Are Speed Dial tiles being forced on us?

rseiler

rseiler

I have ample evidence of my repeatedly deleting them and them coming back anyway. Often, it's not even after a version upgrade, it's just some random time.

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sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer

You need to empty your trash for it to work.

rseiler

rseiler

That's intriguing, but I don't know what you mean. For what to work?

Are you saying that items in Trash will automatically resurrect? If so, why? I'm not seeing the subtraction of any items in Trash, btw, just the addition of them each time that I delete them from Speed Dial. I would think that if they were resurrecting then they should be moving out of Trash each time.

sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer

Items in Trash have a history of reappearing, yes. Every once in a while the default speed dials will still reappear - this last Developer update gave me 4-5, but prior to that I'd seen only a couple in about a year.

rseiler

rseiler @sgunhouse

@sgunhouse OK, I cleared them out. That'll hopefully slow this down.

rseiler

rseiler @rseiler

@rseiler Even with nothing in Trash, all seven came back today the day after the new dev build. I'll try to notice if this repeats before the next build.

zalex108

zalex108 @rseiler

@rseiler

+1

"You cannot know the meaning of your life until you are connected to the power that created you". · Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

rseiler

rseiler

Somehow this continues to this day, even with the very latest versions, though now not usually at all close to the time of a version upgrade.

I've noticed that along with the spam Speeddials, Opera inexplicably disables extensions (at least it tells you that it's doing so now, which is probably why I'm noticing it).

I wonder if the two phenomenons are connected.

If so, maybe it's the spam Speeddials being injected that somehow causes Opera to want to disable extensions (that makes more sense than it being the other way around, at least).

That might make it a case of one hand of Opera (the one injecting SpeedDials) not communicating with the other hand of Opera (the one looking for suspicious events, and maybe disabling extensions when it thinks something is wrong)?

sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer

The extension thing is a bug and should be fixed in the latest build.

rseiler

rseiler

Yes, I haven't seen the extension problem in quite a while now.

As for forced Speed Dials, that's still a regular feature, and I expect it's just part of Opera's advertising deals. I guess someone will have to devise some clever way around it, or at least to automate their periodic removal.

gmiazga

gmiazga Opera

@rseiler what you describe here might be some problem with saving your Preferences file. This might be related to problem with extensions you mentioned earlier. Some background on how it's supposed to work:

When user makes changes to some key features (Extensions, Speed Dials) they are saved in Preferences file in profile
Those changes are then signed to confirm on next run they haven't been modified outside Opera

It would seem that in your case there is problem with either writing those changes to Preferences file or some problem with generating correct signature for them. Could you give us more details here:

What is your operating system exact version
What type of installation you have
Where is your profile folder (you can check it on opera://about page)
Check content of Preferences file (located in your profile) for speeddial.partner.blacklist key. You can use page like http://jsbeautifier.org to get content into more readable state. It should something like this:

"speeddial": {
        "bookmarks_folder_guid": "1A05856C-84F8-4C46-85B0-E84A56B30C2C",
        "column_count": 7,
        "hide_search_box": false,
        "imported_to_bookmarks": true,
        "partners": {
            "blacklist": {
                "http://aliexpress.com/": "20171003",
                "http://domodi.pl/": "20171003",
                "http://www.booking.com/": "20171003 20180329",
                "http://www.ceneo.pl/": "20171003",
                "http://www.euro.com.pl/": "20171003",
                "http://www.gazeta.pl/": "20171003",
                "http://www.groupon.pl/": "20171003",
                "https://allegro.pl/": "20171003",
                "https://www.eobuwie.com.pl/": "20180320",
                "https://www.homebook.pl/produkty/wyprzedaze": "20180301",
                "https://www.zalando.pl/": "20171003"
            },
            "guid": "15fc35d4-f2c7-4ac7-a8f6-876f8f476236",
            "migration_state": 2,
            "signature": "by3Zv8hqugpBF6LzIV8eZ+YcsBa5FgcEyOoO7vqobFs=",
            "timestamp": "13172819140845008"
        },
    },

rseiler

rseiler

But the extension issue was a definite issue (not just for me) that was fixed, was it not (I still haven't seen it in months)? Also, I've seen several people mention the SpeedDial problem, so it shouldn't be unique to me but could still be a problem (if it's not a feature, which it sounds like you're confirming it's not).

