Best posts made by Denizen976

@tronk1it 42

When I try to respond to posts, I get a temporary pop-up that I'm responding to ports too quickly, and I have to wait 120 seconds, until I get 3 reputation points...

Reputation Points?

Was iss?

How do we gain reputation points? If you ask my many (imaginary) arch-nemises, they'll tell you I am disreputable. But they're enemies, and you expect that from enemies. Even imaginary ones.

Please work on the UI for Aria as it works in the sidebar.

Is the search engine that Aria references limited to Google Search? When there are highlighted words in the response, hovering over them shows the start of a Google Search URL.
This is probably a late-process addition, and probably not stored in the Aria corpus. If this is just a link to jump into a search engine, let the user customize which search engine Arai provides the search links for.

@yahgamer1
I have not found any solution yet. I haven't tested it in the most recent update, but I've been using all of the AI chats in individual tabs, and not using Aria as much.

I also updated to use Opera GX, on the thought that I could transfer over my existing windows and tabs, and be able to limit the amount of RAM that they take up.

I will move this content to a new forum/post... it's a rant on trying to save your session info, and transfer to Opera One GX, because:

• Let's you limit amount of ram taken up,
• Let's you import bookmarks
• Let's you create profiles...

https://forums.opera.com/topic/72245/rant-on-opera-one-opera-one-gx

Grrrr.

The way that Bookmarking open tabs is done, is horrible.

Please come up with a much easier way to bookmark all open tabs in a window.

They are supposed to be Bookmarks, not SpeddDial groups.

Saving tabs as Speed Dial groups are not conducive to saving bookmarks.

When all tabs in a window get saved as items in a Speed Dial group, the group has no name. If you have multiple windows open with multiple tabs, you wind up with several un-named Speed Dial collections. This is not helpful.

Renaming a Speed Dial collection is slow.

The only way to get the collections from Speed Dial to Bookmarks is to open the bookmark bar and click-drag the collection down to bookmarks. Crossing any nested set of bookmarks that the mouse pointer usually results in the nested collection popping open, and the whole sidebar display accordions out, making dragging prone to errors.

When you have to repeat this 5 or 6 times, it is quite a pain.

The Aria AI addition is great. I use it more often than BingChat (and depend upon Opera as my browser, instead of Edge).

The problem being, the use of Aria is sub-optimal.

Part of this is stylistic. Whoever thought that Grey font on a white or light background was good, was thinking stylistically, not in terms of utilization. It might “look cool”, or be a style standard, but it’s not optimal for everyone. Some of us have a hard time with the low contrast provided by a shade of grey on a light background. The font color is “too”. Too little contrast. [Honestly, I am Guessing at the font color. I really can’t see it well enough, I’m just assuming that it’s a dark grey.]

Also, in spite of what any designer thinks, not everybody can see as well as they can. The font size in Aria doesn’t appear to be adjustable, and, for me at least, the size is “too”. Too small.

The standard “increase size” Control “+” doesn’t work. The only option I can see is, for users to Copy everything, leave the Opera browser, and paste it into another app. That’s not very user-friendly. And, I don’t think that all of the additional details transfer… do the numbers presented copy/paste into a text document? [ Sorry… just tried it. Yes, they do. I am thinking of another web-based AI response thing… they present the results with markup, but the markup isn’t copied, and when pasted, linefeeds and bullets/numbering disappear. ]

For usability in general - not the ADA / 508 Compliance, - just general “make this more flexible, more usable, more user-friendly”, the font size and style needs to be adjustable.

And, just in case Aria ever includes graphics, please include an option to include/exclude graphics with zooming the text. It won’t help everybody, but most of us - if we want to zoom the text, we don’t need embedded pictures blowing up and destroying our ability to see content / navigate through an answer.

And, please consider this for any web displayed materials associated with Opera and it’s products. Look at the “additional information” links in Aria. It’s in the History/Menu thing. Over there at the top-left. That’s right … now, look down to the bottom. Keep going. It’s below Feedback and FAQ. Can you read that? That’s worse that the regular Aria font, and it might even be larger! What about the regular Opera website? All of those "less important" blots of text.. they're grey, they're tiny, they're hard to read... If you need something to be off-set visually, please consider minor size change, or something that will still give good contrast - distinct, bold colors, or maybe italics, or high contrast against a SLIGHT background color, or a dark-enough background, but larger, high contrast font color… Anything, just so we can actually see what is on screen.

