To love Opera, or not to love Opera

So the oft heard “Opera has no market share” is very misleading considering the number of mobile users that have it. And considering the large proportion of mobile users, it would be folly to write it off when coding.

Unfortunately, Opera desktop and Opera mini are two completely different stories. Opera mini rewrites the content for the user, Opera desktop doesn’t.

Isn’t there also a 3rd Opera browser, Opera Mobile, which doesn’t use the server-side pre-processing system?

An a forth called Coast made for iPhone and a fifth called Max for multimedia shrinking. Opera is producing native Opera mini and Opera browser for a variety of devices. You can see how Opera 12 simply is ancient history for the new Opera.

How can a browser that implements many things that the other browsers are still in the process of copying be ancient history.

Opera may not have ever had a large market share but up until version 12 it always had way more features than the other browsers and new versions of the other browsers were always implementing their copies of features first found in Opera. I expect that it will take at least another three or four years for the other browsers to catch up.

The effort of supporting those niche features are the ones that kept Opera under 2%. And nobody is trying to emulate those features, otherwise Opera would’ve revived Opera 12 long ago.

It turns out the larger portion of the users didn’t want the features, so they turned to Firefox an Chrome. And now Opera has redirected its efforts and is playing catch up and it’s doing a pretty good job.What baffles me is how those “power users” that appreciated Opera not so long ago, they become bitter and instead of supporting the new Opera, they chose to bitch and moan all over the internet, many of them not even bothering to try the new versions.

Opera forums

It’s becoming increasingly tiresome to try and respond respectfully to these Opera bashers. First off we have the childish use of the word Chopera. There is NO browser by such a moniker other than your fevered minds so please… DEAL with the real world and not one of your own making. Secondly, you can hold on to Opera Presto for the foreseeable future now that the Opera team have updated the security so be happy. Go browse to your hearts’ content and be happy. Why hang about here looking for every opportunity to make trouble? Or is this what can be expected of the so-called power-users: that they are essentially troublemakers? You like your Opera Presto which comes complete with everything like a Swiss Army knife and without the need for any extensions. Good for you. Be happy, I know I am with Opera 20. I apply only those extensions that I need and that suits me just fine. I enjoy its speed. I enjoy its compatibility. I enjoy the Stash, Speed Dial and Discover features. I enjoy the FACT that development will continue whereas that is not the case with the former browser which is now dead as far as future development is concerned. I enjoy the clean look of the browser. All in all… Opera has done a marvelous job in the past year and I look forward with anticipation to the coming year. The only dismal spot in this is the continued whining and crying from the Presto crowd.

A very large fraction of the features now found in the other major browsers were copied from Opera. All browsers would be very different from what they are today if they hadn’t copied a lot of their features from Opera.

Chances are if you choose a feature from your favourite browser that the first browser to implement that feature was Opera.

Anyway I am only waiting for one of the better browsers to implement the Rewind button before I switch over (since I don’t like the Firefox implementation). Since I use that button more than anything else in the browser I can’t consider switching to a browser that doesn’t support it. I have been looking to move to a different browser ever since I saw that Opera 15 did not have the Rewind button. I am not staying with Opera 12 by choice - simply that while the main button I need is missing from the other browsers I cannot consider switching to those and I am not all that impressed by Firefox (although I may end up being forced to switch to Firefox if support for Opera 12 ends before a better browser implements Rewind).

I’m talking about the niche features present only in Opera 12, I’m not talking about those that become mainstream over time. Nobody is trying to emulate those, and those haven’t become mainstream. Not yet, anyway.

Of course no one is copying the features that no one is copying.

Over the years Opera introduced many features some good some not and most of the good ones have already been copied by the other browsers. Without Opera trying out all of those features the other browsers would never have known which ones to implement themselves (and wouldn’t have wanted to risk losing a lot of their users by implementing things that were not wanted).

Well, Opera tried out the rewind button and it didn’t catch on. No other browser goes near it even after 2+ years, and Opera is not showing signs of that either. Can we safely assume it’s one of those not so good features?

It was introduced as a Firefox extension about five years ago. Since about 30% of my actions in a web browser are rewind button clicks I may have to look at switching back to Firefox if other browsers don’t introduce that essential button. I’d prefer Chrome or IE though - Firefox would be my last choice of browser for other reasons. Also I expect whoever wrote that addon is probably no longer maintaining it which means I’d have to maintain it myself - easier to stick with Opera 12.

