Seeking Helpful Help files or recommendations for alternative browser
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Deleted User last edited by
My Opera 12.17 is crashing left & right and, no, I have not kept detailed documentation. Life proscribes my spending hours dinking around with a program. Stuff in the real world has to get done. (Imagine the audacity of the generation before me in having heart attacks, going into nursing homes and ~> worst of all, actually having the nerve to die when I'm trying to get something else done.) Still, decided it was time to catch up with what was going on in OperaLand (looks at clock, insurance adjuster will be here in one hour) and found only more confusion.
Version 12.17 / Build 1863 / Platform Win32 / System Windows 7
Browser identification Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.17
Actually am on Win7 ProSo where is my Identify As now hidden? I certainly don't want to have to change it one website at a time.
And which stable version of Opera should I download? Searching Opera & the net I can find no clear delineation of different versions and associated benefits & SNAFUs. Little things like what about my password manager that I rely so heavily on? Will I still have the ability to Ctrl-F2 and start typing 'Library' to quickly get to that account login? Don't have days to dink around with backing up, installing X, see how it works, reload system backup, try another. . . .
Reading through discussions I hear the tendency to flame (do I date myself?) anyone complaining has grown. Valid, well articulated issues just torched.
Opera's Help files have become more useless than MicroSoft's to the "no longer a 'puter geek". Fluff & Sunshine & absolutely useless. Is there anywhere an authoritative, useful, searchable website that gives Real Answers. Did I miss a valuable Wiki?
As an Opera user since '97 who actually paid for the program a good few times, do I have some resentment for the browser becoming everything they promised it would never become? You betcha. Truly Elegant Design shines in it's ability to accomplish with grace and simplicity. The Opera browser is looking more & more like a Rube Goldberg contraption to me. For the kids in the forum: http://www.rubegoldberg.com/
What I want in a browser is security, privacy & elegant design. Which of course immediately rules out MSIE and anything Google. Maybe if my elders would just stop doing what elders do, I could finally find the time to immerse myself in Linux (ubuntu was recommended). Is what I seek there?
Sighing ~ yeppers, I miss Pascal. And Lotus' Symphony. And am one of those folks who believe knew for the sake of knew does not necessarily translate into better (improved functionality). After all, "unlimited growth is the goal of a cancer cell". Planned obsolescence has become the norm such that it seems many can no longer see it when it stares them in the face.
Looking forward to helpful replies & promising myself to not respond to flames. 35 min. to research one last thing in the attempt to assure I don't get bamboozled by the insurance company.
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A Former User last edited by
I recommend a clean install of Opera 12.17 into a new folder. It should not be crashing constantly.
I always use the USB install to keep stuff together. I don't think you will be happy with Opera 20 — too much familiar stuff missing.
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leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by admin
For alternatives, please check https://forums.opera.com/topic/2092/good-alternatives-to-opera-12-16
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blackbird71 last edited by... Opera's Help files have become more useless than MicroSoft's to the "no longer a 'puter geek". Fluff & Sunshine & absolutely useless. Is there anywhere an authoritative, useful, searchable website that gives Real Answers. Did I miss a valuable Wiki?
As an Opera user since '97 who actually paid for the program a good few times, do I have some resentment for the browser becoming everything they promised it would never become? You betcha. Truly Elegant Design shines in it's ability to accomplish with grace and simplicity. The Opera browser is looking more & more like a Rube Goldberg contraption to me. For the kids in the forum: http://www.rubegoldberg.com/
What I want in a browser is security, privacy & elegant design. Which of course immediately rules out MSIE and anything Google. Maybe if my elders would just stop doing what elders do, I could finally find the time to immerse myself in Linux (ubuntu was recommended). Is what I seek there?
Sighing ~ yeppers, I miss Pascal. And Lotus' Symphony. And am one of those folks who believe knew for the sake of knew does not necessarily translate into better (improved functionality). After all, "unlimited growth is the goal of a cancer cell". Planned obsolescence has become the norm such that it seems many can no longer see it when it stares them in the face. ...At this moment in time, elegance, configurability, privacy, feature richness, and security all being available together natively in a browser is fast becoming a rare thing indeed. It appears that the browser-user demographic is increasingly dominated by those who want merely "sleek, simple, uncluttered" browsers, with the majority of former "features" only available by bolting on 3rd-party extensions... which may or may not work adequately (or at all, after the next browser update). To those of us who need to tweak our browsers in depth, this all comes across as dumbing down the browser. But, whether that's an accurate description or not, current browsers are what they are, and there appears to be no end to the "simplification" trend. Likewise for the slowly-evaporating meaningfulness and detail of "helps" files and data... perhaps because of an underlying reasoning that users who have no technical inclination in using their browsers will never need technical/helps information anyhow.
