Disappointed with new opera forum

[Lys]

I do not like the new forum at all. I miss being able to turn off sigs and avatars. The avatars on the thread list slow the site down even more.

Edited September 14, 2005 by fred666

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

Give them a chance, they have created a whole forum/blog/photo type system from scratch. I'm sure they will iron out any bugs, just have to be a bit patient with them.

I personally like the look of the new site, if they could just get it up to speed I would be happy.

Last time I was on they had removed the avatars from the thread lists, you can turn of the sigs, go to www.my.opera.com/(your username)/account/forumsettings.dml to remove the sigs.

[ozgeek]

I agree with ya, Lys. It was so stupid of them to change it.

If it ain't broke...don't freaking fix it!

Instead of making it easier, they made it harder. They broke basic forum layout standads that exists on millions of websites around the world. I don't have time to learn any new features or how to use the forums to get help on Opera.

[Crazysah]

I agree with Alex over here. They are just starting out.. they are going to be bugs but they will be quick to fix it.

I also like the look of there site but their email system could be improved.

Good first try for Opera!

[sidtherat]

it never should have been made public in this shape

it is prematurely relased alpha of some sort. you cant even delete your own post! they forgot about it, that says something about testing, that endless hours of ironing and polishing

it was a great souce of info, and it was only opera forum. and they made worst possible mistake.

[jp10558]

Opera is a good technical company, and seems to be rather creative also in thinking up new useful features for a browser, especially for one that runs in a mobile device.

That said, they need to either listen to their marketing dept, or fire them. Because I see the company make mistake followed by mistake followed by stupid HUGE mistake from a PR standpoint.

First, release Opera 8, but with a *gay power ranger* as a mascot???

Then make an outrageous claim about swimming the Atlantic for x # of downloads, then fail to follow through with a lame excuse.

Then, we have 10th anniversery party, give away codes, get lots of people trying it out, and *now* would be a good time to alpha test our forum code live???

I mean, maybe this works well in Norway, but they REALLY NEED A United States marketing team so they stop falling on their face while stuffing their shoe in their mouth PR wise here.

I mean, it's true to some extent that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but do you really want to seem childish and incompetent?

Then, lately they seem to be really ignoring their customers. I don't know much about business, but they need to start addressing the *obvious* shortcommings in Opera vs any other browser.

UI for editing searchs.

Some more tab options, like the switch to left on close rather than last viewed.

Options for ctrl-enter to complete the address

Middle and Right Click on MENUS like the BOOKMARK one.

Rich Text Editing... MIDAS.

iframe issue with zindex

I mean, at this point, the top 3 ought to be a no brainer for 8.1 or 8.5... We're talking about some dialogue boxes and a tweak to the tab bar. The address bar is just integrating some keyboard edits others have posted already, but allowing it to apply to the enter key.

Changing out the menu widget might take longer, but it's been an issue for almost 3 years now... Why isn't it in some testing code by now?

Rich Text Editing - may be difficult, but it's been an issue for 2 years or so, and is now just an embarassment.

Same for the iframe and zindex bug that makes ads or UI elements of pages overlay each other when they don't in any other browser.

I'd post this rant in the Opera forums, but they are close to unusable now. I'm pretty happy with Opera, but if FireFox 1.5 comes out of beta with the speed Opera has, and I can get it to not die with the extensions to get the rest of the interface, and Opera still seems to be sitting on this, I may be very tempted to switch.

I'm a paying customer too, but I can't see waiting much longer when nothing has been done in 2-3 years.

[sidtherat]

i start to see, that i'm not the only one dissapointed with opera' pr and management. they are on verge of complete disaster.

their ONLY good move, but badly executed, was 10th birthday party, but after it, it took them almost a week to make any comment on the results! that was a complete waste of otherwise good move. and even now, instead of highlightling the big number of downloads and generated codes they managed to make 3 line small statement somewhere inside a portal nobody look at all

now these forums. i like especialy the way they comment on that mistake. by closing some threads and not replying to another..

jp10558, as for that question from another forum, i'll send you that proxy problems/claims i have via pm on this forum.a s soon as i manage to find it. navigation is a COMPLETE disaster on these new forums. they managed to divide forums into 3 different part that have nothing in common! especialy search :/

[ThePast]

you cant even delete your own post! they forgot about it, that says something about testing

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Actually that was a design decision. But the reasons for that decision is beyond my understanding, and I think that it was a very unwise one. One member at the forums wrote something along the lines that they should have allowed a number of regulars to test the forums before making it public. And I could not have agreed more.

navigation is a COMPLETE disaster on these new forums. they managed to divide forums into 3 different part that have nothing in common! especialy search

Yup. Although to be fair I think I should mention that the plan is that you will be able to customize this to behave the way you like. But since that is not implemented yet it would have been a much better choice to have kept the old format.

