Opera 12 vs 23

lem729

lem729

So "lem729", if we all suffer the problems with presto that other browsers didn't have, and you say you don't care about all the functions that old opera has, what made you a user of the old opera? I don't understand..>

I used some of the features in Presto. I didn't use a lot of them. Still, I generally enjoyed the browser. I liked the skins and colors (Now I get my artistic pleasure in the New Opera setting up beautiful wallpaper for the Speed Dial). I think it's great how you can -- among other ways to add art to it -- simply right click on a jpg on the internet, and instantly have it saved as wallpaper for the Speed Dial. It was a close call for me between Opera Presto and Firefox, as I was drawn to the extensions in Firefox. In balance, I still preferred Opera. I used the side panel, the notes function, the wand, the Speed Dial when it came out, and some widgets. (Now for some reason, I don't miss the side panel. I like the present design of Opera, am used to it). I can get nice vertical of my bookmarks with my bookmarks manager extension, Chrookmarks for Chrome.

On the new Opera, I don't find it any more for me a close call at all between Opera 23 and another browser. Opera 23 wins in a walk. I love the minimalist look, the "really" superb speed dial, the ability to get the type of extensions I coveted in Firefox. (Some of the extensions like Chrookmarks for Chrome and Add Bookmark together help me to meet all my traditional bookmarking needs (I can even hide the bookmark bar in Opera, saving space). Then on top of that now I have the Speed Dial (with folders) (what a bonus), and Stash. Now I use ctrl B as a keyboard shortcut for Chrookmarks, so can access my bookmarks in a flash. You know the ability to set up a keyboard shortcut for your extensions is a really nice feature, that I only discovered recently.

Some people with Opera liked Tab stacking and grouping. I didn't use those features with Opera, but I'm using Tab Bundler (a Chrome extension), and it's sort of like grouping/stacking, only better, because I can keep my tab organization, even if I close the tab (and save computer resources). (It's still there when I open my tab bundler unless I choose to close it out completely). Now let me tell you, no matter how I set up Firefox, I can't get it to look as good as Opera 23, or run as efficiently. I don't find that it runs as fast as my Opera 23 does either.

Extensions? The extensions are not made by Opera and no one can assure me that with new updates of Opera I won't have problems with extensions, nor do I have the trust gives me Opera.>

I believe the Opera extension called "Download Chrome Extension" (which makes it possible to download a Chrome Extension from the Chrome store) (Extension Source Viewer does also). Now there are no guarantees in life, so something can always go wrong Who could assure you otherwise? But it's simple to install an extension and to uninstall it if you don't like it, or if it causes you problems. (You can even keep it, but put it in a deactivated status). I have a Chrome extension called, "One Click Extensions Manager" and if I'm worry that my computer has slowed down, with one click, I can deactivate every extension and test.

Look, all of the major browsers go the extension route, or will . . . The latest convert is Internet Explorer. They will be expanding their extensions to compete. Firefox and Chrome are wedded to extension, so you have to get used to extensions, or you have nothing.

Now the problem with the non-extension route is that a company has to put together a huge conglomeration/mix of things to appeal to a lot of different people, many of who won't care about a significant percentage of the items in the browser. And also, the browser is offered free. What company economically could afford (to put the time and energy into research and development) to bundle all of the features. I think the extension model is terrific. You get a basic, native browser -- and Opera is now fast, attractive, minimalist in appearance, with some wonderful features like the speed dial (with folders no less), and the Discover feature (giving you perspectives of news from multiple countries and in different languages) (I like to read the news in it in English, and also in French (with a view to France and Canada).

And then everyone who uses the new Opera can add to the native browser different things to fit their own unique needs. Just because Opera uses the same engine Chromium as the Chrome browser in no way means that the browser can't be developed in a way that's distinctive. And Opera has a long history of providing a distinctive and attractive browser. I think they've done it here, and will keep improving it.

Months have passed and nothing has changed, many users are complaining and we have no answers. Why does it take so long? Or they don't plan to answer our complaints?

People always complain. The vast bulk of people who come to a forum are the unhappy ones. The happy ones generally just use the browser. If you won't put energy into looking at extensions to meet some of your needs, you're just going to be unhappy and complaining. And complainers have a way of making almost everyone around them miserable. I personally think it would be a huge mistake for Opera to overload the native browser with a lot of features that only a small percentage of users really want. And many people are complaining about features they want when they haven't even bothered to look in the Chrome Store or Opera store (they're perhaps lazy and to download and try things, when in fact there is an extension that may well meet the need, or even if it doesn't, that provides something they weren't even aware of, and that they might well very much like.

dobledosis

dobledosis

Yes, people always complain, but this is not any complain, this is a complaint about something we loved and was taken away from us. The spirit of Opera, the features that made it more inclusive, practical, complete, different.

