Posts made by vedicaudio

So after more than a year of hanging on with v12.1x, and getting tired of all the crashes on Windows 8, I tried a few other browsers. Avant, Lunascape, finally Maxthon.

Avant immediately got uninstalled, I can't remember why. Lunascape I really tried but it was very slow and crashed more than Opera.

And then I tried Maxthon, and I actually am almost completely satisfied with it. I would say it has 95% of the core features that made Opera such an awesome browser for the last decade (mouse gestures, shortcuts for direct searching from address bar, private browsing, feed reader, There are features it doesn't have that I will miss from Opera v12, namely: 1) can't put tabs on bottom (used all the time) 2) can't save multiple tabs as a session (used frequently) 3) can't do per-site configuration (used rarely) 4) can't specify how to open certain file types, or configure plugins to do it

Overall, it is also much less configurable, but I think it more than makes up for this with a couple features that Opera wasn't very good at:

1. syncs almost everything across machines with a Maxthon sync account (bookmarks, passwords, plugins, settings, tabs, speed dial) 2) has a cloud push feature which allows you to "send" a tab from your computer to your phone or vice versa to continue reading later 3) built-in and accessible user agent custom string (Opera's was hidden in opera:config) 4) so far renders every web page flawlessly

I know this forum has been filled with people like myself, who prefer Presto Opera to the New Opera, how many have tried Maxthon, and how many think it can replace Opera for them as a main browser? Any tips or tricks to get it to behave more like Opera?

So after more than a year of hanging on with v12.1x, and getting tired of all the crashes on Windows 8, I tried a few other browsers. Avant, Lunascape, finally Maxthon.

Avant immediately got uninstalled, I can't remember why.
Lunascape I really tried but it was very slow and crashed more than Opera.

And then I tried Maxthon, and I actually am almost completely satisfied with it. I would say it has 95% of the core features that made Opera such an awesome browser for the last decade (mouse gestures, shortcuts for direct searching from address bar, private browsing, feed reader, There are features it doesn't have that I will miss from Opera v12, namely:

1. can't put tabs on bottom (used all the time)
2. can't save multiple tabs as a session (used frequently)
3. can't do per-site configuration (used rarely)
4. can't specify how to open certain file types, or configure plugins to do it

Overall, it is also much less configurable, but I think it more than makes up for this with a couple features that Opera wasn't very good at:

1. syncs almost everything across machines with a Maxthon sync account (bookmarks, passwords, plugins, settings, tabs, speed dial)
2. has a cloud push feature which allows you to "send" a tab from your computer to your phone or vice versa to continue reading later
3. built-in and accessible user agent custom string (Opera's was hidden in opera:config)
4. so far renders every web page flawlessly

I know this forum has been filled with people like myself, who prefer Presto Opera to the New Opera, how many have tried Maxthon, and how many think it can replace Opera for them as a main browser? Any tips or tricks to get it to behave more like Opera?

Can you use and customize single character shortcuts to trigger searches like you could in Opera 12?
Like directly searching abebooks.com by typing "b maya angelou"?

Sync is being reworked right now.
That's why it's behind a flag. Both servers and client software are being adjusted. So it might happen that it's temporarily non-functional.

Opera Sync has not worked for over a year now with any version past v12. So I think it's reasonable to assume that it actually is NOT "being reworked" right at the moment. It's yet another valuable feature that is still only available on versions 12 and below.

I think at this point I'd use any browser as long as it had bookmarks and a plugin which would automatically filter all of Leushino's posts from the web so that I don't have to waste time even seeing them.

@blackbird71
So I finally tried installing v12.14 and the first site it crashed on was this very website: the Opera forums.
I guess sometimes you just can't win. Maybe I'll just stop browsing the internet completely. Seems to cause too many headaches these days.

Which is why I said in my previous post "starting from scratch in creating a new version of Opera."
The average person who goes to the website and sees Opera v20 will assume it's an update of previous versions since they have kept the same name and increased the version number above 12. Which engenders all the confusion and hysteria.

