Blog tag: 5 things I’d like to see in Opera
Published July 19th, 2007 1:37 PM EDT By Daniel GoldmanHere at Opera we take our user’s feedback very seriously. We scour the blogosphere and read the Opera Forums in search for feedback and suggestions from both existing and potential Opera users.
We’re busy with some pretty exciting stuff right now. On the desktop side, we’re working on a major update to the Opera desktop browser with Opera 9.5 and following that, an even bigger update with Opera 10. On the mobile side, we’re of course working on Opera Mini 4 that includes desktop-like browsing capabilities and an update to Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile Smartphones and Symbian S60 phones.
And who could forget the Wii browser… the fun browser on your TV.
At Opera we truly want to make the best browser for computers, mobile phones, gaming consoles, etc. We would like to know which features you want us to add to make your Opera experience even better.
There are already plenty of places where you can leave your feedback regarding Opera features that you’d like to see, but we want to reach out to a larger group of people on the Web, including those who don’t use Opera as their primary browser. As such, instead of having all of you post your features-feedback here or in another place, we will be doing this using blog tagging (you might call it a game of ‘Opera tag’).
Here is how it will work:
Once you’ve been tagged by someone, share your list (on your blog) of 5 things you’d like to see in Opera, and then tag up to 5 other people who will then post their own lists and tag up to 5 more people.
Feel free to list the things you’d like to see in Opera on the desktop, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, and/or Opera on the Nintendo Wii.
Having all of you share your wish list on your own blogs will not only encourage participation by others, but will also generate discussion about Opera.
I and others at Opera will be on the lookout–monitoring the blogs that have been tagged. You could always make it easier for us to find you if you either link back to this post, post your blog link to the comments of this post, or send me an email with the link. You can also link to the people you are tagging, like I did below.
So without further ado, let me begin.
5 things I’d like to see in Opera:
- Auto-update feature – would make updating Opera for non-tech savvy users much easier and simpler.
- Ad blocker – Although I’ve mentioned before that no browser would ever add an ad blocker, I think there should be a simple way to click and install a list of ads to block.
- Better Widget integration into the browser – I would like to see some open APIs built into Opera, which would give Opera Widgets more interaction capabilities with the browser.
- Subscribe to RSS – An option to subscribe to feed readers other than Opera’s, such as Bloglines, Google Reader, etc.
- Developer tools – Opera’s current developer toolbar is good, but I would like something with the caliber of Firebug.
Bonus request: I would like Opera to be able to read and respond to all my emails. 
Now here is my turn to tag (up to) 5 others:
Lawrence Eng, Ryan Wagner, Vygantas Lipskas, Stefan Constantinescu, and Pallab
Tag, you’re it!
Recommendation:
When someone tags someone else, each name should be a link to the tagged person’s blog. For example, when you tag me, do this: Daniel Goldman
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Oh man…you’re putting me on the spot now! I think I’ll have to let this one settle overnight and make sure I come up with a good list!
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Ryan, take your time. We want good feedback.
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offtopic: you can already subscribe to google reader, by making your tag public and visiting it’s public page ( looks something like http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user//label/)
and someone please wish for a proper and usable extension system that are a lot more usable than the lolwidgets and are integrated into the browser.
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i think, that aside from this action, opera devs should spend a lot more time in wish-list forums, customisation forums, and userJS forums.
many wishes and problems are mentioned there almost daily for months or years [roboform integration, or opera equivalent solution, spellchecker..].
im realy surprised, that you ask people to fill yet another wish entry, while there are thousands of unadressed in wish list forums
however i agree with your list mostly, for me adblocker wouldnt be on it, but inline-spellchecker, for sure.
- dev tools [like ff]
- autoupdate/incremental patcher [like ff]
- rss - i dont like how opera treats xml’s - basic default styling wouldnt hurt anyone, but lack of it - does. and i hate m2 for its 1990ish, so yes, ability to easily subsribe feeds in external app is needed. emphasis on ‘easily’.