All in all, I believe that once they got all the annoyments fixed it will work great, but I am very annoyed over their choice to make it public in its current form.

[sidtherat]

Actually that was a design decision. But the reasons for that decision is beyond my understanding, and I think that it was a very unwise one.

i cant understand it either. it looks as an attempt to have something done otherwise than all others. like wheel with angles or something..

Yup. Although to be fair I think I should mention that the plan is that you will be able to customize this to behave the way you like. But since that is not implemented yet it would have been a much better choice to have kept the old format.

that means i have to be logged in to naveigate that forum in some sensible manner. another stupid idea they made recently.

All in all, I believe that once they got all the annoyments fixed it will work great, but I am very annoyed over their choice to make it public in its current form.

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i'd like to hear about any ETA. they do not comment on this disaster. behave like big, fat all powerfull corporation who cares not about their customers. customers they are loosing realy fast now.

[megamanXplosion]

I am highly disappointed with the new system.

They should've definately made it publicly-testable before applying it to the live site (Stupid Decision #1.)

They broke the off-topic chat forums into their own "group" so they are no longer accessible through the traditional forum index (Stupid Decision #2.)

They have created a new forum index, that is the default, which makes it impossible to see who was the last to reply in a forum (Stupid Decision #3), how many topics/posts have been created so you can get an idea of wether there were new topics/posts you should look into (Stupid Decision #4), omitted the descriptions under each forum name so new users will have a harder time figuring out where posts are supposed to be made (Stupid Decision #5), and regular visitors will sometimes confuse the different "Wishlist" forums for Mobile and Desktop (Stupid Decision #6.)

Most forum systems allow you to make your e-mail accessible by means of an email-sender so forum users can contact you while also protecting you from spambots, the new forum makes the email publicly visible to spambots. I have two choices: a) disconnect myself from the community or b) accept having viagra and other penis-enlargement pill advertisements sent to my email account. (Stupid Decision #7)

Every blog (blogs and journals are different - Stupid Decision #8) shows "blog" for the window/tab title so it is much harder to use multiple blogs while also hindering the chances of new people finding the blog through search engines (Stupid Decision #8.)

The smilies on the forum must be called upon when needed so you have to wait for them all to load so posting takes a lot longer (Stupid Decision #9.)

The "tagging" system is completely pointless because posts should describe themselves, plus it pushes the "Preview" and "Submit" buttons down so you have to constantly scroll when you are making posts (Stupid Decision #10.)

The "Whisper" and "Group" mechanisms do little more than encourage elitism (Stupid Decision #11.)

The profile pages relate the most frequently-replied-to topics as their "favorite" topics, so I look like a Bush-hating, people-starving, adsense loving, radical. This particular one has me peeved more than any other, they are probably my least favorite things to discuss and that is the exact opposite of what my profile states. (Stupid Decision #12.)

Personal preferences are stored in cookies rather than the database so everytime I delete my cookies (everytime I close Opera) the information is reset (Stupid Decision #13.)

I joined a few groups and later went to one of them to see how the "Members" section is organized, apparently the majority of users are "too lazy to enter a quote." Thank you for calling me lazy, jerks. (Stupid Decision #14)

I can keep naming reasons why I am unhappy with the current system. I've barely scratched the surface, in fact. I have already made a topic on their forum stating that I would rather see the new system completely destroyed and have the old system put back in its place, it was much better. I wish I could place a "spotlight" of myself giving the new system the middle finger so everyone can see it.

[Pallab]

I am terribly dissapointed with their forums.It is terrible.

They have improved the site and the blogs.But the forum is a mess!

I WANT THE OLD FORUM BACK!

[Chode]

First, release Opera 8, but with a *gay power ranger* as a mascot???

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with Homosexuals. Secondly, his name is Captain Opera

Then make an outrageous claim about swimming the Atlantic for x # of downloads, then fail to follow through with a lame excuse.

Humour is lost on so many people. :sleep:

I mean, maybe this works well in Norway, but they REALLY NEED A United States marketing team so they stop falling on their face while stuffing their shoe in their mouth PR wise here.

