Opera have announced the release of Opera 10 beta. New engine, new features, but I’m more concerned about where Opera 10 fits into Opera’s history, and certainly their future. Opera have never made any massive strides in marketshare and is Opera 10 really going to change any of that? Read More to find out.
Software is an intensely complicated thing, design has to bubble up right from the bottom, enthused with each person’s passion for doing the best they possibly can. Some software just smells of bored people stuck in a 9–5 and some software simply pops with joy at being alive.
Because software comes from people with differing backgrounds, differing goals and differing skill-sets, it can be said that software comes in different flavours. We may all think that arguing the specifics of one browser being better than the other is all so very important, but we are no better off than children arguing over which ice cream flavour is the best, or if tyrannosaurus-rex is better than stegosaurus.
Opera is not a flavour of software I have ever liked on looks alone. I’ve stuck my nose up in disgust like I’ve been offered a plate of broccoli, and every new version it’s been more or less the same vegetable in a different colour (cauliflower).
Opera 10 beta is here, and even those like myself who are as terribly petty as to go on looks alone are having their concerns addressed.
Last October, Opera hired Jon Hicks, well renowned designer who designed the Firefox logo, to look at the design of Opera (something he himself has lamented about before).
This is a very welcome move by Opera, they have always in my opinion followed the same wrong path that Netscape took. They seem to over-design the application as some kind of Hollywood impression of a browser (or website). Chunky, colourful and tacky so that it’s blindingly obvious to the audience they’re looking at the Internet. Netscape went as far as making the browser itself, look exactly like their website so that you couldn’t tell where one met the other. The downside to this? On anywhere but Netscape’s homepage it stuck out, looked terrible and clashed with the content.
This is the same feeling I have always got with Opera in the past. The problem with this kind of design is that it gets old and tiresome, quickly. We all use the browser a huge amount, often the primary interface to our day. I don’t want to stare at what somebody using Photoshop thought was cool that day.
I’ve used the same Windows XP theme since 2004 because I found one that wasn’t trying to be the flavour-of-the-month. Just plain out-of-the-way usability.
Firefox 1.5 had probably the best, most concise and clearly presented icons in any browser. Firefox 2 crapped all over that excellent work in the name of dull, blurry, flavour-of-the-month (glass) icons.
I don’t mind that interface designs improve, and move on. What I mind is people and companies thinking that Photoshop proficiency will get you anywhere. Designing an interface is so much more than pixels alone. It is the ideas behind it that lead you to creating certain pixels.
What do I think of the new Opera 10 beta interface?
More of the same. The black bar across the top is overbearing. It wouldn’t be so bad if the small grey gradient wasn’t there to make it look like a vacuum-formed chunk of plastic running across the top of the browser. It wouldn’t even look so bad if the black was matte. The tip of the tabs resting against the edge of the title bar is unnerving. Since Leopard, most apps have moved to the unified toolbar approach, and frankly, Opera looks distinctly out of place. The top of the browser is too heavy, and compared to other browsers, I find my gaze pulled upwards too often.
Here’s a very quick modification I did to show how I think it should (roughly) look like:
This is far less weightier, and simply more Mac-like. It retains the minimal amount of chrome without going as far as Safari’s tab / title-bar combos. Why must Opera go for the tacky look? It just seems to be in their nature.
Beauty is objective, sure, but we’re not talking about web pages, or art here—we’re talking about functional interfaces. Something I have to use everyday, not look at hung on my wall. Quite simply, Opera’s look irks me, always has, in any form.
It’s not just the toolbar, the quirky way of doing anything pervades every dialogue. This, for example, is a disaster of bad design, and doesn’t follow the layout guidelines in the Apple HIG (Apple do follow the layout guidelines and they do matter):
And this is my question: Why does this slide? Who logs in, and looks at the Opera icon every day and thinks that it’s perfectly fine? It’s broken in just about every way imaginable! This isn’t just a subjective thing, it’s a matter of having your eye on the ball and looking for every area where you can make the experience better.
The Opera logo is so ugly looking in the dock it’s like walking into the kitchen every morning to find that it’s been painted a new shade of neon, badly. It’s so bad, I don’t want to click on it.
“Looks shouldn’t matter, it’s the functionality that counts!†some may say, even call me shallow for making looks so important. But that excuse simply doesn’t slide. Maybe, if in this world humans were only capable of producing good function or good looks, but not both, then I might agree with you. Design is about both of those things in harmony (e.g. architecture), not one or the other. As far as the competition goes, the other vendors seem to manage good looks and good function too. Opera are letting the ball roll away here because as far as I’m able to ascertain all “design†has meant to Opera over the years is “Photoshopâ€.
The beta skin is unfinished, and improvements will come. What I’ve seen so far, I think, is just not a radical enough departure from previous practices. It’s a little less twitchy and un-even, but it’s still loud and overpowering.
About the Functionality
Okay, so looks aside, what about that functionality?
The new Presto 2.2 rendering engine supports full Acid 3 compatibility. There’s a lot of features available to
web-developers. Certainly it’s the best engine Opera’s ever had, even managing to do a near-perfect job on my
personal website which uses extensive amounts of CSS3 and is quite brutal on most browsers. Previous versions of
Opera in the past have had poor compatibility with the mess that is the world wide web. This is something that
Mozilla really nailed early on and ultimately did help people switch to Firefox full time.
Opera’s JavaScript support has always been an entity of it’s own. I was actually impressed this time I could log
into Google Mail and get the same thing as Firefox.
Scrolling is noticeably faster and more responsive than even Firefox 3.5. Opera 10 chews through complex layouts like
it was plain text. This really matters. I don’t know how many miles I must scroll a day but responsiveness is yet
another thing that irks me about software. Despite constant improvements, Firefox lacks ‘teh-snappy’ that is
present in Opera. Resizing windows is significantly more instant in Opera.
That said, I found page-loading to be generally slower than Firefox. At one point it took over one minute and thirty
seconds to load Joystiq with nothing but a blank screen, as the HTTP-request hung there on “completedâ€. I managed
to open Firefox, load the site and then load the particular article before Opera had finally received the page.
Perhaps Firefox’s HTTP-pipelining is better, who knows. I just found across the usual sites I browse that Opera was
slower in chewing through the HTTP-requests.
I could cover, in extensive detail, the features Opera has; it’s like a tricked out Firefox with twenty extensions
already installed. Just about everything is here. Mouse gestures, bit torrent client, e-mail client, notes, widgets
and so on. But I’m not the person to ask about these things, I don’t need these things, and don’t even want
them there.
All of the extensions I have in Firefox are to modify the UI of it, and the webpages I use to be
acceptable to me. I have AdBlock / NoScript / Stylish to reshape web sites, I have Menu Editor, Organize Status Bar,
Fission and Stop Or Reload to cut the cruft out of the browser. I care more about a streamlined interface then I do a
widget engine. I have Dashboard in OS X for that. And if I was on Windows I’d have the choice of 20 or so widget
engines including what’s built into Vista / Windows 7. It’s clutter. Bells and whistles that serve some kind of
debatable purpose, but nothing life changing and still doesn’t beat a window you can look out of, and a calculator
on your desk.
