

The vision behind Opera 15 and beyond - richtr
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2013/the-vision-behind-opera-15-and-beyond/

======
Sprint
Right, so it seems like they changed their target audience.

The list of extensions for "power-users who miss previous features" is a slap
in the face. A half-broken bookmarks extension and then two extensions that
are using data-hungry web services. Replacing the simple notes functionality
with evernote? What the hell happened to my privacy and my data being local on
my machine.

~~~
mih
Notes were still synced with Opera link so there never was any privacy. Still
using Evernote to save little snippets is like using my 4WD to visit the
neighborhood shop when my bicycle would do.

~~~
bru
>Notes were still synced with Opera link so there never was any privacy

I prefer giving my data to a Norwegian company rather than an American one,
especially in the light of the recent events.

Moreover, Opera has a clean track record of the matter of privacy, while they
were times when they could have abused their power: a substantial part of
mobile traffic[1] was going through their servers due to Opera Turbo
technology, and AFAIK they did not try to exploit it.

1: They still owned more than 20% of the market in 2011. I do not know which
part of the users were using Turbo regularly, but I believe they were a lot in
the pre-smartphone times.

------
grotos
I'm bitter-sweet about recent Opera (both browser and company strategy) - I've
been using Opera for 8 years. I'm really happy to see some developments,
because Opera browser always seemed somehow stalled (except for investing
resources in strange technologies - e.g. widgets, unite).

I'm afraid that Opera vision is becoming a company serving ads, so the browser
will be no longer best choice for power users.

The old Opera (till 12.16) just didn't have many users, but with new engine
Opera could take some users from Chrome. I think this is a step for being
attractive for advertisers.

Just take a look at Opera business page [1] - the "technology" part just gives
historical context, whereas ads/content takes prominient place.

I think we'll see some innovations from Opera such as mentioned Stash,
Discover (another way of promoting partners' content), etc. But I think in the
case of web browser we really need faster horse.

What is interesting, Opera published their commits to Chromium and Blink [2] -
it seams that only 8 Opera developers work with browser, at least with
adopting engine.

By the way, Opera 12.16 was released, but you will not find it easily[3].

[1]:[http://business.opera.com/company](http://business.opera.com/company)

[2]:[http://operasoftware.github.io/upstreamtools/](http://operasoftware.github.io/upstreamtools/)

[2]:windows:
[http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/1216/int/Opera_1216_int_S...](http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/1216/int/Opera_1216_int_Setup_x64.exe)
[http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/1216/int/Opera_1216_int_S...](http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/1216/int/Opera_1216_int_Setup.exe)

mac:
[http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/mac/1216/Opera_12.16-1860.x86...](http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/mac/1216/Opera_12.16-1860.x86_64.dmg)

linux:
[http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1216/](http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1216/)

------
ziyadb
"That leaves us with the riddle that every software developer faces at some
point: how best to make a UI simple enough to be intuitive for a consumer who
wants a solid, fast browser that just works, and yet is customizable and
extensible so that power users can add the features they want?"

You don't. Taking both user groups into consideration and weighing them
equally assumes that they have the same bearing on the usage of your product.
Once it reaches mass market, the tinkerers (occasionally referred to as the
early adopters or evangelists) are no longer the largest nor the most
profitable segment of your user-base.

Therefore, you can theoretically afford to disregard them--however, in
practice, this has implications that can prove disastrous. For instance, they
could seek out an alternative and start the disruptive cycle all over again,
increasing its appeal and reducing yours, which propagates and ultimately
ruins your perception, though this can probably be avoided.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
GNOME 3 is a perfect, and very recent, example of what you're describing.

It was open source programmers who made GNOME 2 and earlier a successful,
usable desktop environment. These were very technical users who created
software that generally worked well for their purposes, but incidentally also
worked well for other, less-technical users, too.

Yet at some point, we saw the number of "designers" and "UI experts" start to
grow, and eventually overwhelm the number of programmers. The "make it usable
by everyone" mantra took over, but without the skill and sensibility we saw
from programmers alone.

