Where is the menu bar?

[j7nj7n]

j7nj7n last edited by

If Opium's main intention was to stop "wasting" screen space, then how come the tabs and address bar became padded with blank space increasing their size? Or how come the history and preferences start taking up the entire screen without allowing one to see the page which required a settings adjustment, and keep in memory what it was about? With as little as 11px more, the old Opera can add functionality to a page by showing its title.

And if I really do have a small screen resolution, I could use a smaller font for the menu, fitting in mere 16 px of additional space.

Menu sizes like these were used with 640*480 and 800*600 screens. The text on the menu remains crisp with good fonts. I am not showing Opera because it, as well as Microsoft Office was not built for such small resolutions (even back then when they were released in 1999-2005) and add padding around the menu text.

We don't need Opera to "give us back" our screens, when they take them away again with the other hand again (history and preferences pages).

Corrected grammar.

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by j7nj7n:

Menu sizes like these were used with 640*480 and 800*600 screens. The text on the menu remains crisp with good fonts. I am not showing Opera because it, as well as office was not build for such small resolutions (even back then when they were released in 1999-2005) and add padding around the text.

Quite true; Opera was much too padded.

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

You inspired me to take a few extra screenshots so I could show off Opera's nativeness.

This is a native application:

This is Opera 19:

This is a native application using the high contrast color scheme, one of Windows' built-in accessibility features:

This is Opera 19 using the high contrast color scheme:

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

But Frenzie, no one uses XP anymore.

The borders are not the same size, and they lack the inlay or whatever it's called. There's also no drag handle in the bottom right.

No comment.

Look familiar?

Being native means more than faking it reasonably well with the defaults.

[j7nj7n]

j7nj7n last edited by

Opium "wasting" space on the history screen:

Opera has the same functionality in a compact format:

Native and semi-native (like Photoshop) windows can display around 25-35 options on one screen at once:

Opium can display 8 scattered on "wasted" space:

[johnswolter]

johnswolter last edited by

I too would like to see an option for a menu bar. I think the use of a menu bar is a customer choice. People who are not involved in the debate are simply trying to browse the Internet. They are only looking for the easiest way to accomplish there tasks. The average Internet "user" is more interested in social networking or shopping or their average daily lives then a discussion of pixel counts.

The visionaries, that is us, are always pushing to go just a bit farther. The number of experiments that succeed are but a tiny fraction of all of them.

It's clear from this thread, people are still vested in a legacy menu-bar. If you want to remove the menu-bar, the simplest way is to provide an experiment that some number of people choose to Opt-In. It would then be obvious to the uninvolved to Opt-In to the experiment. Soon most will make the change and the issue is resolved by a vote of the customers.

The legacy desire could be satisfied using themes or customization of a theme. It appears that the effort to provide more theme development features has not been part of the thread's discussion. It could be that more Opera SDK options could yield unexpected benefits.

Firefox and Chrome are working very hard to turn browsers into applications engines. Much has been done already. I see that there is much more to do to make that idea happen. An example is the Mozilla Rust language or Google's DART. These are sign posts on the road to distributed application concurrency, security, and reliability.

Note the market for applications is huge. No single browser will own the application space. How can Opera Next be adapted to many possibilities?

Cheers,
John S Wolter

[raven-kg]

raven-kg last edited by

Summing up for all the see below, it is a situation - users demand loyalty and consideration to their wishes , the Opera team are confident that they and only they know what is better for the users.
This approach probably would be relevant when developing an application from scratch, but not for applications having a large number of users, accustomed to a particular interface - interface for these users becomes as a family home.

Looks like: "- I need a picture of a naked mermaid. - No, you definitely need a cast-iron statue of Napoleon on horseback!"

Changes maded by Opera developers was like on the move to remove user's briefs.

P.S. Sorry for my English, is not my native language, regards to google translate)))

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Originally posted by johnswolter:

People who are not involved in the debate are simply trying to browse the Internet. They are only looking for the easiest way to accomplish there tasks. The average Internet "user" is more interested in social networking or shopping or their average daily lives then a discussion of pixel counts.

