Why did Opera become Chrome?

[.Neo]

I don't mind the new opera, I like its interface and its speed dial is still far better than the new tab pages found in all the other browsers

What makes "Speed Dial" special compared to Safari's Top Sites? I can do a command + 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. to go to my top bookmarks in Safari as well.

[ditoax]

I don't really understand the hate due to them switching rendering engines. I can understand the hate from the UI changes though.

 

I loved Opera. I think I first used it back in 1999 when I had to pay for it! The Presto rendering engine was great for the time but it just didn't work as well as Webkit or Gecko these days. I think Opera made the right decision in switching to Webkit however I don't think a lot of the changes they have made to Opera in other ways.

 

I am still a Firefox user at heart though and have been ever since I first tried Pheonix at the end of 2002 and never looked back. 12 years later and I am still a Pheonix user!

[Som]

I so hate Opera for using chrome engine for their browser. Goddamn do i hate the new password management system, the bookmark system and everything about it. Nice way to ruin something so original and imitate crappiness. No offense to chrome users but i was never fan of it and never will. Presto engine had me since the day i first used it.

 

The only reason i am using it now is because i am so used to Opera, have like hundreds of bookmarks and so much data stored in it and for nostalgia of it. I am gonna write my own browser based on internet explorer and call it stnowser, at least i won't claim originality which opera so proudly claim now. It is basically chrome remodeled.

 

PS: You won't understand my frustration if you haven't been a fan of opera, i used it since version 8 and that was eternity ago and it truly was unique back then.

 

PS2: If anyone know of another awesome browser that isn't chrome/firefox, fire away.

 

why don't you make your own browser using presto, make us all so happy 

 

i'm using Opera 21 at the moment, it's way better than the other browsers, chrome, firefox etc but is still so bad compared to Opera 12 when it comes to features.... tis a pity really

[maverick09]

i'm still used Opera v12.16 :D

[Packet1009]

i hear you - i'm still on 12.16 too 

 

not impressed with the new changes - wish they could have kept all the old ui pieces 

[Denis W. Veteran]

I don't mind the new opera, I like its interface and its speed dial is still far better than the new tab pages found in all the other browsers, they just need to get their arses in gear when it comes to adding a proper bookmarks system and getting opera link working, those are the two reasons I'm not using it, otherwise I'd consider it. bookmark sync has become such a basic feature of a browser these days and I can't stand using a browser where I can't easily sync my bookmarks across platforms.

 

As I've mentioned before, the Chrome Xmarks extension works in Opera.

What makes "Speed Dial" special compared to Safari's Top Sites? I can do a command + 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. to go to my top bookmarks in Safari as well.

 

Windows users can't use the latest Safari anymore :p but to answer your question, I do find the ability to create folders in Speed Dial very useful.

[Denis W. Veteran]

Which one, I have not found a satifsying working and good bookmark manager on the extensions, the ones that sort of work don't yet support folders... and I need to import hundreds of bookmarks from myOpera/Opera Sync.

 

Try the Neater Bookmarks extension from the Chrome web store. 

 

 

Combine it with this extension to bring back a better Add Bookmark menu.

 

(NB: use this extension for grabbing Chrome extensions.)

[.Neo]

Windows users can't use the latest Safari anymore :p but to answer your question, I do find the ability to create folders in Speed Dial very useful.

Thanks for your answer. Top Sites can't do folders as far as I know, but that's what the Bookmarks sidebar is for I guess. :P

[Darrian]

I so hate Opera for using chrome engine for their browser. Goddamn do i hate the new password management system, the bookmark system and everything about it. Nice way to ruin something so original and imitate crappiness. No offense to chrome users but i was never fan of it and never will. Presto engine had me since the day i first used it.

 

The only reason i am using it now is because i am so used to Opera, have like hundreds of bookmarks and so much data stored in it and for nostalgia of it. I am gonna write my own browser based on internet explorer and call it stnowser, at least i won't claim originality which opera so proudly claim now. It is basically chrome remodeled.

 

PS: You won't understand my frustration if you haven't been a fan of opera, i used it since version 8 and that was eternity ago and it truly was unique back then.

 

PS2: If anyone know of another awesome browser that isn't chrome/firefox, fire away.

 

Interestingly enough, I have never liked Opera until they recently switched to the Chrome engine.  I've wanted to like it, I've tried every major release in the last 12 years or more, but I just couldn't stand it.  I was desperately trying to find a good alternative to IE.  I am now a diehard Firefox fan and have been since its initial release as Phoenix (thank God I didn't have to use IE anymore), but I use Opera exclusively on my Android tablet now, despite the fact that it doesn't support flash (Firefox mobile isn't so awesome, flash support or not).  Understand that my dislike of Opera never stemmed from which rendering engine it used, but from its horrid UI/UX.  I still probably wouldn't use it on my desktop, but the UI on Android is simple and elegant and it's very fast on a device that is aging and not as capable as newer hardware would be.

[Mike]

I don't really understand the hate due to them switching rendering engines. I can understand the hate from the UI changes though.

 

I loved Opera. I think I first used it back in 1999 when I had to pay for it! The Presto rendering engine was great for the time but it just didn't work as well as Webkit or Gecko these days. I think Opera made the right decision in switching to Webkit however I don't think a lot of the changes they have made to Opera in other ways.

