linux, but as usual, the request has been discarted. Some one also found a fix:
Yes, this is a long standing bug in Firefox. Thanks for the link.
Here is a good howto for integrating Firefox in KDE: