Opera 17, pros and cons

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by leushino:

Frenzie, I've learned to respect your opinions over these months of back and forth. I'm curious about something. Given the choice between Chrome and Firefox, which would you choose and why? And if privacy were not an issue, would your choice change?

I would choose Firefox because it comes with more features I like out of the box, and I also tend to like its extensions better. This goes from basics like the cookie manager, the newsfeed notification button,* and better bookmarks, to more advanced things like userChrome.css, userContent.css, GreaseMonkey, Stylish, NoScript, etc. In the case of e.g. Stylish it's simply the interface I prefer. I find Chromium's settings rather drawn-out and they seem to take many pages for what could fit on one screen. Discarding privacy wouldn't change my opinion.

* Unfortunately no longer displayed in Fx by default, but still part of the default features without any extensions.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

I think you just enjoy a good argument. And as your chosen handle indicates, you like to express yourself in carefully crafted sentences. And that's fine but at the end of the day none of this means very much. Opera has its marching orders and it will continue to do what the board tells it to do. But I suppose these community forums give us the false belief that we can effect change. We can't. Oh how this entire episode brings back memories of the end of Netscape. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Originally posted by scratchspace:

as well as on the developer blogs, of course

If you want the developers to hear you, that's the best place. This forum is a user2user forum for getting help on using Opera. The Wish-list is for feature requests.

[quhno]

quhno last edited by

Originally posted by Pesala:

Originally posted by rs79:

Forms have been destroyed.

The best thing to do about that is to submit a bug report.

Wrong place - that is a general Chromium problem and so the bug report should be filed for Chromium if you want that fixed.
Here is how to do that

Yes, yes, I know:
We are Opera users and want to file bugs to Opera and not to Chromium. Been there, had that discussion with a dev in the #snapshot IRC channel too ...

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by QuHno:

Yes, yes, I know:
We are Opera users and want to file bugs to Opera and not to Chromium. Been there, had that discussion with a dev in the #snapshot IRC channel too ...

And on the Desktop Team blog.

[quhno]

quhno last edited by

Originally posted by Frenzie:

And on the Desktop Team blog.

... and in other places - yes :p :lol:

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

I have to say it's disappointing that what I call regressions (compared to Presto) don't get any special attention by Opera or something.

Plus frankly the Blink bug report system is a bit confusing compared to others I've used.

[rs79]

rs79 last edited by

1) Speed Dial/Home Page
"Yes indeed. AND it doesn't matter that YOU don't like Stash and Discover and yet it was YOU who raised the issue in the first place. I'm simply posting back to you that there are differences of opinion and yours should not trump anyone else's."

Ok, let's look at this carefully.

Used to be, you had an option of when a page starts to get:
a) A page you want (this has historically) been your home page[1]
b) Speed dial.

Now your options are:
a) Speed dial.

See the problem?

This shouldn't be about opinions, whether mine is right and you lose, or yours is right I and Lose. That's win/lose.

This is why we have "options". Options are good. This way we both win.

Used to be you could fire up a new instance of Opera and you'd get your home page. Then, somewhere around the time tabs and speed dial came in it stopped going to your home page automatically and went to speed dial. Ok, that's less convenient, I never use speed dial so I click home and get my home page back.

Now I can't click home.

Stop making this harder! It's a fundamental f'ing feature of a web browser!

Consumers. Like. Options.

2) Opera 12 gets work done faster than any other browser.

"I've probably been using Opera longer than you (since 1999)".

I've used Opera since Version 3 and used it as my "daily browser" since version 5. I used Netscape (0.99 the day it came out) before that and Mosaic before that and Lynx before that and comp.infosystems.www in the late 80s, cause, well, good friends of mine invented stuff like MIME and SGML and I've always had an interest in computer graphics and text layout since the bell labs/unix days in the 70s. I've spent the last 20 years working on a CMS package and understand the specs and standards of ALL this stuff pretty darned well and I'm telling you authoritatively Opera is the only damn browser that works, and that there are fewer mouse clicks and key-presses than with any other browser to do the same thing. This is not an opinion, this is a quantifiable metric.