- centralised, opera maintained, supported and hosted, userJS repository, one to rule them all. and persistant storage for it. that way we could write some kind of extensions [like ff]
- better ad campaigns. sorry to say, but while opera programmers are good, their marketing people seriously need to think in other terms. and im not talking about some ‘man-in-panties’ lame ads for ‘other’ people. opera needs solid, agressive ad campaigns in more than one media. without it, 2% market share is in danger. simply as that, safari is worse than opera, but has cool factor to compensate, it is enough these days.
it seems to me, that formarketing guys at opera success is ‘keeping the job’, not ‘increasing opera market share’. opera marketing seems to lack any form of incentive. persuading opera users to use opera.. well, increasing market share doesnt work that way.
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“opera devs should spend a lot more time in wish-list forums, customisation forums, and userJS forums”
How do you know how much time they spend there? How do you tell how often lurkers visit a forum? Got some inside info for us?
“better ad campaigns”
Which would be?
“opera marketing seems to lack any form of incentive”
Name some examples of incentive then.
“Opera needs better and more aggressive marketing” is pretty vague.
“it seems to me, that formarketing guys”
You know them personally?
You seem to have a lot of inside info
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Daniel, since your #5 was already officially anounced (and as i remember, is scheduled for Peregrine), does this mean that your other 4 wishes are also in the works?
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and you seem to do everything to not touch the point of the post.
what is your input into disscussion? you just diss everything that isnt in line with ‘opera is teh r0xors’. spare it.
incentive? thats the problem with opera ad campaigns - there arent any. if you browse the net for more than one hour, around IT related websites for sure you are going to read at least one FF-related article. count how many articles about opera are in mainstream press. 5 a month?
believe it or not, but for such article to be written, you have [as opera] to do something. send them something to write about, convince them that people would like to read bout it. in opera position it is the only way - opera isnt cool, there isnt much demand for opera-related news. so instead of informing about new final version, they are going to write 250′ article about iPhone. people want to read about it, because they were made to do it. made in a way, that apple sells 600$ worth of outdated phone and people are happy about it.
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1) For the 10,000th time:
AUTOFILL/ROBOFORM (which is also in #3 and #4 below)
2) Easier way to specify site specific CSS files (to override designs).
3) sid’s post above is 100% accurate in every way.
4) read sid’s post again in case you missed one of his points.
5) Better address book. ( I know you arent competing with outlook, but if I am going to use Opera for all my email, and I want to, I dont want to ever have to open Outlook, and if I can’t get the Adress Book functionality, its not gonna happen. Ask around, lots of people are stuck with outlook for this reason.
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Companies and individuals spend incredible amounts of time, effort and money producing and delivering content to people via a website. Servers, hosting, bandwidth, software plus the actual production and editing of the content done on a reasonable scale costs a fortune. Days, if not weeks or months, of designing and coding on the technical side, endless hours of writing, editing, video production and encoding, image selection - all delivered to the user for free, gratis, no cost, without charge. With one caveat - adverts.
What will happen to all these sites if everybody blocked the ads? They wouldn’t be able to sustain thier operations, and they would have to resort to a different business model - or just pack it all in. 80-90% of content on the net would disappear or go behind subscription services. The ad blockers would have achieved nothing.
In short: the biggest damage blocking banner ads will have is in killing content and informational sites that depend upon banner advertising to generate revenues. Blocking banner ads is shortsighted and will significantly reduce consumers’ options in the end.
My primary wish for Opera is to remove ad blocking and finally grow up and play nice on the Internet.
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Oh, and IRC channels are not called rooms. They never have been called rooms, until AOL came along and ruined everything.
Wish number two: rename ‘rooms’ to ‘channels’.
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@sid: at Opera we do have marketing campaigns running on the web. Are you aware of the Opera Mini and Wii browser campaigns we ran on more than 10 influential blogs? With all due respect, just cause you haven’t heard about them, doesn’t mean they don’t exists.
@dane: Smart catch.
@Remco: I agree with your logic. However, if we see that it something that our users want and also something that’s keeping many Firefox users away from Opera, we should definitely consider adding the capability to manually download ad blocking scripts. I’m not suggesting that Opera automatically block all ads.
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@Daniel: Let’s be reasonable here: what ‘many users’ want, be it Firefox users or users in general, isn’t necessarily a good thing that should be haphazardly implemented. Ad blocking is bad for content providers in general (and users in the long end).
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Remco, do you have the same argument against Opera (and virtually all other browsers) blocking unwanted pop-up ads?
