When the Opera Mini developers break a site...
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tao102 last edited by
As a general question, when the Opera Mini developers break a web site, is there any precedent for them later going back and fixing it, even with an explicit bug report? Is there any way to encourage a fix beyond a formal bug report? I have had several sites die on me at least partially since I started relying on Mini a couple years ago and my sense is that Mini's compatibility keeps getting worse instead of better.
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yeswap last edited by
Opera Mini developers don't break sites. Development of Opera Mini for other phones (Java, Symbian, BlackBerry, bada and Window Phone) ended years ago.
Site developers break their sites in Opera MIni but ignoring Opera's documentation explaining which JavaScript features Mini does and doesn't support. Mini's speed, data saving and ability to handle huge pages on very low memory devices depend on server-side rendering which limits the features Mini can support.
It's easy to build sites that work well in classic Mini but there's little business reason to do it anymore. The market share for the platforms that classic Opera Mini runs on is miniscule.
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tao102 last edited by
It's true that the only versions of Mini I can access easily are J2ME, but with a particular site I got as far as the VP of Client Experience, and he was racking his brain trying to remember their last update, which didn't coincide with my technical issues. On another occasion, a comic strip I read regularly suddenly stopped appearing on the page, and the site's support insisted they hadn't changed anything. I understand that the clients are no longer updated, but does that mean the server side has gone static, too? Is there such a press release?
I am not familiar with Mini's developer guide, but often note network activity when completing data in a form. One the first site above, this stopped, and when I submit the form it's as if I hadn't typed anything. I doubt there is much the site developers can do to stop Mini from "storing" form data. If I could simply get this working again, the site would likely come back to life.
FWIW, this web interface sucks.
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yeswap last edited by
@tao102 Code changes on the Opera MIni servers could break sites. Unfortunately, users and web developers have no visibility of those changes.
I don't know if it will do any good or not, but if you hope to get Opera to to do anything about an issue you need to:
- Post the url of the affected site.
- Describe what's wrong with the site in Opera Mini
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tao102 last edited by
Well, I've already filed official bug reports. I came here in case there were any additional ideas for "encouraging" them. I swear if they just reverted to older code, the functionality would come back.
In case anybody from Opera is reading, the tickets are
DNAWIZ-52800
DNAWIZ-52031
SKIRNE-235023 <- this one might be more complicatedIn the meantime, I will try to test the native Android version of Mini in case it works differently.
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tao102 last edited by
No, I found Opera Mini too unreliable. I would need to type and submit the report multiple times before it succeeded, so yes, my reports typically have "Windows 7" stamped on them. If you're suggesting these issues aren't being addressed because they are filed incorrectly, I would think that Opera desktop support would still see them and refile them as necessary.
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tao102 last edited by
I certainly hope not! It would be lazy and violate the concept of tech support. It would be great to get official feedback to know for certain... But Opera really needs to stop sniffing and hard-coding the OS and browser in their tickets. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why somebody would file with an OS/browser other than the combination that exhibited the problem. Unless they want the latitude to be lazy...
Technically, I could probably spoof Firefox as Opera Mini and refile.
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leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
You can use https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/mini to report the problems even from your desktop.
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tao102 last edited by
That page looks familiar, but my bug reports are typically stamped "Windows 7" so I must have used the desktop form. The bug ticket autoresponder mentions that
All bug reports are read and handled by our staff. However, please note that you will not receive a personal reply to the bug report, unless we need more information to investigate the bug.
So I would still like to think they've been filed accordingly.