The initial assumption that WebKit and V8 would be slipped into the V12 browser turned out to be specious, and that's an issue.

Let me take a video of the forms problem, there's no point in talking about it when it's so painfully easy to show.
[1] the page you go to when you click the home button that has everywhere you need to go to. These have been around since the 1980s, and refined over the years.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Originally posted by rs79:

Now I can't click home.Stop making this harder!

You're the one making it hard. Actually, it's very easy — just bookmark your home page on the Quick Access Bar. Getting angry and cursing makes you blind to easy solutions.

We all like options, but what you see is what you get. Learn to deal with it, or you will always be missing something that you want.

[rs79]

rs79 last edited by

Hey, when did Mozilla get fixed?

I haven't used it in ages because forms didn't work, just uninstalled it and installed the latest (25) tried it and it seems to work with forms just fine. I'll have to test it long term to see it never glitches ever, but it does appear to work now. Finally. At freaking last. Good job.

The reason this is important is, if you can't go back and have your form data preserved, then you cant use this to edit anything on the web.

Let me say that again: you can't use it to edit anything on the web.

Ie, you've broken a LOT of web apps. To be sure, sites that rely only on Ajax won't see this as a problem, and that's why Chrome has got away with it for a long time - most of Google's stuff is Ajax. So if you want a browser that works well in the Google ecosystem, use Chrome.

But if you want a browser that works with ANY web app, you have to use Opera. And, it appears, now you can use Mozilla as well.

You know, I can actually live without V8's superior performance. I can actually live without WebKit's better rendering.

But If forms don't work? I can't use it.

Sorry. I'd rather it looks shitty and be slow that not work at all.

Ok, so, the video to demonstrate this concept. It's really not hard and you could have cobbled up a test in 30 seconds, but ok, I'll explain this slowly.

Here's Opera 12 doing this flawlessly.

What you'll see it a bunch of check-boxes get ticked and text gets entered then the home button is clicked to go to a differrnt page.

Then go back.

You'll see everything is in the correct state.

Then "reset" is clicked and everything goes back to the way it was before, when the page was loaded as is proper.

Without these two properties, you're not a browser that can be used for serious work. You can *get by* without the second one, bu the first is a show stopper, it means you can't edit anything on the web. And that's kind of a big deal.

These are straight off my (experia) phone so some people may have codec problems an they're shaky as it's hard to hold the phone, read and type and click mice and there's a goodly portion of thumb in one, but you can get the point.

http://rs79.vrx.net/works/photoblog/2013/Nov/5/op/opera12.mp4

Here's Opera 17 failing in the same way Chrome does.
http://rs79.vrx.net/works/photoblog/2013/Nov/5/op/opera17.mp4

Here's Chrome failing in the same way Opera 17 does. But at least Chrome has a home button.
http://rs79.vrx.net/works/photoblog/2013/Nov/5/op/opera12.mp4

Don't get me wrong, my preference is to use Opera, period. And I understand what a big deal swapping out presto and swapping in webkit is, but I think that's what has to be done to do this properly. Just recompiling Chrome and putting a red O on it means you inherit the Chrome bug-set. And these are non-trivial and profound: memory and spell-check for starters. Screw that noise, that's why I use Opera, cause stuff works.

Call the recompiled-chromium thing Opera Home and keep the legacy 12-branch Alive and phase WebKit in slowly and carefully. Strip it down to only the browser! No irc/torrent/unite/turbo - strip all that crap out - that just causes windows/osx/unix to swap-thrash anyway and stick to core browser functionality, do it right and call it Opera Pro.