If this isn’t something that can be worked easily, then if there is a separate style sheet for Aria (or other side-bar items), let us know how we can get to it/adjust it.

Lastly… Can the ability to chain inputs be added, or can the input buffer be increased? I had a non-complex thing I wanted Aria to review and provide input on, and I had to try chopping it into three (plus) sections and inputting each one as a continuation of the last. Aria didn’t understand that, and wound up providing an incomplete answer based on the first section.

Aria is disappearing randomly.

Checking settings, "Aria In the sidebar" is set to OFF.

Turning it back on, and restarting fixes the problem, and it's fine for a while, but eventually, it disappears again.

The sub-option for Aria remains set.
The two additional options I've set (ChatGPT and ChatSonic" remain set.
"Tixxer in the side bar" remains set.

@thedoubletap First, thank you for documenting so well. Second, you're a brave person (Using Edge). Third...
I guess I don't really have a third, but I will echo - Opera needs some serious work.

Let me tell you about my divorce because of Opera...

I am a bad browser. I will have many, many tabs open. Some will be in Tab Islands. Many of those will be there accidentally. Other, related tabs, will be off on their own, in shark infested waters, I guess.
I will wind up opening additional windows, thinking this will help me organize... i.e.,

• email-related tabs wind up at one side of one window... but every link clicked on, winds up in that same window.
• Another window will have tabs to AI image generation, AI chats, AI news, and random links from those tabs.
• Another window will have social media things
• Another window will have other technical, programming, etc.
• Aaand another one will have electronics, etc.

I usually wind up with links spread sporadically across all of them... all windows will have some YT video, the Social Media one will have login tabs for banking or AI chat. The AI one will have tabs for "X", it's all just 'orible.

My memory is full. I mean, really full. Like, 10 pounds of manure in a 4 pound sack, full. 471 tabs across 5 windows? Oh... not counting the Private window.

And periodically, I try to at least inventory. I can't save a window's worth of tabs, like in any regular browser. No. I have to save a windows worth of tabs to a speed dial. That's it's own type of insanity.
"But that's OK, because you can just move speed dials to bookmarks!" Argh. That's total insanity.

Although... I did (just) learn that I can open a bookmarks TAB, and, I can export the whole shebang to a file and edit it IN an external text editor, to get my bookmarks from the speed dial tabs.

Insanity.

So, I figure I'll try Workspaces again. Tried 'em before, didn't understand the concept, so, quit. Read a bit on it, "maybe workspaces can be used kind of like profiles!"

Spend hours (sob) setting up workspaces for the organization I was trying to get. I'm thinking, "Hey, I know it's not really documented WHY they are or WHAT they do, but somebody said this worked for them..."

I should have inventoried everything before I started - but I was brave - and besides, I was maybe a hours away from Opera expiring on it's own and being so full of tabs that it takes 20 minutes to reopen.

Set up 5 general workspaces, to generally match what should have been organized in the windows, but hey, I'm not that good.

Spend hours weeding through and sending tab islands to the proper window, and assigning to specific workspaces. Hey, I'm beginning to like the idea!

Wow, got all Social stuff with all email stuff with ... basically, any signin not otherwise aligned.

Got all my AI stuff declared to the AI workspace and in the same window.

Etc., etc.

I'm keeping an eye on my memory... it's inching higher still... the Opera windows freeze for a few seconds in between operations... the outlines haunting me like ghosts. Reproachful ghosts.

Okay, time for the big experiment. Close two windows... memory comes down. Close the media/email one... memory goes down. Close the tech/battery/whatever window. Only AI left open. Cool!

If Workspaces work the way described, I should be able to shut Opera down, bring it back up, and go to any workspace, retrieve all the tabs saved to that workspace, in the last state, log-ins and all, and be merrily on my way using oh... 30% of the memory I was?

Open Opera. Ok. AI tabs. Now. Open a fresh window, and Click another workspace.
Nothing.
Nothing?
nothing!?
A different workspace. A couple of tabs. Correct topics, but only 5 or 7 out of the 60 or so that were assigned to that workspace?!
A different workspace. Nothing.

I'm not against grown men showing emotion. I cry when dogs die. I shed a tear for friends who have passed. I sniffle over how much I love my kids.

Opera has caused a grown man to break down in sobs of agony, writhing on the floor, kicking the computer desk, over turning the chair, causing his wife to come running to see what happened.... all she sees is a grown man weeping openly, tearing out great handfuls of his hair.

