Opera 11.64 vs. 12.14

vikingen

vikingen

Another issue I'm having with 12, is that many web sites are slow. I don't blame Opera for it, the slowness is caused by a change in web site technology over the last years. Web sites have became so much more CPU demanding, and a Pentium III 850 MHz is not up to the task.

The slowness is not caused by limited bandwidth, I've got more bandwidth than I can utilize. I also have adblock so Flash ads are not responsible. I also use Externals Scripts, which blocks all external javascript on web pages (though not internal scripts).

Malware? Nope. I'm well protected and nothing else than opera.exe is using CPU.

I'm not sure what change in website engineering that is causing slow pages, but I wonder if it has to do with HTML5 and/or CSS.

Now to the point:

If I revert to an older version of Opera that does NOT support whichever technology that is so CPU demanding, perhaps I can render web pages faster? I'm not sure what version I should revert to, if 11.64 would be it.

blackbird71

blackbird71

... Now to the point:
If I revert to an older version of Opera that does NOT support whichever technology that is so CPU demanding, perhaps I can render web pages faster? I'm not sure what version I should revert to, if 11.64 would be it.

I don't know details with regard to specific Opera versions, but when I use my Off-By-One browser (an old, utterly bare-bones browsing product) to go to various websites, its response is almost instantaneous, regardless of site. On the other hand, what it sometimes displays can at times range from the bizarre to the virtually nil, because webpage rendering which depends on JavaScript or many of the newer technologies simply doesn't work as intended. The result is extremely fast, but sometimes highly flawed.

I suspect this is true of Opera versions, as well as any other kind of browser. The more complex the technologies and the more site scripting/handshaking used to correctly render and format a webpage display, the slower will be the page loading even without necessarily displaying all the graphics, ads, etc. Only when the browser's newer technology-servicing code is tossed out (along with the correct page rendering on the screen, as with Off-by-One) will major speedup occur for such a site. In cases where text-only is sought, the miss-rendering is often no big deal whereas the speed is astonishing (which is why I still use OB1 for text), but where graphics, animation, rich-formatting, new technologies, etc are involved in whole or in part, the result may be a virtually unviewable site.

Since no two sites will necessarily be alike in using the same technologies, how or if their pages will miss-display in a browser omitting that technology is hard to predict. Likewise, what will be an acceptable result, even with the limitations, varies with the user. In other words, YMMV. The only thing to suggest is to go back and try some older Opera versions and see what happens. (NOTE: as always, whenever installing an older Opera version, after Opera starts up, be sure to immediately go to Ctrl+F12 > Advanced > Security > in the Auto Update box, select "Do not check for updates" > OK. Otherwise, you may find yourself suddenly being auto-updated "out of the blue" to 12.16.)

vikingen

vikingen

Quoting Pesala:

Opera 11.64: Better pagedown/pageup behaviour, minimum tab width respected in skins, plays WAV files, broken indented lists, broken PDF plugins on Windows 7, won't login to IrfanView forum, crashes frequently on JIRA.

Opera 12.16: Pings on using Alt Key to type — for example, but works on those two sites.

Opera 20: Works on all sites, PDF plugins OK, no mail client, no customisation, no custom buttons, menus, shortcuts, gestures, or skins, always a low-pitched humming noise while it's running. No tab-stacking, no sessions, no notes for boiler-plate text: etc.

I uninstalled 12.16, that let me install other versions as stand-alone. Then I spent a day trying out 9.24, 9.64, 10.63, 11.01, 11.11, 11.52, 11.64, 12.02 and 12.14.

Several of the versions (international setup) had Chinese bookmarks and Chinese pages on Speed Dial. What the Hell?! On a couple of the installments I had to add common search engines such as Google and Yahoo. They weren't there to begin with. I downloaded from Norway and chose International Setup, I shouldn't get a browser preloaded with Chinese bookmarks and Speed Dial pages.

9.24 I got rid of quickly, didn't even test it. I'm still testing the rest. 9.64 was a version I used from release in 2009 until 11.5 in 2011, since 11.5 I have updated regularly until 12.16.

Opera 9.64: Doesn't feel good now when I'm used to more modern browsers. • Total memory usage only 47 MB with no pages loaded.

Opera 10.63: Speed Dial improved and can room more. • Menu bar can be hidden. • Opera Unite added. • Synchronize Opera added. • Opera Links removed. • Spell checking. • Preferences > Advanced > Content: Java option removed. • Preferences > Advanced > Network: geolocation option added. • New option in Delete Private Data: persistent data. • Wand replaced. • New "Find in page" that looks different, and works slow in plain text. • Memory usage 99 MB, more than twice that of 9.64.

