Problem with Default Search Engines
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fireworka last edited by admin
Hi, all,
So a problem I've been having with Opera for ages today became unfixable. When you install Opera, you get a bunch of search engines built right in, such as Yahoo (using keyword y). I don't use Yahoo, and would like to use the keyword y for Yahoo, as I have for years. Alas, for some reason, it is impossible to delete the built-in search engines. I found a fix a while ago (on this link https://forums.opera.com/post/38687_15178242), and as ridiculous as it was that I had to redelete/rename this file every time Opera updated, it worked. Every time I tried a wikipedia search with w (pretty much the only reason why I use Opera) and got the Dutch wikipedia page instead (I'm currently living in the Netherlands), I knew it had been silently updated, went and deleted "default_partner_content.json" and carried on with my life. Except that with the most recent update (I'm guessing it was today, version number 31.0.1889.99), deleting or renaming said file will throw an error when you try to launch the program: "At least one file with resources (.pak) is corrupted. Please reinstall Opera." Bringing back the file will make Opera word again as usual (along with all the search engines I don't want).
Has anyone else stumbled upon this? Is there a fix in sight? Can Opera just cut this crap already, either by ceasing to force these search engines on us or letting us change them?
Thanks
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joshl last edited by
You hate Yahoo but love Yahoo?
Anyway, in nuOpera keywords for default/preset engines seem unchangeable.
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poipoipoi4456 last edited by
I have been searching the same thing for a few hours yesterday, but I had no luck. Maybe someone will figure it out.
Or, we will wait for the next update, who knows? -
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fireworka last edited by
You hate Yahoo but love Yahoo?
haha thanks, I meant youtube, naturally. Seems that that's that, then. Back to Chrome.
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shinarit last edited by
Same problem here. It would be nice to hear an official announcement if this is intentional or they just introduced a new verification for the integrity of the installation, and this is a sideeffect.
You could convince Opera that your default language was English (as far as Wikipedia is concerned) ... no help for the Youtube/Yahoo thing.
How do I convince it? I always had my user interface language set to English, but still, it uses my locales.
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malyghost last edited by
Same issue here. I've been using y for youtube since...I don't even know, opera 9? Until now the "fix" you mentioned worked but of course not anymore, just like the speed dial thing...this update's goal seems to be to lock down the browser even further or something...
Let's hope Vivaldi doesn't take too long to release a stable version, can't wait to ditch opera
![😕](https://forums.opera.com/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/emoji-one/1f615.png?v=kijdq6s9ous ":\")
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shinarit last edited by
Let's hope Vivaldi doesn't take too long to release a stable version, can't wait to ditch opera
Sadly, Vivaldi is not that promising right now. I know it's preview, but the speed...
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diamond598 last edited by
Yeah, i've been really disappointed with the way opera has been going during the last year. I've been using Opera for around 4-5 years now. I was always highly in favor of it. It just got so many things right: Integrated Mail client, irc client, mouse gestures, custom search engines, mouse gestures, integrated adblock, ... . Now most of this stuff is just gone. It's a terrible design choice to dont let your users change the default search engines. I get it, you need to make money, but don't patronize your users this way. Customisation is the biggest plus Opera had going for it, don't throw that down the toilet. At the moment i'm running Opera 12.14 for my everyday daily browsing, with a really strict no-cookies allowed / don't track / privacy settings. It's also my mail and irc client. Because of the strict settings, some websites don't work in it, so i have the latest Opera as my second browser for those. But if i enter "y search term" and it sends me too Yahoo, it drives me up the wall. Same for "g *search term" which i set to startpage in 12.14. Do i know have to replace Opera 31 with an old version as well or look for a different browser? Yucks T_T
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lando242 last edited by
If you blank the default_partner_content.json file that will free up every search letter but G for google. Its what I do. Try to keep the whining to a minimum though.
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shinarit last edited by
If you blank the default_partner_content.json file that will free up every search letter but G for google. Its what I do. Try to keep the whining to a minimum though.
Have you tried what you are spewing or even read OP? It's the old solution. Now if you change even a character in the json, it won't load up.
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snoitkever last edited by
Same problem as OP. What the #$%@ Opera? Either let us delete the default search engines, or give us a hack like emptying default_partner_content, but why this? I can even understand the reason behind the y = yahoo thing (though its pretty sad), but why can't I just change w to point to english wikipedia?