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A nice filter list for the ad-blocking feature can be found at:
http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/index.php
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“10 influential blogs. With all due respect, just cause you haven’t heard about them, doesn’t mean they don’t exists.”
well, ad campaigns are to be seen. if i havent seen it [and i own WII, and read wii-related blogs] than it isnt my smuggness, or my fault, but these ads simply dont server their purpose - being seen. being heard about.
you can do extremaly good ad campaingns in your intranet, or in corporate mail, but well, what matters is what can be seen outside. and it isnt our fault that we cant see it. users will never look for ads, that are the ads that have to come to me. but please, no opera spam in my mail
ps. blogs for opera fans do not count
they dont need to read any more about opera.
“if we see that it something that our users want […] we should definitely consider adding the capability
How about good IMAP support?”
owned
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I don’t get this. There’s a wish list subforum at the Opera Forums where features have been discussed over the years — and many of them implemented like site-specific preferences, adblocker, opera:config, etc — , so what’s the purpose of providing yet another place for it?.
Maybe it’s just me but it seems that the Opera forums and what they used to be are doomed: the desktop team blog completely killed the beta forum (problems/bugs/comments by devs are reported on the blog but there’s no way to make sense with all the cross-talking and nonsense drivel over there); the new my.opera gets more attention than the skins/setups/etc sections so what it used to be a good place for sharing is now a myspace wannabe; and finally this weird thing about tagging guys all over the net in order to know what would they want to have in future versions of Opera when there’s a well structured subforum for it.
The old Opera problem seems to be still alive: dispersion and wrong priorities.
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See this interview. Full IMAP support is coming in 9.5
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Yay for reading the text, Nimzo. Maybe you missed it, so here it is again:
“but we want to reach out to a larger group of people on the Web, including those who don’t use Opera as their primary browser”
Think of it as a marketing campaign where you reach beyond the small core of Opera users in the wishlist forum. You won’t even have to sign up for a MyOpera account to talk about Opera. If successful, this will spread well beyond people who normally blog about Opera.
The old user problem seems to be alive (one which plagues the weekly build blog too): people never bother to read the flippin’ text!
Your first priority Nimzo, should you choose to accept it, is to RTFA 
But anyway, sid.. I noticed that you didn’t actually answer my questions…
So an “ad campaign” is pestering journalists until they write about something?
By the way, Google news shows about 300 articles for “Opera browser”, and 800 for “Firefox browser”. Not bad considering the huge difference in market share.
As for ads, I don’t really see any Firefox ads online or offline, apart from the ones where Google pays you to download it which pops up sometimes. According to your logic, there are no ads for Firefox. There is no Firefox marketing.
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Why is sid the Firefox fanboy troll still posting in an Opera related blog?
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Note: “sid” = “rather underwhelmed”
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> Maybe it’s just me but it seems that the Opera forums and what
> they used to be are doomed
The forums are doomed because someone from Opera asks other bloggers what they want to see in Opera?
Nice logic there, Mr. GunJumper.
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Great, a smart ***. Targeting a larger group of Opera users was already done when Daniel asked about what features people wanted to see in future versions of Opera, the article reached the digg front page and Daniel server crashed due to to the amount of comments (most of them by Firefox/IE users) so come again?.
Breaking News: users just want better adblock (regex & lists) and webdeb tools similar to firebug in order to make the switch. This is pretty obvious for anyone that has been paying attention over the last few years and I assume the people in charge of these things at Opera have been doing it.
No need to run this tagging thing because it’s already known what users want unless it’s just one of those bizarre marketing experiments that come from Opera from time to time (OperaMan and so on).
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Jesus Christ, a guy misquoting comments giving lessons about logic…
Read the whole comment and try to understand it instead of jumping to the keyboard without thinking, Mr Knee-Jerk.
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This will be hard and I most certainly take my time to answer this question. One of the reasons I use Firefox is because I generally dislike the way Opera renders Google Reader and how the tabs behave.
When I’m reading an item and I hit V I want it to open up in another tab in the back ground, not move me away from my current tab. Lets not even talk about sites like meebo.
What makes this even harder is that fact that Opera Mini 4 is not feature complete yet, grrr.
I will do this, post it on intomobile and definitely have a few people to tag. Thanks Daniel.
