The tale of the little old house
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christoph142 last edited by
##The tale of the little old house
###Prologue
Being confronted with this unbelievable mass (respectively mess) of threads and comments about why they removed feature X, I decided to tell you this little tale hoping that it's less tilting at windmills than replying to all of them individually...###Chapter 1: The old little house (a.k.a Opera 12-)
Once upon a time there was a little house. It was nice and cozy and over the years it grew little by little. Another balcony here a little bay there and on top a bunch of little turrets lined up one by one. Each of them looking different from the others.
But soon more and more people wanted to get inside and live within that beautiful home...
###Chapter 2: The ravages of time
As the little house grew and became bigger and tailored to all of its inhabitants, it also became holey. Parts just didn't really fit together and maintenance became a nightmare. Trying to fix one flaw over there makes another one right next to it pop up and while you're trying to fix this, a turret on the other side starts tilting and threatens to break off.
###Chapter 3: The cut
Seeing their nice little house crumbling away, they realized that something had to be done. There's only one mistake that you can make at this stage: trying to fix it over and over again, investing vasts amounts of resources, keeping it too long.
###Chapter 4: The restart (a.k.a Opera 15+)
So they did what had to be done: They acquired new ground and started to build a solid base. Big enough for everybody to get in, simple enough to stay maintainable cause they learned how not to do it over the years.
###Chapter 5: Story by story (16, 17, 18, ...)
Now slowly but coordinated they are trying to rebuild a house as appealing as the old one used to be. And you can be part of its history...###The moral of this story
It's never gonna be the little house. It'll never have all those turrets and bays, but it'll maybe have a rooftop garden or a built-in fitness center.
It's understandable that not everybody likes changes. Some of you loved and still love turrets and don't want to move out. Then stay for now or try to find a new home that suits you better (e.g. Maxthon, FF, ...), but please don't start complaining and whining anew during building of each and every story (version) that your turret (feature) is still missing. It's impossible to build a building as big as the Burj Khalifa all at once. Keep in mind that what you see now is the basement.
Then you may be able to spot the beauty in what's rising just in front of your eyes while you're still grieving about your beloved little old house.THE END
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linuxmint7 last edited by
Modernism ?, Shudders at the thought. Sorry, it's not for me. Function over form wins out everytime I say.
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awzx last edited by
Then you may be able to spot the beauty in what's rising just in front of your eyes while you're still grieving about your beloved little old house.
I don't see any rise, or this rise is just too slow to spot. It's been a year now but nothing's changed except that from time to time they 'implement' some features that already were available in Chromium to begin with. I personally have switched to Firefox, which is now faster than ever, and don't actually even want or need to look back at this point. Cheers
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Deleted User last edited by
christop142 - you've expressed the situation perfectly. Hopefully users will carefully consider your words. Well done.
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jito463 last edited by
Actually, I can see a number of flaws in that analogy, but since the fans of Opera 12.x and prior already agree with me, and the fans of Chropera (not a derisive term, it's an apt combination of Chrome and Opera) seemingly don't want to hear it, I'll keep them to myself. Still, someone had to make the point that your analogy leaves a lot to be desired.
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Deleted User last edited by
What was wrong with the little old Opera as we knew it? There was a section for Friends, something that other browsers doesn't have, except within their forums. We now cannot access our friends. The little things, or those "turrets".
I realize that we live in an ever & fast changing world. However, it's the basics that built the community, as is the case with the Linux distros that found success. They found their place in the world, kept the foundation & although some makeovers took place, the community is the same. Opera's community, unless there's something I've not seen, is at least partially broken.
Finally, being that I spoke of Linux, Opera & Linux shares something unique. Both has a small set of users, compared to the bigger names. Not that anything was ever wrong with the Opera browser, it's fast, has an ample amount of features such as extensions & other browser options. Maybe Opera became overshadowed by the competition (Windows & Linux). I have always pushed the Opera browser to my fellow Linux (& Windows) users, yet many won't run it because it's not the current version. In practice, it's not good to run outdated software, including browsers.
It would only seem fitting that Opera would extend their latest browser to Linux users, the potential for growth is there, as many are dissatisfied with the "new" Windows, version 8/8.1. Some of these users has turned to Linux, some have stepped down (many will consider up to) Windows 7. However, this isn't always going to be feasible, nor will everyone be able to convert their computer to an Android one. Linux is the next best option & is more user friendly than ever. No, it'll never be a Windows clone, nor would we want it that way. However, those with the successful Linux distros (such as Ubuntu/Mint) have worked hard to make them as such. There is plenty of room for growth for Opera with the Linux community.