It’s great that so much functionality is there, but I’d much rather collect it as I go along, rather than remove
it to begin with and then add it back in. I’m surprised they haven’t baked in a Twitter client yet.
Opera 10 beta also includes a new “Turbo†feature that runs you through a compressing proxy, much like what 3G
providers do to reduce bandwidth on their networks. This is really only practical if you are on dial-up, as going
through the proxy when already on a broadband connection will only slow things down—Opera brings up a warning
accordingly and even lets you set it to turn itself on or off according to detected network speed. Now that’s good
feature integration, and something I wouldn’t expect out of a Firefox extension. Do you really want everything you
do running through a proxy though? I’m not sure if Opera turbo uses SSL to encrypt the traffic between you and the
proxy, but I would find it a bit of a concern if they didn’t. Going through the proxy also means that you end up
with ads being served to you on the basis of the proxy’s IP, instead of your own. Makes a difference seeing foreign
ads, at least.
Conclusions
There’s plenty of browsers that can show me web pages and let me navigate from one to the other so I see no reason
to stick with one whose icon and skin is a constant source of irritation to me. The browser market affords me plenty
of good choice so I see no pettiness in choosing something that works good and looks good. We don’t all
drive the same car because function is all that matters, we have tastes.
Software can be an emotional thing. We don’t always make decisions based on pure logic alone and the same applies
to how we choose our software. If I were looking for the fastest rendering engine, then Opera wins hands-down. But
what I care about is longevity; being able to use a tool regularly for a long period of time and that tool doing
it’s job and not being a source of nuisance.
If Opera’s looks seem fine to you, then well done, you’ve found yourself a good browser, use it, I recommend it.
Personally, I can’t see myself ever switching to Opera unless they dump every pixel of UI they
currently have, and start again.
But then you don’t need me to tell you which browser to use. I can safely say that everybody who reads
this is plenty smart enough to download any browser they want, try it out, and decide for themselves. So it makes
this review somewhat entirely redundant.
I get the point that you have an excellent browser Opera, but you don’t have an excellent brand, and you don’t
have excellent marketing, and you don’t have excellent mindshare.
If all the superior engineering, swathes of built-in features, small file size and memory usage still
haven’t shifted Opera’s marketshare an inch in all these years then maybe, just maybe, I am right and failure to
prioritise looks and design have held Opera back, just as was the case with Netscape 6 onwards and the Mozilla Suite.
The ball, therefore is in Jon Hicks garden and Opera 10’s popularity will be in my opinion largely based on what he
produces; sad and petty as that is.
All this progress, and STILL no 64-bit Qt4 build. It doesn’t make sense, as the i386 binary has a dynamically linked Qt4 version. I know, I should be complaining on the Desktop Team Blog (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/), but it seems that this is the one issue that Opera devs aren’t discussing. Any reason why those of us with modern processors are stuck with a soon to be depreciated Qt3?
this is because they are trying to finish version 10 and get it feature complete before doing a 64 version like you are refering to. It is however something that is going ot come out, but not with the initial 10.0 release.
infact Merry Christmas
http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1000b1/beta1/en/x86_64/
:Edit: File no longer there. Check back in a day or 2 (if they decide to put it back).
Edited 2009-06-04 23:32 UTC
At one point, there was a nightly 64-bit build linked with Qt4, but that version has long since disappeared. Some speculation was that Opera devs were waiting for Qt 4.5 or the beta, but both are here now and still no 64 bit build. Which is fine, Qt3 will work for now, but it looks so out of place these days.
This’s from Opera’s developer, may be that’s you want:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=260419&t=12441601…
————————————
Hi everyone … yes we do read these threads. We know you want x86_64 qt4. It might even be closer than you think.
————————————
Kudos for taking a mulligan on this review.
Really? The quality of reviews is decaying…Kroc clearly abhors Opera and this is becoming a disease, he needs vacation (or maybe see a doctor). Personally, one critical reason why I use Opera (and not Firefox) is precisely its GUI and all its features that come standard. Go figure…
I didn’t say I thought the review was particularly good, but it was definitely _better_. My main reason for posting is that I do appreciate the fact that the criticisms of the original review were taken seriously and some effort was made to address them. The reviewer could have just ignored it and moved on.
I think tab preview is a pretty neat idea, but I agree that it takes up too much vertical screen space, which tends to be scarce on wide screens. So it would be best if it could be moved to the side from the top. It would make more sense to me than sidebars with bookmarks or recently visited pages.
It’s one of the things I really like about OmniWeb, a Mac-Only (used to be NeXTSTEP-only) web browser that has a lot of interesting features.
I agree completely, I find that even a conventional tab bar uses too much vertical space on smaller screens.
You can move the tab bar to the side of the screen, but for some reason tab thumbnails aren’t supported in that mode. Hopefully this will be changed for the full release; it’s ridiculous to lose functionality just because the toolbar is in a different location.
Opera has a windows panel for the sidebar that’s one of my favourite features. To me it makes sense to integrate tab management into the sidebar, it offers a lot more versatility, especially as the sidebar can easily be resized and hidden when not needed. I don’t see why they couldn’t implement a thumbnail view in that too.
You don’t have to expand the tab bar to see previews of all of the tabs on Opera 10. You can simply mouseover a tab to get a preview. It doesn’t eat into the vertical screen real estate. You don’t have to expand the tab bar to see previews of all of the tabs.
Mousing over each tab in turn is hardly the same as being able to see them all at a glance. To me mouseover thumbnails are a pointless gimmick; if you’ve moved the mouse over the tab then you might as well click on it, and see the full page, as look at the thumbnail.
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/opera-turbo-labs-release?start…
What pages will go through the proxy?
Not all pages can be compressed by our proxy and some pages—like Intranet pages—won’t be compressed. Our server can’t reach your Intranet pages, so we will detect that you are trying to reach an internal page and load them as usual. HTTPS pages, like your bank, also won’t be loaded through the proxy.
It seems there is not really much innovation in this version of Opera, it’s faster, has more features, etc. The usual.
Personally, I don’t care much about your comments on the GUI, in general it is not difficult to find a theme/font combination that is nice – for any browser. I share your sentiment on Mail and Torrent, total waste of development time.
I used Opera from 1998 till 2006 as my main browser (really) and paid for it (in the end)
But these days, I think Opera has given up. It seems Opera only releases a general web browser as a marketing tool for its mobile web browser. i.e. the PC version is a loss leader that serves to attract people and test new technology for its mobile browser (where the money is).
The problem really is the same problem for as long as Firefox exists: extensions.
No easy Adblock, Showip, Foxy Proxy, RIP, Greasemonkey, Xmarks and thousands of other programs.
OK it’s fast and feature rich out of the box, but just not extensible in the right way.
As much as I wish Opera good luck, I still hope they will implement an extensions framework properly. Even a good, simple Adblock would sway people I think.
