Opera 15 is a DISASTER

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by kamial:

... In the IT morass NOBODY is playing with open cards. NO Google, NO MS, NO apple, ..., and also Opera. It is very sad. In the beginning all players started more or less with enthusiasm. Now everything is about Big Profit and Big Data. I thing Opera is fighting for existing. And this is very SAD! ... this World Wide War!

In the beginning, the players were typically working out of their garages with only hopes and, as you note, "enthusiasm" to sustain them. But that hope was usually to make an eventual Big Profit, among other things. Those who were in it just for "fun" all left long before Big Profit resulted... and so they can't really be considered part of the long build-up that highlight's the eventual success of the effort. Idealism and fun are great, but they don't pay the bills, attract investor capital to enable growth, weather the inevitable business downs and ups, and so on.

Originally posted by kamial:

Did you realy mean that everything in a forum has a to be a factual argumentation? I thing not. It's simple - nobody is interested about. It's only a question of explanation of the own experience. Nobody is expecting something in deep.Remember, in IT branch everything "is, as it is". No responsibility, please!

When you state in a forum: "You are analysing a large amount of user data without taking in consideration of 'WHO is using' and 'HOW they are using'," you are making an accusation about Opera, saying they did not do something. That may be your opinion (in which case, it should have been prefaced as such), but it's not necessarily based on true facts, a point that @Leushino attempted to make to you. The simple truth is, we who are outside of Opera only know bits and pieces of the true facts about the totality of Opera's market/user research and the details of their analysis methods which led to their Blink Opera decision. So, yes, I do believe that forum statements should at least be factually based or else clearly convey they are the user's own opinion or drawn conclusion. To simply give expression to an emotional or an accusing comment that is not supported by verifiable facts is to stand with one's feet firmly planted in dead air... and it guarantees a fall.

I realize some of this issue may be due to language or cultural differences in expressing things. But successful communications occur only when both the sender and receiver derive and understand the same information from a message. Anything else is "noise" that obscures the message and blocks successful communications. When critical comments are involved, even in a forum, it's extremely important to clearly separate fact, emotion, and opinion from one another. Otherwise, flame battles and wars can and do result.

Originally posted by kamial:

I don't prefer answers like: "...you can use lower versions" or "... than use Firefox or Chrom"...
This are answers of people which are 'cooking only their own soup '.

I don't "prefer" such answers either. But sometimes, and this is one of those times, that is the only valid kind of answer. There have been many complaint threads and postings about all of this in these forums, beyond this one. If Opera was going to change their direction, they would have said so during the past year. But they have not. It's a "done deal", and Opera's not turning back. So, the only valid response to all the complaints now is to tell the complainers that the battle is over... Opera has made their decisions, restaffed, and spent their money. Opera users need to somehow adapt to that reality - there are no alternatives. As for myself, I've migrated mainly to Firefox. While I still hope Opera eventually gets its design into a form that users like you and I can enjoy once again, I'm getting on with my browsing life amidst these new realities.

[kamial]

kamial last edited by

Originally posted by blackbird71:

In the beginning, the players were typically working out of their garages with only hopes and, as you note, "enthusiasm" to sustain them. But that hope was usually to make an eventual Big Profit, among other things. Those who were in it just for "fun" all left long before Big Profit resulted... and so they can't really be considered part of the long build-up that highlight's the eventual success of the effort. Idealism and fun are great, but they don't pay the bills, attract investor capital to enable growth, weather the inevitable business downs and ups, and so on.

this is the simple 'every day fighting'-theory and is ending every 100years in disaster (take Christopher Clark "The Sleepwalkers" - History from 1914, 1929, 1933, ...).
here facts:
As known Carl Zeiss, Karl Benz and many other are not forgotten. They was working especially for the idealism, to create for everyone! Also Henry Ford, but in american way. Their company's are made more than Gates, Jobs,...
But Google, MS, Apple are implemented in the system of control. And all of us is thinking only about our 'current' bill, but unseeing the 'long term bills'.

if Christian have done this way(short term bills), where would be all our attempts for understanding? Captured in a routine 1929/1933 !?!

