Keeping an eye on Opera

Topic: Keeping an eye on Opera (Read 183584 times)

Keeping an eye on Opera

2013-11-23, 14:46:34

Many are giving up Opera due to the shortcomings of the present state of the so-called "Opera Next"

This thread is to inform us on how the Opera Browser develops.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #1 – 2013-11-23, 14:54:04

I have been concerned about loosing the mail which was stored within the Opera Browser.

As an interim solution I downloaded and installed "Opera Mail" which was able to import both mail and contacts from Opera, leaving them intact in the browser.

I write "interim" because I am no longer confident that an Opera Product is good for the long term, but have hopes that a generous warning would be given as has been the case with the Opera Browser.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #2 – 2013-11-23, 16:46:27

I gave up on Opera when they dropped support for anything non-x86, without even bothering to whip up something halfway stable as a final release. Especially MacOS X / powerpc support was apparently dropped in the middle of an unannounced beta phase.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #3 – 2013-11-23, 18:45:06

I think it's just a matter of time they will (also) close the mail-client. I think it's safe to say that people only using that half-baked mail-client because of it's integration with the browser!

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #4 – 2013-11-23, 18:46:46

I've been trying to keep up with the discussion on the alert, but the fan-boy response is getting a little old. Some people are willing to put up with anything, for me there are limits and to tell the truth I've had about enough of the nonsense.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #5 – 2013-11-23, 19:25:11

Quote from: Macallan on 2013-11-23, 16:46:27

I gave up on Opera when they dropped support for anything non-x86, without even bothering to whip up something halfway stable as a final release. Especially MacOS X / powerpc support was apparently dropped in the middle of an unannounced beta phase.

They also won't be returning to *BSD.

Quote from: ohme on 2013-11-23, 18:45:06

I think it's just a matter of time they will (also) close the mail-client. I think it's safe to say that people only using that half-baked mail-client because of it's integration with the browser!

I think it had some really neat features for its time, see e.g. Mark Schenk's review. Unfortunately development was going along at a snail's pace from Opera 7 all the way through 11.50. There were some minor changes like newsfeeds, but even so it took about 8 years for newsfeed folders to arrive.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #6 – 2013-11-23, 19:36:17

For what it's worth (diddly doo, I know) I just successfully switched to the new computer. Signing in here was not as much of a problem this time as the first time, so-- it works.

About the Opera browser--- I'm not sure what to make of that anymore except that I'm not inclined to fuss with it. They change things at will it seems, no discernible plan at all.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #7 – 2013-11-24, 01:20:03

Quote from: ohme on 2013-11-23, 18:45:06

I think it's just a matter of time they will (also) close the mail-client. I think it's safe to say that people only using that half-baked mail-client because of it's integration with the browser!

I used it way back in the 4.x and 5.x days, mostly to keep private mail separate from work. Got the job done but then again IIRC it didn't support any kind of cryptography and at that time it was windows only. So I got used to something else and never looked back.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #8 – 2013-11-24, 01:26:41

Quote from: Frenzie on 2013-11-23, 19:25:11

Quote from: Macallan on 2013-11-23, 16:46:27

I gave up on Opera when they dropped support for anything non-x86, without even bothering to whip up something halfway stable as a final release. Especially MacOS X / powerpc support was apparently dropped in the middle of an unannounced beta phase.

They also won't be returning to *BSD.

They never supported NetBSD ( and I wouldn't ask them to - it's the definition of an obscure minority system ), the Linux version still works on amd64, except it became so bloated that my poor little laptop swaps itself to death after a while, despite 4GB of RAM.
Opera just fills everything up and I don't give enough of a crap anymore to dig around and see if I can fix it. Firefox works lately ( after years and years of crap ), even on sparc64 hardware ( one of our guys had enough and fixed it ), let's see if/when the TenFourFox people get their stuff into the main tree.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #9 – 2013-11-24, 01:53:06

I finally gave up on the newsfeed on the "discover" version of the note that started all of this. Those guys got an attitude, don't need theirs I have one of my own.

Right now, new computer running Windows 8: I have Internet Exploder because this came with that, used it to download Firefox. Firefox is the default browser now.

Present complaint: I have a number of photos, and when I try to view them this system has a fit trying to show me way too many possibilities, most of which I will not use. I'm going to have to see what can be done to make photo-viewing halfway usable.