The end result has been GNOME 3. At best, it can be considered one of the
worst open source disasters of all time. Its designer-driven development
process and subsequent lack of usability and quality has alienated many
programmers. These are exactly the kind of people who shouldn't be alienated,
because they did things right in the first place. Aside from a few odd cases
here and there, GNOME 3 is generally hated by anyone who uses his or her
computer to do real work.

And what you say about seeking alternatives, or even creating them, is very
true. KDE and Xfce benefited immensely from the GNOME 3 debacle, accepting
many of the talented and valuable GNOME "refugees". MATE and Cinnamon have
been born to try to fix the problem, as well.

GNOME 3 isn't the only example. Firefox is another good example, and obviously
quite relevant to Opera. It has been systematically dumbed-down basically
every release starting with Firefox 4, which has rendered it far less useful
than it once was, causing many advanced users to abandon it.

Opera does indeed appear to be following this same path, unfortunately. Opera
15 has the same feeling that GNOME 3 does, in that it is a regression from the
previous versions. Discarding so many things that make Opera 12 and earlier
such a great browser just isn't a good way forward.

~~~
cuu508
> GNOME 3 is a perfect, and very recent, example of what you're describing.

Agree, in a sense that it has abandoned tinkerers and focused on mainstream
users. I'm not sure the result is disastrous, though. In Google Trends GNOME
has maintained its position relative to KDE:

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=gnome+kde#q=gnome%2C...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=gnome+kde#q=gnome%2C%20%20kde%2C%20%20xfce&cmpt=q)

If you have more relevant stats, please share!

~~~
Sprint
I share the dislike of Gnome 3 with many but I also see the potential of it
for others so this is meant as a humorous countergraph:
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22xfce%20sucks%22%2...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22xfce%20sucks%22%22kde%20sucks%22%2C%20%20%22gnome%20sucks%22%2C%20%20%22gnome%202%20sucks%22%2C%20%20%22gnome%203%20sucks%22)

(Google Trends is not a measure of anything but Google Trends!)

~~~
inthewind
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=gnome+issues#q=gnome...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=gnome+issues#q=gnome%20issues&cmpt=q)

------
plorkyeran
Always sort of distressing to have one of your favorite features (Fit to Width
in this case) described as "confusing rather than helping". I guess I should
give up on hoping that Blink-based Opera will become worth using.

------
vivekjishtu
They should have just named it "<New Browser Name>" by Opera. It would set the
expectations right. When its the same name and a higher version number with
most of the features missing it just alienates the existing users.

This would give time to add new features to the new browser while keeping the
existing users happy with what they already have. The existing users would not
crib about missing that one obscure feature that no one else uses.

In the current scenario the power users who normally jump to the next version
end up missing the features they are used to. The best example in this case
would be Phoenix/Firefox which rose from the ashes of Mozilla Suite. The
stripped out all the fat and made a lean browser. What happened to Firefox
after version 4 is another story.

------
inthewind
If Opera do focus their attentions on the UI (not the rendering engine), then
that's a good thing. And there's so many ways the web browser could be
improved.

I used to like Opera's bells and whistles. I loved no image mode, tabs, fit to
width, it's zoom, mouse gestures, url keywords, toolbar customisation and
alternative stylesheets. And some of the keyboard shortcuts (which became
confusing over time.)

But the menu system, and backend was klunky. The app didn't integrate well
into the Linux desktop well either.

Unite was interesting (they should have waited for IPV6 to go mainstream...)
Tab stacks didn't go far enough. Speed dial - really - What's the point? I'd
rather they polish up the bookmarking and history interfaces. Stash looks like
it's just a lifo ordered stack, which is good, but lends no context to the
stashed page. Does a stashed page retain it's history? How do I group
pages/bookmarks - why is this so shitty across browsers? A stash could just be
a temporary/ephemeral bookmark.

Is their any point in having graphical snapshots of pages and thumbnails?
These just take away screen real estate. They bring nothing for me.

I think there should be focus on: reading aids, bookmarking/tabs, privacy,
developer tools, and a very clean configuration - with sensible defaults. An
easy way to flip the browser into an intermediate/advanced mode would be nice.

Bring back a slice of innovation to the browser. It needs to be more than a
Chrome clone. I can think of loads of nice features that could be roled into
the browser rather than end up as a stray extension.

Anyway I hope the clean core and fresh start is a good jump off point for
them, I'll be watching this space.

Where's the Linux version?