 

I am still a Firefox user at heart though and have been ever since I first tried Pheonix at the end of 2002 and never looked back. 12 years later and I am still a Pheonix user!

 

The hate is that 1 year on from the switch and the Blink based version is still not a patch feature wise on the Presto based version.

 

Things like tab stacking, private tabs, sane bookmark management and customisable ui are all missing and no sign of being implemented. Each release has a change log along the lines of "Fixed a few bugs, Chromium updated" with no new features coming

[HawkMan]

I miss the ability to run private tabs instead of a new damn window... So backwards...

I also don't see how a bookmark UI or even complete system isn't something a UI coder couldn't do over a single weekend. What's taking so long...

[Boo Berry]

Okay, decided to try Opera again with the Neater Bookmarks extension. It's not bad. Not bad at all actually. The only thing I wish I could do is extend the height of the popup, but that's not possible due to a Chromium limitation. I'll try the browser for a few days and see if I want to keep it installed.

[dazhu]

The new Firefox aint that bad.

[HawkMan]

The new Firefox aint that bad.

Ok, and that's relevant to the topic how?

[ViperAFK]

The new opera has actually been growing on me. Once it gets sync support I might switch to it.

 

What I'm liking about it:

 

Stash: after using this for a while I think its a great feature. You get full text search for any page that you put into stash. i.e., if you go into stash you can search for any string of text contained within the page, even if its not in the page title or URL. For example I just went into stash, typed "Video/Audio", and it resulted in two firefox bugzilla bug reports that were filed under Video/Audio in bugzilla. http://i.imgur.com/ocNDn7g.jpg

 

At first I thought I wouldn't like stash, because it doesn't have tagging like firefox's bookmarks (I often use firefox's "Unsorted bookmarks" folder, similar to how one would use stash, and I would tag everything I put into there to make it easy to find), but with the stash's full text search I don't think tags are even necessary, you pretty much get them automatically via the text contained in the page.

 

The one thing that kills stash at the moment, is lack of being able to sync it between devices, but once opera sync arrives this will be a killer feature IMO. It would also be nice if you could search stash from the URLbar.

 

Speed Dial: Well, this one didn't have to grow on me, I've loved speed dial ever since they first implemented it in the old opera, and I still love it :) IMO its both more user friendly and far more customizable than the awful new tab pages found in IE, Chrome, Firefox. It seems like the new tab pages in these browsers go out of their way to make it as janky as possible to add pages to the new tab page, customize their placement etc... With the speed dial its intuitive and works just as you'd expect it to (Very easy to manually ad pages, re-organize them, organize them into folders, and you can even right click on the tab strip to easily save a group of tabs as a folder in one click), and looks damn nice on top of that. I've tried various speed dial extensions for chrome and firefox, but didn't like any of them nearly as much as opera's speed dial.

 

Mouse Gestures: Very handy to have mouse gestures integrated out of the box, forgot how much I liked them :) I just wish they'd re-add the tab-scrolling gesture from opera 12 (hold right click + scroll to scroll through tabs). they've already re-added the rocker gestures though, so hopefully they will add this as well.

 

Extensions Flexibility: Obviously not nearly as flexible as firefox :) but it does have the advantage of not being locked down to the chrome web store like chrome. You can install extensions from the opera extension site, manually with .crx files (without having to use dev channel), and there's even an opera extension that allows installing extensions from the google web store.

 

Interface: I'll group the rest here, as they are all small but nice interface touches:

 

 

1. Bookmark "Here". In the bookmarks toolbar, there is a "Add Page" entry under every folder, which allows you to directly add a bookmark to a specific folder in just one click.

 

2. "Search With". When highlighting text and right clicking, not only do you get a search option, but you also get a search with option with a list of all your search engines. Small but very handy feature that Chrome and Firefox lack, although IE has something similar with search accelerators.

 

3. Recently closed tab list isn't limited to 8-10 entries like chrome/firefox, you get a big scrollable list.

 

4. Downloads pop up shows download speed. Its always annoyed me in chrome in fx that you have to go to the full downloads page just to view download speed.

 

The interface also seems to use a lot more native elements than recent versions of chrome/firefox which is nice (especially chrome with its ugly hardcoded context menus). With opera pretty much every menu is a native windows style menu, except for some reason the speed dial has a hardcoded win7 style context menu, but thats probably a bug). I also like how it adapts to windows 8 with nice flat/squared tabs.

[Denis W. Veteran]

You can enable sync via opera://flags/#sync - I've had it on for a while since they enabled it in the developer builds and it works fine. Every couple of days you'll have to refresh your login which is annoying.

It syncs over Speed Dials and the Stash - no bookmarks (can use the Xmarks Chrome extension for that), passwords (Lastpass works), history, settings, or extensions.

 

I like to think of Opera as a 'saner' Chrome, since Chrome's UI direction is going off the deep end lately. Not just on Windows - comparing the bookmark bar menus for Opera and Chrome on Mac, the menus for Opera fit in more than the ugly menus Chrome uses. It's quite amusing since for the longest time, the classic Opera had the most out-of-place UI where native controls didn't quite fit in.

[citan]

Still using 12.16, I can't stop - love the smooth scrolling too much :D, there was even a native 64bit build, not that it really matters to - but at least it's consisent. If it looked/behaved the same like 12, i'm in. Right now it feels bloated, heavy and unpolished to the max. Kind of like Chrome... at least to me.

[spy beef]

If you can't beat them, join them.