Opera is Reborn
blogs.opera.com
blogs.opera.com
Opera is going the other way. They have a closed source browser that directly integrates some specific products into the browser. You can't completely get rid of them, you can't integrate another product in the same way and I'd guess an extension can't mess with these pre-packaged addons. It's nice that you can have a messenger in a sidebar next to your current browsing page. But it's taking control away from users and that's not the way forward in an open web. Why can't this be an extension? Why can't it have a feature that lets me run two tabs side by side so I can choose what products to use there?
In general I think this Opera Reborn is still far behind say Firefox or the official Chrome. Just now you can change the filter lists in their Adblocker something that adblocking extensions could do for years. Now you can change Operas theme, i could make Firefox look like whatever I wanted forever. For all the love that the old Opera deserved, I don't think Opera is the future of web browsing.
You can, just right click and remove the icon from the sidebar. They are literally just glorified links to websites (e.g. if you click the messenger icon on the sidebar, it's literally just loading messenger.com as a web panel).
>Browsing and chatting simultaneously is cumbersome and inefficient now, as you need to switch between tabs when responding to a message
Or, since we all have widescreen monitors (and often multiple monitors) you could just have your messengers in a window next to the browser instead of a sidebar within the browser. Seems like a solution looking for a problem. What good is allowing messengers to reside within your browser other than that it lets the people who are tracking your browsing habits simultaneously spy on your messages?
I highly doubt third parties have access to the messenger tab.
It's a neat addition that works well for people who browse in one fullscreenized window.
Except that - unless you're on a tiling WM on Linux - your window manager sucks, and solution like this is barely usable (hard to keep the windows properly aligned, hard to have them simultaneously on the foreground when other windows come into the mix, etc. etd.).
I agree that solutions like that shouldn't be in browsers. But it's cheaper this way for the app vendors...
As for messengers, what would be revolutionary is if you could actually use all these fragmented messengers in a single app.
I want an app that remembers which of the messaging apps each of my friends prefers, and routes messages appropriately.
If I block someone, it blocks them on all the apps I've ever talked to them on.
I think I use over 5 messaging apps (including sms) on a regular basis. Too many.
Look at Pidgin's struggles.
And no, just because on mobile those messengers are all "apps" doesn't make it any more bearable. In fact, switching between messaging apps all the time is simply annoying.
http://meetfranz.com/ does this in a maybe user-friendlier way than Pidgin (at the cost of a more shallow "integration" due to most of the supported services being non-standard, basically you're running all the clients in one place). It doesn't "remember which of the messaging apps each of my friends prefers, and routes messages appropriately" as requested below by marcus_holmes, but maybe it can start scratching your itch.
That's what Matrix is trying to address. https://matrix.org/ Try it out with https://riot.im/
We used to have this. There were multiple clients that could do this (including Pidgin, an open source one). Then some major players entered using or shifted to proprietary and harder to decipher protocols, and others responded by doing the same lest they be at a disadvantage. Now it's just as bad as it was two decades ago.
So much for progress.
Since you're on macOS, that would have been the built-in iChat app that could do Jabber, AIM, Yahoo!, and some other protocols I've forgotten. It might still work in modern day Messages, dunno, pretty much no one uses them anymore so I can't check.
It's like everyone's forgotten what makes desktops great. There are tons [1][2][3][4] of tools you can install today that solve this problem for you. No need to wait for browser vendors to integrate everything.
[2] http://magnet.crowdcafe.com
Otherwise:
http://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap
https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM
http://download.cnet.com/WinSplit-Revolution/3000-2072_4-109...
You have to download it from cnet because it's not maintained any more and the original website redirects to a paid-for alternative, but it still works for me with Windows 7.
Isn't the solution to that to not use systems with poor usability? Linux exists; it's capable of doing everything many (maybe most?) people need — why not just use the superior system?
And have all links from external app open in a window depending on which was the last one you've used, and having to open links from chat and then drag them to the main browser window. No thanks.
I think they are doing this by having Opera Browser watch for uninstallation of Opera VPN and possibly vice-versa and when one detects the other has been uninstalled it launches the page, clever but annoying.
(I also think what you said is against Google ToS)
Thanks for chiming in. I didn't know this kind of company or business model existed, so now I will be more wary about installing seemingly benign apps. (I am not an app developer).
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And then they end up having to build spl apps and extensions and other garbage that work around and hack cross domain/local file policy, just so the content already on my disk can be read and searched by the browser.
When such a treasure trove of web content is accessible offline the browser can and should be the way to access it.