For example, you said you like Speed dial. What would you do without it? For me this feature is as important as other i said before and it's one of the main features that makes Opera different and practical, and this is one of the main reasons that made me change to Opera.

Small percentage????? I can confirm you are an Opera employee if you are sure about that "small percentage". I see a lot of people complaining about this not only in the forums.. Look at the social networks.

It's not laziness, some of us don't have time to invest in searching if there are some extensions that make Opera work like before. And whenever I want to recommend Opera what will i say? "Ohh, donwload opera, but with extension a, b, c and d because with the default browser you wont find nothing new from the others."

In this competitive world if you want to win you have to make the difference from the others and i know the common user, which are the vast majority of users, they won't use extensions. They just use what you put in front.

If you like minimalist, you could do so with the old Opera, that was another great feature, customizable.

lem729

lem729

The new Opera has a much better Speed Dial than the old Opera, because in the new Opera one can create folders of items for each speed dial position. For me, that's an highly important "improvement" feature. I'm giving my opinion on small percentage. You say that you can confirm I'm an Opera employee if . . . ? I gave my opinion that only a small percentage of users want all of the features that were in Opera Presto. I could be wrong, though I think not. But that's my humble opinion, no more, and no less. So what is it with you. If a person likes the new Opera, they have to be an Opera employee Now maybe dobledosis, you're an IE employee, or from Firefox, or Chrome, and you're trying to demoralize Opera users. That's the way one company might easily try to sabotage another browser, particularly if they are worried that that browser might be up and coming and eat into their browser share.

Golly gee, you can't invest the time, you say, in looking for extensions? Sorry then, there's not a lot for you in the browsing universe. You can't get everything on a silver platter. It just takes a little bit of initiative. Like you have to do something!

So what browser are you going to recommend to your friends then -- Firefox? Chrome? They're the same on this one point: they also use extensions. And IE is moving in that direction too. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa753587(v=vs.85).aspx Basically, the people who are having the hardest time adjusting to the Opera change are people who want the browser handed to them on a silver platter and don't want to do anything. I think it's a small minority. At least, I hope so, because the world is better if people show some tiny bit of initiative. Otherwise, LMFAO, they will do nothing but whine and whine and whine . . .

You say: "this is a complaint about something we loved and was taken away from us. The spirit of Opera, the features that made it more inclusive, practical, complete, different." Well, I'm happy because something I love -- the new Opera -- was given by Opera, with features that make it better. It's for me, practical, inclusive, complete and different. Now why inclusive and complete? It's made to work with extensions. All you have to do is go to a website and click download, and then install, when you see what you want. Once you see how easy it is to do that, there's more there than ever.

In any event, if you're using Opera Presto, I think you will be happier staying with it.

ceboss

ceboss

Ehhh lem729... In my humble opinion only small percentage of users of new Chrome... sorry Opera - aren't missing previous featuring. I am this kind of user that likes to download software and have it fully functional. If I had to find every time extensions I would go crazy. Typical browser user is lazy. He is not sitting on Opera forum and whining about "how the browser is bad/cool". We are users (I typed in Google "how to install Opera 12.17" and I found this forum. Otherwise I would never come here).

So why everyone is saying that Opera is looking like a Chrome? Maybe because layout is very similar? For example in old Opera version history or bookmarks were in side bar and you could find grouped by pages/folders. Now new tab is opened (like in Google's browser). Also I liked to follow my downloads in side bar (I saw progress and same time I could still surf).
Also great staff was proxy settings which were independent from Windows one (in my work I am forced to use IE (maybe) due to bad coding of software in my company, but at home I can freely use same laptop to surf and I don't have to jump again to change proxy because I have to just launch Opera)

I loved also function to plug my favourite sites as icon next to address bar - now I have it with name what consume more space (and it looks like in other browsers).

Speed dial was working previously very good (I could scale it, decide how many "windows" I want to have per row - and I didn't have to scroll it if I had more. So I don't understand this excitement about new one. Yes I can make folder (what it might be not so comfortable as it is additional "click" so it "less faster"), althaugh this option is not available any more for bookmarks (already mentioned).

Of course I can tell you how big disappointment for me is lack of synchronization. It is something what I really loved (and it is in google chrome) and made my Opera personalized, but also allowed me to have same passwords and bookmarks on all my computers.
As I mentioned passwords I cannot rid of inhabit of pressing "Ctrl+ENTER" when I want to log to the side. Now it is same as in Google Chrome (pressing by mouse on account and choose your profile). Tell me that it is not same?

There was also argument that you can change wallpaper on your speed dial window. In previous opera you could do the same, changing theme.

You have told that you didn't like that previous Opera was like mammoth - it had plenty of function, what was not useful for you. Here for me this function is Discovery. For me completely useless gadget.

