Submitted by Opera have announced the general availability of Opera 10 beta. Opera 10 includes an improved rendering engine Presto v2.2. The beta adds a new default skin and a couple of new features, notably “Turbo”, a proxy compressor for dial-up users, and tab previews. The result? Complete fail. Read More for why and a quick screenshot tour. addendum: As an apology to the community for the reckless and inadequate review I will be doing it again, properly, taking into consideration your fine comments.
Opera have always been the underdogs. Even when Firefox was the underdog. Often they have been first with new features, long before the competition, yet have always been far, far behind everybody in marketshare. Even with a massively healthier browser market, they have barely grown compared to competitors like Safari and Google Chrome. So it should be hoped therefore that Opera 10 will finally bring them the attention they deserve?
Theme
On initially launching Opera 10 beta you are greeted by the new skin, designed by well renowned British designer Jon Hicks (who also designed the Firefox logo). Jon was hired by Opera in October last year to look at the UI of Opera (something he himself has lamented about before).
I was genuinely happy about this move by Opera. “Finallyâ€, I thought, a serious design guy to iron out just how non-native Opera has always looked on every problem. And then I saw this: (click to make large)
Words cannot describe how ugly this is on OS X. The purple colour (a colour option picked up from an earlier version) clashes with the grey of any other window, that can be changed though. The black is overbearing and doesn’t meld with the title bar. The whole thing stands out like a sore thumb. I somehow feel like the chrome looks like a webpage, rather than something for browsing web pages.
Even though this is beta software, and improvements are said to come, I cannot believe someone who created the Firefox icon could create something so hideous and inappropriate, especially when Opera’s marketshare is bad enough already. I could not bear to look at this all day, every day, it would drive me mad.
A browser should be transparent, a thin veneer between me and the web page. Not a clown honking his horn in my face.
I went into preferences and changed to the Mac “native” theme and no particular colour:
Mildly improved, but still the black is overpowering, the new-tab button is the wrong colour, and the side pane has a tinge of blue that doesn’t work well with the OS X grey. The tab touching the title bar also just looks poor and conflicting.
Tab Preview
The tab strip has a gripper in the middle at the bottom, that you can tug (or double-click) to expand the height of the tabs and turn them into previews:
Useful if you have a hundred tabs open and need to find something. Though not something I could see myself using regularly, as the loss of vertical space in the viewport only hampers what I want the browser for—browsing. In this instance tab-previews are given when hovering over the standard tabs.
Turbo
Opera 10 also includes a “Turbo†feature that enables a proxy compressor. All your page requests go through Opera’s computers and compressed the images in websites to make them smaller, and provide faster load times when using a dial-up or otherwise slow connection. 3G operators tend to do this already on their networks.
I can see such a feature actually being very useful when connected via limited public wifi, and the large number of Americans stuck with inadequate access (I actually know someone who can only get 21.1 K dial-up).
There are drawbacks. Privacy, for one, but I also found the compression to be a bit-extreme, even worse than I’ve experienced on 3G. Background PNGs in websites turn into massive 8-bit looking blocky images and JPGs leave much to be desired.
(The BBC site displays an advert, because the proxy is located in the USA)
Conclusion
My personal opinion? Fail. There is nothing here that says this is an all new Opera doing all new things. This is the same terrible interface design they’ve had since 2006. It’s goudy, non-native, clashes with the websites you view, and generally gets in the way. Maybe it’s improving a little, but the toolkit underneath still rears it’s ugly head in how the app works, and the general layout of the widgets. The dialogues throughout the app crap all over the spacing guides in the HIG. Every inch of this app is annoying and grates on me. I’m not an interface elitist, but I can’t use software that gets on my nerves and Opera and Vista occupy the top two slots for that.
The browser is eclectic, with too many preferences, too complicated preferences, too many customisation options. Features not everybody needs, or wants.
Version 10 finally includes a built in update feature that doesn’t require you to download and re-install the whole app. But then how many people are they going to get on v10 if Opera users are already the furthest behind any other vendor for browser updates. Opera might have a job on their hands getting everybody onto v10 so that users can get up to date easily in the future.
Unless Opera rethink their logo, their marketing, their UX and UI (being worked on, finally) then nothing is going to fundamentally change with Opera popularity. It’s good for the people who can get on with it, but it has no oomph or brand-strength like Firefox.
Really, it’s sad. Opera has some serious engineering talent, but I just don’t think this is being communicated in a way that matters to end users.
The turbo mode is probably the same as in opera mini. Same servers/code.
No. Opera Mini is rendered on Opera Servers, then transited the whole page compressed to the mobile phone – thus not only improving downloading speed\bandwidth as to speed up the webpage.
Opera Turbo compresses the text and sends it to your PC, and it also heavily compresses the images on the pages. Text usually appears right after you click a link. Javascript flows normally as if you open with Turbo off.
It needs some polish but I liked it. By default I was presented with the mac look and not the blue one. Also it shows some preview if I get the mouse over the tabs…
Ah, yes you are right, the preview does show. I will correct the article.
I wonder if you’ve read the comments down the page. People are very disappointed by your review. I’m too, I was expecting much enthusiasm about the release.
I too like it. I think it actually looks pretty nice. Just because Kroc doesn’t like it he shouldn’t instantly call it a “fail”, there’s people who have totally different tastes than he does.
