Opera 15 Preview for Windows and Mac with Chromium Engine Released
business.opera.com
business.opera.com
Now mail has been shunted into its own product. I don't see widgets. It really looks and feels like a skin for Chrome and nothing more which makes me wonder what the point is. If I want Chrome I will use Chrome.
OK, this is a preview but the news doesn't suggest any of these old features are coming across.
But still I have a hard time thinking that removing many features, not improving features that have been broken for years while almost doubling the size of the download is any kind of improvement.
I wish opera would release their engine as opensource so people can take it up from there. I don't want no google/apple browser or webkit only web experience.
This is a new product so I would be _very_ suprised if they didn't limit the amount of platforms they released it initially to.
The only thing I'll miss from O12 is Dragonfly. Probably just a habit, but I found it much more intuitive and well designed.
Maybe its still alive but not released yet depending on what they mean with this job offer
I always thought the selling point was the e-mail /rss / irc etc. The things Opera came bundled with. I am sure these will still be available via extensions but then again I don't see the point of Opera now. It is now the same as Chrome.
Each browser has its own selling point. I feel that Opera has lost its by stripping out email and providing no news on other features. I always interpreted these features as the differentiators, the soul of the Opera browser. Opera users were people who embraced these things. Opera used to ship with a built in bittorrent support.. how sweet was that!?
I moved away from Opera when I used IRC and bittorrent far less. I also realized I could test less if I built a site testing as I go in a popular browser rather than a fringe one.
I probably could have done everything I did in Opera using extentions in another browser but Opera just did it out of the box. Its features had consistency and were easy to access. The reason I would choose Opera is because of what it used to be packaged with.
In it's current form it is an alternative version of Chrome.. I guess I could develop in it and have Chrome covered but realistically it would be simpler to just use Chrome. I just don't get it.
None of these are 'selling points'. There is better software available for Email, RSS and IRC. If you don't want many tools, ok, you might like Opera more, but they are no reason to choose Opera over any other browser.
The reasons I choose Opera for my daily work are:
- awesome UI (yes, it actually *is* better than Chrome or FF)
- feature-rich
- fast
- smart caching
- best incognito mode integration
- superior integrated download manager
- pages actually do scroll smoothly
- stable with dozens of tabs, see http://i.imgur.com/Z55rPDh.png
At the end of the day a browser is a tool and you have to pick the right one for your task. For browsing, Opera clearly wins - at least it does for me. See also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5176327
@Topic: Opera Next is currently just another Chrome skin. Lets hope they don't forget to implement what makes them special.
Simple mouse gestures work, but without visual guide, configuration and without right click + scroll.
Most horrible thing: MDI don't work. Popups opens in new window, like other browsers, instead of new tabs, like old Opera! Alerts currently don't have any chrome, so may be they would develop this later.
Opera Link don't work.
Text selection in links via mouse don't work.
No sidebar.
Verdict: in current state unusable for old Opera users.
No thumbnails/previews in tab bar.
No any customisation of toolbars.
No fast forward.
One-key keyboard shortcuts work, but funny: in text boxes they work simultaneous with text input.
Ctrl+Z don't open old tabs.
No image properties, so no EXIF viewer.
Judging by past Opera development, they always need massive complains to fix something.
No mouse chording (distinct from gestures). Wikipedia even highlights Opera as a key implementation of mouse chording, and now its gone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_chording
No closed tabs drop down. Its not uncommon for me to want to dig out a tab I may have closed 20 tabs ago. Reopening one-by-one is terrible.
No forward slash search (á la Vim, or indeed, Firefox)
If these things aren't tabled for Opera 15's release, then thats it, I'll be back to Firefox after 9 years on Opera. These sort of small features are Opera's bread and butter, things that have become second nature to me, and I suspect many. Certainly for me, its these little things that have kept me on Opera until now.
Where can we go to provide feedback? The OP provides no obvious link.
Trying to be positive, Stash looks like it might be useful.
The main reason I use Opera: Editing preferences for every site separately.
