Tuesday, September 4, 2007 8:52:41 AM
opera, configuration, usability, kestrel
...
Yippee, Kestrel's finally out. As buggy alpha for now, remember! You are best of testing this in a seperate installation, installing in a new directory does that trick. If you decide to upgrade, you really want to have a backup of mail (and bookmarks, wand, cookies etc if these are important for you).
Among many else, this release aims to become more usable out of the box. That means no surprising non-obvious shortcuts where you need to read the documentation to figure out how to get your normal browser back after pressing the wrong key by accident. Yes, this did happen. Quite a lot. Our Elektrans testers made it very clear that power users will dearly miss some of the one-key shortcuts like 1/2 for tab switching and z/x for navigation. So we've also thought of a way to ship with those power shortcuts in a forward-compatible manner (shipping with an extra 'classic' keyboard setup will bring problems for us later). You can find the new switch to turn these shortcuts on under 'Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts'.
Now, what changes did we make, and why? There's a complete official list of changes available (edit: updated the link to point to the beta 2 version). And here's a list of reasons:
- Several keyboard shortcuts have been changed or added for better cross-browser compatability.
- All single letter and single number keyboard shortcuts have been removed. These one-key shortcuts are powerful, but also caused serious problems for many users. For most of them alternatives are available. They can also be switched on separately in the Preferences.
- All Shift+letter and Shift+number keyboard shortcuts have been changed or removed for the same reasons.
- All Alt+letter keyboard shortcuts have been changed or removed. These keyboard shortcuts are not compatible with many Opera localizations, because Alt+letter is used to access the main menu. Exceptions: Alt+P and the new Alt+D, both available for historical reasons. Preferred alternatives are available for the actions they perform.
- All Ctrl+Alt+letter keyboard shortcuts have been changed or removed. Windows user interface guidelines reserve these shortcuts for system wide use and as alternative input method for some keyboards.
- Keyboard shortcuts for seldomly used features have been removed, including two series of shortcuts that didn't show in the normal user interface: Ctrl+Shift+number shortcuts for 'manage' pages and Site Navigation keyboard shortcuts (think
<link rel=home ...>)
- Duplicated keyboard shortcuts that served no purpose anymore have been removed, those that were needed for compliance to operating systems guidelines have been made specific for those operating systems.
Monday, August 14, 2006 10:58:47 AM
office, opera, ribbon, usability
Remember me talking about the new MS Office interface, especially the
Ribbon, and how it could work for Opera? Now, while checking my feeds after getting back from vacation,
this video demo (3.3 MB) really made me drool
For those not clicking: it shows a Ribbon handling mode where it acts as a cross between menu and toolbars: taking minimal space while collapsed like an old-fashioned menu, only showing options when clicked - but then, it shows
all options in the typical Ribbon manner.
This is not something you can 'just' add to Quick (our cross platform interface layer), but I'd sure like to see this in Opera! Without having actually used it, I'd dare say it would improve usability quite a bit, giving that we want to both present a simple interface and give the user easy access to powerful features. No way to come even close with a customized toolbar this time, alas.
Tuesday, February 7, 2006 2:30:18 AM
office, opera, twelve, ribbon
...
Inspired by the new Ribbon interface design that is being developed for MS Office 12 [1], I wanted to see what you get in Opera, when doing away with the normal top-menu, panels and toolbars. Without sacrificing access to all the functionality Opera has to offer, of course. In this new setup, each function is available in one, easy to find, place.
Here's a screenshot of the result of this exercise, 'Twelve':
2006-06-29: updated screenshot
To try this setup yourself, install both the menu and toolbar from here:
Edit 2007-04-17: the links point to 9.2-compatible setups now
I did this by making the Alt+F11 shortcut work under Windows as well as Linux:
- Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts
- Doubleclick the active keyboard setup, and enter 'F11' in the Quick Find field
- Remove 'Platform Unix, ' from 'Platform Unix, F11 alt', then click OK a lot
- Now toggle the menu bar away with Alt+F11
Use 'Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Toolbars' to return to your previous setup.
For more info, explanation, and screenshots, visit the page 'Twelve' on my website.
[1] You can read some background information on the Ribbon
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 2:58:12 PM
opera, features, accessibility, configuration
...
One of the core goals of Opera has always been to provide you, to our best approximation, with the browser that makes the web available to everyone, and to give anyone the most comfortable way to surf the web. The way we handle features and configuration follows the following approximate formula:
- Normal browsing features: included, on by default
- Comfort features: included, can be disabled from the UI
- Features to make the web more accessible: feature included, UI to make use of feature might be second tier if it gets in the way for the majority that doesn't need it
- Finetuning features: configurable via Advanced prefs (if a significant minority might find it useful) or by editing text-based ini files
- Features to keep old users happy: feature included, disabled by default, configurable via UI or by editing text-based ini files
Note that "features to make the web more accessible" are not "bloat" or a "distraction for developers". Such features are very much needed for our mobile browsers, and it makes little sense to
not make them available or try them out in the desktop version of Opera. Hence things like "Fit to window width" and "Voice". And from old times: disable image loading, plugins, javascript etc. In Opera 9 you will get site-specific preferences, to make it easier to use the accessiblity options when necessary, and use the web as the authors intended by default. Or the other way around! To keep a sane and understandable interface, not all preferences can be made site-specific in 9.0. Experience and feedback will tell how the UI will need to improve or make more or less prefs available in this context.