Just about the optimization. I cannot say that new Opera is faster. For sure in benchmarks it is fact, however nowadays we have fast computers and this 0,01 sec. to open side it is not visible (but it is my opinion)

Just to sumarize:

I cannot agree that only few people are missing functions from Opera 12.17
I cannot agree that way of making software light is good direction. After that I have to "waste" time to download extensions. Soon we can find that we will start to pay for them like for DLC to games
I am kind of person who likes to have plenty staff by default on board, because I don't need to add it to software (can you imagine to have same in AutoCAD - in base software you can make line, but if you download extensions, you can start to draw square; you don't have to install it, because you can make it using lines, however it is lost functionality)

As I said: this is my opinion, but I believe more than few percentage of users can agree with me.
Regards!

Deleted User

Deleted User

You're right about one thing only: it's YOUR OPINION... period. I happen to disagree. Regards!

Deleted User

Deleted User

It's no doubt that presto was too old. I stopped using ver. 12.17 when I got too many faults in page display etc. Companywise it may have been a wise decision to switch to a new kernel and discontinue presto. But the old users want their features back! And someone like lem729 who admits "I used some of the features in Presto. I didn't use a lot of them. Still, I generally enjoyed the browser. I liked the skins and colors..." is not the person to judge this. He does simply not know what others are talking about. What he says about the new Opera is right so far, but he does not know what powerusers are missing. E. g: " I think it's great how you can -- among other ways to add art to it -- simply right click on a jpg on the internet, and instantly have it saved as wallpaper for the Speed Dial." - now that's childish feature... it's like a wallpaper on the desktop. I see my desktop only for some seconds afer a reboot the same goes for wallpapers for the Speed Dial.

I tried Chrookmarks. It is nearly no improvement compared with the plain Opera25. But it always collapses my folders! That's timeconsuming.

We had "Turbo mode" before. And SpeedDial. Ok, stash is new... nice, but not a big thing.

But what has gone:

Bookmarks with the functionality as they used to be,
panels
right-klick email from page
right-klick image and mark it as advertisement and block it (so beautiful)
auto fill in forms
stack tabs easily
accessable buttons to enable: javascript, sound in webpage, plugins, etc.
email!

We had a all-in-one browser! No need to look for "extensions". What do you guess how much time did I waste browsing through extensions?! 1001 useless things! It's a drag looking for the useful one in all the rubbish. I did that with Firefox which I must use at work.
What comes next: You must update all these extensions seperately. Some years ago I would compare Opera against FF with my friends: They would say: "You can have that in FF if you install these 10-20 extensions!" I would say: "Thank you very much!" Today I must do the same...

Deleted User

Deleted User

It's no doubt that presto was too old. I stopped using ver. 12.17 when I got too many faults in page display etc. Companywise it may have been a wise decision to switch to a new kernel and discontinue presto. But the old users want their features back! And someone like lem729 who admits "I used some of the features in Presto. I didn't use a lot of them. Still, I generally enjoyed the browser. I liked the skins and colors..." is not the person to judge this. He does simply not know what others are talking about. What he says about the new Opera is right so far, but he does not know what powerusers are missing. E. g: " I think it's great how you can -- among other ways to add art to it -- simply right click on a jpg on the internet, and instantly have it saved as wallpaper for the Speed Dial." - now that's childish feature... it's like a wallpaper on the desktop. I see my desktop only for some seconds afer a reboot the same goes for wallpapers for the Speed Dial.
I tried Chrookmarks. It is nearly no improvement compared with the plain Opera25. But it always collapses my folders! That's timeconsuming.
We had "Turbo mode" before. And SpeedDial. Ok, stash is new... nice, but not a big thing.
But what has gone:

Bookmarks with the functionality as they used to be,
panels
right-klick email from page
right-klick image and mark it as advertisement and block it (so beautiful)
auto fill in forms
stack tabs easily
accessable buttons to enable: javascript, sound in webpage, plugins, etc.
email!

We had a all-in-one browser! No need to look for "extensions". What do you guess how much time did I waste browsing through extensions?! 1001 useless things! It's a drag looking for the useful one in all the rubbish. I did that with Firefox which I must use at work.
What comes next: You must update all these extensions seperately. Some years ago I would compare Opera against FF with my friends: They would say: "You can have that in FF if you install these 10-20 extensions!" I would say: "Thank you very much!" Today I must do the same...

Can you explain to me why Chrome is the most used browser if it did not have all features Presto had?

Deleted User

Deleted User

No, I can't.