Starting from the scratch and reimplementing everything that was slowly improved through many years is impossible. The proper way is replacing/improving piece by piece of the system. The management should have read
http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/
But they won't blame themselves to lose what's left of their loyal customer base if they just deliver a rebranded Chromium.
> The main reason I use Opera: Editing preferences for every site separately.
That way I enjoy the quietness (by default) of the sites and the higher security of browsing. When I really, really need sites which depend on too much moving parts I start some other browser, but for day-to-day browsing I enjoyed not having to install any extension but still having something like "noscript." If Opera fails, I'll have to discover how to get similar functionality on some other browser.
1. No tab 'recycle bin' (you can get this with extensions in other browsers, but I always liked that Opera had it out of the box.)
2. The downloader is similar to Chrome's one, and I've always hated Chome's downloader. I want my browser to ask me whether I want to open the file (i.e. save into /tmp and open) or to save. I download a lot of things such as Office documents, tarballs, torrent files (etc) that I don't want to have to manually delete from my downloads folder when I'm done.
I can appreciate that this is a beta version, but right now, it looks a lot like Chrome with a different skin. I just hope it doesn't remain like that for long, as Opera is the one browser that annoys me the least.
I was hoping they'd keep UI, just swap the internals. That was main reason I used Opera - I feel like it's interface was much more powerful than those of other browsers, but engine performance just wasn't there.
But this doesn't bear any resemblance to Opera I knew and liked.
No pinned tabs. No 'paste-and-go'. No... nothing.
I fully understand why they did it, and it very well might be just what they needed to do to survive, I won't be looking back.
...and I was hoping to ditch Safari :(
> with Thunderbird no longer updated
It doesn't mean they won't accept features, they've just stated that they're not going to be focusing any of their development wherewithal on these.
Personally I think it's a good move as TB has plenty of features for a mail client but could really do with some optimization to speed and memory usage.
So I guess back to Opera Mail. Other ones like TB, Sylpheed don't cut it for me.. I guess they have UI and network actions within the same thread, and that makes them get stuck.
Also the modal UI blocks only the one sync queue - i.e. the one for contacts & calendars in that account. All other accounts including mails for that same account should continue syncing.
I'd love to help you with those issues - you can contact me at grafnetr@emclient.com
There was a thread on HN a few months back that talks about its unique security/password sharing model. It's clear that the developers put a whole lot of love into it.
You don't have that tiny (2px?) gap?
Not so. That space makes things much easier when dragging the browser window around (i.e. between multiple monitors). And the casual user really does not care.
And now after all this, they made Opera just a skin for Chrome?
These people have no respect for themselves.
This is Chrome. I was hoping for Tab Overflow? No Drop Down list of Open Tabs.
They kept it like Opera, which means no H.264 support.
Basically that means i am sticking to Firefox.
Simple selector test
http://jsperf.com/jquery-selectors-vs-native-api/7
On my machine
document.getElementById
Opera 12.15: 2,089,859 Opera next: 15,609,851
14,376,750
Opera next is reported as Chrome version 28.
Perhaps this is the reason for the introduction of the 'stash', which in fairness might be a better solution (as I'm not necessarily defending 100+ tabs, but its a habit that has worked for me so far)
In Opera you can (at least for now) wrap your tab bar on multiple lines, show an extender menu, disable it (and scroll with right mb + wheel) or simply move the tab bar on the left/right side of the screen, while having a decent resource consumption, all out of the box.
Edit: now I realized it is indeed created specifically for Chrome, it's an extension that tries to help circumvent poor browser design.
It feels like Opera is having a very hard time to keep its head above the water.
Apparently people are forgetting that this a preview release.
The features familiar to Opera users that are missing will be added in the next iterations.
It's a clear and simple thing to understand. Quit whining already.
Like most users there are some features I will sorely miss here but I'm going to give it a try for a few days. See how things go from there.
