Stop messing with the UI

[cyvasse]

cyvasse last edited by

Opera had had its highs and lows, the Internet experience nowadays is great, much better than the last days of Presto engine. Internet navigation today is quite the same across browsers, it is like using Windows or Mac, both can do all you want, you just linger on the platform you are used to.
The moment you change to another platform is when the devs have changed the things that made you use it in the first place. Years ago, I used Opera because it was the fastest, then I used it because of the speed dial and now, I keep seeing the thing I most love in Opera being messed each version.

Today, the only customization available is to change the background. Prior to chromium, I had widgets there, gmail for speed dial, exchange rates... I confess I hated the dial's size, it was too big. Then, we moved to a non-widget UI, then a UI with smaller dials (that size was great btw) and now back to big dials and no widgets.
As a developer, I know that a great UI is one that doesn't requires (too much) reading. Now, just a few websites have Icons recognized, many became just a domain name and worse, some became a white box (i.e web.whatsapp).
In my point of view, the speed dial is much like Windows new start screen, it is a place that you don't read, you just know where to click to get where you want.
Simple solutions would be to allow us to resize the blocks (they can all be the same size, no problem with that). Allow us to set custom names and thumbnails to the dials. Some more advanced modificastions would be to allow us to make groups or move then around creating custom non-grid layouts.

Another issue, IMO, is the new bookmark. I was fascinated with stash. It was so simple, but so powerfull. By using screenshots of the pages, I were able to find everything stashed in a matter of seconds. I even had pointers like "that link is after that cute cat photo".
A good point against the Stash layout was that it demanded a good amount of scrolling. This could be easily handled if we could have multiple stashes (side by side). I could use one for links, another for gifs and photos and so on.

In sum, stop taking customization away from us and throwing away excellent ideas. The tab stacking thing is also something that I miss very much.

Thank you for your time reading this. I can give more feedback on those topics if needed.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

I have to admit I haven't seen new opera in a long time and didn't spend enough time using it to be that familiar with stash. But I have to say I think speed dial is was overrated. I loved it at first and eventually I found that if I use bookmarks, with just icons I could select to have them vertical at the right edge of my screen taking up no horizontal space space and with my links just one click away (instead of two for speed dial). I can fit fully 26 of them on my 12 inch screen.

[grierzo]

grierzo last edited by

Hello Cyvasse, Welcome to the forums. Great analysis! Agree with you on the speed dial, I also thought stash was a useful innovation which could have been developed. I think the new Bookmarks could be OK if they were also smaller or resizeable, those big squares just lead to lots of scrolling.

[lando242]

lando242 last edited by

They are resizable. Internal Opera pages, like bookmarks and the speed dial, are webpages. You can use zoom on them and it will save the setting. You can also set them to list view, which is mostly what I use.

[grierzo]

grierzo last edited by

Well, I never knew that! It does help, although it also renders the text very small on the folders list on the left, or if you switch to list view. Like you I mostly use list view, think I'll stick with it.