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Nimzo, you asked a question and got a response. This is a new way to “ask” people. Tagging them makes it more personal. More of a viral effect. Something completely different from the previous round and the wish-list forum.
Breaking News: users want a lot of things. Your comment is obviously biased by what you personally want in Opera. Everyone thinks that what they want is the most important thing to everyone else. It is only natural of course, but one should not portray it as something it isn’t.
One must ask, though: if you already knew how this was different from using the wish-list forum, then why did you ask?
There’s more to the Opera forums than the beta forum, by the way. You should check it out some time. It’s very active.
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Actually, I did read the comment, and it didn’t make sense. There’s a place for the blog, there’s a place for the beta forum, and there’s a place for the other forums. They all have their tasks. If anything is dying it’s common sense due to your illogical ramblings.
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Wrong assumption, I don’t care about any of that. Better Adblock and Firebug are on the top of most wanted features; the comments to Daniel’s article that made it to digg were pretty eloquent.
Huh?. I already knew what?.I asked what’s the purpose of this since what people generally want it’s pretty obvious…
You clearly didn’t understand a single word. Just an example: the beta forum is almost dead, the number of threads have been down since the desktop team blog first appeared, now people post in the blog what they used to post and discuss in well structured forum threads. Another example: the setups and menus section is a joke now, it used to be ok but since all this “get your blog at my.opera” frenzy no one takes care of it.
Anyway, I’m outta here. Good luck with this tagging thingy, whatever its purpose is.
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Stefan, you could focus your list on Opera Mini, if you’d like. I know that’s sort of your domain now.
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I agree with Nimzo’s comments in general, especially those about the Opera Forum. I must also say that the level of hostility towards those who don’t follow the “official line” is quite high on this blog sometimes, at least that is my impression. There should be more tolerance and less attacks.
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As far as I’m concerned, I have to agree with Sid: there’s not much talk about Opera on the web.
But it’s not about marketing - it’s about “buzz”.
It seems like Opera doesn’t want to hurt anybody, and thus remain silent.
I use Opera for years, and I the only time I saw Opera giving an opinion was about the .mobi domain name, on a not-very-well-known website (and I saw this because Daniel reported it).
In my opinion, Opera can be more aggressive and create some good buzz. For instance: every one remember the stats on Apple website, about the speed of Safari 3. Opera was considered as the worst browser, even Internet Explorer was better. We know that the benchmark was outdated, wrong, and so, and so. But we never saw an official reaction from Opera… Only some jokes on the Desktop Team blog, and an Apple ad spoof for the release of the beta of Opera Mini 4. If Opera had a reaction (e.g. “Hey! You insulted our browser! You’re lying to billion people about the speed of Opera!”), it would have gained some “buzz” (”Ooh, they attacked Apple! Did they tell the truth?”), and people would have more spoken about Opera and his speed (”Wow! It’s true that Opera is really fast!”). And it can be the same story with the AppleTV, which claims to be the first mean of viewing YouTube videos in a sofa. Hey, and Opera for the Wii?
But this didn’t happen… And Opera will stay unknown from the crowd. One appealing thing: my brother (which has a Wii with Opera installed on it), downloaded and uses Firefox, whereas he don’t know about Opera. And he’s a non-techie person. My conclusion is: we don’t heard a lot about Opera on the web.
Opera, it’s time to show the world your real personality. Just make people talk about you.
I know you can do it: you did with releasing the beta of Opera Mini 4 a few day before the release of the iPhone, showing that you can do what Safari for the iPhone can do - and for free, for virtually any phone. People talked about it, there were a lot of blog posts, a lot of articles on known websites. People heard about Opera Mini.
I’m not at Opera, and I don’t know how you work. But it’s up to you to make Opera be a must-have browser. I only could wish you to succeed, you deserves it.
(Sorry for my English, I’m French and it’s late, here.)
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I agree with Nimzo, too… the problem is convincing the blogdevs… they are too set in thier ways….
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For me… 2 things I’d like to see in Opera:
- Better CSS3 support (including RGBA)
- System update for skins and widgets (located @ Opera)
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-Developer tools. Honestly? If we develop stuff on Opera, it’s more likely to work properly on opera - and since Opera focuses so much on standards, chances are, they’ll more on other browsers too. This should be a top priority.
