@Mlipka said in Opera Air is beauty but I have some issues with it:

@salimalbitar Wow! Thanks for all the details and such diligent investigation.
I'll pass it to the team and investigate deeper. This might take some time, I will return once know more.

yeah, I did everything I can do from my part lol

and I'll be patiently wait for your reply ️

@Mlipka said in Opera Air is beauty but I have some issues with it:

@salimalbitar Wow! Thanks for all the details and such diligent investigation.
I'll pass it to the team and investigate deeper. This might take some time, I will return once know more.

yeah, I did everything I can do from my part lol

and I'll be patiently wait for your reply ️

@mohamedsalah said in Tab Islands in Opera Air – Essential for Focus and Peace:

@MrTeatime We are already big fans of tab islands!, we are exploring even further ways to improve the experience to fit into Opera Air, stay tuned for future tab management experience on Opera Air

as I perfectionist, I know you're trying your best, to give us the.. perfect tab management system..

but as a user we want something now lol
because we can't even use extensions from the chrome store, or create our own extensions

thank you in advance
يا فخر العرب

and when I tried extensions to open tabs next to the current one instead of at the end of tabs bar i suffered a similar fate:

I received a "race condition" error which prevented tab from opening next to the current one

i tried to find any wiggle room, but I couldn't

• I've already tried introducing a delay (setTimeout).
• I've tried explicitly activating the tab (active: true).
• There's no "force move" flag in the chrome.tabs.move API.
• I cannot inject code directly into Opera's core browser process to disable its native tab placement.

as for the tab duplication extension:

there's a tab duplication extension in the store, but it doesn't have any shortcut keys
(like other chromium extensions on the chrome store)

but just to be sure, here are the extensions I've tried
(and didn't work):

1. always right:
   https://github.com/autonome/always-right

2. duplicate-tab:
   https://github.com/zertosh/duplicate-tab

3. duplicate-tab:
   https://github.com/stefansundin/duplicate-tab

4. open-tabs-next-to-current
   https://github.com/sblask/webextension-open-tabs-next-to-current

alongside the extensions I created myself:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Lz_L_Gmu2WGtRRrh2myVQhE-c_6C0p_I?usp=sharing

I tried all the tabs above in other chromium based browsers, and they're working fine

thank you again for the follow up and the work
now and later on

and once Opera is ready to be used again
(tab islands introduced and/or chromium extension are supported)
I'll happily make the switch.

P.S.
try taking a few notes from sidekick browser
(the adding tasks for example seems like a good idea to implement)

@Mlipka said in Opera Air is beauty but I have some issues with it:

Hi @salimalbitar

Thanks for taking the time and sharing your thoughts. We appreciate the feedback. We'll analyze it.

In the meantime, can you share exactly which extensions work for Chrome but doesn't work for Opera? This way, we can investigate the root of the problem.

Both browsers use chromium as their engine, and extensions from Google store should work exactly the same in both browsers.

Hey @Mlipka
thank you for your reply it shows that you guys care ️
this makes sure Opera Air doesn't suffer the same fate as Opera's crypto browser lol

Can we assume that
most chrome extensions don't work on Opera?
because it seems like Opera Air is
restricting certain (most) Chromium APIs!

at 1st I thought
it just does not support the chrome.tabs.group API
because it may conflict with the tab island feature (that's not even introduced to Opera Air yet)
(which doesn't make much sense, but ok..)

but then I found out that the same problem is happening with other extensions as well

here's why I think that Opera Air is restricting Chromium APIs:

since "Tab islands" are supported.. yet.
(please add the feature to Opera Air soon)
I was like it's ok.. I'll just use a tab grouping extension from the store
but after all the tab grouping didn't work,
I created my own extension to see what's wrong

then I got this error

Error creating group: Grouping is not supported by tabs in this window.
Context
background.js
Stack Trace
background.js:43 (anonymous function)
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// Listen for when the extension icon is clicked
chrome.action.onClicked.addListener((tab) => {
// Get the current window's tabs
chrome.tabs.query({ currentWindow: true }, (allTabs) => {
if (chrome.runtime.lastError) {
console.error("Error querying all tabs:", chrome.runtime.lastError.message);
return;
}