If you check back in the forum you will find a post I made about two or three years ago asking if anyone knew of a rewind button addon for Chrome as I was considering at that time moving from Opera 11 - that’s how long I have been looking to move away from using Opera but I need that button in the browser so until I can find a browser that offers it I am stuck with Opera 12 as being the most modern browser to provide the functionality I need (regardless of how antiquated ti becomes compared to other browsers).

AFAIK Opera was the first to have tabs. now it’s hard to find a browser that doesn’t have them.
Opera was the first, and AFAIK still is, the only browser to support userscripts - built-in, no addons needed.
And I think it was the first to have custom user stylesheet support.

IMHO it’s low marketshare is a result of other browsers having been marketed better.

Firefox gained popularity with its add-ons, Chrome with its simplicity.

Firefox is now copying Chrome UI for tabs, Opera 24 is not. Another proof new Opera is not a skin for Chrome.

I wanted to say I notice that I can click in an edit box without focus jumping to the end anymore. So something’s been fixed.

I’m also able to safely type some code in the middle of a sentence and it seems to always work.

Good job, whoever fixed these!

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:smile: No idea if that was partially related to some of the work I did, or if someone else found ways of fixing the oddities of Opera 12 too :smile: Either way, I’m glad it is working better for you now.

The things I’ve noticed most as being absent in Fake-Opera are:

  • the lack of “Right-click > Open”. I use that all the time to avoid spawning new tabs when webmasters decide that they know better than I do when I want to open a new tab – Proper-Opera is the only browser that I’m aware of that allows you to force a link to open in the current context.

  • no proper MDI. I love the fact that Proper-Opera allows me to treat each tab as a separate window within the browser so that I can have them cascading or side-by-side. Fake-Opera just has the same useless interface as all the other browsers where you just have everything running in the full browser window and you need to open up new windows if you want to juggle things around. That’s a severely substandard option.

  • the options menus are decimated. Where has all the customisation gone?

I don’t consider Opera 15+ to be Opera. It’s lost at least 50% of the features that made it special, if not more, and without them it’s just a slightly buggy reskin of Chrome. With no ‘fit to width’, no ‘print preview’, no ‘reload every…’, no zoom control on the main interface, no easy way to disable images or scripts, it’s an insult to pretend that it is in any way a successor to Opera. It’s not, and the majority of people I know who used Proper-Opera are utterly disgusted by it.

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For me, client functionality is a big deal. I use the advanced features of Proper-Opera all the time (ie, the ones that aren’t available in any other browser). It’s precisely because of them that I have been an Opera evangelist since v5. If they aren’t implemented in the newer versions of Opera then it doesn’t offer what I consider to be essential functionality.

The vast majority of websites function perfectly acceptably in Opera 12. There are a handful that don’t, but it is rare that I come across one that is completely inaccessible. For those specific sites, I will fire up an alternative browser, but for my general day-to-day browsing, there is no browser other than Opera 12 that I consider to offer a satisfactory experience.

I don’t give a stuff about standards compliance to HTML5 and all the other fancy pants stuff that Opera 12 supposedly doesn’t do as well. Very few sites need that or use it. For as long as it continues to work adequately on most sites, I would rather have a fully functioning browser with occasionally suboptimal rendering than perfect rendering but a permanently inadequate browser.

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Don’t be so patronising. We can’t help it if you never got to grips with all that Opera 12 had to offer and so you don’t realise half the stuff you’re missing out on, but for those of us who did, having to suffer the lack of functionality that every other browser out there gives is like trying to play tennis with both hands tied behind your back. I have installed Opera 24 on my laptop, which I only use occasionally, and I hate it. I have tried it, and it’s seriously inadequate.

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You are right. New users understand the things well.

Okay everyone! Remember this is a “To love Opera, or not to love Opera”, which means everyone can express their opinion. Lets not make things personal. Obviously we have some who strongly dislike Opera 12/24 and are glad to see it decaying along the side of the road. Then we have the other party that still loves it for the features it brought to us (not so) long ago (many of which still remain, some of which haven’t caught on to the general population).

Nonetheless, but are valid because that was the point. To express your own love for the software or the fact that you don’t see the big deal. We aren’t trying to convert anyone from one side to another and that goes well beyond the scope of this topic.

If we can’t bring this back to a happy medium, I’ll have to close the topic.