-UI improvements - special effects and a generally slicker interface. It should stand out more from other products. Especially since the newsfeeds, mail etc. are so bland visually. This doesn’t mean make it look odd - people need to be able to look at it, and say “that looks good - what program and you using?”
- A way to easily export/backup newsfeeds, mail, bookmarks, toolbars, menus etc. all together. When I want to change computers I need to copy the entire Opera folder - I haven’t done a clean installation in years.
-Improved options on right click: I never use open in new window. I just use open in background tab. Reduce those options that are pointless. ALso, when I’m typing comments I want the option to right click and make text bold, italics, insert an image etc. without having to type in html/bulletin tags myself. I’d also like to right click on links and download with Free Download Manager and so forth. Right click for spelling would be awesome too.
-a better ad campaign - this is where Opera seems to be lacking. It’s not really the product, better in a number of ways it offers a btter experience than FF and IE. But the word isn’t really reaching everyone. Maybe sponsor an event or two, run more contests. Hit the social networking site, hit the colleges. And get some snazzy graphics…advertise in techy magazines, advertise on bigger sites. If nothing else, make some damn big claims, make sure you can do it - and challenge other browsers to do the same. More than the Acid2 test - something specific to Opera. People should want those features…which just happen to be unavailable on their browsers.
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I don’t want to add to the fight here, but feel I have to add two cents:
I think some are missing a bit of the point here. Sure a list with all wishes (or the forum with threads) would be a much more ordered way of doing it. And people could vote, and it would be easy to measure what feature is the most wanted.
So why spread a list all over the web? Maybe Daniel just wanted to fill some time? Or maybe the devs at Opera wanted to see what feature was the most wanted today, and wants to add that feature for the next release. Maybe it was just to see if Operas word could spread out to even more people?
This challenge/game could maybe trigger someone that doesn’t usually blog about Opera, to do just that today. That blog might have lots of readers that never knew what Opera was. At the same time, following the tags, both you and me, as well as Opera could find new blogs and new people that might have brilliant ideas, or even brilliant programmers that one day will join opera. Am I dreaming now? Well maybe I am, maybe not. But we won’t know before we try. So why don’t we just leave the arguing, and do this as a community. For the love of Opera, or even the web as it stands today. Maybe it will flop maybe not, at least I think we should give it a try.
It was not ment to come out as Mel Gibson in Brave Heart, but too tired to rewrite. “Over and out sionara”, “good night”, “buona notte”, “god natt” everyone.
- ØØ -
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Daniel, based on the assumption that I would not notice if anyone ‘tagged’ me, I have gone ahead and made my top 5 list.
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forgot to mentio that I love this meme
Forums aren’t usually my thing so definitely like the top 5 list idea.
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I ported my adblock list to opera, and it works fine however the downside is the lack of whitelisting in the content filter, so my only feature i’d like to see is some whitelisting functions in opera.
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fanboy, that url filter list isn’t bad. I like that fact that you didn’t throw in really generic things like *ad* (which as some of us know, blocks download pages at legitimate sites). It also appears to block all of the ads at Yahoo mail. I’m going to go post about it on my blog.
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Nimzo seems to have forgotten his comment:
“the Opera forums and what they used to be are doomed”
Not just the beta forum. All of them!
Who are the “blogdevs, comnut?
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the devs that are only seen on the blog…..
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..and I remember them saying “the PC is doomed”…. still being sold….
but yes, the once thriving forum is a shadow of its former self… (I am talking ‘Opera’ here, not the other chat…)
A year or two ago, I usually got hundreds of replies a day!!
now, one or two…. they have mainly gone to FF, or dont even know opera exists….
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1. Firebug like developer tool
2. Improved document type mixing
3. More Mac like interface (which I see is on it’s way)
With 1 and 3 - I’d switch immediately.
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Very nice idea. I am in.
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The forums WishList is definitely on our radar, we’re always hagning out there. But as I mentioned, collecting this important feedback on blogs helps us also get the necessary feedback from people who don’t use Opera as their primary browser. In addition to satisfying our current user base, we must reach out to IE and Firefox users and see why they haven’t yet used Opera or Opera Mini. In addition, posting the wishes to blogs helps in creating a buzz for Opera in the blogosphere — which is something we all want to see.