"Who died?! What great tragedy has befallen us?!!" She's starting to get frantic, tearing up, expecting the worst, ready to rend her garments and join her husband in whatever fresh hell has been visited upon our family! "What is it, husband mine?"

"Opera," I manage to whisper, croaking out the cause of my pain, through cracked lips. "It's... Opera."

She's confused. She's wondering if it's a tragic opera I'm comparing life to.

She is wondering if we're broke, destitute, penniless, if we'll be cast out into the snow next month (We're in May, in the 35th degree latitudes... it'll be hot soon).

"My browser crapped out, I lost all my hard-won tabs. It's gone. It's all gone." (For me, "crapped out" is pretty strong language, in front of my wife.)

She knows beans about my computer. Or my browser. And I should probably delete my history, but anyway.

"What?" She's still concerned, but now she's concerned about if it would be considered justifiable homicide, and, if she can get the blood stains out, could she turn the room into a sewing room or something.

Okay... it turns out I didn't divorced. Only a broken arm and a couple bruises.

But I blame it all on Opera.

@elissongois I didn't know this was possible. I would like to do the same. Can you provide the link you use?

This may overcome some of the navigation / UI issues that we have experienced.

@leocg I finally got back to you:

Opera One(version: 106.0.4998.41)
Update stream:Stable
System:Windows 10 64-bit
Chromium version:120.0.6099.217

There is an update to .52, but I don't know what's in the change log.
Opera just died and I restarted it, and it didn't apply the update, so when I shut down tonight, I'll do a force-update.

And, it happens randomly - always starts with Aria, and at some point, it just disappears, whether I've used it or not.

The last time it disappeared, I discovered the "Aria Command Line" option in the window menu. I thought "maybe that will bring back the sidebar item..."
It totally tanked Opera! It would be funny, but I think I lost an email I was composing - although Gmail was supposed to be handling the draft backups.

I recently tried to migrate from my pervious Opera One to Opera One GX ... Because...

• Let's you limit amount of ram taken up,
  Haven't tested yet
• Let's you import bookmarks
  Not on my computer
• Let's you create profiles...
  Pretty useless and awkward

I have moved the below content to here, because I was clotting up a post on Aria disappearing.

Transferred content:
I also updated to use Opera GX, on the thought that I could transfer over my existing windows and tabs, and be able to limit the amount of RAM that they take up. My results from that:

• I tried the concept of WorkSpaces in the original Opera One - I am less than satisfied. Spent a couple of hours trying to organize all of my tabs across 5 open windows, into themed workspaces in each window, then tried to move from that to each window having a single workspace. I lost workspaces in other windows, they didn't transfer correctly. Workspaces seemed associated with the original window, and when I thought I was cleaning out, moving to other workspaces in other windows, then closing the current window, it lost everything in the subsequent workspaces, and the tabs in that window, because: other windows are open, you've modded your session..

• No luck trying to save/export the many tabs across 5 windows. No way to "save all tabs as bookmarks". The best you can do with "save all tabs as SpeedDial". I don't know what that does for tabs in separate workspaces, but I'm guessing that you have to visit each workspace in each windows, and save all tabs from that workspace into a speeddial.

• There is NO good way to move contents of a speeddial into bookmarks.

• I wound up pushing all tabs from all 5 windows into Speed Dial entries, figuring that was the way to save my window tab content.

• External recovery MAY be possible: I basically have backed up files names "Tabs" and "Sessions", but it's approaching 8 MB of data, and I don't have the patience to go through it.

• I exported all bookmarks, and speed dials, and PW info, etc. From the Bookmark TAB (vs side menu access), it says that I can export bookmarks, as well as Speed Dials, etc.

• Import into Opera GX did not work, on any level. No sessions, no bookmarks, no speeddials... no PWs. Not happy, devs.

• Opera GX is supposed to get you have "Profiles". It almost kinda sorta does, but not in any useful way. You can force separate profiles as separate Opera Links - but there's no way to go to a specific profile, or switch to another profile from w/in GX. You basically have to PIN each "profile" to your (Windows) Start Bar, to be able to access them. Basically, I have 5 pinned "O"'s taking up room on the task bar... There's not enough contrast between the icon colors,. If you hover over the icon, after a few seconds, it will have a pop=up that tells you what you named that "profile", but it's super tiny.

This is substandard design, substandard UI, and a substandard "features list" - as most of what I'm tried has failed, and I've lost work.