Use AdSweep, Content Blocker + an adblock list updated daily
User scripts functionality comes standard
It comes standard also: Opera Link
i personally use firefox on linux. I read that opera 10 beta is out, downloaded it, fumble around for couple of minutes to set the GUI the way i like it(adding couple of GUI manipulating extensions in firefox) ..played around with it for around half an hour and close it ..so i am no opera fanboy but ..
osnews just lost my credibility as far as opera is concerned. I dont understand why two articles will spend so much time on something that can easily be changed. If a user has issues with how the default look like, the user can easily change it to something else.
if you guys feel this strongly about the opera looks, why not help out in developing a skin that agrees with your personal taste? ..i dont use this browser but i am sure they have public means to send and host user generated themes.
how many people use firefox without tweaking anything in it?
if you guys want to review skins you dont like or put an emphasis on the particular aspect of a program, add that info on the title so that the rest of us who are interested on other aspects can skip the review
“opera 10 beta default GUI review” would have been a more appropriate title
Indeed, the title “opera 10 beta default GUI review” summarizes this ‘review’ pretty well.
Another stream of adolescent maximalism.
Such people buy iPods, iPhones, Macs etc all that shit. They’re just looking for colours!
They don’t care to open a help page and read about features that are unique to Opera and are very useful in browsing.
You must think ‘design’ means ‘photoshop’ and nothing else? How pretty it is. It’s nothing of the sort. iPod is no.1 because it works the best, it’s the easiest to use for regular people. Photoshop can’t make a product easy to use.
OS X is a better operating system than Windows, again nothing to do with graphics, colours or Photoshop. It’s better designed. From UNIX upwards.
Opera is badly designed. Throughout. No amount of Photoshopping will make it any more likable to me.
So good that 5% or so of the world uses it. Great….
So what do you think is better? The scheduler? Or is it actually the GUI and not the OS you feel is better for you? Maybe disk access , server scalability or HW support?
Now I know where the article comes from. A deep and good Apple fanboy base…..
Because moving from Windows after 13 years of use doesn’t warrant me the opinion to say that OS X is better by design?
No. I use both Vista and OS X, and for me, OS X is cleary *not* a good OS.
What if I have an iPod, an iPhone, an alu macbook AND I use Opera!??! Your disliking of Apple products is just as ridiculous as this guys disliking of Opera IMO
Seasoned Opera user will never buy an Apple product
What I am hinting at is that there seems to be no UI evangelism going on at Opera. ‘good-enough’ has been their course for too long. Why, when I have a choice of many browsers, should I force myself to stick with Opera when I can get better UI elsewhere—and I’m not just talking whatever ‘skin’ is applied because I know you can download thousands. The options dialogue in Opera is a mess. The whole way the program operates (the parts you can’t customise) is just annoying and poorly designed. The _feel_ of the app is all wrong to me.
Well maybe because there is more to a browser than GUI and that is where this article fails badly.
Maybe if you had tried using the features of the browser you might have opened up your mind slightly. Just the feature of synchronizing the bookmarks between my Opera on the mobile and all the desktops I use (Mac, Win and Linux)…. The easy scaling of pages and very efficient usage of TAB’s is other points I really appreciate.
But if the only thing that matters is that it should look like it was made by Apple….
This “review” is well below of what I have come to expect of OSnews.
This clearly shows your lack of research and information about the development team. Take a look at the mailing lists to see if they like what is “good enough”…
I wonder in what browser you can see a better browser (except the Aero stuff that’s missing in Opera).
Complete nonsense. It’s well organized, like in any other browser: http://www.spedforms.com/guide/images/opera-preferences.gif
The review should be based on the default look; if the default look is crap, then quite frankly, it doesn’t matter how much you protest as to the virtues of customisation, they’re crap defaults. Opera should go back and ask themselves whether their defaults take into account the requirements of the vast majority of end users.
When I install something, I expect it to work out of the box with sane defaults; I don’t expect to have to for the next half hour having to fumble around in settings trying to get the damn thing working at least in some sort of logical manner.
I’ve just had a look at Opera 10 on my Mac, and it is a big leap forward over the 9.x series (which was when the last time I tried), however, I am going to reserve judgement as to what 10 will turn out. If it keeps on the right path it might be the first version of Opera that I am interested in using full time.
Edited 2009-06-05 07:33 UTC
so basically, you expected a cross platform program to have the GUI and default behavior from your favorite OS guidelines?
if the GUI is a “total fail” on a mac, how about on windows xp? windows vista/7? linux in a kde session? linux in a gnome/gtk session?
and majority of end users of opera are on …mac?
I never said anything of the sort. I stated that it should have sane defaults – I never claimed that it had to follow a particular set of guidelines. I also never said that there was anything wrong with Opera – did you see me mention Opera in the first part? of course not, because it was a generalised statement applicable to all pieces of software and how they are reviewed.
Qt is a multiplatform tool kit, nothing has ever stopped Opera from having different front ends using Qt for each platform, taking into account the unique way of doing things. Considering that there is separation between the backend code and the front end – there should be no reason why they can’t have multiple front ends based on the same toolkit.
But as I said in the reply to the first paragraph, I am asking for sane defaults; it isn’t my fault you made the leap of faith assuming that I wanted something that I never stated I wanted.
Edited 2009-06-05 19:51 UTC
you never said anything of the sort?
you said,
basically, you are saying the GUI looks foreign on a mac
criticizing operas option layout because they dont apple’s HIG here
you also said
again, criticizing a cross platform app because it isnt build to your os of choice default behavior
you are asking for sane defaults that will make it look like a native app on a mac. In your comment, you seem to advocating opera having different GUI in different systems so that it can have a default sane look on your system of choice.
Some people may see this as a good idea, some wont because of the spacial memory thing. I mean would you like the same app to look and behave different across different systems?
There is always a penalty in building cross platform apps. Look at google, they decided to go with native code for their web browser and linux and mac versions are at an alpha stage at best
Edited 2009-06-05 21:46 UTC
1) I never made those statements – am I Kroc Camen? no I am not, so shove it up your ass. Unless you know what the f–k you’re talking about let alone who the f–k you’re speaking to – it is best you never f–king registered for this site in the first place.
2) Nothing has EVER stopped Opera from setting their application to detect the system default colours and adjust the relevant components accordingly. Again, another leap into the unknown based on nothing.
3) Who raised Chrome? I didn’t! again, another pulling at issues and matters which have NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. If we’re going to talk about Chrome, then sure, there is a price to pay for not having a lowest common denominator – attempt to be everything to everyone GUI; but I would sooner wait 6 months to a year for a native and properly integrated browser than a half assed, half baked attempt to try and cover all bases only to end up with a product that keeps no one happy.
Edited 2009-06-06 01:25 UTC
In past I’ve tried opera couple of times on my debian and ubuntu Linux distros. However terrible fonts kept me at bay from using opera. I’m still facing the same issue in my new opera 9.64 version… is there a fix/work around to this issue?
type in the address bar: opera:config
in the quick search enter “font”
check “Draw Anti Aliased Fonts”
uncheck “Enable Core X Fonts”
check “Enable Xft Fonts”
change fonts to hearts content in “Preferences” — “Advanced” — “Fonts”
Back when i was a windows user at home opera was my full time browser, nowadays i use epiphany but i still keep opera installed just to keep tabs on it.