If you had any sense of internationalism at all, you would see that trends are moving away from "marketting teams" as to be frank it would seem that people are sick of the age of commercialism (hence the popularity of open source software, and the adblock extension for firefox).

I mean, it's true to some extent that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but do you really want to seem childish and incompetent?

Hmm. We've got in your post gay bashing, bad spelling, poor sentence structure, no understanding of "non-American" humour, and as one continues reading an apparent pre-formed opinon before you began (known as professional bias, making accurate reviewing an impossibilty). Pot, meet kettle.

Then, lately they seem to be really ignoring their customers. I don't know much about business, but they need to start addressing the *obvious* shortcommings in Opera vs any other browser.

------snip------

I'd post this rant in the Opera forums, but they are close to unusable now. I'm pretty happy with Opera, but if FireFox 1.5 comes out of beta with the speed Opera has, and I can get it to not die with the extensions to get the rest of the interface, and Opera still seems to be sitting on this, I may be very tempted to switch.

Obligatory Firefox reference? :sleep:

That's a lot of "if's" nonetheless, and seems completely random and out of place with the rest of your thread (unless the label of "fanboy" is applied, then it becomes much more sensical)

I'm a paying customer too, but I can't see waiting much longer when nothing has been done in 2-3 years.

2-3 years I take as referring to the period of 2003 to the end of 2005.

2003

Final release of Version 7, as well as numerous updates. Added support for elements such as MARQUEE, BLINK and BDO. BIDI language display. DOM HTML and DOM CSS features, and improved Javascript performance.

2004

Opera 7.6 alpha testing. Advanced standards support. Voice support. Voice XML support. "Fit to width" technology developed.

2005

Opera version 8 released. SVG Tiny Support. User Javascript. New default UI. Inclusion of "Fit to width" for desktop version of Opera. Experimental Bittorrent client.

And you say Opera have been doing nothing in the last "2-3" years?

I'd say that you can't blame a person for trying, but you can blame them if they are unable to present a decent argument.

:sleep:

[sidtherat]

Obligatory Firefox reference?

well.. you went a bit too far i think. these are problems presents in opera for about 2-3 years. it has nothing to do with firefox, but of course theyr presence in firefox is somewhat stimulating [or it should be i think]

UI for editing searchs.

Some more tab options, like the switch to left on close rather than last viewed.

Options for ctrl-enter to complete the address

Middle and Right Click on MENUS like the BOOKMARK one.

Rich Text Editing... MIDAS.

iframe issue with zindex

1st, 5th and 6th are at least 2yrs old, as one can check looking for it in aproriate forums on opera site. 6th is fixed in internal builds, but, altrough VERY important was not a reason to realse a bugfix. it makes viewing sites with adsense a pain in the eyes. 5th is a main point people are droping opera [well, in fact 1st is always the adblock, but..] - in time of blogs and gmail, lack of RTEditing means that opera is obsolete. 1st is an outcome of operas policy of hiding some variables and options, it is questionable, and has both good and bad effects, but i cant imagine search ini a 'disaster causing' variable

anyway, i'm sorry for my english, as i can see you set your points on somebodys spelling an grammar. i apologize, but i try as hard as i can to write it in a readable and understandable manner.

[jp10558]

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with Homosexuals. Secondly, his name is Captain Opera

I'm not gay bashing. I'm summarizing the response I get from about 90% of the people who see it that I've talked to in the US. Also, in the US we tend to use gay to also mean lame - that's where the slang is, PC or not.

Look, cool - Colin Farrell using Opera in The Recruit. Captain Opera? Not cool.

Humour is lost on so many people. :sleep:

Well, it is. Many people expect companies to act professional... that really wasn't. I get a kick out of fun companies, but all I see on the US front is pages of threads and chats bashing Opera making such a statement and then failing to carry through. Whether a patently ridiculous endevor or not, do you want to be remembered for failing to carry through on an action? Image is still very important in the US.

If you had any sense of internationalism at all, you would see that trends are moving away from "marketting teams" as to be frank it would seem that people are sick of the age of commercialism (hence the popularity of open source software, and the adblock extension for firefox).

Internationalism is great - but I don't think americans give a flying f**k about it, do you want to sell the browser in the USA or not? It's a perfectly ok decision to not want to, but if you do want to move up market share #'s here, you have to do some local customization... It worked real well in Japan... are Americans more inscrutible to Norweigians than Japanese?