[shadow=red,left][shadow=red,left]This forum has some weird toys. Gonna have to play with this a bit.[/shadow][/shadow]

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #10 – 2013-11-24, 06:20:35

Quote from: Frenzie on 2013-11-23, 19:25:11

Quote from: ohme on 2013-11-23, 18:45:06

I think it's just a matter of time they will (also) close the mail-client. I think it's safe to say that people only using that half-baked mail-client because of it's integration with the browser!

I think it had some really neat features for its time, see e.g. Mark Schenk's review. Unfortunately development was going along at a snail's pace from Opera 7 all the way through 11.50. There were some minor changes like newsfeeds, but even so it took about 8 years for newsfeed folders to arrive.

I know it has "labels" and such before anyone else thought about it! It's is just me or there are anyone else that think that O mail(client) team are always neglected! This is more apparent now I would say. Anyway like 'Macallan' I switched my e-mail client long ago and never bothered with M2 again. I know some people here really like M2, well good luck to them and don't be too surprised if M2 just vanish someday!

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #11 – 2013-11-24, 06:24:41

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #12 – 2013-11-24, 06:37:09

Quote from: j7n on 2013-11-24, 06:24:41

I've never bothered with other e-mail software because I felt Opera was miles ahead in security of Outlook Express and any web interfaces that most people use.

Aha outlook express was my 1st. email client, at those days I hardly bother about sec. :p
I don't use Win anymore j7n. (with exception of some limited case)

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #13 – 2013-11-24, 08:28:02

Quote from: ohme

like 'Macallan' I switched my e-mail client long ago and never bothered with M2 again. I know some people here really like M2, well good luck to them and don't be too surprised if M2 just vanish someday!

I used Claris Emailer, until it wouldn't work… (Different providers needing different patches…

) Then, briefly, Eudora. When I switched to Opera 9 (from 6.03…) I got used to M2. (Indeed, I made the switch -on advice from a friend- specifically for M2.)
The !new Opera Mail client is okay. Until my email providers fail to work with it, I'll stick with it. But it's not as convenient as the bundled browser/mail-client was…

The new browsers are a different story! I still have 11.64 and 12 on my system… I'll use the others, to see where they're going, how they do. But I'll keep the old versions of Opera that let me use them the way I want to!

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #14 – 2013-11-24, 13:58:46

Quote from: ohme on 2013-11-24, 06:20:35

Anyway like 'Macallan' I switched my e-mail client long ago and never bothered with M2 again. I know some people here really like M2, well good luck to them and don't be too surprised if M2 just vanish someday!

I only use M2 for newsfeeds these days; I don't think I've used it for mail since '08-ish. Like I said, there was virtually no visible development there since Opera 7, while Thunderbird kept improving in the meantime. I currently use Icedove (=Thunderbird).

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #15 – 2013-11-24, 14:40:23

Ah! so you are using Debian

Presently using Evolution! :p

@OakdaleFTL
That seems Mac software, never have any Macs!
I see no problem at sticking at older software, I also do that with many software... media players for example!

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #16 – 2013-11-24, 14:49:56

I actually used Evolution for a while, but it was occasionally a bit slow and more important not always stable. Another potential issue is settings are a bit all or nothing. In Thunderbird you can have different settings per e-mail account, somewhat akin to Opera's site preferences.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #17 – 2013-11-24, 15:14:13

um! not sure about what you meant by different settings per account, can you elaborate please?

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #18 – 2013-11-24, 19:01:31

How to handle archiving, including signature, whether to use HTML e-mails, whether to top or bottom post… as far as I recall Evolution can do those kind of settings application-wide only. I'm not trying to convert anyone to Thunderbird or anything; as far as I know Tb, Evolution, Claws, and probably several others are fine e-mail clients.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #19 – 2013-11-24, 20:55:13

Here's a thread that followed Opera development news http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1767272 but unfortunately it seems to have ended on my hopeful note that it would not end

Is there some continuation of this thread on the other side, on the new forums behind Disqus? Is there a new forums yet? Does anyone know of a similar active thread? Is anyone following the dev blogs, changelogs and user comments on the other side?

As to reasons for using Opera, I used it precisely for the email client first and foremost. I valued the interface of Pegasus, but it mangled with encodings. I also liked Eudora and I have tried a long list of other email clients, but eventually Opera 6 won me over with the inbuilt browser and a growing number of other features, while remaining lightweight on system resources.