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GT500, you could easily track incoming links to your blog via Technorati or Google Blog Search — it’s how I do it. Alternatively, those who tagged you have the option of emailing and notifying you.
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Aside from those I have seen mentioned:
- Ability for skins to modify menus as well (a la Firefox) would be really nice.
- I like the security advatanges of isolating vs. integrating widgets. The downside to overcome: make more features built into the browser. (Spell checker is one that springs to mind.) Opera touts the smallness of its download - who cares if Opera ends up being an 8Mb download nowadays?
- Domain name completion, like Ctrl+Enter for .com (.net could be Alt+Shift+Enter, since Shift+Enter’s already used for open in focus, and .org with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Enter, since Ctrl+Shift+Enter = open in bg - this could be customizable too, e.g. I want Ctrl+Enter to add http://www. and .edu)
- Buzz marketing: a lot, lot more. I don’t know if Opera can afford the $1 per install Google is doing for Firefox; many people like money. The rest of the user base will do it by love of Opera’s truly innovative features.
- User-friendliness: merge preferences and appearance; better use of tabs and graphics to make the new dialog look less intimidating. Turn off by default the kbrd shortcuts I love, like z/x/5/… I know for a fact it puzzles and turns off users who hit them unwillingly. Tech savvy users will find the option to turn them back on. Access to critical mass means endearing the “average users.”
- Sell to enterprises the advantages of an integrated Internet suite, and the security of Opera. But only once you have fixed the update process, currently a big deterrent to choosing Opera for IT admins - in my experience.
Not taking extensions/add-ons into account, Opera is the best browser out of the box. It is also the most secure: you need to tell it to Leo Laporte, Walt Mossberg and other influencers. Cross-platform compatibility is a nice selling point too: no need to re-learn a new suite if you change OS.
Making the Opera community realize that an aggressive stance in response to questionning some of Opera’s choices or features actually hurts the browser. Over the years, I have seen quite a few users talk about it, and mention it as reason for stopping to use Opera or subscribe to its otherwise helpful user mailing list. Check the number of ***-for-tat comments on this entry to see what I mean.
Daniel: I love your blog, and the fact that you now work for Opera - hopefully for a long time. This kind of sustained word-of-mouth marketing can only help give Opera the kind of exposure it needs, and deserves.
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PS: I found that Opera plays rather well on the “cool factor” since version 8 or so; my.opera is very hip-looking. Why not advertize on sites like MySpace or Facebook?
PPS: I was glad to fork my $30 since version 5; what can Opera fans do now? I’d certainly enjoy going out of my way to help promote Opera - can we all PayPal you funds to buy a two-page spread in the NY Times (or Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Business 2.0, Fast Company, Inc…)? It seems to have helped Firefox.
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1. Integrated database of custom buttons like the ones on http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons in order to give normal users the possibility of make their own Opera without the need of “hacks”. Safari has a small function with some buttons to drag to main bar.
2. Yes, I agree with the auto-update.
3. yes, Real widgets, I’m tired of calculators, weather, and clocks.
4. To be able to customize side-bar as address bar: drag buttons, etc.
5. For Opera Mini A way to save webpages on memory phone. In order to be able to access them without the need of reload or transfers. I’t would save users like me a lot of money. My K310a embedded browser NetFront can save webpages on my phone’s folders so I don’t waste money If I want to see those pages again.
6??…More marketing please !! Sometimes I think that I am the only one who uses Opera and Opera Mini here in Colombia.
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Jejeje I’m not really the only one who uses Opera in my country, I have some friends who uses Opera Desktop and 1 that uses Mini too. But the marketing is very bad.
Colombia is called a 3rd world country, yes, but we all have GPRS on owr phones (if supported by the phone) and the service providers do marketing with it. They tell people that we can acces the web but it seems that everyboy does it on their enbedded phone’s browsers. Where’s Opera ?
Not only US, Europe and Asia access the internet.
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Daniel, Technorati is interesting, but I know that there are more blog posts out there that link to my site than what it’s showing me. As far as Google Blog Search, I was surprised to see no results in the search. Perhaps a regular Google search will provide more results.