As the web becomes more and more a corporate sponsored attention sink strong offline support can be a valuable browser feature.
Bookmarks are subject to link rot, having more than a hundred of them is a timesink nightmare to manage, bookmarks are useless when you are offline,... the list goes on and on and I have yet to see any browser even try to do something to address these.
They are not designed to be used as a personal knowledge base or a wiki.
Edit: One of my most used bookmarks is to a specific url on localhost. I'd say bookmarks are as useless as a browser gets while you're offline.
> Bookmarks are subject to link rot
That can be fixed pretty easily: when the user bookmarks, submit a job to the Internet Archive, then use it whenever you get an error page from that link. FF already does half of it with the experimental no-404 extension. Alternatively, you can have your own InternetArchive-like service to do that, which is basically what services like Pocket and Pinboard do.
> having more than a hundred of them is a timesink nightmare to manage
You don't really have to manage them - these days they show up as soon as you type in the address bar. Ideally you'd have some sort of AI-powered categorisation system auto-filing them in dedicated folders, which could probably work with a bit of specialized meta tags. It's basically the age-old problem with filing documents of any type.
> bookmarks are useless when you are offline
Yeah well, a browser is also kinda useless when offline...
Sadly this kind of feature disappeared when opera moved to a quarterly profit based strategy.
The kind of feature you want is achievable today but requires a set of tools beyond a web browser and some human work. It's also a bit tedious to maintain up to date.
kiwix doesnt support stackoverflow...
Nope.
> One of its novelties is the ability to seamlessly hop between discovering new content and chatting with friends, or even share online discoveries while browsing.
Happily I know no one that uses, or will use, this new version of Opera - I can imagine few things that would disrupt, annoy, and / or reduce my efficiency (or enjoyment) at my computer than being subject to even more random thoughts from the easily distracted.
> Nope.
Considering how much HN loves Slack (especially when paired with working remotely), I think you and I are in the minority. Some people can chat and work at the same time, apparently.
It's like if Twitter could get in your browsing.
It's not even just about a trust issue with Chinese company culture. It's that the Chinese government have ways of getting into even resisting companies at their whim that are judged alright in completely different ways than in Norwegian law. So; even if I trusted Opera Software, even if I trusted this consortium that I don't know, even then...?
This kind of reasoning also applies to facebook, any alphabet or google product/service, apple, uber, airbnb, and pretty much any company/service that's based in the US where the patriot act pretty much makes all these companies open bar for the US government.
More generally, I don't see how China having your browsing history is worse than the US having your browsing history and your authentication attempts and all your contacts and just everything, completely everything.
True, if I used Google, or their products.
But, I use Mozilla, who are publicly auditable, and an email provider that is not located in the US.
The majority of visits to websites have no search engine interaction, but those that do, make use of DuckDuckGo and the like.
> More generally, I don't see how China having your browsing history is worse than the US having your browsing history and your authentication attempts and all your contacts and just everything, completely everything.
Bringing up the US here, isn't entirely relevant. We're speaking about China, who have demonstrated some interesting ethics around people who are non-Chinese over the past few decades. Yes, the US is of concern, but that doesn't mean that China isn't one.
Secondly, your browser doesn't just have your history. It also has your authentication attempts, because it makes them. It also controls what certificates you use, and can trivially be used to MITM every authentication you make, unless pinning or other not-well-adopted practices are used. Which can give them everything.
I'm not entirely sure it's possible to build such a tool.
you can take measures to prevent them from tracking you, a simple and quite effective one is to disable scripting and use a properly set up blocker such as ublock origin.
I particularly hate Facebook though, for turning most everyone around me into US informants.
If I see the opportunity to contribute to their obsoletion I'll dedicate years of my life to that.
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/cpy5vt4zfuwgzax/the%20not%20so%20d...
Here you go: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/diaspora
So, just like the US government?
Do these tangents on "the US bad too" and "no China worse" bore anyone else?
It's for this reason I have considered using a Chinese/Russian email service rather than Gmail, at least there is a chance they won't cooperate with the local authorities if they ever want to clamp down on my ass for some reaosn.
Particularly as people use this to browse private repositories, corporate intranets, etc.
> 12. THIS CONTRACT IS BASED ON NORWEGIAN LAW. This EULA will be governed by the laws of Norway without giving effect to any conflicts of law principles that may require the application of the laws of a different country.
Other potentially interesting terms -- "components" from "third parties" may be delivered along with Opera. Operate claims they're not responsible for that software, despite making the choice to deliver it to you:
> 5. COMPONENTS FROM THIRD PARTIES MAY BE DELIVERED ALONG WITH THE SOFTWARE. The Software is delivered along with certain software components provide by third parties (“Third Party Software”). Opera shall not be responsible for any such Third-Party Software.
