Anyway, I was always clueless why such a good Opera browser would be abandoned in order to pave the way for what is now being called "Opera". People want a good browser that has the tools to make life online more convenient, simple, and fast. Many users are not very literate and the most simplistic of browsers can do the job for them. I never realized just how powerful Opera 12.17 was until I started to dig deep into the settings. There is no turning back once you become dependent on a specific function or feature. You either have to release better version, or you are taking a step backwards. And I depend on, and need, some of the functionality of Opera 12.17.

So the original post in this thread was a pretty good way to see just how many people might still need to find ways to get that functionality in a different browser that is still being supported. I want to continue using Opera 12.17 but since the latest update is said to be final, it is not really in anyone's best interest to remain attached to 12.17. I do not mean it is not worth using. It still is very useful. But maybe we have to admit defeat and make provisions to ensure we have options. And thank you, by the way, to anyone who posted some of the viable options that can give us some of that Old Opera vibe, but in other browsers. I am using a program in FireFox called SimpleFill. It gives back that option in the context menu when you right click and select personal in Opera 12.17. If that helps anyone, great. It's all I have so far. Although I did like the options mentioned regarding Mail in SeaMonkey. I too use Opera Mail but would welcome any options offering a better solution.

I try to understand everyone's feeling. One guy insists Opera's new version does not deserve to be criticized. If we did not become familiar with how great and powerful Opera 12.17 was, then we would not have anything to compare to, and the new Opera would not get so much flack. But the way Opera was just abandoned, without much, if any, support, is pretty arrogant. Me and alot of other people were posting questions and looking for answers in the old forums all the way until the day they closed. The type of responses we got from Opera were nothing short of arrogant and I remember one answer from Opera to the question about support for all of the notes, bookmarks, and data that was all being held captive in v.12.16. The answer was to embrace change and to stop whining and enter the information manually and/or cut an paste. In other words, do what you have to do because Opera had no intention of making it easy for any of us. Arrogance. And I won't ever respect that.

Well, if that's all you need for your daily use, it's fine. But being critical of anyone for offering solutions to others to help bring back those features we depended on in early Opera sounds like someone who is trying to get people to see New Opera in a different light. Well, forget it. It won't happen any time soon. It's like that crap with Windows 8. Maybe there was a chance the world would embrace it but as soon as everyone saw the start menu was gone and many things within the user interface changed, it did not go over well. And people made it clear how they felt. As they should. We are the ones who are supporting you while you provide us with the tools to manage our lives day in and day out. If you expect continues support, then provide something that will make it better, and not worst. Stop trying to force feed us something we don't like while trying to convince us it tastes good.
Look what happened with the major update to Windows 8. They returned the start menu in 8.1 and to date, there are several companies that have gone to great lengths to provide 3rd party programs for a powerful start menu within Windows 8. We have to voice our opinions. But, in the case of Opera 12.xx vs New Opera, there are no opinions when someone tells you the new Opera is not able to fulfill the needs as well as the old Opera. That seems more fact than opinion. Because what I like is not just an opinion. It's a fact that the old Opera made my workload easier and in this day and age, the hardware is plenty fast so I do not care about milliseconds difference on page loads. So Chromium has very little to brag about. And it is a fact that my workload is hampered when using the new Opera and I have more manual input as a result of not having features that were abandoned.
We all should admit that the new Opera has very efficient functionality. It's simple, yet effective. But far from earning the right to be considered an "UPGRADE" to 12.17. It's a different animal. It should not even be compared to 12.17. It's like comparing A hyundai to Cadillac GTS. Both will take there but the Cadillac (Opera 12.xx) can do so in style and with much more luxury because of so many great features

If your looking for an alternative that is trying to truly emulate Opera 12.xx try http://otter-browser.org/

Otter Browser is in it's infancy, it's barely an alpha, bad choice

But then things changed fast as Opera Presto started having more and more problems on the web.

- I had a deeper look at Thunderbird and also found the Lightening Addon
It's much more powerful than everything Opera provides in that direction.

- I had a deeper look at Firefox and its Addons
I managed to get almost everything that Opera provides and I found FF to be compatible with almost every site.

- I learned to use Autohotkey. (Not because my browser issues, I would have learned it anyway.)
Soon it was clear to me that Autohotkey was the missing link to get things done operalike.

Three powerful apps just to replace the champ - I still think Opera Presto could beat them all.

Why I write this?
One hand I feel kind of sad leaving Opera.
Other hand I feel some huge relieve that I found an adequate solution for dying Presto.
Try the FF/Thunderbird combo it won't hurt!