It is sad and petty that apparently the most customisable interface in a browser, (everything can be moved somewhere else ala a MS office drag and drop style customise.) is ragged on.
Running the windows alpha of 10 through WINE was more stable than any linux version of opera and that just sucks.
I’ve also found that the only way people start using opera is through a word of mouth “here, you might like this.” it’s just not something people hear about compared to Firefox and now Safari.
A big thing holding opera back is not having auto proxy detection like firefox. that stops a lot of business workstations straight up.
Moving things around a good GUI does not make. Being able to move something does change the fact that the title bar is not unified, or that the skin design looks heavy. Moving things around doesn’t change the fact that other vendors are doing better jobs at making a native experience.
You can’t rearrange the options dialogue in Opera.
My complaints about the GUI are not just skin-deep.
Actually most of them are, and can be fixed with a different skin, while you don’t go into much detail about the ones that aren’t.
The most substantial complaint I can see is your criticism of the options dialog, and pointing out it’s non-compliance with Apple’s HIG is certainly valid. Of course for Windows/Linux users that’s not an issue, and you don’t detail any actual problems with the design itself, let alone how you’d fix it.
The fact that Opera for Mac is a bit too much like Opera for Windows is an issue for Mac users who want consistency, but it doesn’t mean much to the majority of Opera users who don’t use Macs. In my opinion it isn’t much of a review when that kind of aesthetic issue is the main thing that’s focussed on.
hear hear. finally a sane voice in this madness.
i never commented on osnews but the number of clueless comments regarding this “review” is so astounding i bit the bullet and signed-up to answer. (see? member since today)
opera is not and never was a “first listening album”. its real virtues show up only after months of proper usage and not 2 hours of “research” for a “review”.
i was a hardcore firefox user but as a web programmer i have always flirted with opera in the past. it is only after i had to use it (on my sharp zaurus, as everything else crawled) that i came to appreciate it’s true powers, of which small system resources and speed is but the tip of the iceberg. actually, my main browser is opera on openbsd in linux emulation (as there is no native build sadly). it is still waaaay faster than the native firefox on my eeepc 701.
it has shortcomings, every software does, but none of them is a showstopper. for example, it can’t do socks for my ssh tunnels (use a proxy program), it has no proxy autodetection (i have never used that, but ask your network guy for the .pac address and you are set).
but how “too many features” became a shortcoming i will never know. especially when a “bloated” opera installation (10MB) is still half of a vanilla firefox installation (20MB, both windows xp numbers) that still needs rummaging around the internet for plugins that need restarting the browser for “basic comfortable use”. you dont like the built-in torrent client? dont use it. i never have.
or how the preferences menu is a “mess” when firefox has its preferences under different menu on different platforms and where “network settings” became “advanced” camping on the same tab with “offline storage”. totally related.
this article as generic review, as its title suggests fails on so many levels i am surprised it got published. half of the article is a critique of the default skin of a beta product designed by a proper designer, still the author believes he can do better. fascinating. even so, dont like it? use a different one. i dont like it either, but you know, i got one from them internets. i happen to very much dislike the new default firefox look (no, it is not “simply better”) but that is not my first criterium to judge it, as i can easily change that. opera’s interface is so flexible and easy to tailor to your needs (drag and drop ui changes, keyboard shortcut editor, mouse gesture editor) it makes the baby jesus smile.
then the other half is a collection of urban myths combined with hearsay. i am using opera with gmail since 9.5, and if the author had done any research at all, he would know that the glitches in most of the google products (and others) are actually their fault and not opera’s as the software authors have to depend on certain major browser bugs making complying browsers unsupported and more often than not resolving to sloppy user agent filtering because they don’t test on other browsers.
the plugin (which firefox calls by a different name in every release, now being “add-ons”) argument is getting really old as well. i find them way overrated. i was a plugin junkie myself but i realised i need plugins mostly for development (firebug and a good html validator) and while dragonfly is getting better all the time i still use firefox as well when i develop.
of course there is no word about opera’s unique features, like the per site preferences that is so logical and well done, one can only ask, why the others dont copy that one? while e.g. in firefox and it’s plugins one is required to manually add every site on various black- and whitelists for every single feature, opera handles blocked elements, cookie settings, user css, popup settings, user javascript, encodings etc etc in one single window for the relevant website… engineering at its best.
or the search shortcuts directly from the addressbar so actually one doesn’t need a search bar at all. simply brilliant. when all you have is 800×480 you fight for every pixel with the browser and in my case opera hardly manifests itself on my screen at all. all i have is the tabs and the content.
or the “password manager” (wand) that actually saves the state of all the fields in the given form so certain sites where a login form is not just user/password work perfectly.
these, and some others i did not write about are the real features that set opera apart from its competition. a pitty the “reviewer” will never meet them in person.
as browsers are becoming more and more our daily bread and butter, obviously there’s a lot of emotions involved. but it’s not rocket science that only an oldtime opera user using the old versions can truly review what is really new in a new version and how it compares to the old ones. not someone who looking at the default skin cringes and fires up photoshop to fill the blacks with gray.
i am sorry Kroc (as i read your answers how you “can’t win”, there is nothing to win), but if you think my answer is rough, i am not giving you a free ride either. your review, if titled misleadingly, as some suggest, still falls very short, and contains remarks about (unresearched) functionality and “feeling” based numbers of speed. it is neither a design review nor a functionality one. it is a meagre opinion piece presented as a review. put in on your blog but keep it out of osnews.
(btw. i still find opera’s desing better than firefox’s monstrous green arrow thingy together with the no-one is really sure what it is favicon container; and while i dont do UI design, i do typograhpy so i am not totally aesthetic-blind)
Great points. In the time it took him to write both his screeds and read and respond to the comments, he could have easily figured out the Preferences dialog. Then, again, maybe not. . . His loss. . .
To be fair, Firefox does that to obey the interface guidelines of the respective platform (at least I’ve read so, correct me if I’m wrong). So while I understand your peeve with that, I think FFox does it right.
no massive strides in market share? that depends on the region you look at. according to globalstats (gs.statcounter.com), opera is the third most popular brother in the world with 3,7 %, still on third place in europe where it just passed 10% but the markt leader with close to 40% in russia.
I personally agree with the article.
If I am not using Opera right now, it is certainly because the lack of integration with my Gnome desktop.
It looks just ugly and out of place, and don’t tell me to just change the theme, because I have tried all possible themes and they all look ugly in a manner or another.
Actually, theme is not the matter, it is all about the graphical toolkit used.
So I use Firefox or sometimes Epiphany, they look great and I have a clean desktop without the need of unecessary additional libraries.
Oh, so you “feel” that GTK should have been used in replacement of QT4.x and that would have made a world of difference?
Well this is an improvement on the previous drivel but I still can’t believe or take seriously the emphasis on looks.
Q: What kind of car do you drive Kroc?
Kroc: A red one.
Q: How big an engine?
Kroc: My cars a red one.
Q: Economy?
Kroc: A red one.