I think it looks great. It seems to integrate quite well in OS X. So what if it’s a little purple and black? Will the mighty Apple gods be pissed because Opera didn’t follow their precious HIG by the letter?
Same here! I love it! It looks great on Vista (I don’t like OS X). If Opera were to copy Firefox removing options, and changing the interface, I wonder what browser I would use…Seamonkey maybe…Can’t think about it!
I have to agree with you. I don’t mind it at all. The last thing I’d want is a massively colourful and bright skin.
This however is all about taste and personal opinion and shouldn’t fail a browser, particularly when it’s merely a skin…
Maybe they should have asked the guy, who apparently did a very good job with the firefox logo, to redesign the butt ugly opera logo while at it…
EDIT: download links (packages for ubuntu etc prepared); http://www.opera.com/browser/download/?ver=10.00b1
Edited 2009-06-03 21:47 UTC
Seems like the author is more worried about looks vs fuctionality. So it doesn’t perfect with MacOSX. Who gives a hoot!!. It doesn’t look perfect with Ubuntu orange either, but you don’t hear Linux users whining. I care more about functionality rather than looks!.
The problem is that you can’t separate functionality from looks. A program that looks awful will affect its usability and hence its functionality. A program’s appearance has an influence on whether the user thinks it feels natural.
I never used the Opera default skin, I always switch to “Windows Native” and guess what, suddenly it looked like an ordinary application.
I haven’t used the previous versions, but the Windows Native theme on Opera 10 beta looks positively horrid. The default theme is several order of magnitudes better.
I have actually been quite impressed by the Beta and will continue to use it, as my main browser, at least for now.
That’s a claim that may or may not be true, and neither you nor the reviewer back it up in any way. Sorry, I won’t take the claim as truth based only on the authority of a random douchebag on the internet.
You’re confusing terms there.
Looks have little to no impact on functionality. Particularly when the looks in question is just a skin that’s easily (like 3 button clicks in Opera’s case) to change.
Looks DO have an impact on emotion and this can have an impact on whether a user finds the application natural. But this is an emotional response rather than a rational based on how well the application performs / how functional it is.
I call BS – usability and aesthetics are related, but not interdependent. Usability does not depend on aesthetics.
Take Forte Agent, for example – despite having one of the ugliest GUIs in existence (with earlier versions, at least), it’s also widely considered to be one of the most usable and robust NNTP clients around.
Most people who know me know I am a pretty simple man to keep satisified; and it pains me to complain about something that is a fairly basic product that fails to meet what I want, which is namely:
1) I want each tab process isolated – and heck, go one better and have each plugin process isolated as well so that when Flash crashes (which is almost the source of all browser crashes) I don’t end up with the whole thing collapsing in a giant screaming heap.
2) Dictionaries; I’ve never actually seen their dictionaries work properly; be it on Mac, Linux, Solaris or Windows; I want it to work out of the box without any problems.
3) Ugly default font settings on *NIX; is it really so hard to avoid using the ugliest fonts on the system? I’m not asking for much, just some common sense.
4) Website incompatibility; the whole Google-verse is incompatible; not wholesale ‘does not work’ but things here and there which don’t work or when they do work it is very buggy. There are many other websites out there that flat out do not work – whether it is mine or their fault, I don’t care. If I can’t use that website with your browser – I’m screwed, especially if it is a university related website.
5) Get rid of all the needless crap from it; I don’t want a torrent downloader, an email client, IRC client or a extension that aligns my chakras. I just want a browser – ditch the rest and give me just that, a browser with what was mentioned in point (1).
6) A buggy bloated poorly written javascript should not at any time bring down a whole browser; I have seen it occur so many times that it has put me off using Opera.
I am not an opensource freak, a Google fanboy or a Microsoft zealot; all I am asking for is a browser than does what it is supposed to do with minimum fuss and bother. I hardly think my expectations are over the top.
Edited 2009-06-03 21:47 UTC
It’s being worked on.
It works fine in Opera 10. The English dictionary is installed by default and you can install additional ones. Just right-click a text area to change the language.
I yet have to see an incompatibility with Google web sites. It’s thoroughly tested.
If you call M2 “crap”, then you have not bothered trying it. This is my only explanation. If you don’t want all that “crap”, you’re probably better off with browsers like Chrome, Firefox or IE.
If you call M2 “crap”, then you have not bothered trying it. This is my only explanation. If you don’t want all that “crap”, you’re probably better off with browsers like Chrome, Firefox or IE.
I don’t want any torrent downloaders or e-mail clients into my browser either. Those are a lot better off as separate apps.
Good, so they’ve finally fixed it – it doesn’t require hoop jumping to get it to recognise the aspell libraries installed. Praise the lord!
How about using more than google.com – try using Blogger’s own rich text blog entry tool.
Mate, I don’t want it – get rid of it. Yet another paragraph from a mouth frothing fanboy whose implicit message is actually, “it is you with the problem kaiwai”.
Edited 2009-06-04 08:03 UTC
But it actually is your problem. I use Opera since 1999 and just don’t notice this mail client. It’s buried somewhere in menu or something, I don’t really care. It doesn’t interfere with browsing in any way.
And since the browser distribution size is smaller than other competing browser, how can it be an issue?
Spot on.
There’s been about 4 occations in as many years when I’ve used the torrent utility and I’ve never used OperaMail neither.
Yet opera still loads just as quick as other browsers, just as stable (in fact more so in some cases) and has more features available, should you need them.