@stng: What's better about 12.14? I was doing great with 12.16 on a Win Vista, but when I got a Win8 x64 machine, I installed 12.16 x64, and started having lots of crashes. I've tried 12.15 and 12.16 both 32 and 64 bit, and still lots of crashes. 12.15 seems slightly more stable, but it could just be my imagination. Some days it runs fine, other days lots of crashes. It's gotten to the point that I'm considering downgrading to Win7 or even Vista on my new computer since Opera is such a critical piece of software, but I don't know if that will help.

Is anyone else having big stability issues with Opera 12.xx since last year or since switching to Win8?

It's been suggested 1000 times in less than a year? That seems like a lot. At what point do individual voices start to blend and become a critical mass of meaningful resistance?

A simple message to long-time users on the homepage of the website explaining something about the new version, and the direction they want to take it would have gone a long way. When people don't have access to clear info, their minds can run wild and it can be quite frustrating to go on and on without feedback.

Do you think that Facebook would completely change their UI overnight with no notice, no user survey, and no message from Zuckerberg about why this is being done?

The airlines are good at this. Every week there's new info on AA and USAir about their merger and what it will mean for customers.

I'm trying to think of another instance where a company has eliminated so many features in a software update.
I suppose it probably happened with Mac OS 9 going to OS X, but I think it was better explained then that it was a completely new operating system, which was needed for the sake of stability and streamlining.
While presumably the same rationale could be used for starting from scratch in creating a new version of Opera, Opera is a browser, not an OS. The switch from OS9 to OSX was a huge pain for many users, but they really had no choice if they wanted to use a modern Apple product.

In the case of browsers, we already have a pretty tough market. Chrome and Firefox are extremely stable with good market share, and IE is a Microsoft product. The only reason people ever used Opera was for its incredibly unique functionality. I'm not sure how Opera ASA thinks they are going to gain market share by making a less-functional browser that is more similar to browsers which most people already use and are content with.

I haven't read every post on every thread, but I what I haven't seen anyone mention yet is the unfortunate fact that with Opera v12 and older (Presto), there was always a small minority of websites that simply did not display properly in Opera.

I have used Opera as my primary browser for 13 years. During that time, I came to use and appreciate many, many of its advanced and unique features. A few favorite examples: the ability to customize preferences such as browser identification, and whether plug-ins loaded automatically on a "per-site" basis with the "Edit Site Preferences" command, mouse gestures, and not losing typed entries in a web form when using the forward/back buttons when other browsers would tell you that the page MUST be reloaded (can anyone using v20 tell me if these features are implemented?).

Throughout these years, I always had to keep a secondary browser to deal with those few sites that just seemed to trip Opera up. I blamed this, of course, on the website developers, because they obviously did not test their site with Opera (presumably due to its small market share). I didn't really care which one, and used IE, FF, and Chrome at different times, while continuing to use Opera for 97% of my browsing.

However, it was always a little annoying to have to open up another browsing for that 3% of sites that didn't work (case in point, the new American Airlines site). For everything else, I usually have one program. It just makes things easier. I don't do 3% of word processing in a 2nd program, and I don't send 3% of my email with a 2nd program. I used to like GOM Player for video playback, but once I realized that VLC plays 100% of videos, I couldn't be bothered to have several different video players all installed on my computer.

All this to say: I can understand why Opera would decide to abandon their rendering engine and adopt one which would be supported by 100% of websites by virtue of the fact that all web developers test their sites with Chrome. So I am ready to support Opera v20+. But Opera ASA needs to understand that there was a compelling reason for users like me (who I believe comprise most of the folks posting here) to continue using Opera all those years despite the fact that we still had to keep another browser for those 3% of sites: We loved and needed the functionality of Opera on the 97% of sites!!! And after 5, 10, 15 years using that, it is not going to be easy to give that up. People who prioritized 100% compatibility would have dumped Opera ages ago for Firefox or Chrome. I think what has a lot of us scratching our heads is why Blink isn't being released in beta while Presto is still the official version. Until Blink has the functionality that compelled us to use Opera even when web developers weren't testing on it, we don't understand how Opera ASA could market this is as the official release of their product.

So here's the point: I already had Chrome installed to deal with the 3%. I'm not going to install a 3rd browser. So until Opera v20+ re-implements all the functionality of v12, I'm not ready to make the jump. Why would I install this browser when I still need to keep v12 around to do a lot of tasks that v20 can't do yet?

posted with Opera v12.15 x64