Originally posted by kamial:

Did you realy mean that everything in a forum has a to be a factual argumentation? I thing not. It's simple - nobody is interested about. It's only a question of explanation of the own experience. Nobody is expecting something in deep. Remember, in IT branch everything "is, as it is". No responsibility, please!

Originally posted by blackbird71:

When you state in a forum: "You are analysing a large amount of user data without taking in consideration of 'WHO is using' and 'HOW they are using'," you are making an accusation about Opera, saying they did not do something.

No!
I point out the miserable GUI adapted to a mass audience, which is not going in deep.

Originally posted by blackbird71:

That may be your opinion (in which case, it should have been prefaced as such), but it's not necessarily based on true facts, a point that @Leushino attempted to make to you. The simple truth is, we who are outside of Opera only know bits and pieces of the true facts about the totality of Opera's market/user research and the details of their analysis methods which led to their Blink Opera decision. So, yes, I do believe that forum statements should at least be factually based or else clearly convey they are the user's own opinion or drawn conclusion. To simply give expression to an emotional or an accusing comment that is not supported by verifiable facts is to stand with one's feet firmly planted in dead air... and it guarantees a fall.

Than make a XDA-like forum - Professional & responsible

Originally posted by blackbird71:

I realize some of this issue may be due to language or cultural differences in expressing things. But successful communications occur only when both the sender and receiver derive and understand the same information from a message. Anything else is "noise" that obscures the message and blocks successful communications. When critical comments are involved, even in a forum, it's extremely important to clearly separate fact, emotion, and opinion from one another. Otherwise, flame battles and wars can and do result.

You have absolutely right! But read the complete theme "Opera 15 disaster" and your 'wise' statements.

We are not Developers! This is not a Project Meeting!
Short example:
a car have placed the steering wheel in front. And if a company is 'designing' a new model with steering wheel for the rear seats, than long term users of this company products can share experience and tell opinions!
is this correct?
if someone is interested from the company, he can make a special announcements!

Originally posted by blackbird71:

complaint threads and postings about all of this in these forums, beyond this one. If Opera was going to change their direction, they would have said so during the past year. But they have not. It's a "done deal", and Opera's not turning back. So, the only valid response to all the complaints now is to tell the complainers that the battle is over... Opera has made their decisions, restaffed, and spent their money. Opera users need to somehow adapt to that reality - there are no alternatives.

I don't understand what is rational in such a understanding.
User really will walk in future on hands? Opera is deaf? ...because some "Schwarzenegger" is looking good in this 'modern way'.
Where are the eyes? Where are the facts?
For new Opera mobile-GUI: how finger are stressed, context-menu is complicated , copy&paste function is complicated , bookmarks transformed in simple albums loosing the overview and complicated
>>or is this done to have a better overview on private data (today's users present to Big Profit/Data >> next step slavery - George Orwell) <<
or ..., 'helping'-steps toward the Grandma&Grandpa level (sorry!)

Originally posted by blackbird71:

As for myself, I've migrated mainly to Firefox. While I still hope Opera eventually gets its design into a form that users like you and I can enjoy once again, I'm getting on with my browsing life amidst these new realities.

I agree with you! right!

But for my instance, i prefer THIS Opera GUI in the 'mobile Opera 12'. It has the BEST tactile feedback and is fulfilling human operating rules.
Today everything has to be 'changed' to be 'modern' because many of the 'users' are fallowing dogmas from trivial marketing managers. The anonymous 'Market' is responsible! Are we living for the Market?
In my post this was the opinion what was leading me in this forum.

If Opera can involve some specialists in a forum like XDA-developers (fallowed with interest by HTC, MS,...) right from the beginning of a new design, it would be better.

I use Opera 12. lab and classic and on Windows/mobile/7/BB/ till something is changed.

Thanks for understanding + kind greetings to all

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by kamial:

...

Originally posted by blackbird71:

complaint threads and postings about all of this in these forums, beyond this one. If Opera was going to change their direction, they would have said so during the past year. But they have not. It's a "done deal", and Opera's not turning back. So, the only valid response to all the complaints now is to tell the complainers that the battle is over... Opera has made their decisions, restaffed, and spent their money. Opera users need to somehow adapt to that reality - there are no alternatives.