It’s a win-win situation imo.
All this “but I don’t want x or y” sounds like moaning for the sake of moaning.
If teh inclusion of a non-required feature really grinds your gears that much, then use a more basic browser. However I’d bet, given time, those browsers will end up integrating said features anyway (we’ve already seen this with countless features Opera have pioneered)
You are really one f–king biased fanboy, nobody forces you to use the M2 features, you can even disable them. An idiot like you is yet to be seen.
Wow. Ok so you wrote your comment criticising Opera, specifically mentioning something you dislike and then reveal by this that you haven’t actually LOOKED AT THIS NEW VERSION so your comment is entirely irrelevant.
Hah, you have quite a cheek to call someone that when you did what you did.
Opera’s memory and disk space footprint are minimal. If you don’t want some hidden features, just ignore them. You actually have to search to find the email client. So I don’t see where the problem lies…
if all you want is a basic browser try dillo or k-meleon they are JUST A BROWSER.
the fact that operas installer is SMALLER then that of FIREFOX or SAFARI or CHROME or IE8 despite all the extra features should tell you something
example
Opera10beta:6.58MB
FireFox 3.5b4:7.62MB
Google Chrome 3.0.182.3 Beta: 9.87MB
Safari 4: 25.5mb(no quicktime)
smallest installer, most features, easiest to tweak and customize, to me thats ALL WIN!!!
this review was/is a JOKE, clearly done by a die hard and lifelong mac user, they are the only ones I hear complaining about everything being overly complicated and customizable Krok needs a fisher price browser thats got like 3 buttons all the size of a quarter :/
Lot of people use that supposedly needless crap. I like the opera mail client much better than other mail clients. And I don’t have to use two different apps for mailing & browsing. If you don’t want to use it, its not in your way when browsing. I don’t understand the problem here.
I like that they have moved away from the look the introduced in later version of Opera 9. I am a huge fan of the Opera clasic look of 8 and below, so the new look is good, but i am still glad you can switch back to the clasic skin.
Over all I have always been impressed with Opera, version 10 is no exception. Looking forward to the final release.
I personally use Opera as my main browser. I do this for various reasons:
1) Mouse gestures – there is no way that I can get by without these. I know you can get them as an extention on firefox but thats just one more plugin to slow down my browser. Native is always better
2) Speed dial – I just love having all of the sites at one click when I open a new tab. You can also press ctrl + a number to go instantly to that site on the current tsb, or add a shift in there to make it open in a new tab
3) It has everything i want built in – no messing around with plugins or anything like that just to get the bare essentials. I don’t use the mail app, rss reader or chat bits but they do no harm if they aren’t used and stay pretty much hidden if you dont want to use them
Overall I just like opera more than any other browser.
Oh and just so you know – they may have a tiny marketshare on the desktop but they are growing. What you need to take into account is the fact that the number of people using the web is increasing, so if you hold a steady marketshare you’re actually gaining users. This is why IE is loosing marketshare but actually continuing to get more users every month.
I’ve used Opera since ~ 2000, for the same reasons you’ve said. The mouse gestures are fantastic and much smoother than Firefox’s. Once you use them, you can never stop.
A couple other things I love which I haven’t seen in other browsers:
– I can default all images to off to save bandwidth, and then individualize tabs to have images on or off.
– Can set a default Zoom percentage, say 120%, and then adjust a single tab to 200%. Then by middle-clicking any links on that 200% tab so other tabs open, they get that 200% – the zoom factor carries over. Firefox is annoying in that it doesn’t do that. I’m not sure about IE.
– “Fit Page To Width” – this is a godsend on my small laptop. I default this to true, and all pages fit within the screen no matter how high I zoom up – 200%, 250%, the entire page reformats to fit the screen. This has saved me endless horizontal scrolling. It’s also helped in designing websites, to check that the CSS flows correctly.
I’d hate to see Opera stop making their browser. It’s been saving my eyesight and sanity for nearly a decade.
I’ve used Opera on & off since 1997. Version 3 was better than netscape 2 that was on the lab computers, but also didn’t require it to actually be installed.
I for one, seeing this is a news related to OS and software\hardware in general would expect something more insightful and technical other than remarks mostly about the beta UI and popularity. The UI has just be released a week ago, and it hasn’t taken in consideration yet all the feedback it already received. I hope it changes, and I’m sure it will.
Visual Tabs. Not extraordinary, but something that Fx could also use to improve their tab support?
There’s the quick remark on Turbo feature. Yes imagines are highly compressed, but you don’t really need them to skim for news while your network is under intense use – or you’re just on a limited connection. Notice that 3x next to the Turbo icon. That means that the page loaded roughly 3 times faster than it would without Turbo.
Finally, the quick conclusion is based on the UI, with good-old comments on the power of customization, over-featured and probably too complicated.
Actually, it’s sad that you can miss out important things like Crash logging, ready to use Inline spelling checker, Acid 3 pixel perfect match, improved performance on the new engine while more standard compliant, Mail CSS/HTML rendering… And I’m just copying this from their forum page, there is plenty more.
Also, concluding that Auto-Update is too late because users don’t update anymore is laughable. Sorry to sound so rude, but I can understand a user not updating from 9.63 to 9.64 few weeks after just having updated to 9.63. But everyone will download version then once they know its out. Because even tho it doesn’t self-update, it still alerts users there’s an update available.