That’s still the overwhelming impression from the article.
I use linux at home and XP at work and for both platforms I have a huge variety of programs. There are a surprisingly small number that look “native” and/or “comfortable” on either OS (although Gnome and KDE’s native software looks reasonably well integrated). I’m more interested in how the software works rather than how it looks and most users are probably the same.
The settings dialog could do with some love – I’ll admit that, but how often do you need to delve into its depths – not very surely. The immediate GUI – very good in my opinion, does what’s needed that’s it. A black bit at the top doesn’t make me shriek with pain to be honest.
You did look at the features of Opera but the article still gave the impression of being biased purely due to looks… How sad.
You are entirely entitled to your opinion, I totally agree with this but the article would have read better if you’d discussed features, performance, stability, etc. first, then commented on how offensive (offensive enough to cause the downfall of western civilization it would appear) you find the looks. Not the approach of :
I hate this due to looks..
Goodish feature… but see above.
Goodish feature… but see above.
OK feature… but see above.
Crap, but doesn’t matter… see above.
If you want to use this fine, but in spite of the features, it’ll make your eyes bleed and puppies will die.
I may be being overly critical but to me that is how the article reads.
Better than before but in my opinion most people will (hopefully) be swayed not by looks but by performance.
To everyone – give Opera a fair chance. Try it for a couple of days, weeks if possible and see how you get on. Don’t be swayed by looks but by performance and features.
Actually, I don’t own any car and use a bicycle for everything.
My browser has a Gecko engine (1.9.1). It matches the best balance between standards support and compatibility with the web.
The JavaScript dialogues I see all the time, and they’re badly designed too (should be a sheet on OS X, icon is badly positioned, the tick box looks shoehorned in there and confuses the matter because it has nothing to do with what the website is asking.
I suppose it was an equally stupid thing of me expecting OSNews readers to think design is any more than what skin your browser has.
Is there nobody here who is an actual designer, please speak up! Design is not just an interchangeable skin.
I believe nobody think the design is about pretty pixels. The problem is that in your article you only critize pixels for being too colorful or too trendy and their over use of Photoshop or something along those line and then you say that this is not the only thing there is to design but their design suck. And yet, you didn’t tell us what make their design suck, you just told us you don’t like their use of Photoshop but that is not design. The actual design is fine and logical as far as I’m concerned. The menus are where I expect them to be, I have no trouble managing tabs and the options and I understand how the features work pretty well, so that is good design for me. Nobody cares about the skin.
Edited 2009-06-05 09:21 UTC
The design is perfectly fine with me. You’re just not used to it. You use Firefox for too long and too much to learn to use Opera. If you try lynx, you will say it’s complete crap. Some people however use lynx on a daily basis and are lost on Firefox. Some people can’t use linux because it is not Windows. Opera has a perfectly good design, but you just can’t use it because it is not Firefox.
I can’t use it because I don’t see any benefits (only drawbacks) over what I’ve already got. Features included.
Just because Opera release a new version it doesn’t mean I have to give them a free ride and put myself out throwing away the decent browser I’ve got just to be somehow ‘fair’ to Opera. If Opera want me to be a user, then they will have to do _better_ than what I’ve already got.
That’s somewhat humourous.
I can’t remember a time when Opera seemed extremely well-organised or easy to use. It could have the most efficient code on the planet and still be almost painful to use. There was a time when it could be the default browser on Windows and the oblivious would ask “isn’t there something else?” because it just didn’t click with people.
I keep Opera as my second browser because it’s a substitute for Internet Exploder on Mac OS X and Linux. It has become better than it was at version 4 or 5 when I initially tried it. Maybe, version 10 will be well-liked because it has some thought poured into the outside, not just the inside.
So, what do you think is not well organized in Opera?
First you say that you need simply a “window to web site”, next you complain that dialogs are heavy. If you use your browser as a window, then you should never see any dialogs. Then you don’t want any functionality and complain that Opera is just like FF with tons of extensions and then you number tons of extensions you use. I just don’t understand you.
Opera for me is a powerful solution to view the web MY WAY. Not the way mozilla guys want, not the way extension developers want, not the way apple wants. MY WAY! And Opera is THE ONLY solution for that. And built-in power is a key to flexibility. I don’t need Google to search for extensions to enable proper tab browsing or ad blocking.
And hey! My Opera setup is VERY minimalistic (: Because I don’t need toolbar icons for moving forward/backward/stop/reload and so on.
I don’t like new skin either, but it looks like author never used Opera more then one hour. When you get to know interface features, configure them to your liking, then other browsers will have epic fail for life in your eyes.
BTW, everyone, if you hated the article, then write your own review! A better one! OSNews is _very_ prepared to publish content from the readers. We are always looking for differing opinions from across the community. My article was my opinion. If you want better articles up there, then contribute and it will happen!
OSnews is not unbiased and perfect. It’s completely independent, with the content written by a group of bloggers who all have their own take on the landscape. We _don’t_ want to regurgitate other peoeple’s RSS feeds. If you don’t like my writings, then contribute articles so that I don’t have to do any writing!
Your article was your opinion – I totally support your right both to have and voice your opinion.
As the saying goes “I may not like what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it”.
I don’t think many people have a problem with the fact you have an opinion. I think the problem was with the emphasis – style over substance. Form over functionality.
E.g. I’m an Opera user (surprise surprise), as I write this I’m using 10 beta and I’ve tiled the display with your review in the left half and this comment in the right – a fantastic piece of functionality that comes as standard. Would I trade this for a “better” GUI or icon… no chance. A victory for function over form.
And that was the main issue with the review – function was relegated in favour of form.
I don’t think any of us have a problem with you – never met you to have a problem. And I agree that maybe more of us need to contribute if possible.
Don’t take it personally. You actually posted an article and it takes a bit of courage to put oneself up to be knocked down. Kudos for that.
Edited 2009-06-05 09:27 UTC
kroc, I think you are taking some hits on your reviews of Opera 10. I saw the headline on the front page on Wednesday and read your 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.
Thus, I decided to wait for your followup, thinking there was no actual review at that point. Today, I read your second review and felt you pretty much had your mind made up at your first glance at the UI. After reading through the comments on this review I went back to the Wednesday entry and found you actually did post a review on Wednesday. I read through it and found it pretty much like the one you posted on Thursday. I didn’t see where you went deeper or were more balanced in your approach. You just seemed to harp more on the UI. Therefore, I would have to say the hits you are taking are pretty much deserved.
I admit Opera is an aquired taste, at least in my opinion. I’ve been using it since the late nineties when Netscape ran aground and I couldn’t bear to use IE. I had tried Opera before, but couldn’t bring myself to break up with Netscape. When I could no longer stomach Netscape and purposed to give Opera a month, I never looked back.