There have been some mentions about sleipnir... Just FYI, I tried it and was amazed how actively it phones back to g00gle (I guess every chromium-based browser does so, but haven't tested), thanks to comodo firewall with custom ruleset. Sleipnir establishes a bunch of connections right after the launch, and all of the IPs happen to belong to g00gle. That occurs, I'd like to stress, even before you managed to enter any address to navigate to. I could understand and (possibly) allow a connection to sleipnir's home site for the sake of checking for updates. But dozens of them, all headed towards g00gle, are beyond me. Many of them using SSL, so that you couldn't just look into those packets' payload. ...

Hmm. It might prove an interesting exercise to temporarily block the site calls (with a hosts file, etc) and see what, if anything, "broke" in the browser...

Just FYI, I tried it and was amazed how actively it phones back to g00gle (I guess every chromium-based browser does so, but haven't tested), thanks to comodo firewall with custom ruleset.

Sleipnir establishes a bunch of connections right after the launch, and all of the IPs happen to belong to g00gle. That occurs, I'd like to stress, even before you managed to enter any address to navigate to. I could understand and (possibly) allow a connection to sleipnir's home site for the sake of checking for updates. But dozens of them, all headed towards g00gle, are beyond me. Many of them using SSL, so that you couldn't just look into those packets' payload.

Firefox seems (without any warranty, though) to remain the last stronghold of non-snooping browsing. At least it doesn't initiate any connections until you actually decide to navigate somewhere. Opera is history now, as well as lavabit.com mail. The latter had the guts to inform its users about being pressed to comply. Opera just silently became "you can't stop the progress" Chrome.

- It doesn't support creating a gesture combined with a keyboard buttons(ctrl, alt, shift...)
- it doesn't support context dependent gestures (in Opera, one gesture can be customized/used in a different parts of the browser's UI. For an example, in Opera, I've created the "GestureRight" gesture for Paste&Go function, which works exclusively over the address field.
- No support for multiple actions in one gesture

I simply can't adapt my own Opera's mouse configuration in the Firefox/MG Redox :(.

MG Redox supports all these things, since you know a little bit of JavaScript. Edit gesture > Script.

Examples:

if(globalSrcEvent.ctrlKey) alert('Mouse gesture combined with Ctrl');




if(globalSrcEvent.target == document.getElementById('urlbar')) alert('Mouse gesture only over the address field');




if (mgGestureState.globalOnImage) alert('Do something if over an image');
else alert('Do something else if not');

danielsro

- Mouse Gestures Redox (best extension for mouse gestures + rock gestures)

- Better than FireGestures
- Not supported by its developer anymore.

I'm using "All-in-One Gestures". I have tested both, "FireGestures" and "Redox" (not sure if it is still working with Fx 24) in the past.
For what's most important to me, history navigation (Rocker gestures) and for opening/closing tabs it works as well as Presto's built in mouse gestures.

- Mouse Gestures Redox (best extension for mouse gestures + rock gestures)

- Better than FireGestures
- Not supported by its developer anymore.

But Redox still doesn't come close to the native implementation in Opera:

- It doesn't support creating a gesture combined with a keyboard buttons(ctrl, alt, shift...)
- it doesn't support context dependent gestures (in Opera, one gesture can be customized/used in a different parts of the browser's UI. For an example, in Opera, I've created the "GestureRight" gesture for Paste&Go function, which works exclusively over the address field.
- No support for multiple actions in one gesture

I simply can't adapt my own Opera's mouse configuration in the Firefox/MG Redox :(.

That's good advice if you want some stability (i.e. you use the browser to get work done). Still, the ESR might just as well break extensions as the smaller releases.

All I can tell you from my own experience (I'm using Firefox ESR alongside Presto for 9 months) is that so far I didn't had any problems with broken extensions. Not even during the transition from ESR 17 series to ESR 24 series.
On the other hand I only use a few extensions (for mouse gestures, for custom buttons and for saving as web archive/MHTML & MAFF).
My local filtering proxy takes care of the rest

Anyway, if some extensions might break for the newest Firefox release there a good chances by using the ESR channel that those extensions will get updated till you get there.

Chrome hasn't improved at all since I last tried it. There's a new mouse gesture addon, MouseCrx, but it too misses about 2/3 of all gestures. Firefox does not have native mouse gestures, but FireGestures has worked very well. Firefox even has a bookmarks pan... uh, sidebar! No support for File API, but it's time to update, so I'll stick with it for now.

If you must use Firefox, and I no longer often do, use the Firefox ESR version. Firefox ESR receives security and stability updates from the most recent, stable version of Firefox, but is not updated for any feature or appearance changes (except once for every 7 versions of Firefox stable, approximately every 42 to 48 weeks).