@lanshara In my sidebar, I have a ChatGPT plugin. I usually just use the OpenAI website when I need to use ChatGPT, even tho' the freebie version is v3.5, and does not have newer web results. I haven't checked the plugin to see if it is web enabled.

The other sidebar AI is ChatSonic. I think I tried it one, earlier after upgrading Opera to get Aria. I get enough strong use out of Aria, on desktop and on Android, that it has become my first choice when I need quick inputs.

BingChat through Edge will give you 30 iterations, but I rarely get that far before it gets snotty and sulks and refuses to answer me. When using Bing through Opera, it only offers 5 iterations. Because of it's adolescent temper tantrums, I use BingChat less and less.

I have recently tried Bard (from Opera). It LOOKS like it would go OK - but it's not very good. They upgraded it to let is see your GoogleWorkspaces, but it can't be trusted to tell you facts. It will make up things if you ask it about content in your workspaces or in your other Google apps. Bard regular web results aren't much better. I asked it some questions about some data systems, that it could pull from the web, and it hallucinated relationships between them that don't exist. It stated them very confidently - enough that I started to doubt what I knew, and I resorted to verifying with sources. Flat-out confidently wrong.

But, you can also add plugins/extensions to Opera - either through the Opera web extensions collection, or from the Chrome webstore.

One of the AI newsletters mentioned "AskMe" as an AI search tool.
( askme . feednews . com )

I tried it. I won't evaluate it here, but I am curious about the product.

The main page has little/no information on who is behind it, but...

You have to use an account to use the site (only Gmail and Discord) - there is no information on what information is shared to or from the signin account.
There is no "branding" on the page. There is no company name associated with the website There is a small "copyright" claim, referencing AskMe - but it is not a link to a company or provider.
If you sign in, your sign-in icon has the vertical dots for options. There is also a small footer at the bottom of the page with some generic links: Privacy, Terms, Security, Cookies Policy. If you click either the account options or the footer links, the user is taken to Opera pages for those topics. That makes it Look like this is an Opera product.

Update:
I just went upstream. It Is an Opera product, they just don't claim it.
If you go to Feednews(dot)com, it's an Opera news feed service - it's just junk. It looks like it's click-bait-y headlines intended to trick users into reading "Dermatologist reveals gross reason some people get more mosquito bites than others".

I'm sorry to say, feednews appears to be Junk, and that makes me think that "AskMe" is just as much Junk.

Is that why there is no Opera branding on the page?

@xb70 Sorry to not be clear. If I access the BingChat from Edge, I get up to 30 steps in a conversation with the BingChat implementation. Your first input prompt is #1. BingChat replies, and you can provide a second input prompt, etc. If you get lucky, you get your answer before either a) you reach the 30th's prompt (cycle/iteration) or, b) BingChat refuses to conversate any more.

With any other browser I contact BingChat with, the number of interactions is limited to 5.

Five may be enough, but I have been taking pains to get complete answers from BingChat, so I approach prompting as a process. Getting good/complete answers in just five iterations has been a challenge.

Unfortunately, because of my browsing habits, Opera takes up a good 6-7 GB of my RAM, and I can't have both Edge and Opera running at once. I thought 16 GB would be enough, but with Word, Excel, Notepad++, EPIM, etc. also in memory... if Edge accidentally gets started, I'm in for a good 15 minute wait until I can get control of things and shut things down gracefully.

Nobody should insist on having hundreds of browser tabs open at once.
But I still do.

@leocg I was commenting on what appeared to be an un-attributed/rogue AI website.
It wasn't properly identified, and, while it wasn't horrible, it also wasn't great.

I was concerned because of the source being non-attributed, but the appearance of whatever links on the page pulling from Opera pages.

For my part, I wanted to let anybody involved w/ Opera know that it was out there. I thought I was doing some minor service to Opera by announcing it, just in case it was some rougish thing.

It turns out it's an Opera product. I don't think it was meant to be a full-fledged AI chatbot, but more of an AI-augmented search tool.. It's just not labeled. At all.

Finding out that it was on Opera turf was a little comforting. Seeing the content of the feed-next-door was ... disappointing, at best, because of the quality of the stories in the feed.

So, all in all, it's not a security crisis of some hidden AI masquerading as a legit service, snuck under the Opera wing.. It IS a branding disaster, as... a) who will know about it, and b) if it's useful, who will know that it's associated w/ Opera?