Hmm. We've got in your post gay bashing, bad spelling, poor sentence structure, no understanding of "non-American" humour, and as one continues reading an apparent pre-formed opinon before you began (known as professional bias, making accurate reviewing an impossibilty). Pot, meet kettle.

Well, you ought to really check out my posting history around the web. I'm not bashing Homosexuals. I'm not missing the humor - I found it hilarious. I do have a pre-formed opinion... I'm not forming it now, if I was, I wouldn't be posting.

Look, I like Opera. I've used it since 5.12. I want to keep using it, but I won't if it's an inconvienience... I'm not a fanboi. It's just painful to see Opera Software *keep* making huge PR faux pas over what ought to be obvious issues. Look, I don't know anyone who has thought the new forums were ready for prime time when they went live. They *CLEARLY* crashed and burned... and still aren't as functional as the old ones today.

I don't know any Opera user who wouldn't be extremely pleased with MIDAS support debuting tomorrow in Opera, or the iframe bug being fixed. Slightly less users would literally dance in the streets if something like AdBlock was in there as well. A few less would probably offer to have the devs children (as applicable) for integration with RoboForm or equivelent functionality built in. And many might pass out with joy if the menus supported middle and right clicking.

I think Opera has forgotten why many use Opera in the first place, the UI. It's never been it's compatibility with websites, it's always been the benefit of the UI over other browsers. And speed. But broadband makes that less an issue, and FF1.5 makes that less a point of superiority. Fully 2/3 of my list of *ancient* user requests are UI. The rendering engine doesn't need to change at all for those. 1 of them is a rendering issue supposedly fixed in internal builds. These are *HIGH PROFILE* bugs!

Obligatory Firefox reference? :sleep:

Look, firefox 1.5 is looking like competition. For the first time ever really, there's competition for the old school Opera users for browsing.

That's a lot of "if's" nonetheless, and seems completely random and out of place with the rest of your thread (unless the label of "fanboy" is applied, then it becomes much more sensical)

True - and I'm not saying it will be the Opera killer. But if Opera isn't clearly superior, you won't sell it to the Techies. If it's not marketed better, you won't sell it to the masses. Who are you selling it to?

2-3 years I take as referring to the period of 2003 to the end of 2005.

Well, 2002-present really.

And you say Opera have been doing nothing in the last "2-3" years?

I'd say that you can't blame a person for trying, but you can blame them if they are unable to present a decent argument.

:sleep:

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I'll say that Opera has been doing things, but has been ignoring many very important *cosmetic* issues. Look, is ctrl-enter, for address completion, really difficult to add in to ease transition from any other major browser? It's only requested *every day* on the forums. For 3 years.

Is it impossible to have tabs behave like in FireFox as an Option? I mean it looks like Opera 8 was trying, but then fell short in the most important part, the closed tab issue. Is this really a challenge to code, for the people who came up with spatial navagation? I mean, heck, it's in there for mouse guestures....... WTH?

It's frustrating to see that it's basically supported, except not.

To end, these are not vague fanboi bashing arguments, these are *specific* issues with *suggested solutions* or at least pointing to why it's not ok now, from a vetern Opera user and Forum member.

Edited September 14, 2005 by jp10558

[Pallab]

I would agree with jp10558 on the Opera captain mascot.It is terrible!Absolutely terrible.

But i think that Opera's Birthday celebration was an excellent idea.Thousands of people downloaded and tried it.Opera has now woke up and is doing their publicity campaign quite well.

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

I think this topic needs cleaned up, we have gone waaaay oftopic. This is about the new forum not the "gay" mascot, any bugs/features you feel opera has or doesn't have etc.

[sidtherat]

But i think that Opera's Birthday celebration was an excellent idea.Thousands of people downloaded and tried it.Opera has now woke up and is doing their publicity campaign quite well.

yes, and all that new users came to forums and met the server monkeys [oh mamma] if at all. they busted the forums at the peak of public intereset, thus wasting entire effect

as for cosmetics in opera. they have a bad habit of starting something real great or very functional - like ua.ini in last versions, but leaving it halfway done and never come back. what is the use of ua.ini when there is no gui to edit it?

way of topic? i think these topics are connected - gay mascot and completly broken down forums and some technical decisions opera made recently are a sign of something bad going on with opera company at all. they behave, like their entire marketing dept. is made of retired programmers, who never had any serious busines experiendce.

relasing unfinished forums, as these 'will polish up in time' was a disaster. wastly similar to other disasters they did pr, and marketing wise...