That's good advice if you want some stability (i.e. you use the browser to get work done). Still, the ESR might just as well break extensions as the smaller releases.

I've been using Opera 18+ almost exclusively for the past month and have found it to be awesome, better than "very good".

I wish I could say the same but each to his own ...

I've been using Opera 18+ almost exclusively for the past month and have found it to be awesome, better than "very good".

I think the only browser I'd call awesome is Opera Presto :lol: Still, I do think Firefox is better than it ever has been. I haven't been following the successive releases of Opera Blink as closely as before, is there much improvement feature-wise from 15/16?

Once I did, however it's a pretty solid

Just be wary of browser upgrades.

In terms of the browser remembering entered text it actually does a better job than Opera.

Yes, the hard part is to make it forget about entered text.

I am webmaster and editing many CSS/HTML code etc.

The main reason why I still stick in Opera 12x are:
- Load back/accident post. AFAIK, only Presto have this ability. even after successfully post, I am still can do revert previous one only click BACK
- The Opera Dragonfly, is different than WebKit or Gecko/Firebug Inspect element.Presto has nice "real time" live mouse hover and show the styles.
- I am still have thousands of Notes instead of important Speed Dial.

But, still I am facing the big 5 fact. That my visitor still use Chrome, WebKit, IE and Presto Engine,including Opera Mini.
So, for testing site, I use current Opera 18x and Firefox also IE

Well, I remember many years ago. I am using Intel Pentium 300MHz with 256MB of RAM. At that time, IE was buggy and consume high cpu resources. While Firefuk had many memory leakage problem. Only Opera is the winner, can open many many tabs at once with LOWEST memory & CPU consumption. Dang..

So, quick update: I've been using Firefox exclusively for the past month and have found it to be very good.

In terms of the browser remembering entered text it actually does a better job than Opera. Firefox remembers text entered in fields even after closing and re-opening the browser, as well as pressing Back generally. Haven't tried testing submitting a form then pressing back yet. Edit: just did now, and it works :lol:

For memory usage it's stayed between 350MB-450MB running with 25 addons and various userscripts, etc. So far a very positive experience coming from Opera 12, although it's no easy task setting it up initially with the type of things I wanted to customize. Once I did, however it's a pretty solid

Tip:
- Right click toolbar -> "Customize". Put buttons in this order: reload-stop, so they will merge into a single button.

Some other addons:

- Mouse Gestures Redox (best extension for mouse gestures + rock gestures)
- Advance Cookie Manager or Cookies Manager+
- CacheViewer2 (opera:cache)
- Custom Buttons
- FxIF (EXIF data in image properties, I use it with Element Properties extension)
- HeaderControlRevived (per-site referer, useragent and language)
- InheritPrincipal (execute javascript in urlbar)
- Open in Browser (option to try to display file in browser instead of downloading, I use it with InlineDisposition extension)
- OpenDownload² (option save download in temp folder and autoopen when completed - especially useful for *.exe)
- Scrapbook (most similar to Notes)
- Source Viewer Tab
- Tab Permissions
- Tile Tabs (Firefox does not support MDI, this extension reduces the impact of the problem)
- Link and Forminfo (like Links panel, I use it with View Dependencies extension)
- Add to Search Bar
- Menu Filter (simple and non-buggy extension to customize context menu)
- Organize Status Bar (Revived) (to be able to hide some buttons from statusbar)
- RighToClick (stops javascript annoyances such as forbidden right click, forbidden text selection or cascading dialog boxes)
- switch-to-tab Blacklist (to be able to open the same url in multiple tabs)
- Click to Play per-element

- Full-featured custom searches. While Firefox does include the ability to add basic custom searches via bookmarks with keywords they aren't accessible via a text selection context menu (in Opera it would be 'Search With>'). Additionally JSON autosuggestion can't be manually added to custom searches.

I created several custom searches accessible via a text selection context menu and with JSON autosuggestion.
Try this and this.

Originally posted by laurenbacall:

Strangely Tab Utilities seems to add an irremovable toolbar full of buttons to links of 'Total Commander', 'UltraCompare', 'FreeGate', etc. Bizarre. Can't say I'd want to continue using it based on this experience.

about:config
extensions.tabutils.button.button_UltraCompate -> false
extensions.tabutils.button.button_TotalCommander -> false
etc.

Tab Utilities is better than Tab Mix Plus IMHO. Tab stacking.

Originally posted by laurenbacall:

I suppose the benefit of the addon is adding the Keyword input box to the pop-up bookmark star in the addressbar when you first create one, as well as Description, and a few other options, similar to expanding Opera's 'Details' button.

These input boxes are always there, but hidden. I use this UserStyle to display them:
Keyword addition for Add/Change Bookmark