I don't understand what is rational in such a understanding. ...

At the risk of making a way-too-long post, I supply the following. I've been a forum reader here for many years, lurking at first silently to gain insight into Opera's free desktop browser and how I could adjust or repair it as needed. About 5 years ago, I decided it was time to put some wood back onto the woodpile for others to use, just as I had found it here when I needed it. So I joined the forum and started to try helping other users in whatever modest ways I could. In earlier days, these forums were tightly moderated and truly were 'Helps' forums... posts that ranted or were simply general complaints about new versions did occur, but most often were quickly locked or removed as not being part of the main forum focus. Normally, an explanatory reminder about courtesy, posting only for browser questions & problems, etc. was provided with the locking message. This is one such thread that once would have been quickly locked. The "helps" focus of these forums up until the last year or so was maintained by both other posters and the moderators chiming in whenever the focus on problems and questions was being disturbed, first with warnings, then with "discipline".

During those days, when this forum was focused on users helping other users with technical and user questions, the forum index and the topic titles were the means for a helper-user to quickly and efficiently locate thread titles with which he might be familiar in order to help others. The forum search engine (at the top right of every page) allowed users of all kinds to search the forum archives seeking past problem solutions, assuming the thread titles were clear and appropriately worded. I personally found this entire process to work effectively when seeking to help users with problems beyond my own direct knowledge.

However, when Opera announced the abandonment of the Presto engine for Opera's browsers, the forum began being increasingly impacted by negative or hostile threads that merely ranted, complained, and generally cluttered up the index with topics that were outside the previous forum focus. Legitimate threads began being disrupted by increasing off-topic posts that merely made snarky, sarcastic, or even obscene references to Opera and its new browser.

I explain all this to provide background and a sense of the atmosphere of this forum, previously and now. I frankly don't understand the reasons behind the relaxation of moderation here in recent months, though I have my own thoughts (which are really not relevant here)... but just a year or so ago, none of this would have been tolerated. The point is that this forum was originally set up by Opera for users to help other users, never as a feedback forum for rants and repetitive complaints. When the new browser design first emerged amid Opera's initial explanatory statements, there was an understandable outpouring of surprise, complaints, and so on in the forum. And, in the first couple of months, I and some others felt it appropriate to voice some specific dis-satisfactions and the reasons for them because we felt it might yet influence the design which was then at a fairly early stage. Whether that did or didn't influence design, however, the time for voicing those complaints (even if constructively) is long past. Repeating them over and over, in increasingly louder, harsher, or even obscene tones will simply not accomplish anything. I still come here to help users (though I only use Old Opera as my secondary browser these days), but it's getting harder and harder to help constructively amidst the growing atmosphere of negativity, complaining, rudeness, and lost focus that has now overtaken the forums.

So in light of all that, I point out once again some realities, not rationalities: Opera has set its course in a new direction, starting over a year ago. Presto is essentially dead forever for an Opera desktop browser. Nearly all the Presto developers have either long ago been re-assigned to Blink or left Opera ASA for other jobs. Contracts and business arrangements supporting the new engine have long-ago been made. Schedules and work assignments for Blink-related browser design have been made and followed for over a year. Opera is simply not going to reverse course, period. All the complaints and rants made in this forum (or any other) are not now going to change that business decision. The only thing that could change it would be demonstrably negative financial consequences in coming months and years, or if the company underwent a buyout or stockholder revolt of some kind. So if we're talking rationality, what could be less rational than users continuing to beat their heads against a forum wall, ranting and raving about something they (and certainly those helper-users who inhabit the forum) cannot change, corrupting the constructive use of that forum to help users with real questions and tech problems, when nobody from Opera is ever going to be influenced for the good by all those rants? If anything, it's merely destructive... and there's usually nothing rational about destruction for its own sake.

[kamial]

kamial last edited by

Originally posted by blackbird71:

when nobody from Opera is ever going to be influenced for the good by all those rants? If anything, it's merely destructive... and there's usually nothing rational about destruction for its own sake.

thank you spending time and helping opera users!
opera is forgetting their users.

in some points i agree with you, but anyway ...