A while back, I moved to Firefox (28) plus a small handful of extensions that allow me to replicate Old Opera's configurability and "look" in those areas that matter most to me... although where Firefox seems headed in the upcoming release or two is not promising. As a backup, I still use Opera 12.14 (which allows me still to select my own default search engine... something that disappeared with 12.15 and later). IMO, beyond these, the browser horizon looks bleak unless/until somebody, whether Opera or someone else, decides to build or evolve-into a full-blown browser once again. There are startups like Otter out there, but in such cases, "there is many a slip twixt cup and lip" before they will ever become a practical alternative for demanding users.
FWIW, I still use Lotus Symphony on my Win7 system (via DOSbox) to run a couple of very old spreadsheets containing very large and elaborate macros with self-modifying code (try to do THAT in Excel!). What we Symphony users went through with the onset of Excel (plus its counterparts) and the evaporation of Symphony is not unlike the trend we're now seeing with browsers. Unfortunately, nothing expert users could do then had any impact on the trend for 'office' software to chase the demographic of "simple" users... and nothing expert users can do now will have much impact on the browser trends in that same direction today.
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Deleted User last edited by admin
Went to: For alternatives, please check https://forums.opera.com/topic/2092/good-alternatives-to-opera-12-16 and feel compelled to comment that I find I have the same visceral, disgusted response to "FanBoys".
What I am hearing is no, there are no decent alternatives. Got it.
And we can't complain about Opera in Opera forums??? So Opera has hired the Stazi to ensure their good reputation? Like my soon to be "Previous" (Security Service Federal) Credit Union that admonishes me regarding my being rude but no apologies or repercussions for an account manager not telling me about additional fees when I asked more than a half-dozen times "are there any other fees?". And then they wonder why folks walk in with 100 round clips and start shooting...
Should I also take away that there is no definitive comparison of 12.17 and 20? What they removed, what (if anything) replaces it, and what is new?
No old copies of Lotus to muck about with and my 5 1/4 floppies self-erased long ago. Have decided that, between Quicken & Quickbooks, I'll set up a spreadsheet in Quattro Pro to accept CSVs from that soon to be previous credit union. Having been taught bookeeping in The Old Days - and having used Quicken years back in a small office - I can find no "time saving" in the past decade plus of software development. Just lots of time and money wasting.
I will have to kick myself long & hard for trusting Opera and not doing a complete back up before the last two recommended updates. Never should have OK'd AutoUpdate in the first place. Never Never Never trust Any Company. Never trust anyone who works for any company to know anything about the company they work for or the product they are selling. Not a fan of Putin's or the USSR - but gotta agree with Eastern Ukraine regarding Western Fascists. The part that really gets me is that modern MegaCorp Capitalists refuse to see (and certainly would never admit) that they are guilty of the very same corruption & and very same SNAFUs as the USSR. Same product, different label. Fascism by any other name would still smell the same. If that "rome is falling" posting is supposed to be sarcasm - I've got 6,000 years of history and archeological data that shows pretty clearly that "Rome" is in fact falling. Just a shame it won't happen a whole lot quicker as that would create all kinds of opportunity . . .
Good bye internet, good bye & good riddance. Not even useful for organizing a serious revolution. 'Bout the best you can say for 30 years of technological development is that Skyrim is a pretty good game - but still not as fun as sailing . . . . .
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Deleted User last edited by
LOL... I think you just enjoy complaining. That's why so many complainers are dismissed: it's apparent that nothing short of a complete reversal will please them. Well, it's not going to happen so deal with it. Use Opera 20 Or use Opera 12.17 OR use Firefox OR use Chrome OR use IE11 Or use Seamonkey OR get off the internet completely. Those are your viable choices. But then, if you were to follow any one of them, you would not have the opportunity to complain and where would that leave you? Hmmmmmmmmm
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lem729 last edited by
The best choice for you isn't necessarily the best choice for me. That's what makes a market for different companies. I think Opera 21 is terrific -- fast, lean, capable of adjusting to the changing world on the internet, and new website standards -- and I take away from my decade experience with Opera, that it will make the adjustments that will make its new browser even better. As it is now, there's an Opera store for extensions that can only grow (and a Chrome store) that is usable, but with caution (read the reviews, and customer comments). But I can understand how you might think. I remember, I used to consider that Word Perfect a long time ago was absolutely the best, and nothing came close to it for Word Processing. I had to deal with change, when my Office switched to Microsoft Word (which in the end had more features) (so many, lol, I could never find the basic features I wanted) (they were lost in the hodgepodge of features). I sometimes still long
for that old word processing program. Best of luck to you, Corviab. -
drewfx last edited by
Generally when I have had problems with Opera crashing, I shut it down, back up my profile and delete some things and restart with an empty session or a session that I know to be good.
