Opera Seeks Developer Input For Opera 10

taskforce writes "Opera Watch is reporting that the folks Opera Software are asking web developers for input on what they think the most important features are which could be added into the next version of the Opera desktop browser. Considering what has been added in Opera 9, what do you think would be most important for the browser from both a developer and a user standpoint?"

Extensions

API for extensions !

Re:Extensions

Compared to what? http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html [howtocreate.co.uk]

It's worth pointing out that the person publishing those benchmarks is an Opera employee [howtocreate.co.uk]. Not that I think they are fabricated, but it's always good to know potential biases.

Re:Extensions

This should be possible with the current opera. I'll describe how to add a shortcut key that launches the current webpage in internet explorer. If you want to add it to a gui element (like the right click menu) you will probably have to edit an ini file. Anyway, here is how to add it as a keyboard shortcut, step by step.

* Goto Tools->Preferences->Advanced->Shortcuts.
* (Optional) Duplicate the current keyboard setup using the duplicate button.
* Edit the keyboard setup you want to change.
* Select the "application" entry in the list that appears and click the "New" Button
* Enter the keyboard shortcut to the left. For example: i ctrl shift alt
* To the right enter the following: Execute program, "iexplore.exe", "%u"

Now, whenever you click ctrl+shift+alt+i, internet explorer should launch using the current url as an argument.

64bit support

Probably it's not the answer to the question, but I'd love to see a native 64 bit version of Opera. As for the argument "there's no 64bit flash", screw adobe/macromedia/$proprietary_technology_owner. The web is a nice place also without Flash. Maybe even better!

Niggling

Give users more monitor real estate (less toolbar, more web page) and reinvent favorites/bookmarks. Say automatic online backups to Simpy.com [simpy.com] and an easier way of keeping bookmark catagories organized. I've recently gotten into genealogy and the links pile-up in a hurry. I almost want to use a browser exclusively for that research alone.

The Linux support is awesome however. It's the best browser for that platform.

Re:Niggling

MORE real estate? One of the reasons why I love Opera is its interface is one of the most easily configurable. Not only do you have a lot of control over what toolbars are displayed and where, but exactly which buttons appear on them. The side-panel is much nicer than Firefox's in my opinion, and is another great space saver. What more could you want?

Opera gives you all the space you need! (scrensht)

> but even then it still usues way too much screen space for things other then the actual webpage.

WTF?! You do know that the sidebar "Panel" toggles on and off with F4, right? Requests ought to focus on stuff that isn't already in the browser and trivially available to users to configure, don't you think?

I'm sorry, but requesting more space for the web page is sort of insane, considering there's always full screen mode (F11). The difference between full screen and my current configuration is neglible. Here's a current full screen screenshot [gazonk.org] (~44KiB) of my setup. Explain what you want to disable and how that makes a real difference to your browsing experience.

Personally I'd like a special tab which would include all client-server exchanges, toggable to exclude content body/show as hexa, etc.

From a developper point of vue

- More CSS 3 - A Javascript Debugger (including XMLHttpRequest debugging, as with the Firebug extension) - XForms - XUL ? And from a user point of vue: - Extensions

Re:From a developper point of vue

I'd have to second the request for XUL support. With Microsoft producing its XUL clone XAML for use with Vista software, it's only a question of when, not if these technologies take off. Is this an area out of which Opera truly wishes to stay?

The parent's request for better AJAX debugging is another possibility certain to turn a number of web-dev heads. Few doubt AJAX's destiny. I for one would love to see this.

Additionally, I'd also like to request an option to specify how the middle-button responds to clicks for scrolling. Presently, and for prior versions, pressing the middle button to begin the hands-free scrolling feature snaps the cursor to the middle of the page. This becomes an issue when trying to open a page in a background tab with a middle click and, if the click is off by a little, the cursor shoots away, causing the user to move their cursor back to the link. A minor nuisance but one I've heard complained about for years.