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

The ua.ini is meant to be a last resort to get pages to work, also you have to edit it with opera closed so they can't really have a gui method to change it.

And yes we are taking this topic way off course. As I have said before this topic is about the forums and problems people have with them. Not peoples comments on whether operas marketing strategy is good or not, not about any "gay" mascots, not about feature's you wish opera would add.

Anyway getting back on topic, the speed of the forum has impoved 100% for me, the dev's have added the option to delete posts, you can now see the posts you have created and posted in.

[sidtherat]

The ua.ini is meant to be a last resort to get pages to work, also you have to edit it with opera closed so they can't really have a gui method to change it.

i cant see a reason for this option to need a browser close in first place, and i think that gui would be nice anyway

Anyway getting back on topic, the speed of the forum has impoved 100% for me, the dev's have added the option to delete posts, you can now see the posts you have created and posted in.

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tell me, when you'll be able to use old forum links.. their 'translation' engine, that merges old links into other well.. is broken entirely as for now

ps. have you managed to actualy delete your post on new forums?

[vinczej]

I think, that the new forum has many extra features relatively to the old forum. It's more usable functionally. I agree, that has "children's illnesses", yet.

It seems to be the problem, like the switching from IE to FF, and not Opera. We don't know the possibilities, yet, and don't take the time to get to know it. It has many new ordering-ways, informations. It has new tools for self-expression (personal site, new blog).

I hope, that the technical problems will be eliminated, and can we enjoy the whole superiority. :yes:

[jp10558]

The biggest problem with the new forums is the lack of go to first unread post. Also, the new marking of threads as to whether they have new posts is much less convienient to me. It just doesn't seem to update to me. I'll read a thread, come back and it's marked as new (this is not using history, it's coming back to the page later in the day) even though I HAVE read the last post...

[sidtherat]

well, can you please list 5 new forum features? i can list one: quick quite. all other is a mess

delete posts still gives 502 error, navigation is a joke, layout is a joke too, but at least this is a matter of taste, not something measurable.

i wont comment on other parts of community, as these are of complete zero value for me - for me it is only a forum.

i know one thing - no matter how good this forum is going to be in a month the impression it did to me is strong and VERY unpleasant

it WASNT tested before going live. no matter what opera staff would say, it wasnt tested. it had so f.. big problems that i cant believe anyone could be so brave to launch it few days after free code giveaway

[vinczej]

Meanwhile I use the new forum, I think and feel, that it's much more, than the vBulletin was. It's a great job! And almost every wish was implemented recently. The new forum is more usable and comfortable. And the speed and stability is satisfying. Earlier I was, too, confused with couple of new behaviours( e.g. like the new notification way), but I've got used, and I am familiar with the new forum, and I'm glad to enjoy it. :yes:

[sidtherat]

well.. i still think otherwise.

search is broken - it simply does not find topics even when they are on the first page of general discussion

no way of deleting posts

lack of consistency - on some pages date of last post leads you to last post in discussion, in some other places this date isnt a link. and there is no aparent reason to not have it as a link anyway

notifications do not work for me, but i dont care about it, so no problem

preferences are set on cookie basis, it leads to funny situations when i see some people as my friends - good that i dont see their passwords and pm's

i still dont know why it was relased in such shape, it is now a third week after relase, and there are still things that do not work!

i see many people are talking about new features - please list them! i know one - quick reply. but i miss go to last post, i miss my search, i miss skins and setups that are gone! skins section is screwed up completly, no option to go to next page, no option to see more than 10pics per page etc.

i realy cant see a gain, and still dont know any way of browsing longue and forums at once. and how to search anything [as if this matters, search is broken anyway] from the longue and forums at once?

[worbd]

Then make an outrageous claim about swimming the Atlantic for x # of downloads, then fail to follow through with a lame excuse.

This was a smashing success. They got massive media coverage. That you think it a "failure" says a lot.

Then, we have 10th anniversery party, give away codes, get lots of people trying it out, and *now* would be a good time to alpha test our forum code live???

The anniversary had nothing to do with the new site.

I mean, maybe this works well in Norway, but they REALLY NEED A United States marketing team so they stop falling on their face while stuffing their shoe in their mouth PR wise here.

It looks to me like you live on a different planet. Opera has had lots of press coverage lately. Positive such.

I mean, it's true to some extent that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but do you really want to seem childish and incompetent?

What's childish is pretending to be a PR expert and criticizing massive successes like the CEO swim.

nothing has been done in 2-3 years.

You are wrong I'm afraid.