There are different things to consider:

technical things: the browser must be up-to date and presto was not.
I guess many IE users were happy for an alternative
I suppose there were too few "powerusers" who liked the timesaving features in Presto very much. And Opera's Mangement didn't care. They went for the money.
I encounter this behaviour everywhere: People go for looks and shinyness, funny gadgets and stuff like that. Just look at all the people who open two seperat Windows-explorer-windows to copy folders with their mouse. I guess only 1% uses a "Norton Commander"- like prog that sports two panes like xplorer² ( http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm ). There is so much time to be saved in a day at office and few realize how it can be done.

ceboss

ceboss

Well, I guess the popularity is related also with marketing. Google attached a question "do you want to download Chrome" when you are entering their side. So it might helped a lot. My father is using Chrome only because he had this notification during daily surfing. Opera side is not linked to social network or searching and maybe due to this it is not the most popular browser.

Deleted User

Deleted User

You can't explain why Chrome is the most used browser BUT you CAN tell us that lem doesn't know what he's talking about... is that the picture? LOL Uh... perhaps it is YOU who don't know what you're going on about. Has that simple fact ever occurred to you? You're not going to get skins and they are the least of anyone's concern anyway. Some of the key features will be returned but don't expect everything.You and ceboss seem to be doing little more than whining and casting aspersions on Opera as a company. You are aware, are you not, that Opera is a business trying to make money... right? And that they gave to all of us a FREE browser for many years (and continue to do so). If you don't like the new offering, use the OLD one OR go to a different browser but please stop your incessant whining. Extensions ARE the key to personalizing a browser and whether a few stuck in the 90's like it or not, extensions are here to stay. Your problem is going to be finding ANY browser that doesn't capitalize on extensions. Opera is fast becoming the best browser out of the gate, like it or not. I happen to love it.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Firefox and Chrome have a huge store of extensions, Safari and Internet Explorer has a small one. Why be against it?

Deleted User

Deleted User

Well I guess anybody who drove a Mercedes and changed to a Volkswagen without noticing it is still happy.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Silly analogy. That Mercedes was increasingly difficult to keep on the road let alone develop for it. And very few people wanted one (if you must make such a comparison). Time for the company to go with what "most" drivers want rather than a few non-paying customers.

colderwinters

colderwinters

If you like the Old Opera and absolutely hate the new Opera, try the New Chromium Blink based Slimjet Browser, the amount of options it has compared to chrome or the New Opera is impressive, you can even change the omnibar where you type in the URL's to any search engine you like without typing in any code letters or whatever, better toolbar options, A home button that you can set to any page you choose, full chrome theme extension support so you can actually change the colors of the toolbars with whatever themes the Chrome extension/theme site offers and tons more options besides that, this is information mainly for users of the obsolete old opera and not for people head over heels in love with the New Opera I waited patiently for Opera to offer more than the most basic of functionality, but someone else beat them to it.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Look... why are you here? If YOU don't like the new Opera, then go enjoy your Slimjet and be happy. But stop trying to stir up trouble here. You can be thankful I'm not a moderator or I would ban you outright. The forum exists to help users with issues with the browser...not whiners and malcontents.

colderwinters

colderwinters

Look... why are you here? If YOU don't like the new Opera, then go enjoy your Slimjet and be happy. But stop trying to stir up trouble here. You can be thankful I'm not a moderator or I would ban you outright. The forum exists to help users with issues with the browser...not whiners and malcontents.

Pleasant surprise meeting you here again Leushino, hope everything is going well

Deleted User

Deleted User

Indeed... a couple of herniated discs but acupuncture and walking along the ocean has kept me out of surgery. Getting ready for Hawaii in two weeks (Lord, willing). You know... I'm not your enemy. I just don't "get" guys using the forum to express frustration with Opera. If you have a suggestion, there is a Suggestion folder. Better yet, you'll get more audience if you enter the developers' blogs and make your voice known (respectfully of course). But here? To me this is supposed to help folks understand the new browser and find extensions and ways to adapt until such time as more familiar surroundings re-appear. My best.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Forgive me for not asking after you. I hope things are going well for you as well.

colderwinters

colderwinters

It's cool Leushino, things are going ok here for me, I got 4 days off work which is nice since I work 12 hour shifts and at 61 years of age I think i'm in pretty good health, probably maybe Hope those discs get better, take care man

Deleted User

Deleted User

Thanks, I appreciate the good wishes. Glad to hear that things are going well for you. I guess I'm your senior by 7 years (just turned 68 a few weeks ago). Retired from 32 years teaching and then another 13 years working part-time in a bookstore which I LOVED, being a reader and loving to talk with people. I have time off now and since my wife is younger and still enjoys working, I find myself walking along the ocean quite a bit and dabbling in photography. I know I come across too strong in the forums and I'm trying to "cool my heels". I find myself feeling defensive for the company having used Opera since 1999. I'm looking forward to Opera 25 becoming stable and hopefully containging the complete bookmark manager many desire. Opera has always been an innovative company frequently coming up with features that others then adopt. I'm excited about what will eventually come about. My best.