I too agree that UI needs work, and that Visual Tabs won’t be a life-saver. Yet you focused on the superficial things, and kept the same speech you probably say every time – that Opera has too many preferences, too many features, etc etc.
Thank god. I read this article thinking exactly what you’ve expressed and then I nervously clicked the link to the comments wondering whether or not OSnews had turned into a place where something like this could go under the radar. Thank you for preventing that from being a reality.
Put simply, this article was written by a child, not a computer scientist. When did computers stop being productive tools that aid society and start becoming fashion accessories?
It’s no coincidence that the author uses a Mac.
Looks like I trolled. I’ve had a very hard week and rushed that too quickly. All the commentators here have helped me learn a lesson, I’m using the wrong perspective.
At least the negative article brought out all the best reasons to support Opera.
I will try gather those up and write a better review.
I can accept a negative review on any product I like\use, just as long as its detailed and analyzes the important and newest aspects of it.
I appreciate you’re going to rewrite this, and you can keep your opinion as far as I’m concern, but as long as you do a more insightful review. As telling someone is wrong isn’t a bad thing after all, but rather elevating that person to a new level of understanding. I deem harsh reviews will make a product better.
Oh, and you should also read this: http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2009/06/03/about-the-new-skin.
Does the text-to-speech stop working when you go from one web page to another? They broke this with the release of v9.5 and AFAIK, they still haven’t fixed it.
the writer seem to have a personal deep dislike against the browser( or the company or somebody who works there) and should not be in a position to review it if this can be called a review.
grade for the reviewer: F-
I really don’t understand why everyone has to be a dick when talking about others software.. Osnews sometimes is very disappointing
This is what I thought too! It’s not an objective review, it’s a strong gripe with personal tastes. It seems that whatever release, the author will always be harsh just because the browser isn’t the way he likes.
I have to totally agree.
I don’t use Opera, I’ve tried other versions for the Mac and always gone back to Safari / Firefox. This is the first Opera that I have actually liked. I think the l&f of this is brilliant, could be better, but then, so could just about anything else. I don’t think the black background behind the tabs is distracting at all… Sure, it’s not perfectly “native”, but that could be argued for Safari 4 beta too…
I’m not saying this is enough to get me away from Safari 4’s beta, but it certainly didn’t make the case for Opera any worse…
I just don’t quite comprehend how Kroc could say “Word’s cannot describe how ugly this is”.
I’ve used opera for a while and have liked it since 8.x days and right up through now. I think if you’re not into all the extra functionality then you shouldn’t use the browser, but I’ve made it work for me in the past and it was quite helpful. I personally don’t use opera all that much since early 9.x just because many websites say they don’t support it, even though they could. But I think that page preview tabs are great, and I’ve always liked that the mouse over gave you previews, something firefox lags in. The speed has gotten a little better although it’s still a slower browser. I’ve used the e-mail part, and it’s fine. I’m happy they finally have html encoding so you can have better looking messages. All in all, I think there is no glaring problems with this browser, just matters of opinion to differ on.
Opera had been my primary browser since around 2000 for several good reasons. Complaining about a beta UI is just stupid and not really a ‘review’. For one thing, beta software should not be reviewed in the first place (I call those PREVIEWS). Wait for the final product and quit bad mouthing Opera in the mean time. Waste of keystrokes….
BTW, my favorite opera feature is the trash can. Maybe I’m trigger happy but I close tabs by accident or prematurely all the time and being able to ‘undo’ is fantastic.
Not only is it silly to review a beta UI, it’s especially silly in this case because Opera’s UI is so easy to change. In less time than they spent writing the review, they could have made it look however they wanted.
I’ve been using Opera for longer than I can remember, and its flexibility is one of its greatest features – of course that’s completely missing from the review.
Edited 2009-06-04 03:59 UTC
I’ve used Opera since around version 7 which I think was before FireFox even existed. I would like to point out that the marketshare figures for Opera are inconsistent among various marketshare watcher sources. It seems that many of these sources have a US bias. Opera’s global marketshare is considerably higher than Opera’s US marketshare. I think there is a country in Europe (Belarus perhaps) in which Opera has over 50% marketshare, but that is not the norm.
See http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/index.dml/tag/net%20applicatio… for where I heard about this issue.
I somehow agree with kroc when he said that opera buries under a load of options.
There must be a way to organize them in a more user friendly manner ( or provide a “Kroc” mode ).
The new default skin is a mess for me ( the 9.5 skin looked cleaner ), but I like compact skin anyway.
But I still love Opera, for its memory conservation, speed, per website preferences.
I’ve been using Opera since v3.62 – yup, with the old banner ads and all. I’ve been enjoying tabs for a long time.
Out of all the popular browsers available, Opera is my favorite – it is the first application I download and install on any new system I own. From mouse gestures to the best page-zoom around, from the M2 e-mail client to the Fit to Width feature, I use most of the built-in functions of the Opera browser. I like learning about the bits I don’t use, and then I end up using them. The Opera folks do very good work. I do change the default skin, but the new one in this beta looks nice enough to keep, this time around.
I’ve enjoyed every new version of this browser (I am happy that they allow for the use of the old shortcuts) and am looking forward to the final release of Opera 10.
i like this site alot just registered though cause i wanted to comment.
like others said horrible review.
you dont talk about any performance its like a guy just complaining about his date cause she was fat.
i dont want to comment too long, but i liked the review structure. screenshots,quick, and to the point just unfortunate the point was..lame.
