Opera Neon, released in January, is an experimental browser that envisions the future of web browsers, similar to the way concept cars predict the future of automobiles. One of its novelties is the ability to seamlessly hop between discovering new content and chatting with friends, or even share online discoveries while browsing.
Inspired by Neon, we decided to bring those seamless transitions between chat and discoveries to the Opera browser. The result is Opera Reborn, complete with integrated popular messengers so you can keep chatting with friends without skipping a beat.
It’s great to see Opera back to making interesting browsers, even if the features specified aren’t exactly my thing.
Thom Holwerda,
You know I’m all for Opera trying out innovative features, but honestly I’m not seeing very much to be impressed with in this release. Changing the color theme: meh. Having a chat window and browser window at the same time: been doing that already for two decades.
There’s nothing wrong with small changes, but nothing here is deserving of the title “Opera is Reborn”. It should be “Opera is still clawing away”, but I jest
Edited 2017-05-10 13:52 UTC
You picked the features out of the summary rather than looking into it a bit more. There’s things like animations built into the browser, the minimalist style etc. You should take a closer look.
Also I think it’s fair to say the “Opera is Reborn” was Thom making a play on the name of this release (Opera Reborn) rather than an emphatic statement. I’m no stranger to criticizing Thom but your criticisms here were shallow at best. All he said was that it was interesting, which it should be to most readers of OSNews.
charlieg,
“Opera is Reborn” came from the article itself. Anyways I wasn’t really trying to be critical of Thom, in fact I suspect that Thom and I are probably in agreement in this case: I like that Opera tries new things, I just think they missed the mark this time.
Edit: Maybe you took offense to my tongue in cheek comment that “Opera is still clawing away”, I tried to be clear it was a joke, haha. Sorry, it’s just my dark sense of humor.
Edited 2017-05-10 15:57 UTC
Emphasis mine.
Link: http://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2017/05/opera-is-reborn/
Edited 2017-05-11 00:13 UTC
charlieg,
…You do realize Thom did take “Opera is Reborn” from the article, just like I said?
Oh forget it, why do we even get into these mundane tiffs? Haha.
Is it just me or did the osnews discussion threads used to be more thoughtful? I miss that.
Opera still trying to be relevant? That’s cute. They should call this release the ‘We Hate Introverts’ edition.
They openly made fun of desktop Linux users, shed all of their assets and employees, and now taunt a new theme/icon pack and messenger integration (also known as needless attack vector) as a reborn browser.
Desktop Linux’s 3% market share is probably an order of magnitude larger than Opera browser’s market share now.
Their best asset post-Presto was FastMail. They threatened to sell that to Facebook until the FastMail employees decided it was enough and bought it all back from Opera.
Opera post-Presto is Nokia post-Symbian.
Let them die.
Opera has lost it’s way. It no longer focuses on power users, instead, it’s aimed at mobile users switching back to a desktop.
Vivaldi (founded by the original people behind Opera) are once again focusing on that non-mass-market power user group.
Also, opera has built in VPN sending all your traffic via their parent company’s servers in China. Personally, I am unwilling to entrust my traffic to a state that manipulates internet traffic and freedom of information.
This is misleading! The free VPN offered in Opera browser is based on the Canadian VPN company ‘SurfEasy’ it acquired in 2015. VPN servers are located in Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore & US.
Pls do not mislead others with sentiments originated from your own delusion.
Chinese private investor != Chinese government.
Use Opera’s SurfEasy and run one of the DNS leak tests freely available.
All the traffic goes via Chinese DNS servers by default.
Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I Limited Partnership is partially owned by the Chinese state. Those who control the money control the puppet (and all that)
Web browsers should focus on being web browsers. I have no idea why devs and companies seem to think that a web browser should be an operating system inside an operating system.
I wish e.g. all these chat services were brought to life as an integrated desktop chat application – whether it actually ran on a browser engine or not.