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by scratchspaceredux:

[Originally posted by blackbird71]
I frankly don't understand the reasons behind the relaxation of moderation here in recent months, though I have my own thoughts

Some possibilities:
*Desktop users are no longer regarded by Opera ASA as a significant part of their user base, and so they don't really care what those users think/say.
*Opera ASA believes that giving Opera Blink's more extreme critics free rein on this forum would make it a "hate magnet", thereby channeling and confining much of the negative energy that they knew would attend the release and "break-in" period of the radically different Blink desktop version to this (dead-end) forum.
*Opera ASA is using this forum somewhat like a petri dish, to see what criticisms either have or do not have support sufficient to warrant their attention/resources (though if you believe the idea expressed in the first possibility listed above, as I do, any attention/resources would be quite limited)...

Indeed. Some other possibilities:
*Allowing increased critical posting to erupt here was hoped to keep negativity minimized elsewhere (dev blogs, etc).
*The mods have become weary of the constant battle to keep the forums focused... they have other lives, besides this place.
*These forums as we know them are going to be fully repackaged presently, and only some of the threads will be moved... the others (especially the critical/nasty ones) will be going to that great bit-bucket in the sky anyhow - which also increases the relevance of the possibility I noted immediately above this one.

My own money would be placed on the last possibility, if I had to bet. But it remains simply a guess...

[kamial]

kamial last edited by

i thing its a very simple answer, they are focused all manpower on analyzing "user data" and sell than.

like here:
.................................................................
http://www.operamediaworks.com/

Advertise

Our focus on brand engagement empowers the world’s top brands with technology and solutions to deliver rich user experiences that drive customer acquisition
------
or this:
------
http://blogs.opera.com/news/

In October, we expanded our base in Silicon Valley. It’s now one of our biggest offices, and we’re proud to continue to be one of the world’s leading mobile advertisement platforms.
.................................................................

*our today's world is like red light milieu

...or, J. W. Goethe - "Dr. Faust"*

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by kamial:

i thing its a very simple answer, they are focused all manpower on analyzing "user data" and sell than. ...

Well... generally speaking, many (most?) of the mods are volunteers, not Opera employees. So they aren't being focused on anything else Opera ASA might be doing as a business effort. Actually, if I were a stockholder (I'm not) with my money making it all possible, I'd probably want to see Opera branching out into a variety of business ventures... as long as it all revolved around Opera's core strengths. As a browser user, most of us certainly might rather want to see Opera pouring resources into browser design instead - but we don't really have a financial oar in the water, so we have little say - justifiably.

A business, seeking to please those investors who are risking their money in the venture, adds employees in market areas into which it wants to expand its capacity or begin/increase market penetration... and those are usually not employees who might be interchangeable with employees in an existing technical specialty area. They have different training and skills. A business evaluates the potential market and apportions its limited expansion capital in the direction it feels most likely to produce the greatest return. The simple reality is that developing a free desktop web browser in a highly-competitive marketplace of other free browsers requires an expensive level of employee support. A "free" browser earns its revenue for the owning company through marketing preferred ad or search-engine placements in the browser (or, rarely, by rental of the custom browser-engine code to other companies). Put another way, Opera probably has decided it will make its stockholders more money by more aggressively pursuing advertising tie-ins with its browsers (especially mobile) than it will by staffing up browser development to add various "features".

There's a harsh "life" reality that many users forget in all their debates and criticisms over new free web browsers: somebody has to pay the bill to create the browser. It's certainly not the user paying directly, in the sense of a purchase price or a rental fee. But it is the user "paying" indirectly, by selling his click choices (and perhaps associated marketing data if the thing/site clicked creates that) that generates royalty payments back to the browser maker from the owner of the thing/site clicked. One may not like that "model", but it is the model used by virtually every browser out there that has a marketing share above 1/10 of one percent. There have been, and always probably will be, individuals who develop software altruistically as genuine "freeware" and gift it to the world. But developing a full-fledged browser and keeping it safe, up-to-date with evolving web standards, and supporting it once it's out in the hands of users is not a task for the faint-of-heart, those with extremely limited resources, or those in it just for the short term.