OS NEWS its a tech site. have a little encouragement in new beta stuff like opera. if your going to dislike it at least do a better job of showing it.
because im such a tech enthusiast im still going to dl the new opera right now..
I did the same thing, for the same reason. It was a lousy review.
From a quick glance at one of the mirrors, it seems that there STILL isn’t a shared Qt4 build for amd64. What’s the deal? i386 gets a Qt4 build, but those of us running 64 bits are stuck with the depreciated Qt3?
On Mac OS X new Opera’s face is not that FAIL you called it. Not even close.
On Mac OS X new Opera’s face is not that FAIL you called it. Not even close.
Well, Kroc is Kroc. Even the whole review can more-or-less be shortened to: “<debrief what Opera is> It’s complete fail. <cry about wrong colors> <cry about wrong spacing> <cry about wrong colors again> <write something hasty about the new features> <claim you’re not an interface elitist and cry some more about the looks> Opera is fail.”
That was insulting, and I don’t even use Opera. I mean its fine to hate the UI and call them out for it, but at least put it into perspective. The UI may not be perfect, but it doesn’t look much worse than what they had before to me.
So what is widely considered a pretty good browser with a very extensive feature set gets a new UI that is no worse/marginally better than it was – and that equates to a complete failure? Why?
I use Opera 9 and I love it. The UI for Opera 10 doesn’t look too different from Opera 9. I think it looks fine. If there are any major issues with the UI, I’m sure the Opera guys will handle it before it comes out of beta. Meanwhile, you can change the skin — there are many to choose from. To do that, you’ll have to go into the neatly organized options dialog that Opera has (just press Ctrl-F12). Of course, it is optional to do that. No piece of software can satisfy everybody but I think it is pretty harsh to call Opera a “complete fail”. It does many, many things nicely. And you know they’ll keep improving on it.
On the matter of the improved rendering engine, which is one of the most important improvements that Opera 10 has, can anyone please tell me just how much faster is it? Oh, never mind. I’ll be getting Opera 10 anyway.
This ‘review’ is indeed utter fail. I’ve used Opera since 6.x and I’m posting this through 10 beta (been running the alpha which offered to update itself yesterday) and I’m not looking back.
I use Opera because of the functionality it offers, the stability (while 10 alpha crashed a couple of times, Chrome and firefox crashed on those pages too, so it was through no fault of Opera) and the general UI design. Not the looks of the thing alone, but mostly how the UI is customizable and that’s nearly perfect for me.
It’s fast, does what I want it to do better than IE and firefox (imo) and the new version is faster than the previous ones.
This is the beta, there’s no guarantee they’ll use this skin as is in the final version. But if they do and I end up not liking the new skin I’ll just download an old one and use that. So far, however, I’m liking the new skin.
Very disappointing review. The reviewer should probably visit a psychiatrist or something… To be put off so easily by a piece of software is kinda worrying…
I use Opera as my main browser and just don’t understand all that craze with Firefox etc. From time to time I install Firefox but uninstall it later the same day – it’s unusable for me feature-wise. Despite having (probably!) ‘correct’ UI colors.
all review is about how it looks bad on Mac OS X =]. not all users care about look, you can always change the skin.
‘The browser is eclectic, with too many preferences, too complicated preferences, too many customisation options. Features not everybody needs, or wants.’
that point is stupid. browsers are all about functionality, features and customization which are implemented because of user requests.
it is a matter of time when `problems’ mentioned in the review will be fixed. I personally would like to have visual tabs on the right.
opera team is far more innovative. lets wait till other browser makers `invent’ opera`s features.
it is sad that close-minded people like kroc can ruin reputation of OS news so easily.
Give him another chance. I don’t “know” Kroc, but he has been around for a long time and generally doesn’t sound so angry.
He obviously “loves” Opera and doesn’t want it to go the way of BeOS, if you know what I mean.
How can you complain about a compression feature that results in compression??
Good question.
After spending the past 2 weeks on a dialup connection, I would have found that feature quite useful – much more so than constantly going into Firefox’s setting to disable/enable the “Automatically load images” setting.
In Opera, you can put your tab bar on the side, which is the best thing someone can do if forced to use a widescreen. No need to complain about lost vertical space.
Try that in Firefox!
The Tab Sidebar extension does that. It also features tab preview thumbnails already. Unfortunately, it seems it hasn’t been updated for a year.
[Edit]
There’s also a couple of similar ones. Tree Style Tab, Vertigo, Tab Kit, …
Edited 2009-06-04 07:47 UTC
Yes, but I think customizing the UI should be possible in the ‘stock’ version as well. It’s nice to have loads of extensions, but I’m glad that Opera has most of the really useful features built-in.
Also, I’d really expect reinstalling Firefox on a new machine to be a total nightmare, if you have to re-download your 35 extensions again.
So you don’t like the colour: “Poor UI design!” How about actually using something instead of just looking at it. There is absolutely nothing worthwhile in this review. Nothing.
Dear God that was painful to read.
Lets summarize shall we.
Opera is crap because I don’t like the look and the icon looks crap and the UI is crap.
Kroc obviously has a serious grudge against Opera to write such an obviously biased “review”.
As some of the other posters have said / implied, when one uses Opera for a length of time it is a real struggle to move to something, anything, else. There is more built-in functionality in this browser than any other. If one wants to use the functionality great use it, if you don’t want to use it, fine – it gets out of the way.