Now when migrating away, the email client has been the most difficult component to replace. In the end I believe I used everything in Opera. I used it as it was - an internet suite. A tough loss. Migration from it is very difficult.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #20 – 2013-11-25, 06:26:50

I suppose it depends on how complex the emails are that one wants to write. But not having tried anything else for a long time I would not know. My main interest in an email client is keeping things to hand rather than cloud based (some exceptions to that, for example if I fly somewhere, the flight confirmation emails are kept in a folder in Fastmail which I use and are thus available from any computer). Generally my storage of emails is of the file and forget variety but i do like to have a good search facility in case I want to refer to something.

On the subject of Opera itself, or rather Chopera, I've heard criticisms of it although nothing too specific except the Bookmark business (which is a killer for me) but I'd like to have a look. I presume one can just download and install it and get a new installation but the old Opera installation will remain untouched - any cautionary advice on that?

I want to see what it is like.

I originally bought opera in version 2 something and was happy to buy subsequent versions when I needed to to keep my web use compatible with the Psion I was using at the time. Since I use mini Opera on my android stuff the same logic could apply.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #21 – 2013-11-25, 07:06:12

Quote from: string on 2013-11-25, 06:26:50

On the subject of Opera itself, or rather Chopera, I've heard criticisms of it although nothing too specific except the Bookmark business (which is a killer for me) but I'd like to have a look.

The criticism is of two kinds. One kind is missing features: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1768972

The other kind of criticism is Chrome-ness. All the criticism that applies to Chrome also applies to Chropera.

Both kinds of criticism have been very specific on the My Opera forums, but of course, go ahead and install it so you can see for yourself. However, if Chrome or Chromium is not for you, then chances are neither is Chropera.

!

Reply #22 – 2013-11-25, 07:51:07

My last OPERA experience was v10.63.....I decided to switch to FireFox because I didn't like using menus...I wanted to use buttons...Custom Buttons is a breeze with FireFox (for what I want anyway), & I found customization much more user friendly in FireFox. Extensions were a dime a dozen,,,,Greasemonkey for userscripts gave me even more flexibility, & between the two I was able to find just about everything I could possibly ever want.

Opera then became one of my #1 goto browsers for specific sites, & saving websites easier.

I use FireFox Portable ESR v17.0.9 at present....but because it's portable, I don't have to search folders for anything....all my needs & files can be located independently in one folder.

Backups are as simple as copying a folder & it's contents.

Absolutely no Registry dependencies either.

If the browser should really get messed up, all I need to do is delete the folder, & copy the backup folder to replace it, or to wherever I want it located...I have over 7 versions of Firefox Portable from v3.6 all the way through v24.0 at my immediate disposal, & I can switch through all versions using any saved profile I wish.

I have basically one up to date profile that I can use with at least 15 different browsers simply by using a copy & paste, & they're always hot to go.

Then again, not often, but every once in a while I fall back on my OPERA browser due to a difficult rendering website.

I also have 3 versions of OPERA Portable available in a split second with just a simple toolbar custom button press.

Unless OPERA makes some monumental changes & u-turns, I doubt if I will ever go back to using it as my go to browser.

FireFox is getting a tad bit fussy with some of my must have custom buttons, but the Custom Button programmers are usually quick to the fix! Never had a button that couldn't be fixed or replaced with a better one.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #23 – 2013-11-25, 08:55:16

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #24 – 2013-11-25, 10:08:41

Quote from: SmileyFaze on 2013-11-25, 07:51:07

My last OPERA experience was v10.63.....I decided to switch to FireFox because I didn't like using menus...I wanted to use buttons...Custom Buttons is a breeze with FireFox (for what I want anyway), & I found customization much more user friendly in FireFox. Extensions were a dime a dozen,,,,Greasemonkey for userscripts gave me even more flexibility, & between the two I was able to find just about everything I could possibly ever want.

Could you tell me more about that? I couldn't figure it out compared to Opera. I'm not interested in messing with XUL, although I might do it as a last resort.

But I've got my Opera customized in just about each and every aspect. How I can attach the same macro to a menu, button, mouse gesture, stack a whole bunch together… I don't think any other browser has that.