If opera 10 is anything as buggy as 9.5x and 9.6, you have a guaranteed loser. 9.27 was the last stable release which I continue to use.
There are some really irritating bugs from 9.5x that persist in 9.6. Gmail simply doesn't work. Far more insiduous, when saving pages as MHT, it sometimes silently fails. I thought I'd saved about 30-35 important articles, and found only 20 saved.
Fix your bugs before you become like microsoft - form over functionality.
Opera 10 will be 'prettier'
Summary
Many users, especially of Apple, found Opera's latest version 9.6 unpleasant on the eye. But the company says its next major update will be prettier.
Topics
The next major release of Opera for the desktop will be 'prettier' than the current version of the browser, claims the company.
Opera, a Norwegian firm, makes browsers for devices ranging from the PC to mobile phones and games consoles. It released an incremental version, 9.6, for the desktop last Wednesday, prompting a million downloads in a day. Version 10 will be more significant, according to the company's web evangelist, Bruce Lawson.
Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk on Monday, Lawson said Opera 9.6 had performance improvements, but conceded that many users, especially of Apple, found the browser unpleasant on the eye.
"There's been a lot of criticism from some quarters that Opera on the desktop looks a bit shite, especially on the Mac," Lawson said. "I personally feel it feels busier than it is. [In Opera 10] the whole look and feel are being seen to — it's what our customers are looking for. If we want it to be a tool, it's got to be pleasing to work with."
Lawson said the firm had hired the British designer Jon Hicks to rework Opera's user interface and "make it look prettier". Hicks is best known for having created the Firefox logo.
Lawson and his colleague, product manager Roberto Mateu, declined to list possible features that may appear in Opera 10, saying that such features are subject to change ahead of launch.They did, however, say the version would go into its alpha release by the end of 2008, around the same time as the low-end mobile-phone version, Opera Mini 4.2, goes into beta.
As for Opera 9.6, the browser can now synchronies the user's typed browsing history across any devices using the Opera Link synchronization feature. The built-in email client, Opera Mail, also now supports a "low-bandwidth mode" for those users with slow connections, and offers the option of ignoring "less important [conversation] threads and contacts with a single click".
A multi-column feed preview has also been integrated into Opera 9.6's RSS reader, allowing users to view a feed's contents before subscribing to that feed. New languages are also supported in the updated browser: Indonesian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil.
Asked whether the release of Google Chrome had had any effect on the Opera team, Lawson said the team had been "mostly pleased", due to the coverage afforded by Chrome to browsers that are not Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).
"People saw [Chrome] on the news and realized there is an alternative to IE," Lawson said. "People are now aware there is a market."
Lawson also claimed Chrome was "not a competitor" to Opera, as it was not pursuing Opera's "main constituency". "Most people who use Opera are comparatively tech-literate," he said, adding that Opera was nonetheless trying to widen its appeal beyond this set.
Talkback Most Recent of 9 Talkback(s)
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kraterz13th Oct 2008 -
Huh??
Gmail works fine here in Opera 9.52. There have been several bugs in Opera that previously kept me from using it, mainly problems with streaming media. As of 9.0 I've found that they've worked out a lot of these issues so I've switched to Opera from Firefox. I find it much faster for browsing than Firefox. Right now it's probably the best browser out there, for me at least.
Necrolin13th Oct 2008 -
Faster than Firefox 1.x, 1.5x, and 2.x, definitely.
But have you compared it against Firefox 3? The memory footprinto of Firefox was drastically improved with 3.0, and when 3.1 comes out, its JavaScript performance should surpass that of even Google Chrome (currently far and away the reigning JavaScript speed champ) thanks to the new native-code JavaScript Just-In-Time Compiler (what makes Google Chrome so fast, but from what I hear, FF3.1’s is even better).
Joel R15th Oct 2008 -
Have you reported these bugs?
The Opera people can’t fix them if they don’t know about them.
As for Gmail, we hear in this thread from “Necrolin” that it works just fine, but it occurs to me that you two could be talking about two different things.
So, Kraterz and Necrolin, are you using Gmail in POP3 or IMAP4 mode within Opera 9.5x? Have you activated SSL encryption (required with Gmail) and set the proper SSL-encrypted ports (995, not 110, for POP3, for instance) for all three protocols (including SMTP)?
Also check the server URLs. They are not “mail.google.com”! The POP3, IMAP, and SMTP URLs all differ, including in the second-level domain name as well as the third level!Joel R15th Oct 2008 -
Will it not crash? Bugs
Every time I try Opera 9 on either an intel Mac running 10.5.5 or a PPC Mac running 10.4.11 or 10.5.5 when I quit the application it crashes.
Clean system, full system. fast or slow. I do no use Opera because of that.
I have sent in bugs and asked questions, but no replies. I gave up on Opera. I am surprised there was anyone at home. I guess they were in their basement workshop working on these new features. Didn't hear anyone knocking...
Aria Pictures15th Oct 2008 -
my opera experience.
i run 10.4.11 on my ppc machine and opera rearely crashes. It might happen about once every weeek or two but when compared with how much I use opera and my computer in general its acceptable. most of the time when it crashes it will bring up the exact same pages I was browsing so nothing is really lost either. Maybe you are just unlucky or you have some weird settings but I assure you that is not a common problem. opera got me hooked a few years ago with the best tabbed browser features at that time and I've been using it ever since. The only complaint I hve had is that some websites will not work with opera, but I usuallly just copy the link into safari when that happens.
Kiamors16th Oct 2008 -
GMail works for me
GMail works fine for me (Opera 9.6)
I did have problems a couple of years ago, but nothing in the last year or so
Spanna16th Oct 2008 -
RE: Opera 10 will be 'prettier'
i've tried opera,ff,ie,k-meleon,avant. all the latest. ff3 absolutely a bloatware. it just like using adobe acrobat 8 when u have foxit. in terms of experience in browsing, opera win it. RSS reader in opera is the best. i've tried many add-on in ff but all that like hell.
aku4616th Oct 2008 -
RE: Opera 10 will be 'prettier'
Sure. All other browsers are wainting for the final release of Opera 10 to steal some more features from it, and with their (big guys') marketing power they'll lure people by saying: "Hey come to see our nice and new browser!", hiding thet fact that they didn't actually created nothing useful that Opera already hadn't.
I've realized that especially FF users are afraid of Opera specifically and take it as their real threat (not IE or Chrome) because they know that Opera is the company which really outputs innovation to the browser market.
Elton Miranda
Brazil.
operaemt5th Dec 2008
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