Opera may come with "additional services", including one that routes your browser traffic through an Opera proxy:
> 6. THE SOFTWARE MAY INCLUDE ADDITIONAL OPERA SERVICES. Various additional Opera services may be offered where available via or as integrated into the Software (“Services”). These Services may include one or more of the following:
> ii. Compression: The Software includes compression functionality to enable users to boost the download of web content such as webpages and/or videos. This functionality requests web content through Opera’s proxy or compression servers. Your browsing experience may change due to increased loading speeds.
This last clause seems to allow Opera to route your web traffic through their servers, where they presumably have the technical ability to examine, record, and modify it. It's not clear to me if the EULA places any restrictions on how they may interact with this traffic, to record it, examine it, etc.
Others of these "additional services" are described as "optional", whereas the compression service is not:
> v. Contextual Hints: The Software may include “Browser Assistant”, a component that provides contextual hints about certain Opera browser features and other useful information which you might be interested in. Browser Assistant is an optional component of the Software.
Though, to be fair: the third-party reference may be referring to open source software (but doesn't appear limited to that); and Opera's compression service is similar to features offered by other browsers like Google Chrome.
Electron apps aren't relevant – I'm talking about the user experience, not the underlying technology. As far as the user is concerned, Slack is a standalone application.
The point isn't why they use a browser. The point is that they do use a browser. So if they're doing it already then the idea of proper IM integration along a side panel is potentially a favourable one for a great many people.
> Electron apps aren't relevant – I'm talking about the user experience, not the underlying technology. As far as the user is concerned, Slack is a standalone application.
I know it's a standalone application but the relevance is down to the performance improvements you'd gain from integrating that into Opera (and thus sharing resources) rather than spinning up a new instance of Blink for each "application". The idea of that is quite appealing to me though sadly it looks like Slack support isn't available yet.
If you ask somebody why they are using Facebook in their browser, they'll tell you that it's because that's how you use Facebook Messenger. They won't tell you that it's because they want to message and surf the web at the same time. In fact it's terrible for this – Messenger is stuck on the Facebook site, so if you navigate away, it's either hidden away in a separate tab or gone altogether.
People quite clearly don't use Facebook Messenger in a browser because they want to surf and message at the same time, which is quite clearly relevant to the questions of "why would I want this?" and "what value does this have as a product?".
> I know it's a standalone application but the relevance is down to the performance improvements you'd gain from integrating that into Opera
I don't think many people wish for better performance out of their messenger applications, certainly not enough to switch browser over, which again, makes me wonder what the market for this is.
...which is why Opera's solution is better ;)
People don't have to use a browser by the way. There are already desktop clients for Messenger (though most of which people are unaware of and/or require a fair bit of setting up) and popular apps specifically for Messenger on mobile phones and tablets. But the fact remains that many people do still use the web interface. Usually just because it's quicker and easier. Opera's solution ticks all of those boxes while also solving your complaint about how the current web solution sucks.
> I don't think many people wish for better performance out of their messenger applications, certainly not enough to switch browser over, which again, makes me wonder what the market for this is.
Most people wouldn't. But then most people call a browser "the internet" so it's hardly surprising they don't understand what Electron is. However given the millions of techies who do understand, Opera could still make a decent business targeting us. And if we switch then there's a chance we might encourage our non-techie friends and family to switch as well (lets face it, how often are we called upon for free technical support?). This is all hypothetical of course but at least Opera are trying out some new ideas in UI/UX rather than building yet another Chrome-clone (even Firefox these days feels like another Chrome).
To be frank, your complaints sound a lot like "I hate this feature ergo it's stupid and nobody will use it". I say kudos to Opera for trying to do things a little differently. If it works then that's great for Opera, if it doesn't then what difference does it make to you? Either way new ideas - even ones as evolutionary as this one - have always been met with naysayers. Sometimes they're proven right. However frequently they've also been proven wrong (remember the HN thread about Dropbox?).
I've not given my personal opinion on this yet so I'll close with that: With the way how technology is moving, I think having IMs inside the browser is an attractive idea. If I can then do away with Electron then it's doubly attractive. And if I can do away with having half a dozen different IM clients and run it all from one browser then I would close my libpurple-compatible client in a heartbeat and switch to Opera.
I think perhaps you've lost sight of the original point you were making?
* I asked why I would want this, with the implication that this a product without value.