I think you're going to find it would be easier to put webkit and v8 into 12 than to bring 17 up to date with 12's ergonomic features and get rid of the chrome bugs 12 doesn't have. While the legacy opera can be a petulant teenager, she is 15 but generally wall mannered and very stable now, but chrome is barely out of the terrible twos and still acts like it. Quite a contrast to the efficient and stable mature Norwegian codebase we've come to rely on.

[rs79]

rs79 last edited by

"We all like options, but what you see is what you get. "

Errr, no. We wanted our computers to talk to each other. So we built the net.

IBM tried it your way. It was called X.25 and nobody used it.

[mazzic]

mazzic last edited by

Originally posted by Pesala:

Who are you going to negotiate with? Who is going to care if you stop using Opera?

Ah yes, always a good move for a company to ignore its customers (as if he's the only one complaining). Maybe huge companies like apple can afford to do this. Opera on the other hand...

I have yet to discover a single thread saying something positive about the new opera. Even a single one...

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Originally posted by mazzic:

Ah yes, always a good move for a company to ignore its customers

They don't ignore their customers, but rs79 is not the only pebble on the beach. Making demands won't wash with any developer who knows who pays the bills. Opera will prioritise feature requests and implement what makes economic sense, while postponing or not implementing those that don't.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by mazzic:

I have yet to discover a single thread saying something positive about the new opera. Even a single one...

Then you haven't been looking very hard, have you? In general, when things are liked people don't bother posting (even though a few brave souls have posted positive threads). Those who generally start posts in the forums are seeking assistance and/or wanting to complain. Naturally that is what you are going to see most often. There is no way to gauge accurately the acceptance or rejection of the new browser at this time and certainly one would never base it upon a few thousand posts (many of which are made by the same posters) here in these forums.

The browser is faster now. The browser is more compatible now with sites such as Yahoo mail, Gmail, Facebook. The browser has the addition of several unique features such as Stash and Discover. Speed Dial can be optimized. QAB can be accessed in opera:flags and then enabling it in preferences. Features are being returned to Opera as was promised. I have no problem setting a Start Page with Opera 17 so I'm not sure what your problem is.

You are not in a position to dictate to Opera and furthermore, threats to abandon it will certainly not garner any attention. Advice has been given countless time now but evidently it bears repeating: if the new browser lacks features you consider essential then simply stay with the version you currently have (i.e. v.12.16). You might also consider installing alongside the older version a copy of the new browser so that you can better judge for yourself how it is changing.

[quhno]

quhno last edited by

Originally posted by Pesala:

Opera will prioritise feature requests and implement what makes economic sense, while postponing or not implementing those that don't.

We'll see it in next years annual report if they made the right assumptions about their users because this years report will be quite catastrophic for the desktop part.

I don't think they'll gain the about 4 million users of Opera desktop they lost until Q3 2013 in comparison to Q3 2012 until the end of the year with the new version. Interestingly, despite just alienating "a mere 7%" of their user base, they lost 25% of the income from desktop - which doesn't look like a good management decision. It seems that the users who switched to another browser were power surfers who generated a lot referral link income with their searches etc.:

Originally posted by Opera ASA Q3 financial report:

Revenue from Desktop decreased by 25% in 3Q13 versus 3Q12, due to a decrease in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), primarily due to less search and license revenue and a user decline of 7% in 3Q13 versus 3Q12.

Source: http://www.operasoftware.com/content/download/4580/153912/version/2/file/3Q13.pdf

BTW - the all time high in user numbers was reached with 11.64 which was the most feature complete version with the most options they ever build.

Originally posted by leushino:

You are not in a position to dictate to Opera and furthermore, threats to abandon it will certainly not garner any attention.

Your opinion in that matter is irrelevant - only the numbers count - and according to the numbers they should really start fighting for every user and not disregard those "threats" as empty.
Fact:
Opera ASA has lost about 10k desktop users per day since they decided to switch to chromium.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Statistics can be made to prove anything you want. Opera was never successful, period. They've gambled and time will tell the real story; not you, nor I. I believe in their new direction but I know that there will be a rough ride ahead to achieve their goal.