@xb70 And don't give up... there are lots of options.
I haven't tried Claude yet, but I have seen some good reports (YT videos). I will get around to trying it shortly, I'm sure.

And, don't pass up some good videos on approaches to better prompting techniques, find some prompting cheat sheets online, etc.

By trial and error, I wound up implementing some of the most common recommendations for better prompt results... and in watching some videos, I figured out how to chain prompts, and constrain the results to get better answers, etc.

But always remember... check their answers. The AI just mashes up data, and if it's not monitored, or instructed on how to check it's answers, you might just get some fabulous fairie tales that aren't quite... "accurate" in the real world. I assume they're just trying to please us, and they don't know they're fabricating data.

@xb70 Well, like any new technology... it's only as good as the craftsman that made it. :

I know that it's been a battle sometimes when I'm trying to get specific results. Other times, I'm really pleased with what the AI can turn out - usually re-writing things or background embelishment.

If you're interested, I'll dig through some of my old AI playlists and find some that are short and to the point that talk about how to structure the prompts to get better results.

We're here to share and get more effective.

@xb70
tldr; "It's not as bad as all that." I realized as I was responding that I write a ton of (fun, for me) stuff, but not what you need. Scroll to the bottom for useful information... /end of tldr; dislaimer

Long, philosophical musing.
Think of it like your absolutely brilliant, extremely high-IQ friend who's a nerd and has some minor spectrum disorder social traits. Heh.

They have a really good memory, but, they don't follow facial cues, don't really understand interpersonal relations, will either over-share or stop abruptly because they figure you know what they're talking about.

But, they want to help, they just need a little help to get oriented in the correct direction. Yeah. But, they don't have BO or bad breath, and they won't say anything totally inappropriate.

They're a good editor, can be very creative, and sometimes lose the border between being scholarly and a fiction writer.

That sounds like fun, right?

Seriously, it's not as bad as I described. Hey, I might be an AI!

I have used the various AIs to come up with ideas, summarize projects, set up the grunt-work for projects, generate code frameworks, generate fictional stories, generate song stanzas, compare documents, review resumes, create cover letters, check my writing, change the tone of writing, etc.

The AI is a huge bag of data, information, references, etc. You can't just close your eyes and reach in and get great results. Just like getting good results from a search engine, sometimes you have to work on the search request in order to bypass a lot of the junk that gets returned if you throw out a simple search query.

---

Better, more informative stuff:
(What I actually intended to write.)

OK, some quick techniques to help get better results. Try these, mix and match, and don't give up:

1. Assign a role: Initial responses may not be focused enough to be helpful. Assigning a role will help limit the amount and type of information returned. You may need to try different roles.
   eg: "You are An expert resume reviewer/writer..."
   "Act as a python programming assistant..."

2. Give it (specific) tasks to perform. Rather than get a dump of information, help it focus on what is important to you.
   eg. "I want you to provide the framework and code for a Python web scraper."

3. Give it some context for the answers you want to get. "I am a beginning python programmer and I am trying to learn ..."

4. If you're looking for something back in a specific format, you can try providing it examples. Some people who are looking for help generating text will provide it with examples of their writing. For what I do, I provided examples of a table format for some output it was supposed to give me.

5. Provide some constraints on what is to be returned. For me, I have used "Don't do ..." as well as providing formatting (it's a kind of constraint) as above.

6. As I have had some pretty detailed topics, I have used a "stop and go" format. I was trying to get it to review a document, but there was so much content, that it needed to be chopped up and pasted in in sections. If I didn't tell it to wait until I gave it a "go" phrase, it would start analysis on an incomplete document, and then each section that got added was reviewed like it was separate. By setting up a starting condition "don't start responding until I enter 'OK, begin responding.' Is that understood?"
   Some people will also give it a command to delivery intermediate responses. "After each section, once you have it, respond with 'I have that part. Upload the next part.' Is that understood?"

I know that the above is a lot, but it's also stuff that you can work on in bits and pieces. You may not need every step - it depends upon what you're trying to get out. For simple stuff, I just use pretty simple prompts.
I have Bing on my cell phone. It will respond by reading results, if you prompt it with verbal instructions. When I'm driving around and need something to think about, I'll fire that up and ask it to look something up and summarize it. "Search the Reddit forums for DIY projects on cleaning and maintaining a wooden fence. Summarize the results discussing power washers."
Right now, that sounds pretty dumb while I'm typing it, but it found some good stuff, and I also refined my questions as I was tooling along. And, I was paying attention to traffic.