"Editing text-based ini files" can be somewhat hard to explain to potential power users. Opera 9 will include a built-in editor for opera6.ini to make this easier. Of course we can have long discussions about what the default settings should be, and which settings should be delegated to opera.ini. The built-in editor is not meant as a alternative interface for the Preferences, so the latter should contain all the things a 'normal' user might want to change once in a while.
This posting is inspired by Firefox developer Ben's latest post
Battling Firefox Bloat. The problem I have with the Firefox philosophy: almost everyone is a member of a minority, and usually member of a few minorities. So with Firefox,
everyone has to manage a set of extensions for necessary (for them) features or nice-to-have comfort features like "Mouse gestures" and "Paste and Go".
And it has become clear that you can not trust the extension developers to stay passionately involved over many years, so it can be days or months after installing a new Firefox version before it is working again as it used to do. Opera's text-based ini files can be a bit more clunky to work with, and less powerful, but the advantage is that anyone with a text editor can find out how to do it. To write an Firefox extension, you need to know a fair bit of JavaScript at least, if not XUL.
Update: also read
David Baron's concerns about Firefox maybe relying too much on extensions.
Monday, December 19, 2005 10:23:51 AM
usability, feed, icon, rss
...
Tim Bray (of XML and Atom fame)
writes about the new found love between MSIE and Firefox (they agree on using the Firefox invented icon for announcing the presence of a feed).
How ironic that Tim actually added this icon to his page now! Because my initial thought on the MS-FF agreement was "this doesn't help people much unless the symbol is universally adopted by page authors as well."
I couldn't agree more on the content of his posting: things need to be even simpler and more integrated. Two nagging details though...
- I'm not sure how we can have a 'default feedreader' on Windows. The 'feed:' pseudo-protocol is a unpopular hack (though it actually works if an app registers this protocol for itself...) and the mime type 'application/rss+xml' doesn't work because it lacks the source URL. The latter problem can be solved in Opera if you care to configure the setting manually and check "Pass web address directly to application", but users of other browsers don't have that luxury. And Opera's really integrated RSS icon in the address field kicks in earlier, preventing you from sending the feed to a different default reader on your system.
- Tim suggest the localizable text 'Subscribe' for the autodiscovered subscription address. This doesn't fit well with our tendency for clean UI...
Monday, November 7, 2005 9:07:20 PM
office, usability, opera
Jensen Harris, working on the Microsoft Office "user experience" team, is keeping a blog, to explain about the user interface changes there are doing in the next Microsoft Office. Fascinating reading every weekday, and frankly the research facilities they have make me jealous. Luckily, it appears they build their monopoly-winning older versions (until Office 003) using the good-old
wild guesses, justifications, and personal 'anecdotes' served up as fact
method. Somewhat like we do, though occasionally some people get abducted from Karl Johanns Gate in Oslo, to be released only after performing some tasks in the latest Opera under the watchful eye of UI developers.
But MS now has a "Customer Experience Improvement Program", where users can opt-in to send
all their actions in Office to Redmond. Harris shares a little bit from the vast store of data they've collected in a few years, the
Top 5 Most-Used Commands in Microsoft Word 2003:
- Paste
- Save
- Copy
- Undo
- Bold
He also shares that, although Ctrl+V and the context menu are the most used methods to activate 'paste', the paste button is still the most used button in Word.
I'd
love to have data like this for Opera usage....
What do you think are the most usd commands in Opera? I'm afraid I can't give prizes for the best answer, because that is simply unknown
Sunday, November 6, 2005 2:20:06 AM
opera, tabs, firefox, usability
Firefox user interface developer Ben Goodger, payed by Google, tells about usability tests they have been doing.
Conclusions: a close button that is not on the tab is hardly noticed, and returning to the originating page after closing a tab is often expected behavior.
The title of this posting is a bit cheeky, after all Opera is not the only browser that opted for close buttons on tabs. Safari and Epiphany preceded us.
Monday, January 10, 2005 9:43:53 AM
tim bray, opera, shortcuts, usability
Tim Bray writes about keyboard shortcuts [1], he doesn't believe Apple's research [2] applies to him.
I find it hard to believe Apple's research applies to me as well. But it is probably true that learning and using keyboard shortcuts only makes sense for a few shortcuts that can be applied in all applications you are working with without thinking, and maybe a few more in the one application you use all the time.
In my experience, the keyboard can be
very efficient in a specific Opera use mode:
two-handed operation.
In the right hand, for fine control: the mouse. Click links, highlight text, doodle around while reading.
The left hand hovers above the left part of the keyboard, and is always ready to press Z and X (back and forward), Ctrl+Tab (cycle pages) and Space (page down, next page).
I have to say that in Opera, the mouse became a lot more efficient for me with the introduction of mouse gestures. I don't have to travel accross the screen anymore for some common functions. I only use three gestures regularly:
- back
- forward
- close page
The others? I don't use them often enough, so I have to think before using them. And just as Tog explains for keyboard shortcuts, that means the speed advantage is lost. Together with the scroll wheel, this means that mouse control is now about as efficient as two-handed control for me. But I still have two hands, so why should I not keep the left hovering above the keyboard?
There are cases when you have to perform repetitive tasks, and then it also makes sense to think about the way to perform the action with the keyboard. For me, this is for example using Shift+Down to select consecutive checkboxes in a long list of messages in a webmail interface, using Space to mark a few of them (as Spam, or for deletion). The fine control of poiting to each checkbox with the mouse is too annoying. This is a shortcut (spatial navigation) that is only possible in Opera, if you would use Tab in other applications you would have to go through all the links on a page as well.
[1] <
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/01/09/JeremyOut>
[2] <
http://asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html>
My Opera