~~~
Tomis02
> Speed dial - really - What's the point?

I use speed dial all the time, it's hard for me to believe that when it was
first announced my first reaction was "meh, I don't need it". But it's
extremely useful/comfortable, at least for me.

~~~
inthewind
Could you say why? Are you using it on a touch device?

~~~
Tomis02
Well, there are three methods in Opera (that I can think of at the moment) to
access bookmarks - through the main menu - which takes a few clicks and maybe
modifier keys, through a dedicated toolbar which takes up screen space (I
sometimes work on my 1366x768 res laptop), and finally through the side panel
which again will take an F4 (I don't usually keep it open) and a few click to
get there.

Compared to a simple ctrl+T or mouse gesture plus a click, or the simpler
ctrl+the speed dial number, it's too much of a hassle to use bookmarks for the
most commonly accessed websites. In short, I'm kind of lazy.

In bookmarks I usually put sites I might want to come back later (but I rarely
do), usually documentation or stuff like that.

------
azakai
> When we took the decision to switch to Chromium, compatibility was one
> reason — but most importantly, we wanted to spend our time on browser
> innovation, rather than competing on building a rendering engine.

This seems to be saying that "browser innovation" can only be done in the UI?
That seems misguided.

Innovating only in the UI has been tried many times: Flock, RockMelt, Dolphin,
etc. It's never worked in a significant way. Not to say it never will, I
suppose anything is possible, but it seems highly unlikely - what is different
this time?

------
fiffig
Here's my wish list for Opera 15 and beyond:

    
    
      1. Linux support.
      2. Don't break my bank (dnb.no) like Chromium
      3. Single-key shortcuts
      4. Ability to close browser windows with C-w (or C-q without it killing *all* windows)
      5. Ability to start browser windows without tab bar
    

Single-key shortcuts and a tiling window manager recently brought me back to
Opera after only using it for banking a while. It's far from a perfect TWM
browser, but the keyboard navigation really is worth it.

Faithfully yours,

2003-2008, 2013-present

------
janlukacs
I used Opera for years but now i really don't see the point. They simply won't
be able to innovate enough in UI to justify using it vs Safari or Chrome.

------
coldtea
I would feel a little ashamed to go and tout my employer after it has laid out
tons of hardworking people that made the company and the product what it is.

I can understand the economic pressures that drove the decision, but at least
a little solidarity for those left behind would need to be in order.

------
lovskogen
Hmm.. so it was too hard to keep the same UI because of Presto, and then the
reasoning for the new UI is because they wanted a 'fresh start'? Seems like
creating a vision in retrospect because of the time restraints.

------
6d0debc071
I really liked Opera. I've used it for as long as I can remember to pretty
much the exclusion of all else. Best mouse gestures, integrated mail and RSS
client, notes that were easily searchable and right there alongside all my web
stuff, nice speed dial for regular sites, first people with tabbed browsing
(though they managed to screw that up to an extent by stopping the tabs
overflowing so they shrunk into unclickable icons instead.)

But, honestly, you strip out mail, you strip out notes - that's a lot of the
advantages that it had going over other browsers gone. It's no-longer
something you can really use to _manage_ information. You're almost in a
position of saying, "Well, I mean - why _not_ use Firefox? It's stolen most of
the other features anyway." Pretty much the only thing Opera has going for it
at this point is the nice mouse gestures. Everything else it is basically _the
exact same thing_ as Firefox. They've even stripped the easy access bookmarks
out so they can't claim they've an advantage there anymore either >_>

At the moment I'm still using Opera 12 - but there's only so long you can
stick around on a browser that's not being updated anymore.

I think, in retrospect, the point when Opera went wrong was when they stopped
charging for it - at that point it was grow or die, and it never did grow
_that_ much.

~~~
exterm
Opera 12 will indeed be updated with security patches for some time. "You can
expect that we will keep Opera 12.x up to date and secure."
[http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2013/07/02/opera-15](http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2013/07/02/opera-15)

~~~
6d0debc071
Good to know, I'd turned auto-update off in fear of getting forced into Opera
15. Thanks :)