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GT500, I haven’t found any issues with either services mentioned. They both provide me (seemingly accurate) information on blogs that link to me.
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A normal Google search reveals a startling number of results, but many of them are for gt500.org.uk instead.
BTW: I just noticed that your little browser and OS icons that go in everyone’s comments don’t have transparent background. If you want, I can fix that for you.
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GT500, thanks for the offer. I’ll send you a zip file containing all the icons.
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@Chuck Monroe: Opera already supports domain name completion, and it is customizable like any other keyboard shortcuts. Its in the Address Dropdown widget section.
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No blog, so I’ll post a list here.
1. Roboform. I won’t say “or equivalent” because Opera’s attempt will never be equivalent.
2. Global and site preferences to disable page JS only - so user JS, bookmarklets, and opera:config still work.
3. Beg or bribe Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on to test in Opera.
I’m not greedy, 3 wishes is enough.
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Here’s my list: http://weblog.timaltman.com/node/862.
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@Simon Houston - To my knowledge, you only have one choice under Prefs > Adv. > Network > Svr Comp. I’ll be thrilled to be proven wrong!
(I am not sure why you mention customizable kbrd shortcuts; it wasn’t the point of that remark.)
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@Chuck Monroe -I did, because its already possible! Its not a tickable option in preferences dialog. Its a DEFAULT shortcut as part of 9’s shortcut setup, you can customise this already via keyboard shortcuts. Simply put, its a default shortcut that you can redefine yourself in Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Keyboard > Click “Edit” then enter “Autocomplete server name” in the quick find field.
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So cool! Thanks SO MUCH Simon
I mapped “Enter alt shift” to:
Autocomplete server name, “http://www”, “net”
I mapped “Enter ctrl alt shift” to:
Autocomplete server name, “http://www”, “org”
Any idea how to prevent the “bing” sound when you press alt shift Enter?
You made my day
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Don’t think its possible in opera itself, as it seems every windows program with that shortcut does it, must be a windows thing. Try going to Control Panel > Sounds/Sounds and audio devices > Sounds tab > Set “Default Beep” sound to None. But that will disable it for all windows apps. It probably won’t cause any problems though.
Hope that helps.
using
Yeah - not really what I wanted; I’ll live with it. Thanks again for the huge tip.
using
Chuck, Simon, see this screenshot.
The keyboard shortcuts, of course, offer a greater level of control than simply specifying the prefixes and extensions in the Server Name Completion settings.
using
I’m sorry for double posting, but in regards to the sound you hear when pressing Alt+Shift+Enter, I think you’re hearing a noise related to the Windows “Sticky Keys”. You can turn that feature off in the Windows Control Panel, under Accessibility Options (or something like that).
using
Thanks GT500
Smart idea - the only problem is the order, e.g. “asp” ctrl enter goes to asp.com, when I really had asp.net in mind.
About the bing, I realized Windows was catching it, but I was surprised Opera would let it “bubble up” to the OS, since it had been setup as a kbrd shortcut. Looks as though it is unhandled, if you see what I mean. Anyway, I am really happy to have my kbrd shortcuts for http://www. .net and http://www. .org - this was one of the very few things that irked me with Opera.
Can’t wait for 9.5, and the revamped M2
using
You’re right that the server name completion in Opera is a bit limited, but that’s because it’s not based on keyboard shortcuts. Just typing in ‘microsoft’ into the address bar, and pressing enter, will cause Opera to look for ‘www.microsoft.com’ (which is different from any other implementation, which all use special keyboard shortcuts to engage the feature). I think it’s a little simpler to use, but at the same time it’s also more limited (as you mentioned).
As far as the “sticky keys”, Windows does not allow any application to override them. If one of the keys that activates the “sticky keys” functions is pressed, then Windows will catch it, and unless you are using a kernel module to catch keyboard input before Windows can parse it, then Windows will always respond to those keys before any other application will.
using
1. Downloads acceleration - Metalinks, segmented downloads whatever it takes, Opera should be really fast on all fronts.
2. Middle clicking ‘JavaScript links’ opens them in new tabs.
3. Progress bar for uploads - Eg: To X-Drive, Yahoo! Briefcase etc.
4. Extensions / Plugins.
5. SOCKS proxy support.
using
@Chuck Monroe
If it is only that page you have problems with, why not just bookmark asp.net, and add a nickname to the bookmark called asp. then you don’t even have to hold controll down. Just write asp + enter.