Ordinary users may not be concerned with counting pixels, but they do like to have as much space as possible for the web page. If you look back at the early versions of Opera, like 6.06, there is a large amount of space used by the GUI. First, the Windows title bar, then the menu bar, then the main toolbar with a big advertisement taking up half of it, then the status bar, then the personal bar (aka Bookmarks Bar), and the panels are open on the left for bookmarks, etc. Much of this clutter can be turned off, but this is how the default setup looks

Recent versions of Opera have done away with nearly all of this, with just the address bar and tabs showing in the default setup. Opera 18 is no different there, and the menu displaying at the side with Alt is no different either.

Chrome doesn't even show the menu with Alt. Firefox and IE11 both autohide the menu, and show it with Alt. I prefer the way that Firefox does it — showing it right next to the Firefox Button.

There is no reason at all why Opera Next must bring back the menu bar. It is not an essential feature at all. Options are always nice, of course, but there are many other features that they need to bring back before this one.

[j7nj7n]

j7nj7n last edited by

You got a point there about the text on the "Main" bar being superfluous. I never understood why Explorer had such a toolbar design. The meaning of back and home buttons was clear enough, and I rarely used anything but Back, Forward, Refresh, and occasionally Encoding. Of course the banner is there because the browser was ad supported, and powerful enough to get rid of similar or even larger banners on pages themselves.

The web doesn't look as bad as the 404 page you showed. Here's a more conventional configuration of Opera 6 showing a working webpage (which has not been needlessly "upgraded" rendering it broken for old browsers).

The title bar shows the full page title which remains visible when the view has been scrolled down. The Bookmarks menu is in a distinct place from View and File, and accessible by remembering its position in the center of the screen.

The problem with all the menus being compressed under one single button is that this button becomes a "bottleneck". Opera appears to solve this problem the wrong way by removing seemingly "unneded" functions to lighten up the large menu.

[jtclipper]

jtclipper last edited by

Long time Firefox user here, turned away from the recent Nightly builds, trying to find a Browser that delivers for all flavors/shapes/colors minimalistic or flamboyant!
Only to find a similar trend here as well , it seems that the current road-plan with all 'modern' software design points to the same direction.
Opera is no exception and jumps in the bandwagon. I understand that desktops are not what they used to be or at least what companies think the game is at, tablets/smartphones and all other similar devices are the primary focus now and the traditional UI's crumble and fall in the name of content consumption and smaller screen sizes.

Anyway I read carefully all the posts here and (for me at least) what it all boils down to is people arguing about what they think is better, faster more efficient and so on and so forth. And you know what? all of you are right you want to use what suits you best and one must respect that. Using a toolbar won't create a hole in the ozone layer nor the planet will overheat if someone likes a zero tool-bar/menu configuration, It's personal and a software has to respect that and deliver the corresponding options. Removing any means or a great part of customization for the one thing that can be customized the most 'A software's UI' is not close to my heart.

Here is my flavor for not wasting space:
clumsy? cluttered? non-practical? it works for me and that is what really matters.

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by jtclipper:

Here is my flavor for not wasting space:
clumsy? cluttered? non-practical? it works for me and that is what really matters.

Personally I'd mix up the few bookmark folders in between the menu items, arranged alphabetically. That is, I'd want Alt+G to activate your "Games" bookmarks folder as if it were a completely integrated part of the menubar.

In Opera/Presto I've achieved this simply by editing the menu manually—not by doing anything conceptually with bookmarks. In fact I've also stuck "bookmarks" in between built-in functionality where appropriate. For instance, a bookmarklet that reports on quirks mode goes better in the developer menu than in some separate bookmarks folder.

To what extent that should be supported in a GUI I'm not sure, but Opera's menu.ini sure made it easy to implement regardless.

That's also the biggest weakness of extensions imo. They just sit there with their specialized buttons, or if they do alter the menus, it's not the way you want it but how the extension author envisioned it. There's just a lack of user control.

[tradeofjane]

tradeofjane last edited by

Originally posted by Pesala:

Ordinary users may not be concerned with counting pixels, but they do like to have as much space as possible for the web page. If you look back at the early versions of Opera, like 6.06, there is a large amount of space used by the GUI.

Instead of copying Chrome's interface, Opera should have kept or at least given users the option of making it look like it was in earlier versions of 9.XX:

[johnswolter]

johnswolter last edited by

The Opera marketing team announced on October 31, 2013 that the Opera hosted community is being shutdown by March 2014. It's time to pull up the tent's stakes and move to their choices. I like Google+ for all the features. Facebook is the 364 kg Gorilla in the room however. Some like the streaming feeds of twitter.

