Posts made by al-khwarizmi

In previous versions of opera, I often did the following: go to the address bar, type "www.red", and then the address would be completed to a subreddit I often visit (so I get a completion of the form www.reddit.com/r/...). I would see that, press enter and go to the subreddit.

But recently, there is a quite jarring behavior. I type "www.red", and the address is still completed to the subreddit. But below the address bar, there is a "suggestion" for a promoted website. And when I press enter, I go to that site instead of the subreddit.

This screenshot shows the situation:

I get that they need to promote things to make a living and I'm OK with that, but isn't this a bug, in the sense that pressing enter should take me to the address in the address bar? Is there any way to disable this behavior?

If the promoted website appeared in the URL bar then I wouldn't prese enter, but it's a bit shady for me to be looking at the URL bar, see the correct website I want to visit there, press enter and be taken somewhere else. I hope it can be disabled or they fix it.

I've had this issue since like forever (since Opera adopted the Chrome engine IIRC). It affects all my computers (4 of them, with different monitor resolutions so probably that's not the deciding factor) so I thought it would be obvious and known, and never bothered to search for it until now. I just learned to use a different browser to view PDF's, or download them and open them with Adobe.

By the way, it's not a beta issue, currently I'm experiencing it in 40.0.2308.62 Stable for W64 - but I've experienced it in pretty much every version.

In which case, there would be no end of further complaints of Opera being a Chrome-clone. It seems Opera developers just can't win... if they try to create anew, they're "hungry" - if they try to copy, they're "cloners".

They can win. If they copied the features from Opera 12, instead of from Chrome, they would make the user base happy.

Option for a classic menu bar. Bring back the option to have a common (MDI) close button for all tabs, and the option to "click tab to minimize".

I use it and feel perfectly safe. I don't think it's a security risk while security patching for it is officially supported. No security patches have appeared lately, but that's likely to be because most hackers won't bother to make an exploit for a browser that is no longer going to be updated.

The problem is that javascript-heavy sites like Google and Facebook get buggier and buggier, slower and slower, as the browser is no longer updating to keep up with their changes.

For syncing notes between computers, if you're OK with a standalone and not in-browser application, try Evernote. It's great.

I find the idea ridiculous that some claim their "work" is hampered because they cannot stack tabs. Evidently they have dozens
and dozens of tabs open at one time and therefore need to stack them. Seriously? How on earth did you function back in the
90's when there were no tabs at all? And when tabs first appeared the ability to stack them was not present. How did you
manage then?

What kind of argument is that? In the 90's we also managed with 16 MB or RAM, 14-inch CRT monitors, MS-DOS and 56 Kbps connections. That doesn't mean we want to go back to that. Progress is supposed to improve things, not the other way round.

By the way, I don't really care much about tab stacking, but I understand that each user has their pet features that they need for an efficient workflow. In my case, those (tab-related) features are:

• Vertical tabs
• Option to have common (MDI) close button for all tabs
• Click on tab to minimize

Yes, of course it's a huge plus, but I count that as a consequence of O12 not having been maintained (except for security updates) for a year, not as a problem with O12 itself. When O12 was maintained I could open all the sites fine.

Anyway, if we don't take that into consideration... I would say that I prefer the new Opera for Facebook and Gmail, but I very much prefer O12 for the rest of the sites I visit.

Personally, after almost a year, I haven't adapted and I don't think I ever will. O12 is still my primary browser, although I always have the latest Opera Developer installed which I sometimes use for Facebook and Gmail (unusable in O12).

I still miss the standard menu bar, the bookmarks menu, the download dialog and manager, the MDI common close tab button, the tab behavior "click on tab to minimize" which allows one to go back to the last tab, etc.

I keep using the latest Opera as a secondary browser out of a mix of nostalgia and self-deception, but it's not really even my second favorite browser, I prefer Firefox. Although I also must say I prefer the new Opera to Chrome (for things like native mouse gestures). My ranking would be something like O12 > Firefox > IE tied with new Opera > Chrome.

BTW, so you see I'm not all negative, the feature that appeared very recently in the new Opera by which the tab preview when hovering over a tab is big and readable instead of just a thumbnail, is really cool and useful. But sadly it's the only advantage I can find in the new Opera, and it is far from outweighing all the missing things.

I'm also waiting for the Otter browser to develop. The latest betas are already rather functional and stable. Once mouse gestures are added, it'll probably become my primary browser.

Menu bar was removed.
And? There's no point on having one.

Will you guys please stop lecturing users on what they should want/need? You don't find a menu bar useful, that's fine. But many of us do (as shown by the fact that this complaint has arisen lots of times). Dismissing other users' requests as irrelevant is disrespectful to say the least.

I have the same problem. I now run Firefox alongside Opera 12.17. Firefox for Facebook and Gmail (which lag in Opera), and Opera for the rest.

Also, the classic menu bar. And the download dialog with options to Open, Save As, etc.

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by richardlemmens:

... nobody wants this browser anymore.

Somebody must, else there'd be no new Opera version downloads or occasional requests for technical help in these forums.