* You then gave Facebook Messenger and Electron apps as examples that there is a demand for this type of thing, basically saying that they've proven the market for this feature.
* I pointed out that the reasons people use those are not because they want to surf and message people at the same time.
You saying that Opera is better because it lets people surf and message at the same time in contrast to Facebook Messenger doesn't support what you were just saying. If anything, it undermines your point because you were originally using it as an example because it was the same as Opera's new offering, and now you're trying to say that Opera's different to it.
> many people do still use the web interface. Usually just because it's quicker and easier.
It's not quicker and easier for messaging-while-surfing because it doesn't actually let you do that. So pointing to it as proving the market for Opera's product that lets you message-while-surfing is a tad silly, don't you think?
> To be frank, your complaints sound a lot like "I hate this feature ergo it's stupid and nobody will use it".
I don't hate the feature – why would I? I don't have to use it. I just think it's pointless. It's more like "I think this feature doesn't have any compelling use-case and it's stupid for Opera to build it because there isn't a non-negligible market for it". And so far, the only answers I've had are:
* Because people do it already (even though the examples given don't show that).
* Because it gives better performance.
* Because Opera fans are weird.
* Because desktop window managers are so bad that having two windows of different applications side-by-side is difficult.
So far I remain unconvinced this feature has value.
That's not what happened. I addressed your "Why would I want a messenger application embedded in my web browser?" question with examples of messenger applications that were embedded in a browser while acknowledging that I emphasise with your dislike for the modern day "everything in the browser" mentality. You then raised additional points based off my examples, which I addressed specifically. I never once attempted to answer why you, specifically, would want this.
For what it's worth, I could also have raised points about Chrome / Firefox "apps" that install locally into the web browser (many of which have hundreds of thousands of unique installs) and the desktop notifications feature that websites can implement to push notifications to the user. So what Opera is building isn't that far away from what many people are already using in Chrome - albeit Opera are building a better UI/UX around it.
> > many people do still use the web interface. Usually just because it's quicker and easier.
> It's not quicker and easier for messaging-while-surfing because it doesn't actually let you do that. So pointing to it as proving the market for Opera's product that lets you message-while-surfing is a tad silly, don't you think?
If you re-read the point I actually made (rather than selectively quoting it), what I actually said was it's quicker and easier to open up a Facebook tab in a browser than it is to install libpurple or whatever to install Messenger integration on a PC desktop. I could also add to that and said it's also quicker and easier to type something on a PC keyboard than it is to tap your message on smartphone touchscreen (which was also hinted at in my original comment albeit I left the reader to reach that conclusion themselves).
> I don't hate the feature – why would I?
For someone that doesn't "hate" this feature you put an awful lot of effort into discrediting it :P I acknowledge this feature might not prove popular but am at least open minded enough to let the market decide. Because, and like I said before, it's common for people to dismiss new tech that later gains popularity.
Someone, somewhen, had that bright idea of popularizing 16:9 and 16:10 screens, which are now de-facto standard, and that leads to huge amounts of screen estate being wasted. Most of the users (i.e. those not using tiling window managers on Linux systems) don't have proper tools to manage screen space, and especially web browsers when maximized waste most of it.
So TLDR; yeah, I could use a messenger tab side by side with rest of the browser tabs, because I have a shit ton of useless screen space with a maximized browser window.
It is also too thin to read comic books. Wasted space at the bottom.
The fact that this keeps coming up makes me think that people have forgotten how customizable the desktop experience can be. Unlike iOS/Android you're not tied down to what the app designer thought a good layout is when organizing your windows.
[1] http://alternativeto.net/software/divvy/?platform=windows
I did check out AlexandrB's suggestion of WindowGrid[0] and it works very nice; I'm now using it on my Windows machine at work.
[0] - http://windowgrid.net/
Trying to get the WhatsApp widget running it seems like I must allow access to the camera and the microphone on my computer.
This is ridiculous.
On mobile, this is not needed, and is maybe even fine. When the app is turned off you know it isn't listening or taking pictures.
On a desktop computer there is no such guarantee. On the other hand this applies to all software I'm running. Maybe it's time to put a piece of tape over the camera.
Eg http://www.0xf8.org/2009/09/the-shortcomings-of-the-linux-le....
FWIW didn't work for my WiFi, had to use an alternative (modprobe.conf maybe?).
I'm no tinfoil-hat but this combination doesn't really strike as "privacy focused".
Now its just a mess and Vivaldi is not much better.
And I do use Opera as a default browser.
