Increased focus on Opera extensions and ending support for Unite applications and Widgets
By Arnstein Teigenespirobind. Tuesday, April 24, 2012 3:01:03 PM
Over the last six years we have learned a lot from our work on Opera Widgets and Opera Unite, and when we later built the extension platform for Opera 11 we benefited significantly from this experience. Our extension technology has been a great success, with millions of monthly downloads, and so far completely dwarfing the other platforms. Recently, Opera also shipped a labs version with extension support in Opera Mobile, investigating a fully cross-platform extension environment.
Moving forward we want to focus on one high quality Add-on platform across our products, rather than spending resources on maintaining legacy systems. The know how and and technologies from Unite and Widgets are already being reused in other Opera products. An example is the recently announced UPnP support in Opera Dragonfly.
To provide your feedback about use cases for Opera Unite or Opera Widgets you want to transfer other Opera products, please visit to our forum.
If you are a Widget developer you might be interested in how to convert Widgets to extensions.







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WolfiwolfiTV # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:29:57 PM
How long will unite run?
no unite, no opera!
Shiso89 # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:49:20 PM
I trust more in Unite Apps than in Extensions.
RIP Opera Unite
Макаров Андрейwinand # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 1:12:14 PM
FransFrenzie # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 1:40:55 PM
Originally posted by Макаров Андрей:
I have an FTP server, but that only helps if I'm at home. Now think of quickly sharing some content from my phone or something… admittedly I have an FTP server on that too, but the way Opera Unite works could actually make that usable for everyone.
TA5K # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:06:11 PM
Unrealmirakulix # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:27:03 PM
Originally posted by TA5K:
+1, own Application "Unite". :top:
nadirnadir89 # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 5:36:11 PM
What separates opera with other competitors are such unique features. Unite is powerful and very useful. Most of my sharing happens through this medium. Widgets were once popular and i lost interest in them when once they no longer had the option of choosing where to install. I mean now they are by default installed on the system which was not the case in the earlier versions. Opera should have given us options to choose. Not to forget the unstable widgets in the higher releases of opera.
All these apart, i would not want such services to be removed completely, Opera can provide us an option whether to choose or not. After all its the users who experimentwith the browser and the hardcore opera fans would want the same thing.
Opera should really concentrate on fixing issues in its unstable versions , not removing exclusive features.
Strongly Destest!!!!
thelid7 # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 5:40:30 PM
Wat do wat do
Ankuryadavankur # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 7:19:15 PM
I sure hope you don't kill the Opera server that makes unite possible (dont have static ip). I always have several Opera versions installed, I am sure I will keep an old version of Opera just to use Unite. If you kill the Unite server at Opera though, I am not sure what I will do.
Why Unite never took off will remain the greatest mystery for me, it had so much potential.
Widgets were amazing too, but year clearly they were dying a slow death.
If only Opera had made a bolder statement and told us "DONT WORRY, UNITE AND WIDGETS WILL BE MERGED INTO EXTENSIONS"
Tiago Wakabayashiozoratsubasa # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 7:22:50 PM
Originally posted by TA5K:
I was thinking about it, if some abandoned features of Opera were Open Source, they would have more careful.
Khaled KhalilKhaled-Khalil # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 8:57:16 PM
Opera widgets engine was the sole of its kind that is cross-platform, the time browser-contained web apps are rising, you had a good platform for standalone web apps and you give it up ?
And Unite, the idea of user server looked very promising at time, I always wanted to have a desktop with a stable internet connection to have unite album and file sharing application always up so i can make my own personal computer my personal site.
Both platforms were, imo, very good and stable, you only had to give the web catalog more attention, filtering their contents according to some quality standards you set, and refining your own ones, like the brilliant e-book reader, the media player, twiget, etc.. All of them had reported issues, if they were fixed you can advertise them as high-end applications.
Can you imagine that you are not only delivering a very good cross-platform browser, but also with it an excellent also cross-platform e-book reader, twitter client, messenger.. with only installing Opera!
Also with Hardware acceleration some games would be really nice if made in standalone widget, or even better if also installed locally as a unite application.
Like some have proposed long time ago, a small start-up tray application that runs as unite server, runtime for widgets, and naturally preload some of the desktop browser libraries then making it loads much faster would have been optimal, I think.
But now it seems Opera only wants to be just like the others, or a bit lagging in the same set of features
Khaled KhalilKhaled-Khalil # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:52:01 PM
Drop extensions by the way then.
WasAPasserBy # Thursday, April 26, 2012 1:32:58 AM
Easiest way to share files, EVEN with the popularity of dropbox, skydrive, google drive.
TBH, I'd rather see the torrent feature dropped, and the Unite file sharing feature saved!
Kevin Vaillantkvaillant # Thursday, April 26, 2012 7:12:08 AM
h0mayun # Thursday, April 26, 2012 7:26:39 AM
SpyBetaPro # Thursday, April 26, 2012 7:28:24 AM
ChrisSlamdex # Thursday, April 26, 2012 7:52:03 AM
Originally posted by Khaled-Khalil:
"Our extension technology has been a great success, with millions of monthly downloads, and so far completely dwarfing the other platforms."Are you blind, or just trolling?
ChrisSlamdex # Thursday, April 26, 2012 7:55:50 AM
Originally posted by kvaillant:
All the other things that other browsers don't have.Olivierolivir # Thursday, April 26, 2012 8:09:10 AM
"the web you know, just reinvented"
Kevin Vaillantkvaillant # Thursday, April 26, 2012 8:09:57 AM
achurchner # Thursday, April 26, 2012 8:15:26 AM
the extensions are sometimes useful, but I will sure miss some unite features
Originally posted by yadavankur:
MossMan # Thursday, April 26, 2012 8:21:30 AM
I see one, maybe two that have some possible use for me - the rest are just fluff and junk.