Note that when I remove the Speed Dials in question (had to do it just today, which is in line with it tending to happen a few days after a new build), they stay gone for a matter of days. It's not as if I remove them, close Opera, run Opera, and see them again, which would certainly suggest the writing problem you mention. I can also add SD's consistently. So I don't think it's that. Maybe it's the signature issue though.

-Current Win10 build: 17686.1003. But it's happened with all the builds I've used stretching back to last year. Including 17134, which is an RTM build.

-Portable (Dev)

-Program Files\OperaDev\profile\data

It's different from yours. What does being on a blacklist mean? Maybe you'll see something in it. I see that it contains all six of recurring items (Overstock used to be the seventh, but it must have been dropped).

"speeddial": {
    "bookmarks_folder_guid": "7661E6C9-BDEA-4FA8-9C5C-5F83F31F565D",
    "hide_plus_button": true,
    "hide_suggestions_forced_for_news": true,
    "imported_to_bookmarks": true,
    "partners": {
        "blacklist": {
            "http://aliexpress.com/": "20171003",
            "http://www.amazon.com/": "20171003",
            "http://www.booking.com/": "20180329",
            "http://www.ebay.com/": "20171003",
            "http://www.walmart.com/": "20171003",
            "https://www.tripadvisor.com/": "20171003"
        },
        "guid": "24e4a92c-fedc-4943-8b18-a114f444fe8c",
        "migration_state": 2,
        "post_migration_cleanup_state": true,
        "signature": "6QniTEoT5fWhEF3Iwu9m4RKo2vY9lyemBZ5WibGQX68=",
        "timestamp": "13172820183614318"
    },

Thanks

gmiazga

gmiazga Opera

Issue with extension was not exactly fixed. We just disabled feature which was causing it. Looking at what you sent seems to look ok. You might have different items there as offered Speed Dials depend on region and language.

By design if anything is in blacklist it means user deleted those partner offers and we shouldn't added them again when updating list of Speed Dials. There is exception from this that we could force some partner to appear again, but this in normal case would happen just for certain Speed Dial and definitely not like every week. I will forward this to developers perhaps they will have some more ideas.

A Former User This post is deleted!

A Former User

Speed Dial / Start Page is a hasbeen. It was great back in 2004.

O15 had Stash and at least it was something new for the whole 'landing' ~ before igniting to surf the world wide web.

Internet has changed so much since and these days people need comprehensive service to keep, maintain and organize they're abundance of information and data, data, data.

That other browser expanded Speed Dial with Stash Folders ~ sort of to say. Now I heard they're going even further.

Perhaps people somewhere else - like at Reddit - would be interested to brainstorm a concept brainstorm. Use pencil and paper or PS or Gimp. Drawing board is always fun time of dev.

gmiazga

gmiazga Opera @rseiler

@rseiler are Speed Dials addition related to any changes you are doing to your system? Like updates or restarts perhaps?

rseiler

rseiler @gmiazga

@mgeffro That's interesting. Windows builds are updated roughly weekly here (reboots are a natural byproduct of that process), and this problem occurs on a similar interval, though I don't have any concrete knowledge of whether one has followed the other, since this idea never occurred to me.

Yesterday, however, is fresh in mind. I did upgrade a Windows build, and Opera also triggered the problem. Hmmm. Is it even possible that Opera could be looking at the specific build number of Windows 10 in making the determination of whether it should un-blacklist something?

I'll definitely be watching more closely now and let you know if one follows the other again.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @rseiler

@rseiler said in Are Speed Dial tiles being forced on us?:

Yesterday, however, is fresh in mind. I did upgrade a Windows build, and Opera also triggered the problem. Hmmm. Is it even possible that Opera could be looking at the specific build number of Windows 10 in making the determination of whether it should un-blacklist something?

With Windows 10 upgrades being almost like a full, fresh install anymore, maybe there's something to that.

A Former User

I too get the extra speed dial tiles being added whenever I update to the latest Insider Preview build of Win10. It's one of the few really irritating behaviours I find with Opera, I have my speed dial arranged a certain way and these tiles getting added keeps cocking that up. I've tried deleting them and keeping them in the bin, I've tried deleting them and emptying the bin, I've tried moving them to a different bookmark folder and keeping them there. And yet every time I update Windows, there they are again.

I get that Opera is supported by things like this. But it keeps adding tiles for stuff that I already have on there (eBay and Amazon for example). Could the behaviour at least be altered to check for duplicates before spamming the speed dial?

rseiler

rseiler @Guest

@customcruiser I'm told they're working on a fix now that the association between two seemingly separate things has been identified. Stay tuned.