The correct Ctrl+Tab behaviour which works like Alt+Tab (switch between the most recent tabs, with a small popup list of tabs) is the main reason for that. Much more productive for me than the usual "cycle over all of open tabs sequentially" behaviour that Chrome, Firefox, and everyone else have (except the Vivaldi browser).
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/
1. Go to about:config
2. Search for browser.ctrlTab.previews
3. Change value to `true`
4. Close tab
Now your ctrl+tab should work as you want.
If you wanted multiple sites open you had multiple browser windows on the taskbar.
That became unmanageable quite fast, so we got tabs.
Note btw that even the earliest Opera had "tabs". It used MDI to provide multiple sites within a single browser window. This stuck with Opera all the way to version 12. After that they changed over to being a Chrome clone.
A few years back the founders got removed and there was a shift to quarterly profit and they stopped developing and maintaining their own rendering engine and browser to basically become a skin for google chrome, saving costs. In the recent times they improved their skin status and tried to sell the whole package and managed to do last summer to a chinese consortium of investors.
I suppose right now opera gets its money from the deep pockets of rich chinese investors, the current business model might have something to do with surveillance capitalism.
If this is the best Opera has to offer today, they won't last long.
Asking because I can't find a reverse-shoutout to Opera on either Facebook's, WhatsApp's, or Telegram's blog. This is not altogether unusual (especially given the recency of the Opera announcement) but it still makes me curious.
I did not authorize this during install.
Chrome is supposed to tie them with the single instance you're running. You can't just copy the Chrome folder and transfer it to another location. You'd have to use Chrome's Sync for that. I'm assuming Chrome has been opened at the same time by the OP, allowing Opera to snatch the passwords and other shit, making an intrusion into Chrome's data.
But, on the other hand, I was able to copy the data from a Chrome extension after a system crash on one machine and extract the data to a new machine just fine by reinstalling the extension and then pasting the extension's folder to the same location where it was on the previous machine.
Since that extension was Mailvelope, I would essentially lose a private key in this case if that wasn't possible, since I didn't have the backup of it. Not sure if I would call that bug or a feature.
But still... this is some weird sh*t... they should have at least asked me before.
Just because you did not look at the settings does not mean there was no option. I get this from the elderly all the time, "Well how was I supposed to know to click that menu first?"
Opera lost me when the followed Chrome in the elimination of the menu bar. If they haven't rectified that, I'll stick with Firefox.
Perhaps it could reside in a little "window", then it could be moved anywhere! ....wait, this sounds familiar.
/s
Edit: the Wikipedia page shows tiling in Opera 1.0 in 1995... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Opera_web_brows...
I'm with you though. I dumped Opera the moment they became a featureless skin around Chrome. Such a sad event
Operas best days were the early to mid 2000s
Sure enough the tiling feature is there. Right click the tab bar and go to the arrange menu.
What is the solution you are currently using that you want them to implement?
Is quick commands (F2) + typing the tab name to navigate around not sufficient on Vivaldi?
I love it, though, and I truly hope performance is something they tackle soon.
Granted, a lot of people use it for social/messengers, but it's also super useful for resources and tools like Stackoverflow or Google Translate.
Still, I was long time Opera user but so far it didn't feel same after they went for webkit. This seems promising, time to try again.
Opera is now a combination of the Epic Privacy Browser and the Vivaldi Browser. They copied Epic's privacy features and in-built VPN/proxy and Vivaldi's social networking sidebars (which incidentally Opera pioneered and Vivaldi's founder is the Opera co-founder).
I think "Reborn" is a bit of a stretch here.
Then:
>If you use more than one messenger, you can easily switch between them by using our shortcut key for quicker access (⌘ + ⇧ + m on macOS, CTRL + SHIFT + m on Windows and Linux).
So, why would this be any better than switching tabs? One thing about a browser, I usually have my hand on my mouse and not the keyboard.
The only "shady" thing is hiding the Chrome ad on Google's home page, though I guess you can consider that as a convenience once you decide to switch fully to another browser.
I don't know how easy it would be to pull an update for that file however, in which case it could become shady in an instant.
Especially because I live in America.
None of the listed features are relevant to me ("Animations", "fresh look and feel", etc.) and my adblock performance is already adequate.
No? Oh well, back to chrome.
If you're interested in the actual reborn opera experience, it's vivaldi you're looking for, opera co-founder and many for the original opera team is making vivaldi and though based on blink engine too, hence limited and unable to do exactly what opera used to, it has the same philosophy and vision.
The other alternative is the free software otter[1] browser aiming at recreating the opera 12 experience.
which is, well, another google chrome skin ;)