[quhno]

quhno last edited by

Originally posted by leushino:

Statistics can be made to prove anything you want.

You really don't get it, right?
That is not a mere statistic, that is from Opera ASAs own 2013 Quarter 3 report.
Those are the numbers the board and the CEO use to make their decisions.

As soon as desktop costs more than it earns it will be cut off, probably as soon as the tendency is clear, if they use the standard prediction models.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by QuHno:

Originally posted by leushino:

Statistics can be made to prove anything you want.

You really don't get it, right?
That is not a mere statistic, that is from Opera ASAs own 2013 Quarter 3 report.
Those are the numbers the board and the CEO use to make their decisions.

As soon as desktop costs more than it earns it will be cut off, probably as soon as the tendency is clear, if they use the standard prediction models.

First off, don't demean me. Of course I "get it" as you put it. But I've been around long enough to know that numbers mean more than just one thing and you are using them to give one interpretation of the situation. And who are you to say that "as soon as the desktop costs more than it earn, it will be cut off"??? Says who? Many companies are willing to lose money initially in order to gain over the long run. MS is but one example of a company that practically gave away the X-box (below cost... losing money on every single box it sold) in order to establish itself. Opera will undoubtedly have a bad year, possibly two BUT if it is going to win over the long haul (and no doubt it has taken all of this into consideration), it must stay the course. It can't reverse itself now; there is too much invested in this changeover. And that is something that I doubt many users here really grasp. They keep believing that somehow with enough negative press, anger, complaining, even petitioning, they are going to get the company to reverse itself. I can guarantee that this will not happen. The company's desktop was never popular and in a sense, it has nothing to lose. So... they're willing to gamble and I believe they've chosen the right course of action. And if by some chance, the gamble does not pay off, then they simply jettison the desktop division... period. End of the Opera browser as we know it and they continue development of mobile and whatever other interests they have.

[quhno]

quhno last edited by

Originally posted by leushino:

Opera will undoubtedly have a bad year, possibly two BUT if it is going to win over the long haul (and no doubt it has taken all of this into consideration), it must stay the course.

The company? I totally agree as a shareholder.

Originally posted by leushino:

So... they're willing to gamble and I believe they've chosen the right course of action. And if by some chance, the gamble does not pay off, then they simply jettison the desktop division... period.

Exactly what I say. As soon as the desktop browser costs more as it earns it is dead and they will not shed any tear about it. Probably they will even kill it up a bit before it actually starts loosing money.

btw: The comparison with MS is not quite fitting - they had and still have money they could burn to brute force a wedge in a market with strong competitors. Opera is not (yet) in a position that comfortable, but mediaworks shapes up quite nicely ...

[rs79]

rs79 last edited by

"You are not in a position to dictate to Opera and furthermore"

That was true when Opera was proprietory. Now it's an open source Javascript engine and an Open source rendering engine and all the things that made Opera opera are gone. It's just recompiled chrome with all the chrome bugs.

The barrier to somebody else reverse engineering Opera 12 with WebKit and V8 - what the world wanted and was suggested it was getting? The enthusiasm for this was very very high - people had been asking for it. That's a pretty good sign.

If we'd be told in the spring "How about recompiled Chrome instead" then people who know would have gone "but it doesn't work". Who'd want that?

I posted videos of Chrome and Opera 17 screwing up going back and losing a form full of data.

Does that now count as a show-stopping bug? Again, this makes it impossible to use Chrome or Opera 17 to edit stuff on the web.

Ie, all the weird little bugs Chrome had Opera now has. Without any of the cool features Opera had. How is this progress?

If 12 is dead then give away the source. If it's not then can we talk about plans for it? I think in a large sense some of the pushback for the Chrome version of Opera is that it was a surprise. That was not part of an ongoing dialogue between the company and it's base.