Marc's Journal

Hi Marc,

Well, that is sad news indeed. Though I understand the frustration of not having some important sites working for you, your feeling that nothing has happened there in the last 4 years is pretty harsh.

In that time, opera has done a huge amount of core development work. Lots of changes have been made. The problem is that all those technical advances are not so easily appreciated. All the grunt work goes into making the core of the browser work better, but all the marketing goes into selling other stuff. But just because the marketing guys are focussing somewhere else doesn't mean nothing has happened elsewhere!

The desktop team blog, which releases weeklies, is just that - the Desktop team. They will tell you about changes on the desktop, they won't be talking too much about core issues like better HTTPS certificate negotiation, fixing handling of unclosed HTML elements parsing, working round wrong implementations by other browsers while balancing spec commitments etc etc. It may have taken 5 developers 2 weeks to optimise error handling, and 1 developer 1 day to add in fraud protection, but the desktop team will talk about the desktop changes to fraud protection. And you will think, "God, why don't they fix proper stuff instead of adding fluff!"

Also the Desktop team are really focussed on the next point release (9.x), but as I read somewhere, lots of developement is being done in the background for the next major release (10.x), so you think less is being done than it is.

And I do have to re-emphasise - widgets are web pages. For example, when a core opera dev has to optimise widget rendering, he is working on the core rendering engine, not on widgets! So saying opera focuses on 'widgets' and not on 'stability' per se is not accurate. Please don't propagate this idea that widgets are some voodoo magic different from browsing.

Fraud protection is genuinely useful to lots of normal web surfers, and I doubt has taken many developers to implement (just uses HTTP requests which are what opera has been doing since, um version 1 ).

For some of the complexities of getting e.g. online banking working (luckily all my online financial services work perfectly with opera ), see Dave Storey's recent posting here: http://my.opera.com/dstorey/blog/show.dml/607009 - Opera has bent over backwards to placate online banks (I think specifically of breaking memory cache on HTTPS sites due to a perceived security weakness, that upset a number of long-term opera users but took away the excuse many online banks used to refuse opera access).

What opera has not focussed on enough in the past - developer tools - is now in the pipeline. The big problem is developers ignoring opera when they develop. To really understand some of the complexity opera has to deal with, Hallvors blog is highly recommended, especially the following post: http://my.opera.com/hallvors/blog/2006/11/17/being-compatible-with-the-dark-matter-of

If another browser works better for you, then go with what works best. Hope you don't disappear completely, and thank you for all your contributions to the community

What a waste!

As you say you've followed Opera development for 4 years, and now you can't see how much has been done? And if you can see why you diminish all the work has been done (by you and by others) just because you don't like widgets or fraud protection is useless for you.

Personally, I see widgets as just gadgets (doh! ) nothing more, but as nontroppo already wrote this isn't any new technology. It's just a creative use of existent rendering engine (Presto to be specific )
As for fraud protection - I've never tought phising is such a big problem until I've read that IE, Firefox AND Opera will have fraud protecion. Well for me it's just a marketing but... Opera badly needs good marketing. I'm pretty sure you are aware of it.

So what's the big deal? You can't see that we have XSLT, XPath, contentEditable, canvas etc - to list just a few last additions? That browser is still lighting fast with lot of features. Regular user doesn't understand he needs XMLHttpRequest for his webmail to work with. He does not understand this freaky-deaky tech speak. But fraud protection this is something he CAN understand (even if you can't understand HOW it works). And wigets... Widgers are cool, colorful, shiny, cool (er... )

Decision of course is yours but please say you're leaving us for Firefox/Safari not for IE 7

Agreed- sad news indeed.... I've appreciated all that you've done for the community and for me. Although you all don't know me, I've gained a respect and appreciation for all the veterans around here that been so willing to contribute and support the community.

Like non-troppo says though, I think you're (because Opera has?) focusing on the wrong issues. Of course, I can't speak to your rendering woes, with execption to some google site quirks, but in so far as widgets are concerned- I've always thought that the marketing emphasis should have been "mobile" from the get go since that's where I think they would be the most useful: "We're developing Widgets to take away the browser chrome/UI from your mobile web-apps, and trying to make a standard! Oh- you can use them on the desktop too." That would have possibly helpe to stop the "what are going to do with this? More bloat?... etc..." reaction that is common with widgets.

Anyway, sorry to see you go, but you're right, nothing is for everyone. Hope you find a product that works best for you.