As I began to delve the layers of functionality that comprise Opera, I realized that Opera, at its core is built to browse the way you want to. There are so many ways to change its appearance, rearrange the UI components, or how to do something that it is very bewildering to many. You said, “A browser should be transparent, a thin veneer between me and the web page. Not a clown honking his horn in my face.” If I want a browser with a clown honking his horn in my face, Bill Gates has accomodated me! Sorry, couldn’t resist. Who are you to declare what a browser should be? That’s would be like me saying, “All bicycles should be a traditional, single speed with pedal brakes. There should be no hand brakes, gear changers, flashy lights, water bottles, bike computers or handlebar streamers. A bicycle should be a thin transparent veneer between me and the road.” Liberty is a great thing, even for personal browser tastes.
Perhaps Opera’s plethora of customizations, are a turnoff to many. Furthermore, that lack of extensibility is an abomination to FF users. And I can see where the default UI might be abhorrent to Mac snobs, not that I’m call you a Mac snob, but you did choose to obsess about how the UI did not look just like every other Mac app. Seems to me, before Macs became so cool many Mac users took pride on being different and not following the PC herd. But they can’t take an app that doesn’t look like all the others.
However, I would like to postulate that if you will dedicate yourself to customize Opera to a point that it suits you and then give it a fair shake and use it for an extended period of time, from that point on you will have a much different view of it. You still may choose to use something else, but I bet you will appreciate it for what it is and the elegance at which it delivers so much functionality is so small a package.
Edited 2009-06-05 14:39 UTC
It’s already clear that I can’t win, whatever I do; the community is however right. In all fairness I should be far more fair. I don’t give any software a free ride—you will never see a positive review from me unless that software convinces me to switch to it permanently on the basis of few day’s use (Such software does exist, Firefox 0.93 convinced me to switch from IE almost instantly).
The layout of buttons is not a problem, I don’t need to customise them. The default skin is simply a barrier to me using the app regularly, and even beyond the toolbar, the dialogues are badly designed, and I can’t rearrange them.
I looked at Opera hard and I gave my reason for not liking it. That’s a valid reason. Just because other people would rather I chose a different ‘valid’ reason because they don’t agree with the reason I chose, it doesn’t make my choice invalid.
People either want me to love Opera, or dislike it on a basis that they can agree upon. I can’t win with that. The default out-of-the-box design on Firefox is simply better than Opera’s and nobody seems willing to accept that. it *must* be about functionality instead of looks or somehow it’s not a valid complaint. Looks matter. A lot. If looks didn’t matter then companies simply wouldn’t even bother wasting their time spending the money they do on ads.
Opera’s history of Netscape-like skins is no longer good enough I think. That’s what the article was about.
Then your review should have been titled “Opera’s Failure at UI Design” or “Why I Hate Opera” and not billed as a more in-depth review over your first attempt.
You have just as much a right to your own opinion as the rest of us. Lots of people buy cars just because they like the way they look and care nothing about other deficiencies. Others care more for functionality. It’s where your priorities are. Think how cool it would be to have the Fedex guy come to a screeching halt in a Ferrari in front of your house with your latest order from Amazon, just a few hours after it was shipped. Sure he got there fast and in style, but now he has to go back to the Fedex distribution center to get another package. Having a truck to carry more packages takes priority over speed and appearance.
If the browser appearance matters to you, fine. But don’t criticize the functionality just to validate your opinion of the appearance. And I agree you can’t win in the comments on your review, your review sealed that outcome. Put out a balanced review on multiple platforms and people will be more accepting of constructive criticisms.
Edited 2009-06-05 15:18 UTC
I didn’t unduly criticise the functionality. Read the review, I was very fair in the functionality section. I wasn’t thorough to the last, but then I would only be repeating what everybody already knows here. The functionality is a bit much, but fine. The UI I thought was a barrier to adopting that functionality.
I believe there is no winner and no looser. Your opinion is perfectly acceptable to most people. They just have another opinion and you have to accept that, too. So long as your opinion is not that Opera should include a virus to destroy everything that you don’t like it is perfectly OK.
Edited 2009-06-05 15:19 UTC
No, that’s your opinion, not a fact. Other people are under no obligation to agree with your personal taste, any more than you are under an obligation to like Opera’s look.
Many people here care more about function than form and are obviously going to see your complaints as vapid, especially when most issues with the look are easily changed.
I think if you’d posted a similar review of Ubuntu, dismissing it because the default theme is too brown, while glossing over any new and interesting features in the software, you’d get a similar response from Ubuntu fans. People simply expect more when an article is touted as a review.
Maybe you should have made that more obvious? I don’t think you’d have received as much criticism if you’d made it clear that you were just posting an opinion piece on the new Opera skin, rather than an actual review of the application. You could have left out the shallow glance at it’s functionality completely and purely concentrated on the default aesthetics.
Yes, sorry I went too far defending that. A little too angry. I’m tired at being berated for focusing on what matters to me, the skin. I simply can’t live with software that doesn’t look right. The customisation doesn’t count—I don’t need to customise the layout, I need it to be designed better. I can only hope that Jon Hicks improves drastically on the beta.
I never comment on articles. But this is (still) so unfair that I had to repost.
First of all, Krok, this is not personal! 🙂 I respect your opinion. I just think that you are just too influenced by design.
How can you judge a browser by it’s interface skin? It is like saying a Ferrari is crap because it is red or you don’t like its design. Of course car color is important, of course design is important. But the most important thing by far is that the car is easy to drive and takes you wherever you want, fast.
Good software is about productivity not just looks.
Design (colors, fonts, skins) are important but are just a small part of the usability equation. A lot more important for a daily use, is to be able to do things in the easiest and fastest way. Productivity. A pretty face is welcome but productivity is king. That is where Opera excels.
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 pretty complex web apps and http app servers. I Usually browse 6-7 hours a day. During all those years, for professional reasons, I have tried every kind of browser you can imagine and finally kept the best one: Opera.
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:
PRODUCTIVITY (usability, customization, speed, stability)
Can you be productive if your tools are missing, difficult to use, your soft is slow or crashes often? No.
*** Opera has lots of functionality built in.
As yo said in your review there is a lot of functionality built in in Opera. Too much? I don’t think so.
If a BitTorrent download is faster than a normal download will you use BitTorrent? Of course!
If you use an email client why juggle with two applications? It is more productive to have it all in the same app, in one panel. I can assure you. I have used the Opera email for a long time and it is more convenient that having a email client as another process. By the way, the email client is great.
As a bonus for the extra functionality you don’t need to search, download and install plug ins that usually hog your browser.
Anyway, if you need more, you have widgets. Lot’s of them: http://widgets.opera.com/
And all this functionality in less disk space that chrome or Firefox! So why worry if you will use it or not?
*** Opera 10 is adapts the workspace to your needs.
Opera is *extremely* customizable. If you don’t like the default position of panes, buttons or toolbars, just change it in minutes. Make you panes float. Or hide them if you do not use them.
Opera 10 allows to adapt the workspace to your needs.
Can you do this with Firefox, Safari or Chrome? Not yet.
And if you don’t like the default skins (color, icons, fonts), there are dozens of skins available just a few clicks away by choosing Tools->Appearance->Find more skins. Easy. Not satisfied? create you own skin and if you want, share it with others. Some of the skins are excellent. Period. Check them at http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins.
*** Speed and efficiency
But how can a tool be usable and productive if it is slow? Impossible.