The best and very good decision by Opera to shutdown these forms shows they are sensitive to knowing customers well. Everyone is using social networks and menus. See them online at Google+(my favorite), Facebook, & Twitter.

I'm signing off this and going to Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by johnswolter:

The Opera marketing team announced on October 31, 2013 that the Opera hosted community is being shutdown by March 2014. It's time to pull up the tent's stakes and move to their choices. I like Google+ for all the features. Facebook is the 364 kg Gorilla in the room however. Some like the streaming feeds of twitter.

The best and very good decision by Opera to shutdown these forms shows they are sensitive to knowing customers well. Everyone is using social networks and menus. See them online at Google+(my favorite), Facebook, & Twitter.

I'm signing off this and going to Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

Personally, I despise facebook, twitter, google + etc when it comes to having a discussion. Forums have always been the best way to keep things organized when you have a huge group like this one.

When these forums are gone, I doubt I'll ever participate again just because, to ME, it's too hard to navigate EASILY how to follow things and post things the way it is so easy to do in a forum.

Maybe that's because I'm old (almost 50) but I find Twitter completely and totally useless. Facebook is great for keeping in touch with people who live far away from you, seeing your relatives' pictures, etc.

Google + I hate because it hates Opera.

I just don't find it easy to navigate or find answers to things if they're not in a place such as this where there are clearly defined areas of discussion, threads pertaining to those areas, questions, etc., etc., etc.

I guess I'm just getting old.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Originally posted by bjdobson:

When these forums are gone,

They are not shutting down the forums. If you read the announcement they are shutting down My Opera, but the forums will move to www.opera.com — hopefully these useless troll threads will all disappear during the process, but the useful content will be retained. There is a huge amount of information here about using Opera that should be preserved for another 5 or 10 years at least.

What about the forums?

Our forums will be moving to www.opera.com. The most important existing threads will be moved across, and you will be able to use your My Opera account to log in and continue the discussion. In other words: Your My Opera account has become your new Opera account that you can use for all Opera services and products.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by Pesala:

Originally posted by bjdobson:

When these forums are gone,

They are not shutting down the forums. If you read the announcement they are shutting down My Opera, but the forums will move to www.opera.com — hopefully these useless troll threads will all disappear during the process, but the useful content will be retained. There is a huge amount of information here about using Opera that should be preserved for another 5 or 10 years at least.

Thank you, Pesala. I misinterpreted what it said then. Phew!! Good to know.

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by bjdobson:

... I guess I'm just getting old.

No, it's just that you have a reasonably long attention span, use logical reasoning, apply sound organizational skills, and try to focus on single paths of discussion. That is not how much of the world presently functions. The temper of the day for so many is dominated by short-term focus, multi-tasked triviality to the point of distraction, and enamorment with the glitz of fads and hype. Our social techno-constructs, of which the Internet and browsers are just two, serve only to reflect this. There are clear reasons for that, but that would carry us even more OT than my post here.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by bjdobson:

... I guess I'm just getting old.

No, it's just that you have a reasonably long attention span, use logical reasoning, apply sound organizational skills, and try to focus on single paths of discussion. That is not how much of the world presently functions. The temper of the day for so many is dominated by short-term focus, multi-tasked triviality to the point of distraction, and enamorment with the glitz of fads and hype. Our social techno-constructs, of which the Internet and browsers are just two, serve only to reflect this. There are clear reasons for that, but that would carry us even more OT than my post here.

Thank you! Mostly I get told I'm just old (by my 20 something kids, of course!)

I always tended to focus clearly, multi-task well and NOT get distracted by the crap of today's world. I don't know how any employers get anything done with the kids of today using their phones and internet all day long. I turn these things off or ignore them when I'm working -- always have, always will. That gets things done and leaves me more time to do as I wish without dragging my work over 10 hours because I'm constantly allowing myself to get interrupted!! LOL

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by bjdobson:

Thank you! Mostly I get told I'm just old (by my 20 something kids, of course!)

If it helps, I'm 20-something and I agree with you.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by bjdobson:

Thank you! Mostly I get told I'm just old (by my 20 something kids, of course!)

If it helps, I'm 20-something and I agree with you.

Thanks!!!