-Eddie


ps-I figured this was the case- but we registered here right around the same time (Feb 2003)

What direction should Opera go in? Widgets are mostly in Opera 9 because they're a great idea for mobile browsers and have ended up in the desktop browser almost as a side-effect. Mobile browsers are one of major reasons Opera Software stays in business! Fraud protection is in because it's a good idea, and also because IE and Firefox have it - making it a 'checkbox' item for people comparing browsers.

As for web sites not rendering correctly - you've been around for long enough to know that isn't something Opera can fix by themselves. Opera 9 is probably the first version where I can't think of anything supported by both IE and Firefox that Opera doesn't also support. Add to that browser.js and site-specific preferences and you have a huge amount of work and effort that Opera have put into making their browser "more compatible".

I'm not saying that Opera is bug-free - it isn't. Nor that it can't improve "compatibility" further - it can. Opera Mini is taking off in a big way - that's getting Opera's name in front of heaps of people and into the access logs of many sites, and is one of the better things Opera are doing to raise their profile, and thereby getting web sites paying attention to Opera.

I know what will keep MarcFou with us... radical changes to the mail client!

I've seen people with great potential that left projects and never came back. I don't think you are one of these persons. Even if it takes a while, I bet you come back. If not I owe you a

I mean, I can understand that others could more easily switch to another browser; but I think there is no community that can beat this one. Period.
(That doesn't mean, of course, that you have already left it or must do so.)

I hope you're having fun, though, any shape your way may take.

Yep, this isn't the best news I got this Christmas. (If it is mail improvements you're after, I can at least tell you that there is steady improvement in mail. It's one of the things that is very important to me since without Opera I would drown in the stuff...)

Still, as you say, it is impossible to please everyone. However much we try - our users are pretty important to us, and being able to pinpoint problems is something we work on.

Good luck, and hope to see you here from time to time

I, for one, will miss you on the community. You seem to really know a lot about Opera and your skins are among the best. Good luck.

Hi Marc, have a great time and good luck!

Hi Marc,
an end is always a beginning. I hope you found and find something interesting and satisfying. And there is always the possibility of a comeback. Maybe with some great new ideas and new power.

I hope your work is appreciated elsewhere as much as it was and is by the members of Opera community - including me. Thank's again for your instant and comprehensive help for my questions about skin copyright.

Please allow me to add some broader thoughts towards your frustration about "The last few versions of Opera have been going in a direction that no longer appeals to me."
The question: what makes web pages work in a browser for sure?

1. The browser developer makes the browser work exact the way another browser works? I'd think that's not possible. Furthermore it would really disappoint me all browsers having all the IE flaws and bugs.
2. The web page developer takes care the pages work fine in this browser. And in other browsers of course, too. But with restricted resources the ordering party may decide to order only the most important browsers - sadly not including Opera sometimes.

The follow up question could be: what could Opera ASA do to make web page developers and the ordering party ensure the web pages work in Opera?

Think about Firefox - IMHO first of all it is the big market share (and for a part the media hype and the emotionally strong supporters) that makes it a browser that has to be supported.

So I think Opera is well advised to try to increase market share. But as it is IMHO not possible to enforce a hype and as marketing was not the biggest strength of Opera ASA in the past there should be increase marketing efforts, what Opera does - slowly. The biggest benefit of bigger market share for the users will be more pages work without flaws in Opera.

In Opera9 Widgets are one example: get attention and have something comparable with Firefox's extensions (for most of the "just users"). And as most of it was IMHO already developed with Opera platform it was not a lot of effort to have them. And technically it is nice to have - the real power is not revealed yet. But more important Opera9 brought the urgently needed RTE and in general works on even more webpages. Well, I think especially in Germany most sites work in Opera anyway.

The fraud protection feature was a must: at least in German computer magazines every comparison of IE7, FF2 and Opera9.0 emphasized fraud protection as the new and important security feature and Opera9 didn't compare as good as it should. I don't want to discuss about the stupidity of this results here (IMHO Opera is still saver than IE and FF even without this feature).

Another aspect of fraud protection: it is the first step with a completely new philosophy - user data is sent to a server! And there will come more with synchronizing Opera Desktop and Opera Mobile (and probably Opera for Devices) via Opera servers. Opera follows a market trend: Web2, Online Applications, Flock, the comeback of client server architectures, etc.
And the same time Opera follows the old philosophy for a best Internet experience on any device (and from everywhere).

I'm quite a bit excited about the developments in near future with widgets and my Internet data everywhere. And hopefully Opera will become an alternative for everybody - at least I hope for Opera having higher market share. Additionally I'm very happy and expectant about the recent and future improvements of M2.

Hi Marc,

Why removing all your skins? Any chance to download your latest updated skins?