Seems like Opera has given us a lot of innovation in the past. Most people might miss the significance of the change to Chromium for a small company like Opera. My gut feeling is that once they get over this initial bump in the road we will see a lot more existing and new features come our way (at least I will hold on to that thought!). I suspect they have much more time to focus on adding cool stuff now rather than keeping their head above water and we should all get a first-rate new browser to play with as a result.
Let's see what happens but I won't ever pass judgement on any first ever 'built from scratch' 'alpha' release of something.
Opera Next aren't going to be released next week, so they can still migrate a lot of features, but I do agree with those who are concerned that they won't manage to move "enough" features to keep all their old users. I also wonder how fare they are will to diverge from Chromium, the further away they go, the harder it might be to keep in sync.
One have to wonder: "How important is the desktop browser to Opera business?" Do they make enough money on the desktop version to make it worth porting every single feature in order to keep all their current users?
However this preview release is a big downer for me. I know it is a work in progress but it is missing some key features like the RSS reader, the ctrl + z combo to bring back closed tabs and many more. So I'm not switching just yet but I'm hopeful.
and the biggest annoyance (which was only working in opera before): i usually set up custom domains to my local development like lepunk.loc or similar. opera used to interpret it correctly but now it does what any other browser do: does a google search
The results:
Chrome Version 26.0.1410.64 m: 2418 points, HTML5 Capabilities 5/7
Opera Next Version 15.0.1147.18: 4248 points, HTML5 Capabilities 5/7
Anyone else get similar results?
Chromium: reported as Chrome 29.0.1513.0: 4226
Chrome: reported as Chrome 27.0.1453.94: 4244
"Unread" and "Received" folders, that seem to contain pretty much the same thing until you read them, then it is removed from both.
I'd try it out full-time but I can't live without my 1password extension :/
There's a couple of things that Opera might be loosing in this update, with the switch to Blink. Hopefully anything the do loose they'll be able to port over soon.
Windows 7 - Version 27.0.1453.94 m (which BTWI copied and pasted from Chromes about page)
(Another annoying bit about Webkit in general: if you underline an element (such as a link) and then use sup inside this element, the underline is moved up under the superscript.)
Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/2yPmm0K.png
Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/EXz8wQF.png
FWIW, I have the not uncommon affliction of selecting text on articles and blog posts as I read along. Chrome's text selection "paradigm" is greatly annoying as it tends to be a little, uh, unpredictable on layouts with a middling level of complexity.
Edit: And now that you've pointed it out the way that chrome does it is really annoying!
I don't think I can live without this anymore. What's the point of having wide screens if you stack everything vertically?
I also hope they won't remove the bookmark panel. Having your entire bookmark tree open anytime is a very pleasant feature in my opinion.
Firefox has a plugin for it but it's all just too sluggish.
I'll just use the old opera for now.
Now it has a chance at being a decent browser and
acquiring a new user base, who doesn't care about those
'gutted features'.
Now it's bigger with less features.
The market share of power users might be smaller, but there Opera at least had a chance. Competing for the "I can't do shit so I don't want options" crowd against Google and their shamelessly emotional ads? No chance. No good reason to even try, either.
You don't need to install any Adobe crapware, still you can use it. Also you can disable it and set it up to use it like the Click-to-Flash extension.
The new email client seems to be the old Opera only with browsing features removed. Must have been a quick job.
So on both of these it's the opposite of what you are claiming...
You clearly don't develop software, if you think all they did the last 3 months is add icons.
How do I switch tabs using my keyboard? Cmd-<N> doesn't work, so does not Cmd-Alt-Left|Right.
By sticking with Chromium, Opera will automatically start using Blink when Chromium starts using it.
Never having to use the chrome bookmark manager again (or firefoxes or safaris) is a huge sell for me.
As for all the features they dropped, Im sure there are or will be extensions for that. Personally, I prefer the browser to be screaming fast with just enough features that I need. I could never switch to opera in the past because it was simply too slow.
Also, I wont get ads for Google products in browser or prompts to "login" to my browser as Google has been doing lately. YAY!