- ØØ -
using
comnut
“the devs that are only seen on the blog”
The devs that are only seen on the blog are too set in their ways? Huh? Have you ever heard about the concept of “lurking”, by the way? You know, reading a forum but not writing anything?
“but yes, the once thriving forum is a shadow of its former self”
A shadow, only with a lot more members than before?
“A year or two ago, I usually got hundreds of replies a day!!”
Hundreds of replies! In the forums! You are sure that isn’t because there were fewer people making new threads back then?
using
@GT500 - I see what you mean; I’ll just bare with the bing or turn off Sticky Keys, a minor inconvenience now that I have the server completion
Like you said, it is actually very user-friendly - something I don’t think any other browser has.
@Øyvind - Thanks
I use bookmark nicknames quite a bit, they are a priceless timesaver. But http://www.asp.net was just an example of a site I’d visit rarely enough, not to warrant a bookmark. (See
#comment-66177 on this page, Simon Houston tells you how to set your own server completion with kbrd shortcuts - I wish I had realized way sooner Opera could do this.) On this topic, I recently noticed that Firefox also supported them - I thought Opera was the only one supporting them.
using
@Chuck Monroe:
An other option is to just reorder the top domains. Usually if you add .net before .com you won’t get as many misses as the other way around. Since there is fewer .net domains than .com. If that made any sense at all to you.
Well then you have a problem
But as you said yourself. Shortcuts should do what ever you want just fine.
- ØØ -
using
@Øyvind - Thanks
I’ll keep what you suggested for country codes, leaving .net, .com, and .org to kbrd shortcuts.
using
I want opera mini 4 to support flash or flash lite so I can watch youtube videos on my phone i have a sony ecrisson p990i.
I don’t know if it is opera’s fault, symbian’s fault, macromedia’s fault or sony ecrisson’s fault all i want is flash support for my mobile phones is it really that difficult.
has anyone else got the same problem.
using
plus opera mini 4 beta doesn’t support wordpress blogs.
using
done that.
http://my.opera.com/operafan2006/blog/
using
Sounds like you should be using Opera Mobile and not Opera Mini. All traffic goes through Opera’s servers when you browse with Opera Mini. Can you picture millions of people watching videos using Opera Mini and bringing Opera’s servers to their knees? Sounds like a bad idea to me.
That, or Opera Mini would need to support direct streaming of videos outside of Opera’s servers, but that would make it huge since decoding video isn’t a small task. So it wouldn’t be Opera Mini anymore.
using
@john: for your mobile, use: m.youtube.com
this is a youtube page specifically designed for mobiles that streams the videos not using flash but using 3g video so this should probably work in any modern smartphone.
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My thoughts are here:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/07/what_id_like_to.html
- A
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I have just 1 wish:
The option to EXPORT and RESTORE all settings! skin, stored passwords, buttons configuration, bookmarks, etc. All in just one simple file. I dont think I’m asking too much.
I dont need torrents downloads or rss reader… I already have software for that… I just want Opera to be fast and safe.
using
I finally got around to making my list..
http://www.kyleabaker.com/news_comments.php?news=44
using
Things that should be done with the wii browser:
1. Better Flash (and other video) Support
2. More audio support
3. More compatiblitilty with websites
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1) My number one wish is for better plug-in support. Flash on Linux doesn’t work as well as it does in Firefox and VLC doesn’t work at all.
2) I also agree that enabling other RSS readers is important.
Chad
http://linuxappfinder.com
using
1. Auto update.
2. RSS/Feeds in teh side panel
3. Export and import All Settings giving the options for bookmarks toolbar ad button settings and whether or not to include skins in teh exported archive.
4. Option to remove or hide the title bar, similar to Maxthon 2. so much sleeker.
5. DO NOT MOVE THE TAB BAR UNDER THE ADDRESS BAR… If you do so.. PLEASE give me teh option to have it the original way. The right way. The Opera Way. it just makes more sense.. and i prefer the look and feel of it. Firefox, as great as it is has always felt wrong to me. I recommend it to many people but i just don’t use it myself.. never ever warmed up to it.