The web browser itself should also integrate better with the rest of the desktop and not try to reverse the process by integrating a desktop inside the browser.
I used to really like opera prior to the Blink reboot. Now, it only supports the big 3 operating systems. Not too exciting. Can’t run it on half my computers anymore.
“Opera is Reborn?”
Neon is just a wrapper around Chromium
I installed Opera Neon soon after it was released. Since then, I have used IE, Chrome, and Neon for various web tasks.
I have come to enjoy the bouncing balls and minimalist user interface of Neon. It has been quite refreshing. I can easily envision being quite comfortable as an user with it on a system with a touch screen.
I may give a try to this Opera Reborn release. I do not find it very appetizing because its main window looks too much like Windows 8.x/10.
I hope that there will be a second, if not a third, iteration of the Neon concept.
Why are they still trying? I thought they made it clear they no longer care about or even want to be in browser business when they switched to Chromium. Now they are back-tracking and again want to be relevant as a browser? Make up your mind…
Real Opera-reborn is Vivaldi, not Opera-Chromium.
https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/05/opera-rebor…
I’m somewhat of a ecurrency junkie, but still I think the Brave browser is really innovative in how it rewards content creators while protecting user privacy.
There are still some kinks with embedded Twitter videos and sharing screens in google hangouts but generally it’s been great for me so far. Well worth checking out I think.
Interesting seeing what Opera are up to 5 years or so after dumping their browser. It really couldn’t have moved much further from the highly customisable and feature rich ‘power user’ browser it once was.
Opera had its faults and flaws, but there’s still nothing quite like pre-Chromified Opera. I used Opera from version 2 until the death of Presto and I still miss classic Opera’s unique combination of features and flexibility. Switching from Opera to Firefox is probably the most uncomfortable software transition I’ve experienced, more so than switching office suite or OS.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a niche for this ‘rebirth’ of Opera, but it certainly isn’t a browser that appeals to me.
Anytime I read an article about Opera, I always read how everyone hates or stopped using Opera when they moved from Presto to Chromium. The one good I have seen out of that situation is how Opera is compatible with websites at the same level Chrome is, and Chrome is the most popular browser. So if a page doesn’t display correctly in Opera, it probably is not working correct in Chrome either. In addition they can use all the extensions from Chrome. Presto cornered them into supporting a browser engine and having to stay competitive in speed and standards, and any deviation from that and some websites might not display the same way. Most websites will check compatibility against the most popular browsers.
So by them using Chromium they get a compatible engine with Chrome, plus all the benefits being added into Chromium. That allows them to focus more on the upper level GUI and add their own set of nice features such as built in AdBlocker, built in VPN, pop-out video, built in currency conversion, built in integration with the web chats, etc.. What would be nice over time would be if they re-introduced the higher level GUI features that the Opera Presto had, into the Opera Chromium. If it was on GUI feature parity with the old Opera, then arguing over it being Presto vs Chromium would be trivial. So I have come to see the move as a good thing over time, even though I was a hater at first. I use Opera Chromium and enjoy using it more then Chrome, so I can’t complain.
My past browser was Firefox, but since their future path meant breaking a lot of the plug-ins I used, I figured it was time to look at a new path, and Opera provides the best overall experience for my personal use since I get Chrome compatibility (engine and plug-ins) with extra built in features (Adblock and VPN), and even seems more stable (I would get weird issues with Chrome that I don’t get with Opera). In addition it is nice I can install Opera on my mobile devices, and still keep everything in sync. So I am very happy with the current Opera direction.
Except after move to Chromium Opera became just another Chrome clone with nothing special to show for itself. Old Opera was awesome browser precisely because it had all these loads of features, clients and neat tools well integrated into it, and after moving to Chromium they dropped most of it… And now are trying to re-implement some of those from scratch. GUI also became piece of shit after moving to Chormium — all bloated and wasted space everywhere.
Edited 2017-05-15 08:15 UTC