Opera 11.01: Extensions. • Plugins can be enabled on demand. • Memory usage dropped to 72 MB.

Opera 11.11: Speed Dial much improved and not lets the user designate custom names. But a downside (for me) is that Speed Dial don't show snapshots of pages, it shows only the header of pages. • Memory usage 111 MB.

Opera 11:52: Status Bar has become very fat and is wasting many pixels in height. • Memory usage 113 MB.*

Opera 11.64: New "featherweight" skin, it looks nice and the Status Bar is slim. But a big drawback is that the tabs have become flexible and sometimes they don't get their full width until you hover the mouse over them. The "alive" tabs sometimes makes me miss the X-button because the tab suddenly becomes a little wider when I get the mouse over it. • Easy way to opt out of the search suggestions in address field. • Two new options in Delete Private Data: plug-in data and geolocation data. • Memory usage 116 MB.

Opera 12.02: "opera:cpu" added. • Trashcan for closed tabs replaced. • Opera Unite hidden and deactivated by default. • Widgets options removed. • Finally you can drag a shortcut from the address field to ANY folder, not just to Desktop. Also, the shortcut is created exactly where you release the mouse button. • Ask websites not to track. • Voice control removed. • New option in Delete Private Data: camera permissions. • "Page down" changed to not scroll a whole page down in order to adapt to floating headers/bars that some popular websites use (bad reason!!). • Memory usage dropped to 73 MB!

Opera 12.14: Preferences > Advanced > Content: "Enable sound in webpages" removed. • New option in Delete Private Data: settings and data for all extensions. • "Find in page" search in plain text was always slow since Opera 10, but this is terribly slow (takes two minutes to search a word in a 1.4 MB .mht file), search is basically unusable. • Memory usage 73 MB.

Opera 12.16: Removed the possibility to add search engines in order to enhance security. • Search in plain text is not more possible than in 12.14. • Memory usage 73 MB.

(All memory usage notes are including usage of virtual RAM, and only one tab with Speed Dial was open.)

blackbird71

blackbird71

+1. Thanks for including that synopsis, especially the memory stats... you've certainly been busy! I'm going to bookmark the post as a useful future reference to give to users asking the "which version does what" question.

I'm not sure what caused the "Chinese" character issues, but I do recall a few infrequent user posts in the My Opera forums regarding similar experiences, though after being advised to reinstall with a fresh download from the Opera site, not much further feedback resulted. Perhaps that was only because they simply downloaded an English version thereafter.

vikingen

vikingen

+1. Thanks for including that synopsis, especially the memory stats... you've certainly been busy! I'm going to bookmark the post as a useful future reference to give to users asking the "which version does what" question.
I'm not sure what caused the "Chinese" character issues, but I do recall a few infrequent user posts in the My Opera forums regarding similar experiences, though after being advised to reinstall with a fresh download from the Opera site, not much further feedback resulted. Perhaps that was only because they simply downloaded an English version thereafter.

I believe new features and big changes are often made on even version numbers, such as 11.00 and 11.50, and maybe 11.10 and 11.60. But for testing I chose uneven versions, when new features had hopefully matured a little and bugs been weeded out, like xx.01 and xx.64. So my list is not necessarily accurate for finding exactly what version introduced this or that.

I now tried to post with 9.64 but it was impossible to quote, clicking the quote button sent me to the top of the page! And my login button was in the upper left corner instead of upper right corner. Funny...

I can no longer edit my previous post, but I want to correct a typo that may cause confusion:

"Opera 11.11: Speed Dial much improved and now it let the user designate custom names. [...]"

I plan to test 11.60, 11.61 and 11.62 soon.

Regarding the Chinese, I never got it before. I think I always used to download the international setup (EXE, not MSI), but this time I chose English language. Earlier I used Norwegian. It's supposed to be the same Setup, but maybe there's a bug that mixes Chinese and English when English is chosen. I don't know. The lack of Google and Yahoo was also strange. Instead there were alternative Chinese search engines, Yandoo and something else.

stng

stng

Opera 12.16: Removed the possibility to add search engines in order to enhance security. • Search in plain text is not more possible than in 12.14. • Memory usage 73 MB.

Also for 12.16: various rendering bugs, web site incompatibility has broken.

12.14 is the last proper Opera.