Speed – I find it way faster than any other browser I’ve used.
UI – I find it to be very simple and intuitive.
Looks – I like the looks to be honest but we must remember, one persons beauty is another persons poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
General browsing – No problems for me. The only sites I ever have trouble with are budget airline sites. No other sites ever cause problems and I do mean ever. In the past there were problems but not now. Ok maybe I don’t go to this or that site as I’m not “l33t” but then again I have a life and the sites I go to work fine.
This wasn’t a review. When one writes a review you must start with an open mind and willingness to be honest. This was an attack (of sorts) dressed in the finery of a review. I and many other visitors to this site would expect much better than this. Very disappointed.
This “review” is so poor, I am speechless to describe it. I would take this more easily if was posted on some blog with personal daily thoughts but calling this a “review” and posting it on OSnews, sorry it’s hilarious.
That would have to be the weakest review I’ve ever read. It read like something a child would write. You did little more than whine about completely subjective facets of the browser. Maybe it is a failure, but it’d take more than a color scheme that clashes with your tastes to make it so. I’d be embarrassed to release such drivel.
You really have to ask yourself what’s at stake when you slap an article like this to your front page.
I won’t stop reading OSNews becaus of one stupid article but I do feel offended by it.
Do you know in which way? It’s simple, you should be aware that your readers are smarter than that and harder to please.
You got the installer, had a 2 minutes look, jumped to a conlusion and hurried to publish your opinions about only a small part of the new features. Did that take more than 10 minutes of your time? How much more?
Is that enough to make for a good article?
Edited 2009-06-04 10:32 UTC
To be fair, I probably wouldn’t be able to write any better reviews. I know to avoid getting stuck on a single point and I am usually quite careful with words (strong personal opinions etc are bound to cause a stir) but I am not too good at writing anything in an interesting way either so if I were to wrote a review it’d most likely just get overlooked by people.
Your comment is more thought out and better written than the article. I’d read a review from you.
To me this is Opera’s niche. If I want a simple browser with limited features then I have plenty of other options. But as I want a browser that I can configure to meet my needs, and as I do use many of Opera’s unique features, Opera’s the only one I’m happy with.
It’s like complaining that a complex text editor aimed at programmers should be stripped down like Notepad. The simpler option may suit most people, they certainly wouldn’t need every advanced feature, but there are plenty of others who appreciate a bit more power.
As for the aesthetics of the browser, I run it on Windows with the Windows Native skin, making this a non-issue. But it is clear that Opera have some work to do on the Mac version.
So you don’t like the colors in the new Opera interface? Boo-hoo! The feature that concerns me the most is the privacy of the proxy, but you almost dismissed that out of hand.
I guess you use the iPhone and Google without a thought to their security “features,” too:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3582226
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/02/22/google-in-bed-with-us-in…
Edited 2009-06-04 13:28 UTC
I’d have been okay with your review but it’s the “complete fail” tag that ticks me off. Let me put it this way:
1. Safari sucks on windows (AND mac); Chrome stands out on Windows Classic; I hate firefox on OSX with its odd-ball button design. I’m not a big fan of opera’s skins but this one’s not as bad as you suggest. Other than the purple inactive shade; the rest blends in fine for me..
2. Tab Previews — They let me view loading inactive tabs; and they’ll be useful on multi-touch displays. If it wasn’t such a burden we wouldn’t have more and more desktop platforms adding previews (expose included)
3. Stop whining about privacy; every company does it. As for the image compression; it’s doing what the description – making web-pages load faster. If you care for image quality you switch it off.
Yeah, the “complete fail” stuff is getting on my nerves… seems like every highschool kid uses it. Like the famous “crystal ball”, or “getting popcorn” and so on… definitely not cool.
Yeah, your review may not have been the best, but I thought it was informative and passionate about this issue. And since when has OSNews been about being objective and balanced? The comments will always blast you here, even if you try to write objectively or whatever. Frankly, most of the writers here (especially Thom) end up tossing up thinly veiled rants and half-baked opinions about issues they often know very little about. It’s all subjective. Your review was subjective. It’s fine.
The internet is for trolling. We all have done it. I certainly have
No big deal, learn from it and move on.
I like it! Opera has never been my first choice but I have always respected their advancements and options. I also do love the email tool. The only thing that keeps me from using Opera email is the integrated calendar options (plugins) for Thunderbird – I like to have it all visible in one tight package. But anyway… it seems to be pretty stable and renders well.
Just the fact I can do Control-Z to open up a tab I just closed makes Opera better than all the other browers from the stone age.
Any time I try using another browser I am left horrified once more by all the basic functions that are missing.
Opera is the best browser, totally superb. Once people started using it, all the other browser companies would go out of business or be forced to re-engineer and re-design their products.
As an example, Google Chrome is ruining the Internet by continuing to propagate the inefficient, out-of-date method of creating a new TCP/IP connection for each HTTP request. It supposedly “uses” HTTP/1.1, but it just inserts an extra “Connection: close” header so that it is even worse than if it used HTTP/1.0.
HTTP/1.0 should have died in the 1990s, not to be re-used by incompetent programmers who can’t even cope with a simple protocol for streamlining and pipelining multiple requests through a single TCP/IP connection. The overhead to allocate a new connection (on both server and client sides) is about four times as much as the time to download an average component of a webpage.