Still no Opera topic in Slashdot

It's time for you to stop dissing Opera. There are applications that get news coverage really seldom and even they have their own topics in Slashdot. Opera gets mentioned every once in a while and always gets placed under the general software topic. Do I smell an anti-Opera Software bias among the editors?

Adblock

Adblock, adblock, adblock. I know you can do something like adblock with Opera, but it doesn't even compare with firefox's version. That's the reason that I still use firefox even though it isn't as small or as fast as Opera; I want my adblock.

Re:Adblock

Opera 9 has integrated content blocking - it is quite good. You don't have to edit filter.ini any more...

Re:Adblock

Do you have to do this for every new ad you see? Or does Opera automagically create regexes for permanent blocking of similar ads by using your method?

No regexes, but a simple matching expression using * is automatically created. You can also block specific images only by holding Shift while clicking. It is quite intuitive, with a simple UI with only a few buttons and a short explanation text.

Re:Adblock

I know you can do something like adblock with Opera, but it doesn't even compare with firefox's version.

What's missing? Right-click on the page, select "Block content", and the page gets greyed out, with the blockable items highlighted. Click on everything you want to block, and it automatically sets up wildcard rules to block those ads. That's easier than Firefox's Adblock.

Re:Adblock

As I expected, the list blocks Google ads. If everyone downloaded this list and used AdBlock, Google would die. In case you did not know it, 99.99% of Google's income is from Google ads, based on their public reports for share holders, etc.

Blocking obtrusive ads is justified. Blocking any other ads is not. Did you ever stop to think who's going to pay the bandwidth costs of sites that depend on income from ads? The more popular a site is, the more incredible bandwidth fees they pay (popular sites can't use free hosting, mainly due to their bandwidth needs, etc). Without ads, sites like SourceForge.net or Slashdot.com would have to charge everyone for reading or die too. Think twice before blocking unobtrusive ads. Mass selfishness could bring many popular free sites to an end.

Re:Adblock

Bah, how about not forcing Opera to keep up to date with specific extensions found in Firefox...

Firefox actually has a worse adblock implementation then Opera, did you know that?

The root of the problem as I see it is not a poor integrated adblock functionality -- I'm sure Opera 9's new interactive and visual adblocking mechanisms are sufficient for most people -- the problem is more likely deep extension support for power users to extend functionality as they want and need.

While Opera ASA is doing an admirable job of keeping up to date with the competition as a company, my number one wish for Opera 10 is good extension support.

And no, Opera's aging Netscape plugin support is lacking in so many areas, like chrome and renderer extensibility, that I won't even discuss it.

Integration.

Human Interface Guidelines, native widgets, integration with the host OS. Opera is completely unusable because it refuses to behave like all other applications, be it in Gnome or Windows. It doesn't matter if that way might be better, because the problem is switching between paradigms.

Re:Integration.

Your one person. He meant everyone. Without following HCI guidelines, it makes it difficult for someone new to start using the program. Let me give you an example. I used to work on a coworkers computer in my spare time for a little extra money. She only liked Mozilla (and later firefox). Her husband only liked Opera 6. (literally one version) He would not switch off opera or let me upgrade it. He complained that anything other than the browser he knew was too hard. His wife just thought it was a piece of crap like IE. She was able to use IE, Netscape 4, Mozilla 1.x and Firefox without me telling her much. She just needed to know how to organize bookmarks and change her homepage. She could not use opera, but every other browser was ok. Why is that? Could it be the odd layout in opera? Yes. Now I realize that is the charm of opera for some, but the masses hate it. Its similar to Mac OS X that way. Its different enough that some fear or hate it. This could be applied to anything thats different like gnome, kde, etc. People are used to certain widgets in certain places with a certain look and feel. Unlike the web, conventional user interfaces must follow strict guidelines. (games are the exception to some degree) Even on the web there are certain conventions like RSS icons for instance.

Tools for standards compliance (for developers).

Browsers bend over backwards to be compatible with lots of pages, and by so doing promote worse behaviors.

The mess that passes for HTML is a direct result of the permissive approaches of browsers. It is understandable that browser vendors want to make the browser work on as many pages as possible, but it is a horrible tool to use in the hands of web developers because the bottom line is if it works, it is OK.

