Things I Think About!

All of my.opera.com seems to be working for me except for all of the files that I have hosted here. At the moment, Opera is my only webhost, so I sort of need it! haha.

Anyone else having issues?

---

Since my last post, I've done exactly zero work on the skin. It's good and thin enough for me right now, although it still needs some serious work. Buttons can be made thinner; address bar can be boxed in better, etc., etc.

Since then, I have moved from Sydney, Australia back to Colorado, USA. My girlfriend is now my ex-girlfriend and life is moving forward. I'm waiting to hear back about a job, although they seem to be taking their sweet time. T-Mobile has messed up my phone service and I am only contactable via e-mail or IM (although, honestly, this isn't a bad thing). I have a roommate at my new place, and she's pretty awesome. My computers are in a state of not-working and working, like normal. I need to format all of them, but I need to find my XP disc, first. I know it's around here somewhere.

But, being around here "somewhere" is not particularly descriptive at the moment. My apartment is /still/ a total mess and I've been here a few months, now. But it doesn't quite matter since I'm intending to buy a house before the end of the year, anyway.

It's a scary, scary time for me.

I think it's high-time I changed the title of this journal. I haven't really had any ideas lately that aren't just niggling bug-fixes that I'm sure Opera is aware of anyway.

Instead I've been focusing my time making a better Opera Skin. Well, not 'focusing' so much as 'fiddling when I should be doing homework'. I've started off with a skin called 'noname' and I'm editing it down... removing extra pixels here and there... slowly changing colors... just getting it to look and behave like I want: A very utilitarian, very /thin/ skin that isn't roundy and annoying like Breeze. So far I'm quite pleased with what I've done. There are a lot of things that need some work still, and in the end I also intend to re-make all of the buttons (the last task, since it'll be the most annoying ), but I'm slowly getting there. The version I have now is good enough for me to ditch my long-loved Dark Tofu and use it permanently everywhere (including in Opera@USB ).

I think there could be more documentation about Opera Skins, though... I've found the current Skin Tutorial to be lacking in some areas, mainly the documentation of all available sections and to what they refer. I think this could best be handled with a /ton/ of images and bright red arrows showing the affected part of Opera and two example images (for example: [Addressbar Skin] with all of the options set to -10 and then all set to 10 -- it'd give a /very/ exaggerated view, but it'd make it easy to see the difference. There could be an arrow pointing to each area showing where 'padding' affects and where 'margain' affects, etc). This is something I may actually do myself someday... probably just as a webpage, or maybe as a wiki. It'd be nice to have for new skinners (like myself).

I look forward to the day I can upload my skin, though... sure it's my first skin, but if all goes as planned, it'll be perfect (for me) and I think a lot of other people will like it, too.

Now... about that homework...

In my last post, I erroneously stated that Opera sometimes requires a clean install. Rijk, however, pointed out to me that I was wrong, and so I point out to you the same: that I was wrong.

I guess my time in the Beta Forums colored my understanding of how Opera works on new installs. It won't happen again, I promise.

I do have to wonder, though, what's next for Opera?

Obviously the most high-profile thing is Acid2. I expect the next major addition to Opera to be support for the Acid2 test. I'm sure they'll do bug and security fixes between now and then as well. But, honestly, Opera 8.5 is darned good.

I've reported in the bug section many times about some of the niggling bugs Opera has (and has had for a while), but it seems that Opera is either uninterested in fixing them (since most of them occur only in SDI mode, which is not exactly the popular way to run Opera) or cannot fix them due to an architectural problem (I think the "image dialogue not working at all in a popped-up window" is one of these).

I know they're not going to sit around, either. Opera makes money with it's web browser. It has to pay developers and keep up with the times.

So I wonder... what's next?

I know this update is focused on IMAP and all, and that's great 'cause in the past IMAP would've been amazing to have, but I'm not going to talk about IMAP.

Specifically, I want to talk about problems I've been seeing in Opera dating back to 7.0 beta 1. That's quite a few versions back. They're just small things, but they're things that I encounter often enough to drive me ABSOLUTELY BATTY.

1. Most Recently submitted as bug #164801: Opera's Right-Click Menu on an image in a popped up window doesn't do squat.
I've been complaining about this forever, and it never gets fixed. A fair few websites pop their images up in a window. When these are, for instance, desktop images, a user (such as myself) may desire to save these for use at another time. So in Opera I right-click the image from, let's say he Constantine Movie wallpaper gallery (located here: http://constantinemovie.warnerbros.com/wallpapers.html ). It pops up in a new window. "Oh, that's nice! I think I'll save it and/or use it later." Right-click 'Save Image...'...
...
...
Why isn't anything happening? Oh, that's because it doesn't work. Okay, so I'll check the image properties and go to the direct URL. Right-click image... 'image properties'...
...
...
Oh... it's still not working. I see.