People should stop focusing on artificial benchmarks like SunSpider and focus on things that matter. And by the way, SunSpider deliberately uses code that is not optimzied.
For instance, the MD5 code used in Sun Spider is slow and out-of-date beaten by other people’s code since at least 2003.
http://www.google.com/search?q=md5+speed+test
Why doesn’t anyone bring up the technical deficiencies in the benchmarks, rather than judge browsers?
The computer scientists are probably laughing at everyone who trusts benchmark results without understanding what they are based on. For instance, Betanews takes off 25% from some browser’s benchmark scores just because they don’t pass the Acid3 test perfectly. And Acid3 isn’t even a finalized standard yet.
User interface design is extremely important, just like underlying technical design. I don’t have a problem with judging Opera based on its appearances. But someone who comments on it should be qualified in that area, and preferably someone who uses Macintosh, Windows, Unix, and Linux, and has an open mind toward the best artistic features of each, without a bias toward one just because of its open or closed source background or its name.
Edited 2009-06-04 17:34 UTC
I really, really like Opera’s new UI niceties like the GREAT reflow option (reformats webpages to fit your window perfectly, under View-fit to width) and new smooth scrolling – not tiresome and slow like in Windows, but swift and subtle. Opera shows some great work here.
I’d love to use opera if it had extensions (can’t live nowadays without flagfox, asnumber, showip etc).
But I do find that Opera 10 is more of an ‘under the hood’ release than pointless eye candy.
I use opera as my primary browser – I use all the browsers every day because I’m a web designer, but I always come back to Opera for doing things because it means I don’t have to go hunting for plugins/extensions because for normal use it does everything I want done – and things I can’t get done in FF, all right out of the box. Flip Navigation, favicon quick launches, portrait mode tabs, self customizable buttons/controls, robust adblock, spell check, it’s all built in.
Some of the features for 10 are quite nice. The new version of speed dial finally lets you customize how many it shows – 2×2, 3×2, 3×3, 4×3, 4×4, 5×4 or 5×5 (the 5×4 looks really good on a 16:10 display) – I really prefer speed dial to Google and Safari’s approach since I get to choose what’s displayed there, not have it thrust upon me by way of them tracking my use or having what they want me to see show up.
But the new skin? Color me unimpressed. It still has that “over the top” gap between the buttons – screen real-estate is tight enough as it is (and that’s coming from a 3 displays at 1920×1200 apiece user) without introducing a 8 pixel gap between the buttons. The black background STILL makes custom buttons unusual, so just as I’ve done and just as the reviewer did, I switched back to native – or should I say, I re-did my own variation of native that adds a few extra icons and strips that pixel gap between buttons (in your toolbar.ini add “Mini Buttons=1” to each Toolbar.style)
The new icons for forward/back/new tab do indeed blow chunks, even more so on the ‘native’ skin… it appears to no longer obey the ‘large images’ button, and I don’t know what the hell that icon is supposed to be but it certainly doesn’t make me think ‘wand’.
Turbo is cute, and handy enough when on the laptop in the back yard were signal strength ends up bupkis, but it’s not exactly an original idea – NetZero and Bluelight used to do that too.
I do like that the inline spell checker now comes pre-installed instead of having to go track down and install GNU ASpell. So many people constantly bitched that Opera “doesn’t have a spell check” when it’s detected ASpell since version 8 and used it if available. This is one of those things they let go for too long without “fixing” or making it more obvious. (like say… have a spell check in the menu if aspell was not present and when the user goes for it, it tells them to install ASpell, just like how VOICE works…. But this is good too)
Though I hear a lot of people bitch about the layout of Opera itself – I’ve never understood this as to me it’s no different than FF or IE – and it’s the most customizable in that department. I’m actually quite shocked that in the same breath people will bitch about the UI and then bitch it has too many customization options… Serious Whiskey Tango Foxtrot territory.
I do wonder what people are on about with the expanding tabs – since that doesn’t show up in any skin with the tabs in any orientation. That new ‘feature’ is completely missing here. Does not seem to exist – Not that it would since I prefer running tabs portrait mode on the right (just as I run my taskbar portrait on the left) and a lot of the wiz-bang features often get neglected if you put elements anywhere but “top”.
The improved web standards are nice – too bad they will be effectively real-world undeployable until some time around 2020 if Microsoft continues to drag it’s heels on moving forward while continuing to have market dominance… While I’m one of the few people who applaud Microsofts concentrating on getting CSS2 working PROPERLY before moving on to CSS3 (were that Firefox’s project managers and developers were as dilligent, hey how’s bugzilla 915 coming along?) it would also be nice to be able to start using at least SOME of this stuff without clients coming back to bitch “Why does the page look different in IE”… So really on that front Opera’s efforts (and the webkit folks suffer from this too) to be ahead of the curve on rendering leaves things a bit… lacking in the other aspects of the browser.
So, it’s a mixed bag release. The best complaint the majority of people come up with is the UI – I have no complaints with the UI itself – Apart from the graphics and colors the only MAJOR difference between it and FF right now on startup is it actually has a new tab button for nubes who don’t know you can double click on an empty part of the tab bar, the refresh and stop buttons are combined (since you’d never need both at the same time!), you have the fast forward and rewind buttons, and of course actual accessability controls and a trash can – Oh yeah, that’s so radically different we instantly have to bash on it… NOT.