Your profile in Windows should be under username/AppData/Roaming/Opera
After backing everything up I recommend deleting at least vlink4.dat, global_history.dat and restarting with an empty session or a saved session that is known to be good.
If that doesn't work delete the other .dat files except "cookies4" and "wand" and try again.
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grierzo last edited by
First of all, thanks to the OP for the reference to Rube Goldberg, I'm not a kid, but he is new to me.
You say that you are looking for privacy, security and elegant design. I honestly don't think there is anything today that fulfils those requirements. I used to enjoy playing with Opera and Firefox themes that came complete with icons, they were functional and still looked great, but it seems now that a theme amounts to little more than a background for the speed dial. My own new favourite is Maxthon Cloud, which allows you to choose any default search engine for the main window, and has a separate search window so that your browser is not looking for suggestions the moment you start typing. So it is private, fast and customizable but I wouldn't call it elegant. Sleipnir and Safari both claim to be elegant, and they are, but you are stuck with default search engines, and a fixed layout.Actually I find that of all the Chrome based browsers, Yandex, with its Tableau is the most elegant. But I wouldn't know about its security.
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lem729 last edited by
There are extensions that can go with Opera 21 and enhance security, like Disconnect, Disconnect Search, ZenMate, Do Not Track Me, AVG Privacy Mix, Ghostery, etc., all available in the Opera Add-On Store.
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blackbird71 last edited by admin
@corviab
Went to: For alternatives, please check https://forums.opera.com/topic/2092/good-alternatives-to-opera-12-16 and feel compelled to comment that I find I have the same visceral, disgusted response to "FanBoys".
What I am hearing is no, there are no decent alternatives. Got it.
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I will have to kick myself long & hard for trusting Opera and not doing a complete back up before the last two
recommended updates. Never should have OK'd AutoUpdate in the first place. ...FYI, you can still "go back home" with older Opera versions (11.00-12.17): ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/ For several reasons, I prefer (and find to be more stable) Opera 12.14 over any later versions. I've also found it best to install Opera versions into custom-named folders (such as *\opera1214, rather than the default-prompted *\opera name) to avoid importing any prior-installation file corruption from the left-behind prior Opera versions. Then (with Opera shut off), copy the bookmarks.adr, notes, eMails, toolbar file, etc over from their old Opera folder to the new one. This tends to make for a cleaner installation for situations where the previous Opera version has been causing grief.
OT:
No old copies of Lotus to muck about with and my 5 1/4 floppies self-erased long ago. Have decided that, between Quicken & Quickbooks, I'll set up a spreadsheet in Quattro Pro to accept CSVs from that soon to be previous credit union. Having been taught bookeeping in The Old Days - and having used Quicken years back in a small office - I can find no "time saving" in the past decade plus of software development. Just lots of time and money wasting.
...Over the years, I've used Lotus Symphony sequentially on at least 11 different computers... fortunately! Each time the system was bumped to a new one, I migrated the Symphony installation by simply copying it to the new system - so the media was always being "refreshed" - first via 5-1/4 floppies, then by 3-1/2 floppies, several times by simply moving a physical 'data' hard-drive, and more recently via USB flash sticks. Consequently, I've never had to deal with the fading mag media issue (though I do still have my original Lotus floppies from the 1980's, but haven't checked them out in many years). It's also amazing what you can do with the entire 4Mb Symphony program in terms of fitting it onto ever-more-modern media. Back in the day, I also played around with Quattro Pro, but always found I liked Symphony better for the more complex spreadsheet macros I'd created (many hundreds of lines of self-modifying code). The really cool thing is that the most complex macro which used to take 45 seconds to execute on a 4.7 MHz computer back in the 80's now takes about 1/2 second to execute on a Win7-64 system, even running it under DOSbox (since my Symphony's 16-bit software).