Opera 10 is *fast*. It has the best rendering speed of html and CSS. Why? Efficiency.
Their Presto engine is the most efficient out there. In Windows it renders html and css in less time and with less cpu usage than Firefox beta 4, IE 8 or Chrome 2.
Less CPU usage= faster browsing even on low end, old or underclocked cpus. This is great news for netbook users.
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).
Well… at 600Mhz Opera 10 rocks at html, css rendering! (with flash disabled 🙂
Firefox beta 4 or chrome 2 hog a low end, old or underclocked cpu when rendering one complex page. It is easy to prove. Put your cpu in power saving mode. Fire process explorer on Windows and watch those browsers eat all your cpu cycles to load and render just one complex 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 heat and fan noise. Welcome battery life! You can’t do this on Chrome 2 and it is not as easy in Firefox beta 4 or Safari 3.
*** Stability
Opera rarely crashes so no need of one process per domain which is very expensive in resources. Chrome easely hogs a netbook or a machine with 1gb if you use it with lots of tabs and other apps open.
And with the new crash report tool in Opera 10 the Opera developers can smash bugs faster. That means a even more robust browser.
OPERA SOFTWARE ARE INNOVATORS
Those guys are the Apple or Google of browsers. They invented new ways to improve the browsing experience.
Opera was the first browser to have (Opera team correct me if I’m wrong):
– 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 or bad dsl connections),
– 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)
An as I said before, *All this functionality* and more in less disk space than other browsers with less features and in a small 6MB installer. Amazing…
Krok, I think that you should use Opera for a reasonable period of time not just a few hours. I’m shure that it will grow on you.
Opera is a Work of (software) Art. Opera developers deserve lots of respect for this refined software.
This review does not do justice to the enormous effort of this team to offer the best possible browsing experience.
Disclaimer: I’m not related to Opera in any way.
Thanks for this informative post.
There’s a lot of valuable info in your post, thank you for that.
I actually think: After the Opera team hired a new design guy, maybe they should hire someone new for PR – you. Your whole post reads like an advertisment, and a good one at that. I have nothing to criticise about it, except I found it unnecessary that you reposted it on both Opera 10 stories.
I just tried Opera 10 quickly myself and the first thing that struck me was the speed it renders websites at.. It’s like a greased lightning compared to FireFox! I noticed some rather odd font-rendering issues and I need to find some AdBlock-like addon on it, and then I’ll most likely dump FireFox.
I had noted this in the article, but people were too hung up on me being hung up on graphics to notice this
Well, you did concentrate on the looks a bit excessively. I like the looks of it atleast in Windows and I don’t really see why I wouldn’t like the looks on OSX or Linux either.
So far Opera 10 seems fine and I love the speed of it, but I can’t find anywhere any adblock-like addon, and it doesn’t provide any way for me to jump to a specific tab number, instead it forces me to cycle through them all. That sucks for me since I am a heavy user of tabs, I always have 6-7 tabs open, and having to cycle through them all to get the correct one instead of just pressing a two-key combination is slow.
To block content in Opera:
1. Right-click on a part of the webpage that isn’t Flash (because then you’d get the Flash right-click menu).
2. Click “Block Content”. Your screen should feel “faded” with pictures/flash standing out.
3. Click on the item you want to block.
4. Click “Done”, at the top. If you’re curious about what it’s blocking, click “Details” and it will show you.
To cycle through tabs:
0. This only works with Mouse Gestures turned on (Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Shortcuts -> “Enable Mouse Gestures”). Also, this is from Windows, so I don’t know if it’ll work on a Mac, but I like to think so.
1. Hold down your right-mouse button (command-click?)
2. Rotate the scroll wheel
3. Find and highlight the title of the tab you want.
4. Release the right-click
In Opera 6, you used to be able to scroll through all open instances of Opera, but in 7 and onward, the tabs you get are only from a single active instance. So, for me, who turns off the Tab bar, it’s not useful anymore and I miss it… but that’s why I have a taskbar, anyway.
Edit:// Also, one thing I’ve noticed is that you can help the “speed” feeling in rendering a page by changing the page redraw: Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced Tab -> Browsing -> Loading: “Redraw instantly” rather than the default “redraw after one second”.
Edited 2009-06-05 22:22 UTC
To block content in Opera:
1. Right-click on a part of the webpage that isn’t Flash (because then you’d get the Flash right-click menu).
2. Click “Block Content”. Your screen should feel “faded” with pictures/flash standing out.
3. Click on the item you want to block.
4. Click “Done”, at the top. If you’re curious about what it’s blocking, click “Details” and it will show you.
More of a hassle than a proper addon. But yes, it works.
To cycle through tabs:
But how to jump to a specific tab without cycling through them? In FireFox I can just press control+number and it opens the corresponding tab. Having to cycle through them is annoying and slow.
Firefox run slower with more addons/extension to reach the level of Opera.
Edited 2009-06-06 14:47 UTC
Firefox run slower with more addons/extension to reach the level of Opera.
Like what? Sure, Opera has an excellent rendering engine, it’s a whole lot faster then FF, but didn’t see any features that I’d miss with any other browser. For example mail and bittorrent clients shouldn’t be built-in to the browser IMHO, they should be separate apps.
It should NOT be built-in if it slow down the browser!
You don’t bother if you don’t use them. They are not affect to Opera performance.
I don’t deny that every browser have its own advantages, and I use Firefox for some extension that I must use web-service or not easy to do with Opera.
But, what make Opera my choice, and Firefox or other can’t do better:
* Sessions manager: stable, automatic recovery, easy to use.
* I use many tabs, too. And I have no problem with tab cycling, Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab for cycle forward/backward, it’s likely scrolling in iPod (my opinion).
It’s efficient if you have 10xtabs.
Of course, Firefox is better if you have less than 10 tabs.
Bonus, you can use “tab cylce” feature in every tabbed windows of Opera, not only pages window.
* Trash, better and better.
* Feeds reader, I use feed reader very much.
* Bookmarklet + Buttons, really cool feature.
* Searching in address bar and QuickFind.
* Fit to Width, cached image (easy way), author/user mod.
* Adblock, or Noscript???
I use Bfilter, very fast, easily configurable and can use with every browser.
Opera can disable/enable plugins (flash, … etc), Java, javascript, sound, gift with one key F12.
* Also site preference, I like this feature!
How many extensions can do these???
I did not use Opera’s mail client too much to have much of an informed opinion about it, but I kind of like it: it is unobtrusive, fast and does what it is supposed to do remarkably well, I have to say. I don’t see any problem with having it deeply integrated with the browser, but don’t see any good argument to have it there either.
My pet peeve with your comment was about the BitTorrent bit. Sure, BT is a P2P protocol and as such it is not the most obvious thing to have embedded on a web browser. But when you think about it, BT differs greatly from other P2P protocols/clients in that it NEEDS to work together with a browser to work properly (you have to visit a tracker through a web browser to open up .torrent files, after all*) so it is nice to have it integrated with the web browser as well. As anything that is related to Opera, it is fast, small, light on resources and efficient. That’s hardly something to be ashamed of.