// Find the active tab in the current window
const activeTab = allTabs.find(t => t.id === tab.id);

if (!activeTab) {
  console.error("Active tab not found.");
  return;
}

// Filter tabs that are to the right of the active tab
const tabsToGroupIds = allTabs
  .filter(t => t.index > activeTab.index)
  .map(t => t.id);

if (tabsToGroupIds.length === 0) {
  // Notify the user that there are no tabs to group
  console.log("No tabs to the right to group.");
  chrome.notifications.create({
    type: 'basic',
    // iconUrl: 'icons/icon48.png', // Removed as icons are not provided
    title: 'Tab Grouper',
    message: 'No tabs to the right of the current tab to group.',
    priority: 0
  });
  return;
}

// Get the current group counter from storage
chrome.storage.local.get({ groupCounter: 0 }, (data) => {
  let groupCounter = data.groupCounter + 1;

  // Create a new tab group with these tabs
  chrome.tabs.group({ tabIds: tabsToGroupIds }, (groupId) => {
    if (chrome.runtime.lastError) {
      console.error("Error creating group:", chrome.runtime.lastError.message);
      return;
    }

I was chatting with Manus AI about the tab grouping error I got and it told me that:

"This error message:
"Error creating group: Grouping is not supported by tabs in this window."
is very specific and tells us exactly what the problem is.
It means that the browser you are using (Opera Air, in this case) is explicitly reporting that it does not support the chrome.tabs.group API for extensions in the current window.
While Opera browsers are built on Chromium (the same base as Chrome), they may choose to implement or restrict certain Chromium APIs.

Opera's "Tab Islands" is a native, core feature of their browser, and it's highly likely that they have disabled or not implemented the standard Chrome Tab Grouping API for extensions to prevent conflicts or to maintain control over their own tab management system.

What this error means for your extension:

• The code itself is likely correct for a standard Chrome browser.
  *The limitation is with Opera Air.

The browser environment you're running the extension in is telling you that
it doesn't allow extensions to create tab groups using this method."

and since I tried the extension on chrome:
this confirms that:

The limitation is specifically with Opera Air's implementation of these APIs

I used to love Opera browser/s, but I haven't used them in a long time.

so when I read about Opera "Air" I was like this could the reason I go back to using it.

when I 1st downloaded and installed it, I was mesmerized by it beauty and design!
i was like that looks pretty good,
and with brain boosting music, I was like, Nice!

but under that beautiful exterior, it was awful!

the thing that pissed me off the most was not being able to properly utilize chrome/chromium extensions
most extensions I wanted to use weren't functioning properly,

I tried chrome store alternatives extensions, most of them had the same problems, I even created my own extensions to see what's wrong, they worked on chrome just like other extensions

but it seems that Opera was preventing those extensions from working
only extensions from the opera store would work
and that store barely has any useful extensions

so I result I had the following problems:

1. I couldn't open tabs next to the current ones,
   new tabs always open at the end of the tab bar.

2. there's no good opera extensions to duplicate tabs, that have keyboard shortcut features which means
   we can't use keyboard shortcuts to duplicate tabs so we can overcome the new tabs problem!

3. tab islands feature isn't available and we can't create tab groups!
   the opera extension isn't good enough!

4. vertical tabs extension is a joke so we can't really say we have vertical tabs!

the things is, if you want to create an
eye catching almost-useless browser, be my guess but don't prevent us from making it better or at least functional

it's like having a nice house, but with many of the essentials not being there and with NO WAY of bringing stuff from outside!

if those things aren't available because it's "in Beta"
then why put chains on it?!
and if you did those things to make things "better"
or to make us "more productive"
then you couldn't be more wrong!

Mozilla's Firefox doesn't support chromium extensions, but at least the alternatives are there!

speaking of which I'm going back to Zen browser

let me know when opera Air isn't full of hot air!

until we rant again!
Salim.