And so on, and so forth. I don't remember how long this particular bug has plagued me, but I am pretty sure it goes back to /at least/ the 7.2 betas.

2. Right-click + scroll wheel in SDI mode.
Not much to say except it worked in 6.xx, and hasn't worked in SDI mode since. It works in MDI mode, when you're cycling through tabs, but that's not very helpful to me, now is it? I guess I should probably submit this as a bug again in case someone's actually caring.

3. Resizing an opera window using the bottom right corner with two scroll bars.
This bug has plagued Opera since about version 7.2 as well. If you have two scroll bars like so:

and you use the bottom right area (not the actual window border -- that /does/ work) -- the area with the diagonal lines -- it doesn't move. The mouse pointer indicates that it should, but it doesn't. Sometimes it's just really easy to grab that corner and resize, except that it doesn't work until you move your mouse to the window border, not that corner. Annoying, but easy to avoid, I guess... mostly just annoying.

I guess that's all. While I'm happy for IMAP users and all, these bugs are /not/ unknown to Opera. to say they are is to say that they haven't read at least one of the bug reports I've submitted over the last year or two. And while that's possible, they shouldn't offer a bug reporting service if they're not going to use it.

Edit:// Haha, knew I forgot something... it's the other half of the title, after all!

Patching.

Currently, a user has two ways to install when a previous installation of Opera already exists:
1. Install the new opera over the old one. Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it isn't. Depends on the alpha/beta/preview.
2. Uninstall Opera, reinstall new version. To do this /safely/ a user really should delete the c:documents and settings[username]application dataOpera (after safely backing up bookmarks and any other files (like the search.ini if you're me) and c:program filesOpera folders. To leave them there risks losing customized changes and bookmarks and who knows what.

Personally, I use #2. I uninstall then delete the folders. That means that each time I install a new preview, I have to re-download my skin (because I always forget to save it, heh), re-enter my registration code, redo the appearance and re-set my settings, then close opera and copy my bookmarks and search.ini back to the documents and settings folder.

Most of the time this shouldn't be required. If there's some change to the opera.exe file, why does the whole program need to be reinstalled? I can understand the requirement for a major version change (say, Opera 6 to Opera 7, but they install to different folders anyway I think? It's been a while), but for a preview change -- say 8.0 beta 2 to preview 5 -- it's just rediculous.

I suggest that Opera includes some sort of script in the installer that checks either the version number of each file or the date built or date modified or SOMETHING, and if the installer finds old versions, it replaces them. Opera wouldn't need to be reinstalled, just patched. This would be FAR better for the casual user that just wants a security update. This is a much better method than 'installing over' the old version as it gives Opera more control over what's happening over an install.

Though I guess if every file is built every single time Opera itself is compiled, then it would be a complete overwriting anyway...

But then there are the instances (at least in the previews) where we are explicity told that "this release cannot be installed over an old release".

I just think it'd be nice, y'know?

Now that it's been a few days since this came out, I thought I'd post my thoughts.

After a bit of a discussion in the preview thread, I'm able to make 7.5 look just like I want it to. It's a great browser, mostly. There are still some SDI issues, which I mentioned in the thread.

Well, that post was noticed, and I recieved an e-mail straight from Junyor asking for SDI issues that I commonly run into! So I took a bit and e-mailed him back with a few things. If they all get fixed/worked on, I don't think I'd be able to contain myself.

The biggest one deals with the whole Panel setup. While it's great for some people, I, personally, don't like it. It also doesn't work /very/ well in SDI mode if you want to turn it off. Setting its placement to 'off' results in a transfer window inside the instance of Opera -- not an ideal situation.

My solution to this would be to allow any panel to become separated from an actual browser instance of Opera. That way, I could permanently have the Transfers Panel, Bookmark Manager, and anything else (M2, Opera's IRC client, perhaps?) pop up outside of a browser instance of Opera. Not how it's intended to be used, but it would just make so much sense. As one user pointed out, it'd be great to have the IRC stuff in a panel, that way you can browse and chat in the same window. That's probably the only panel that I'd consider having in way of my viewing, heh.

Regardless of what happens, I'm excited. I encourage everyone to try out the new beta (available here: http://my.opera.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=31 ), as it really is improved.