Browsers need modes that can be enabled for developers that raise exceptions when exercising behaviors that were inserted for compatability but which violate standards and/or are likely to break other browsers/versions. They need to do this to make it easy for developers to use the browser to test their web pages while not promoting worse-formed content. Whichever browser does this first, will be my choice of main browser to use when testing my web pages.

Only one thing needed

I think Opera is a great browser (although I personally prefer Firefox because of all the plugins), but it is also the most feature-packed browser. That's a good thing, but too much is crammed into into this thing. Most people use only the most fundamental basics of a browser. What I would like to see is an ultra lite version of Opera with all the nifty features removed, or at least scalability in the full version.

Internet Explorer is great because it allows the user to remove stupid buttons, move around the menus and so forth, making the browser only one length thick on top. That's great if you want more space for viewing web sites and such. I personally prefer compact applications. When I look at Opera, I don't see that. I see a lot of cool stuff but I don't really need most of it and would prefer to add these nifty things once that I need them.

Personally, I think it's a publicity stunt.

I don't know, I use Opera 99.9% of the time and only fall back to Firefox in extreme emergencies, but, I must say that I'm not entirely certain they really listen all that well to suggestions and such. For example, people have been calling for extentions (let's not get into an argument here, whether you think it's good or bad, the fact is, a huge number of people want extentions so they should at least make it more clear why they haven't made any efforts they've shown to us in this direction) for years and there isn't even an official response as far as I know. Then they do these "widgets" that are just pointless (hey, I tried. I downloaded several things that should be useful and tried to get the hang of using them, but, in the end they just get in the way and have no real use. I searched every widget on their site and didn't find one that I didn't end up finding to be in the way once the neatness factor wore off. Anything a widget can do, you can do better with an actual program in Java or some other easily portable language.) If you look at their forums you can find some long running feature request threads that a lot of people have "+1"ed that just never happen. (Not to mention that more than a few of those are probably requests for extentions. It gets posted a lot.)

We can hope though I guess. All browsers have a lot of room for improvement (though I personally feel Opera mainly just needs extentions and to remove the extra pointless overhead that widget support has added) and if they actually stop and listen maybe we could get a browser that's truly as close to perfect as any peice of software can be? (Ok, that's going too far I guess, but wouldn't it be nice?)

Personally, I think it's a publicity stunt though. Get the web designers to look at Opera and get it mentioned enough that more users hear about it. To make suggestions on improvements, web designers would have to actually get it and try it (actually, I like the sound of that since a lot of them would have no choice but to admit that it's a good browser and maybe should get the occasional support instead of an "only IE and Firefox supported" page.) The truth is though, it seems to me that most of the suggestions are basically going to be things that should be ignored, such as a designer asking that they support a proprietary extention that works only in IE (I still don't know why they do that sort of thing since it's actually more work in the long run.) The fact is, unlike the big two (IE and Mozilla/Firefox) Opera is among the very few that correctly implements enough of the actual standards to pass the ACID2 [webstandards.org] test, so it seems to me like there isn't going to be a lot of requests that they support this or that standard.

So what's left from a designer's perspective besides asking them to fully support whatever little bit of the standards they don't already? Most changes need to come from the customer's perspective I think. Extentions, a better download manager, etc. It's easy to think of suggestions a user can make. Actually, what worries me is that generally what it comes down to is a developer wants as much control over your browser as they can. For example, one might want the ability to change the skin and menu layout of your browser specifically for their site. That's great for the developer, but, the end user would go bonkers in a hurry. Besides asking for proprietary extentions and more control over the user's screen, there's really so little that a developer can do that I can only conclude this is really ultimately just meant to get people's attention (hey, they got it on slashdot even, that's a good start, though the problem is that most slashdot users are intelligent enough to know about browser alternatives and most here who don't use Opera are just using it because for whatever reason they don't like it.)

Anyway, I'm not saying boycott Opera or something, just I'm wondering if this is just a publicity stunt or if they really do have a point for