Maybe it's time to consider returning to our "little old house". It was certainly a happier one.
Cat
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A Former User last edited by
I don't see any rise, or this rise is just too slow to spot. It's been a year now but nothing's changed
Tell us more about the changes you have seen to Opera 12 since Aug 2012 (your account creation date).What was wrong with the little old Opera as we knew it?
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Ugly compatibility issues with websites that never ceased to appear. Devs had to deal with them losing precious time because the users don't know, don't want to know and even deny when we say it may be or it's the websites fault (leaving Opera).
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The engine performance was broken: lags/hangs and freezing in popular sites using modern web standards technologies, no fix for OOPP, no hardware acceleration (an endless beta).
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Code complexity for features that not even near of 1% of the users cared about or that are doable, making it difficult for them to maintain and introduce new features without breaking something else in the browser.
Switching to Chromium solves all that at once.
There was a section for Friends
Hm this thread isn't about the "My Opera" website. -
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awzx last edited by
Tell us more about the changes you have seen to Opera 12 since Aug 2012 (your account creation date).
My account creation date has nothing to do anything with since when I've been using Opera. It's 2006-2007 FYI. And I don't see the point of your question. Who says that something needed to be changed in Opera? Besides those (rather rare in my case) incompatibility and performance issues, there was not much to change, the browser was almost perfect. And in fact, still is pretty much usable.
Switching to Chromium solves all that at once.
What you are saying is basically "getting rid of all those features and flexibility that Opera was loved for solved the problem". Doesn't sound much like a solution to me.
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scipio last edited by
It would help if the architect told a little bit more about what's going to be added to this new building in the future. It's bad enough that we've lost many things from the old house which were exactly the reason why we preferred that over the competition, but it's worse to not know whether it will be anything like the old house again. That will help us decide whether it's worth waiting or else decide that we can move on and find an alternative that suits us better.
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Deleted User last edited by
I think we need to exercise some patience here. Mozilla does not broadcast all of its coming features nor does Apple nor MS. Why should Opera? We know this: Opera 20 is a far sight more capable than Opera 15 and that should be an indication that things are getting done in their good time and that the job ahead is a challenging one.
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biggerabalone last edited by
nice story. however, the chapter 2, "ravages of time" needs some context to understand peoples frustration. if we are to believe opera's former ceo and creator, the owners of the home decided to no longer maintain it and invested elsewhere (admarvel and skyfire). this is why the home degraded (no money for presto maintenance and improvement). but it's all irrelevant at this point, 'cuz what's done is done.
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scipio last edited by
@leushino: fair enough, but a vision would still be nice. Is Opera going to be (eventually) a highly customizable browser that will also suit knowledgeable people? Or will Opera rely on extensions for any advanced feature that we used to have before?
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bgh251f2 last edited by
And then all the Linux Users got evicted, now they or have other house or are homeless, question why would anyone return to a house from which he was kicked? Other houses can be worse but the newer is not good either and, as they forbid you from entering, why would you even care?
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alreadybanned last edited by
@Chrisoph142
If the analogy is to represent that nothing lasts forever, then you would be right, but your apple pie little story paints an inaccurate image.
Opera has moved into someone else's house. They now have; a room that they can furnish the way they want, walls they can paint any colour they want and if they are lucky, there might be a balcony or piece of land in the backyard allotted to them to plant a garden. BUT it is no longer their home and therefore they must follow the rules of the house. So gone is the ability to play loud music past a certain time or have over company whenever you want because Opera can only operate within the parameters that Chromium allows and that is why, in a house with many different rooms, they all look the same from the outside.
This is what always happens when one trades away their sovereignty for the convenience of having someone else do the heavy lifting. Politics is politricks the world over, Jon knew it and that's why he left home
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alreadybanned last edited by
I think we need to exercise some patience here. Mozilla does not broadcast all of its coming features nor does Apple nor MS. Why should Opera? We know this: Opera 20 is a far sight more capable than Opera 15 and that should be an indication that things are getting done in their good time and that the job ahead is a challenging one.
yes, patience is a virtue after all but when Opera's people say certain features like notes, mail, (proper)bookmarks are either never to return or just not on the radar, what are we waiting for?
Safari and Chrome are awful browsers and now Opera shares their DNA. Nothing lasts forever and so I have moved on but it still saddens me to lose Opera.