It may not have all the features of a dedicated BitTorrent client such as Azureus but is about on par with Transmission, which is more than enough for the occasional download.
Having said that, I pretty much agree with everything that you said about Opera in a previous post: it is insanely fast, it renders most pages well these days and many of the meaningful features that people have to look up Firefox extensions for added functionality are already built-in. In a nutshell, it is a darn good browser! The only reason that I still cannot adopt it for my daily use instead of FF is that Opera’s adblock solution is not nearly as good as Firefox’. Yes, it is possible to make it almost work as AdBlock – you have to export AdBlock’s rules to a file and then set it up manually into Opera – but you have to keep doing it manually on a weekly basis at least if you want the same results.
The day that Opera put up something as good as AdBlock into their browser will be the day that Firefox will die on my machines (except for the occasional compatibility testing, of course)
* Yes, I realize that not everybody load their .torrent files from web trackers, but those are too far few and between that I suspect that it would not matter too much for the typical use case.
$ opera -nomail
Tab cycling with mouse or keyboard is similar to Alt+Tab to cycle through windows. It’s more useful than this Firefox feature if you open many tabs (and really faster).
Such as I have 30 tabs opened. I want to active the tab named “Tab’s position, where’s my tab!?”. It’s position is about 14, 15, 16, I don’t know.
I must test with Ctrl + ’14’ or ’15’ or ’16’.
OR, I must find the number of position of this tab.
In Opera I can ‘visually” tab cycling with mouse and/or keyboard to quickly find the tab I want.
It’s more useful than this Firefox feature if you open many tabs (and really faster).
As said, I do open and use many tabs and I still find a quick 2-key combination A LOT faster than having to cycle through all the open tabs. I had to go back to FireFox because I just can’t get used to that annoying need to cycle through everything when I know exactly what I want and where it is.
As I give example, how do you “QUICKLY” find the number indexs the tab you want if there many tabs opened????
You must count?? or Firefox give you the tab’s number position??
It only takes less than a second to see how many tabs I have open. Maybe it takes more for you, I dunno, but for me it doesn’t take longer than that.
I see, you use about less than 10 tabs (in your example)!
I said in my latest comment, Firefox seem to be faster with about 10 tabs opened. But, it can’t be faster with more tabs, ok!?
Also, I use “open with new tab” feature very much when searching, use Shift+Enter (instead of Enter) when search with Google. Open and open in 5 minutes, then tab cycle easily with Opera.
With “Enable single key shortcuts” its as easy as pressing 1 for previous tab and 2 for next tab. One of the best features in opera.
With “Enable single key shortcuts” its as easy as pressing 1 for previous tab and 2 for next tab. One of the best features in opera.
Thanks for the tip, gotta try :]
http://www.adsweep.org
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This is the most superficial and unfair review I ever read about Opera.
Complaining that the black bar is too heavy and that it should be made to look like a uniform gray along with the tabs is foolish and misses the point of creating a user interface. While perhaps it is, for some, more aesthetically pleasing to have all of the buttons and tabs a uniform color, it is far less functional.
Human vision relies on differences in contrast, luminance, and color to perceive the presence of edges. By having a high degree of contrast, you are making it easier to detect the presence of an interface element, thereby assisting in the placement of visual attention. The time it takes to recognize a tab with a higher contrast against its background is far less than if you had it with low contrast as would be found with a gray background with gray tabs.
What Opera has done is a good idea as far as usability is concerned. Ultimately, helping the user find information that is relevant to the regular use of a piece of software should be the goal of software designers. That is what Opera has achieved here.
They could go further by making the tabs more useful by making it possible to colorize different tabs. The Firefox Chromatabs extension does this now (though the implementation needs a little help). If Opera set up the tabs so that the tabs were automatically given a tint, it would help to further discriminate the tabs. This would be even more useful if the user can select the tab of each color. This would allow the user to set the tabs apart by category, rather than individual page.
I don’t want to review everything, but the fact remains. I cannot use another browser for the life of me. Opera just does exactly what I want, when I want, with almost no hassle. Just a little list of features that are so missing for me :
– The most annoying on firefox for me is the absence of Trash. You have the recent history thing, but it’s clunky, fairly hidden, and doesn’t reopen tabs on their last position (I know, seems logical heh).
– Lightweight e-mail client. Ho yeah you can use another program, actually I do too. But for my day to day use when I’m not heavily mailing Opera is really all I need, and it’s super enjoyable. Same goes with newsfeeds, bittorrent etc, etc.
– Speed. FF just doesn’t compare sorry. It bloats out even on fairly good hardware.
– Search in the address bar. So there’s google (default). There’s wikipedia. You can also take 5s and add more of those. I put on CiteSeer, DBLP and Google Scholar for research work, and looking something up is “F8 ‘gs something'”. Once you get used to that, it’s just not beatable.
– Wand passwords. Once again, I didn’t find browsers who compare (but I admit I didn’t test much). Multiple items and accounts with better recognition than FF.
– Speed dial
– Cycling through tabs
– I could go on, but day-to-day that’s just stuff Opera has baseline and other browsers don’t.
I don’t even know what’s hidden underneath (page-based preferences, discovered something here ^^). I knew about the DOM/js helpers but I don’t dev on a regular basis. And I find it silly to trash opera compliance when they usually are the ones following the CSS/HTML guidelines by the word. Javascript used to be an issue but the 9.x engine is faster than FF now.
I also dislike the default 9.x interface. I have a default skin, very minimalist, that I like alot for it. It takes me 3s to find and put up (name is Dimple or something). But those features are game-changers, skin doesn’t matter for me. I’d have prefered an in-depth look in what changes in Opera INSIDE, because the skin is 10s away of what you really need.
In the end, it’s really a matter of preference, no questions asked, but your review just does nothing for me.
Just a few notes on Opera’s integrated components (e.g. e-mail client, feed reader, BitTorrent client, note-taker, contacts manager, etc. . .):
When one gets used to using them, installing and running other programs to do the same things is needless activity – Opera simplifies your use of your computer. This is akin to not needing to hunt down extensions because of built-in functionality (e.g. mouse gestures, content blocking, Page Zoom).
I have found Opera’s M2 e-mail client’s search and sorting functions for e-mail (and RSS/Atom feeds, and Contacts) superior to Gmail. In fact, I wish they had calendaring and To Do functionality built in!
The “Save to Note” function (select text and right-click) is great for research – no need to open Notepad and save. You can organize notes in folders, as you see fit. If you need to find the page a particular note came from, double-click the note and a tab will open up with the original page (if it still exists). Even if it doesn’t, you can hover your cursor over the note to see its original URL, along with a date and time stamp. Notes are searchable. You can create your own (not limited to selecting text from a web page).
Opera handles Torrents as any other download from the internet. Again, pretty simple.
Session saving is a boon for project management.
Using the built in Page-zoom in conjunction with the “Fit to Width” function (Ctrl+F11) makes increasing text size on a page a second-nature, speedy activity. Scrutinzing images is effectively effortless, as well, because of the complementarity of these functions.