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cplwork last edited by
if i can't even manage the search engines of my browser, i will just use another browser, simple as that. in every other browser you can do that. opera always was about customization, but i guess money overrides that.
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narushima last edited by
Yeah, i've been really disappointed with the way opera has been going during the last year. I've been using Opera for around 4-5 years now. I was always highly in favor of it.[...]
I have the same experience/outlook. I want to keep loving Opera so much, but all the things that made it special are being stripped away. And for what?
The user base is lower than when the browser was highly customisable: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.aspIf you take that aspect away from Opera, what does it have on other browsers?
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lando242 last edited by
The problem id had with the older version was its renderer: Presto. They were the only ones maintaining it, it had poor support from website creators (even though it was standards compliant), it was costing them a lot of resources to keep current and it was simply falling behind. So they decided to switch to the Blink renderer to solve those problems. The problem they had was the interface made for Presto was incompatible with Blink. They had to start from the ground up making their interface.
Remember, despite how 'good' everyone says the old Opera was it never got past the low single digits of market share on the desktop. They decided after 18 years of beating their head against that wall they would try something different. Since they were starting fresh they decided to take a new tack. Instead of trying to build in every feature they could, which makes the browser troublesome to maintain and hadn't bought them much in the way of market share, they went with a stripped down browser based around extensions. It took them 18 years to build the old Opera to what it was at version 12. Its taken them 2 to get the new Opera where it is.
Remember also that the number of people using things like the built in email, IRC, sessions, voice control, etc, etc, was a very low percentage of their own users. Even really basic features like bookmarks are used by a larger, but still pretty small, number of users. Heck, ad blockers, which is something I can barely tolerate not having, is only used by 25% of all web browser users. And that a high estimate. I've seen some as low as 9%. Most users just want a web browser that shows them web pages and thats it. While everyone laments the loss of the old Opera you have to remember it wasn't really making them that much money and Opera is a business. They have to got to where the market is.
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shinarit last edited by
But reskinning Chrome won't get you users. Old Opera provided something no other browser had. New Opera is basically Chrome with a couple different shortcuts which can be added to Chrome as well. Most features of the old Opera were UI based, most of which could be put on the webkit engine. But they decided not to, because who cares about users.
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lando242 last edited by
But reskinning Chrome won't get you users.
Its not a reskin of Chrome. Its not more a reskin of Chrome than Vivaldi is and half the bitter folks around here have been holding that up as the second coming.
Old Opera provided something no other browser had.
And it got them crap market share. There is a point where you have to admit that something sin't working and move on.
New Opera is basically Chrome with a couple different shortcuts which can be added to Chrome as well.
It does a number of things very differently from Chrome. Bookmarks, Speed dial, extensions sidebar, etc. Its only been 2 years, give them time. Rome wasn't built in a day and that certanly don't have the resources Google has.
Most features of the old Opera were UI based, most of which could be put on the webkit engine.
Incorrect. The old interface was built for Presto. It was not compatible with Blink. It would have required a completely rewrite from the ground up. The dev team felt it was better to start fresh and ship a product then it was to stay locked away earning less and less income without a release. It would have taken them significantly longer to rewrite the older interface and test it then start new and there would have been years worth of bugs to hammer out. On top of that, as I said above, many of the features in the older Opera simply weren't being used by enough people to justify their existence yet still wouldn't have needed to be maintained.
But they decided not to, because who cares about users.
Look, I understand you are bitter but we don't need you to come here and whine at other users about the decision the Opera team is making. We didn't make that decision and the devs don't show up here very often. You are literally barking up the wrong tree and its just poisoning the well.
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narushima last edited by
And it got them crap market share. There is a point where you have to admit that something sin't working and move on.
They went from above 2% to below that. The situation didn't improve.
But it's a good thing they have fanboys like you ready to defend Opera no matter what they do, at least that'll keep them above the 1% mark. -
Deleted User last edited by
So what exactly is wrong with a 2% market share, when the market is in the hundreds of millions, at least?
People like me used Opera (and I still use 9.51 for much of my browsing) because unlike the rest, it had a usable user interface. I don't really care about the underlying rendering engine: if that needs to be changed, fine. But instead of keeping the same interface around the new engine, they created a completely new UI which as far as I can tell is exactly like the unusable UI of all the other browsers. So what reason do any of us loyal users have to stick with Opera? (And I've been using Opera since sometime in the '90s, long enough ago that I actually PAID for the first versions.)