Seriously though, if this is the best the big name graphics guy they hired can come up with to hang on the UI for eye candy, then they flushed more money down the toilet like they did with that stupid ‘pissing contest’ billboard… but then the FF logo never really blew my skirt up, and if you look at the guys website it’s more about vector based eye candy logo bull than UI design and actual usability – as evidenced by the unclosed div, lack of semantic markup, lack of graceful degredation, fixed HEIGHT layout, and fixed metric fonts. Yeah, and this is someone choosed to do interface design? Bub, do us all a favor and stick to doing vector logos.
But could be worse, I could spend five hours searching for and installing extensions to bring FF up to the level of functionality I’ve come to expect in a browser.
Edited 2009-06-04 20:18 UTC
I never comment on articles. But this is so unfair that I had to register and post.
I’ve been following OsNews for years, almost every day and never ever read in your web such a simplistic and superficial review, not only in OSNews but in any other serious tech web. This is not a objective and technical review. It seems one of those biased user reviews you find on forums.
How can you judge a product by it’s interface skin? It is like saying a Ferrari is crap because it is red or you don’t like its design.
If this review was done right you would find that Opera 10 *is* the Ferrari of browsers.
First some background about me. I’m not native English so excuse my spelling.
I have been programming for more than 20 years. Wrote my first big web app 14 years ago in 1995. Still building web apps. I Usually browse 6-7 hours a day. During those years I have tried every kind of browser you can imagine and finally keep the best one: Opera.
The first version I used daily was v5 with banners! 🙂 It was faster, had a very good email client and tabs.
Of course I have Safari 3, Firefox Beta 4 and Chrome 2 installed and I use them from time to time to check compatibility of web pages. But for day to day use nobody beats Opera.
Let me tell you why..,
EFFICIENCY
Opera 10 is *fast*. It has the best rendering speed of html and CSS. Why? Efficiency.
Their presto engine is by far the most efficient out there. It renders html and css in less time and with less cpu usage than Firefox beta 4, IE 8 or Chrome 2.
This is great news for netbook and atom users. Less CPU usage means less fan noise, less heat, less energy waste and better battery life.
To test the efficiency of the Opera Presto engine try running it with 20 tabs open (this is what I usually have) open on a netbook with an Atom processor in power saving mode… (My eee pc 901 is set to 600Mhz in power saving mode. Battery lasts 7 to 8 hours in this mode, really!).
Well… at 600Mhz Opera rocks at html, css rendering!
Firefox beta 4 or chrome 2 hog a low end or underclocked cpu when rendering one complex page. It is easy to prove. Just check process explorer on Windows and watch those browsers eat all your cpu cycles to load and render just one page.
Add to this how easy is to disable flash which is such a resource hog. Flash eats a lot of cpu and therefore battery life, increases heat and fan noise. Just press f12 and ‘disable plug ins’ on the pop up menu. Easy and fast. One of my favorite features. Bye, bye fan noise. You can’t do this on Chrome 2 and is not as convenient in Firefox beta 4 or Safari.
JAVASCRIPT
Ok, Firefox beta 4 and Chrome 2 are faster at Javascript apps. But Opera has decent speed for a normal use. Opera is working on Carakan, a new js engine that will compile js code on the fly an will compete with Chrome v8, Firefox TraceMonkey or Safari SquirrelFish
ROBUST
Opera rarely crashes so no need of one process per domain which is very expensive in resources. What we need is a robust browsers in a process and not dozens of processes hogging our computer. And with the new crash report tool the Opera team can smash bugs faster. That means a even more robust browser.
CUSTOMIZATION
Opera is *very* customizable. You can show or hide panes change its position or make them float. You can also hide and show buttons.
And if you don’t like the default skins, there are dozens of skins available just a few clicks away by choosing Tools->Appearance->Find more skins. Or check them at http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins. Some of the skins are awesome.
OPERA SOFTWARE ARE INNOVATORS
Those guys are the Apple or Google of browsers. They invented new ways of use a browser and they deserve a deep respect for this.
Opera was the first browser to have:
– Tabs,
– Jestures,
– Speech recognition,
– Integrated RSS client/reader,
– Widgets (small apps that you run inside Opera. calendars, clocks, games, todo lists, etc. – Browse http://widgets.opera.com/)
– Speed dial (Chrome took note)
– Trash icon with deleted tabs and undo tag close by pressing control z. So useful!
– Turbo for slow connections (great for 3g or gprs mobile internet),
– Synchronization of bookmarks between several Opera browsers (via Opera own servers).
– Skins that you install and uninstall with a few clicks,
– Integrated BitTorrent download,
– Page flow (adjust page to the width of your browser window)
– Easy enable, disable of animated images, plugins (including flash), java, cookies, etc. just by pressing f12
– Tab previews
– Save sessions (groups of tabs)
– *Excellent* integrated email client. It is disabled by default. If you do no use it, you will never know that it is there.
– For developers, select ‘tools->developer tools’ and you will find a state of the art dom and javascript debugger!! (dragonfly)
*All this* and more in less disk space than other browsers with less features and in a small 6MB installer. Amazing…
Opera is a Work of Art. As I said before, Opera developers deserve lots of respect.
Please, OsNews team, You should delete or rewrite this review in a deep and objective way asap. And you will discover that Opera 10 is probably the best browser available.
This review is hurting Opera Software and… OsNews reputation as a great tech web site.
I hope the new review will talk about functionality and usability rather than looks.