Andrew Gregory

Opera 10 Wish List

Saturday, 8. July 2006, 10:04:58

Daniel Goldman blogged for us to all say What would you like to see in the next Opera desktop browser?. This really isn't something to shove into a little blog comment - it deserves an entry all of its own!

CSS

border-radius : Rounded corners are something people want now, and they're using ugly hacks with images to do it. The sooner more browsers support this property, the better.
~~text-shadow : So cool! Just do it! Seriously, a little shadow goes a long way to making things look special.~~ _{(Added in 9.50)}
~~rgba~~/~~hsl~~/~~hsla~~ : RGB is for computers, HSL is for people! HSL would make it so much easier to create colour-coordinated designs. Alpha support is needed for the same reason opacity support was needed. IMO, opacity is being pressed into use where alpha colours would make more sense. _{(hsl added in 9.50, rgba and hsla added in 10)}
~~overflow-x/y : Mostly because IE and Firefox already support it.~~ _{(Added in 9.50)}

M2 (Opera Mail)

~~HTML composition~~ - No, not something I particularly want, but it is an expected feature. This was waiting for Opera to support contentEditable/designMode type of functionality, which didn't exist until version 9. Now that that support has been added, putting in HTML emails shouldn't be a drama. _{(Added in 10)}
Delete attachments.
Read newsfeeds in a panel.
PGP/GPG encryption.
Better newsgroup support, eg multipart binary decoding.
Threading needs a lot of improvement. Threads in my various emails and newsgroups always seem to be fragmenting all over the place! _{(This might have been added in 9.5x, 9.6x - I have seen some improvement)}

Other

Roaming profile - I'm sure Opera will eventually make this a my.opera service. _{(Opera Link is a start on this)}
Download manager - The ability to open more than one pipe to the same download, plus the ability to limit the bandwidth used by all the downloads.
Able to download only some files in a torrent.
~~DOM Inspector and JS debugger - there's already hints of a forthcoming JS debugger in opera:config, so that's good. They should each be available as panels too.~~ _{(Dragonfly - Added in 9.50)}
~~SVG-as-image support - the ability to use SVGs where ever GIFs, PNGs and JPGs can currently be used, i.e. in img elements, CSS, etc.~~ _{(Added in 9.50)}
~~MathML - I know there's some userJS to emulate support, but nothing beats native support!~~ _{(Added in 9.50)}
XBEL bookmark support
Form filling could stand some improvement. Opera needs to keep track of field name -> field values, and keep all entered field values in a special entered values history.
Default to native skin. I'm not a big fan of skins. Skinned apps never "fit in" with any other app and after a while just start looking untidy.
Default to having a "Go" button. It would be one of the first things I'd remove, but it's an expected part of browser UI for new people. It should also be prettied up with a green triangle icon or similar.
Chrome buttons with drop-down menus MUST have those little triangles that indicate the presence of those menus. On the current default web page navigation toolbar, the rewind, back, forward, and fast forward buttons are all missing those little triangles. Have little-trangle-less buttons available as a customization, but the default UI MUST HAVE THOSE TRIANGLES! _{(Added 11 July 2006)}

Not Wanted

Extensions
~~Update manager - I'm not convinced. Even on dialup, Opera's 4MB installer should take about 15min to download. Grab a coffee or something!~~ _(Retracted)

I'll come back and update this entry as I think of things...

Opera 9! Woot!Opera 9 and the Acid2 Test

Comments

YtseJam # 9. July 2006, 07:43

About MathML -- now that White Lynx, the creator of that UserJS has joined the ranks of Opera, I do believe this should probably get a push.

As for the rest -- +1.

(Except for that 'Go' button. blechs! -1)

Stahn # 9. July 2006, 12:02

The idea behind the Update manager is simple, should be like Firefox: Just download the part that's updated.

And they can make this even faster using some kind of IPS patches.

I think it's a must, becase, for example, I'm expecting an upgrade to the skin I'm using, so I must check manually everyday...

mxforce # 10. July 2006, 04:22

Update manager is not wanted? It becomes tiresome to do so with each new release. Not all of us have fast connections nor do we want to wait 15 mins when its not necessary. Besides it will help the newcomers keep up to date.

robodesign # 10. July 2006, 15:45

+1

+ update manager

vherva # 11. July 2006, 18:41

I would _really_ like to see improvements in the per-site settings: text size, user/author mode, show/don't show images etc etc.

ResearchWizard # 12. January 2007, 01:13

Chrome buttons with drop-down menus MUST those little triangles that indicate the presence of those menus. On the current default web page navigation toolbar, the rewind, back, forward, and fast forward buttons are all missing those little triangles. Have little-trangle-less buttons available as a customization, but the default UI MUST HAVE THOSE TRIANGLES!

That is just a matter of customization / skinning. For the (Custom and default) buttons there are two options for popup menus:
"show popup menu"
"show hidden popup menu"
first one is with triangle / dropdown arrow

So the default skin uses no triangles on purpose, I suppose to have a clean looking interface.

for more information see http://operawiki.info/AdvancedToolbarINIGuide#operatorplus