Yeah, well. But for each such request in the forums, there are like five or ten posts criticizing what has become of Opera.

And if you think they're all clones or something like that, look at the comments from the users in this post about Opera posted yesterday on a general tech news website: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/01/31/1629253/former-dev-gives-gloomy-outlook-on-linux-support-for-the-opera-browser

The amount of people who "want this browser anymore" seems to be diminishingly slow.

By the way, I have downloaded all the new Developer versions, and posted a help request in the forum, but it's not because I want this browser. It's because I still check every version because I have a tiny bit of irrational hope in that it can recover part of the old glory.

Originally posted by Staiger:

HOWEVER - it has one major failing which renders it a show-stopper for me: it has almost no customisability at all. Damn shame, really.

Well, at least it does have a classic menu bar that you can enable temporarily or permanently if you want, unlike Chrome and the new Opera.

Ohh, that is really great news, wok-tek. I think I'll check the source for that Otter browser and see if I can give some help to the project.

Both Firefox and IE can show the menu bar permanently on Windows (apart from temporarily with Alt), i.e., they are in the same boat as Presto Opera: hiding it by default but giving the user the choice to enable it. Which I'm fine with.

It's only Chrome, of the three big browsers, that doesn't have the option of enabling the menu bar. Which is the reason why I have never used it.

Originally posted by haavard:

You are paying too much attention to version numbers. They are not really relevant anymore. All the version number tells you is that it's a new version. However, the new version could have small or big changes. You really can't tell from the version number.

OK, point taken. But anyway, the comment about version numbers was just an anecdote, a parenthetical element in a sentence, not the main point of my post. If you remove the text "six major versions (!)" from my post, the rest still stands. In six months we got like, how much, 2% of the features in Opera 12, being optimistic? I'm not expecting to get everything back, but at the current pace it will be years until we get even the most popular set of features.

Originally posted by sirnh1:

Opera is no longer actively maintaining an engine and claimed (somewhere) that that means they would have more time to work on new innovative features? So... I wonder... Where are these 'innovative' features? (...) Judging from what I know and see, I can only see a dead opera in the feature.

Yes, to be honest, that's what I see too. I have always been critical of the new Opera but I have tried to keep it constructive, and in fact I have kept Opera Developer as a secondary browser (Opera 12.16 is still my main browser, of course) to use for Facebook and GMail, and watch its progress. I didn't hope for the new Opera to ever become as satisfactory to me as the old one, but at least I trusted the developers to really devote their time to new features as promised. I.e., I was prepared to not get the handy IRC client back, I was even convincing myself to accept that I would have to make a sacrifice and give up my beloved menu bar (and it would be the first program for which I gave up that - I switched from Office to OpenOffice due to no menu bar, in spite of the latter being inferior in all the rest of the aspects). But at least I thought we would get get a decent download manager, proxy settings, proper bookmarks, simple but handy settings like click on tab to minimize or disable X button on each tab, maybe some MDI settings, options for moving tabs to the side, status bar with URL information on hover, etc.

The reality is that it's been half a year, six major versions (!) on the Developer stream, and they have implemented almost no significant features. The pace at which they implement them is much, much slower than with the Presto-based Opera, contrary to what they said. And since I'm sure the Opera developers which brought us a great browser with so many handy features haven't become incompetent overnight, I'm convinced that the reason is just that the company doesn't want to focus on the desktop browser anymore. They probably have allocated almost no resources to it. Honestly, if this is the case, it would probably have been better that they had allocated no resources at all and declared the browser a legacy product. Because the way they're doing it, I'm honestly beginning to feel deceived. I feel that they have been giving us the hope that with a bit of patience they would give us a good browser again, and that they never really had the intention of doing so. I am patient, if I thought that Opera would really give me a good browser in another year, or even in two years (which is quite a lot in Internet terms), I would wait and even keep the incomplete Opera Developer installed to help by testing it and sending reports. But what I won't do is wait for nothing, and help a company which I can't really trust anymore, with a browser that is never going to be good and probably is bound to die because there is just no point in installing it.

I really hope I'm wrong. I hope in a year we get a really great Opera browser. But this is my sincere opinion right now.

I don't need the menu bar to browse web sites. However, I *do* need the menu bar to browse web sites *comfortably*. And for me, the function of a browser is to browse comfortably, so the menu bar is as needed as the back button or the scroll bar.

No one is asking to bring the menu bar back by default. Just as an option. I don't know why it is so hard for some users to respect what other people need in their browser.

11.64 was the pinnacle of Opera IMHO. It was the most perfected version with the best feature set, including Unite, which was a great idea that would have been big if it had been Google's idea.

12.x began to remove features, and 15+, well, we all know how those are.

I switched to 12.x anyway because it would deal with the usual suspects (Facebook, Gmail) better. Now that 12.x is rather slow on those as well, I'm thinking about switching back to 11.64 for my non-Facebook/non-Gmail browsing.

Thanks. I did that, disabled the Nitro Pro plugin that was enabled for some reason, enabled the Adobe plugin, and now I can save.