Sarou # Thursday, April 26, 2012 9:24:33 AM
It's very useful and allows me to keep my data at home.
MossMan # Thursday, April 26, 2012 10:32:03 AM
Originally posted by MossMan:
Follow-up: I tried the single interesting looking one on that page... Ghostery. Was interesting to see which sites use tracking and what type it is (interesting that BBC seems to allow a lot of survey-type profiling, US sites are all about advertising of course).
But then... okay, that was fun. None of my sites seem dangerous, so I'm never going to use it again... uninstall.
MamiyaOtaru # Thursday, April 26, 2012 10:53:37 AM
Arnstein Teigenespirobind # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:11:05 AM
Originally posted by AleksOD:
We're including skins + themes in the addons catalog and will be remove the current skin database at some point.
See http://my.opera.com/addons/blog/2012/04/26/jazz-up-opera
Arnstein Teigenespirobind # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:54:08 AM
Maybe Unite was ahead of its time. Today there are lots of really good solutions out there for problems that Unite was trying to tackle, including file sharing.
In the end I think this is for the best, and I sincerely hope you agree. There's an amazing development happening in HTML5 and exciting things coming up on the extension side. In order to stay competitive and make sure we all get high quality Opera products, we need to focus.
bondbase # Thursday, April 26, 2012 12:06:11 PM
Or is there something else you guys are not telling us?
PengePenge4 # Thursday, April 26, 2012 1:07:21 PM
Originally posted by spirobind:
What's the good solution for Lounge?
Iván Floresivanflores # Thursday, April 26, 2012 1:53:40 PM
Vecanti # Thursday, April 26, 2012 2:03:49 PM
Unite is sad to hear. I don't use it enough as I should. I think it had the potential to be more revolutionary. Seems as with all things Opera though they just throw great ideas out there and hope they catch on or another company/browser steals them. They never really seem to polish anything up.
Not much to do though, I guess this is the price for using a closed source browser.
MossMan # Thursday, April 26, 2012 3:42:17 PM
Originally posted by spirobind:
Hmmm... I'm not so sure about this. I still have friends and family members try (and sometimes fail) to send multi-megabyte files through e-mail. If it fails, they'll usually drop by with a USB key or CD with the data on it instead.
There are the various third-party storage options, but these same people are not geeky enough to use them or are scared off by the porn adverts, MegaUpload scandal etc.
Personally, I'm not going to sign up for any such service and I don't trust "the cloud" with anything important anyway. Before Unite I would temporarily run a local FTP server and mail the details to whoever wanted to send me something.
When Unite came along it became easier since I wouldn't have to worry too much about setting-up and stopping a separate FTP server. (Don't want it running all the time when I only need it once or twice a year!)
Unrealmirakulix # Thursday, April 26, 2012 4:06:37 PM
Originally posted by MossMan:
registrating, porn ads, ... Imagine sharing a file to a colleague at work... -> porn ads...FransFrenzie # Thursday, April 26, 2012 7:39:59 PM
Originally posted by spirobind:
Could you please be more specific? I already run things that solve the same problem: i.e., a web server and an FTP server. Combined with a DDNS provider and a reasonably decent router that lets me share things without too much trouble, but that's the exact situation as it was pre-Unite. But is there anything else that makes the configuration consist of effectively no required knowledge thanks to the wonders of UPnP and Opera's NAT? Anything that isn't on my computer (and cross-platform) isn't trying to solve the same problem at all.
I suppose I'll get started by mentioning http://owncloud.org/ which seems to tackle the problem of file synchronization and file sharing, but what about the quick photo album or music player? Those are actually the ones I find hardest to replace, seeing how the likes of http://phpgraphy.sourceforge.net/ require more steps to set up, even if it's pretty much just a drop-in gallery. The instant chat room without bugging people about IRC clients or using some third-party service is also quite nice, but not something I used by often. Still nice to have just in case though. I repeat, the feature as such was available pre-Unite, but setting it all up was just so easy.
Just to be clear: I don't disagree with you. I'd just really like to know what you're thinking of when you say there are equivalents out there, for I'd like to use them. I don't care if it's provided by Opera or not.
Sergey Khokhlovxoxlov # Thursday, April 26, 2012 8:29:41 PM
tinhoy # Thursday, April 26, 2012 8:55:26 PM
Removing support for Unite and Widgets is a slap in the face for the dedicated developers who've put countless hours complementing Opera. To do so without any consideration and recourse for the users of the Unite Apps and Widgets is absolutely vile.
Khaled KhalilKhaled-Khalil # Thursday, April 26, 2012 10:13:57 PM
Originally posted by Slamdex:
If you only checked the links, you would know who is the blind. Next time speak respectfully or shut up, troll.Khaled KhalilKhaled-Khalil # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:01:30 PM
Originally posted by tinhoy:
Unfortunately, I am afraid that won't be possible, some of Unite functionality is done Opera servers side, if they dropped Unite completely you won't be able to even login into the service.
DarkPlout # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:02:04 PM
But Unite is one of the feature that only Opera can offer, and the end of it will make Opera loose a lot of old fan I think. With Unite, Opera was unique...
greenpoise # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:05:33 PM
greenpoise # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:12:24 PM
Originally posted by Frenzie:
I think you are trying to show off your skills/knowledge. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and thoughts.. The good or the great thing about Unite was that it was right in your fingertips. No switching applications, nothing none nill..it was all in our favorite browser. Plus, there are service ISP providers that block many ports and Opera Unite somehow was not affected by that hence not limiting the user to stream/share files.oracle2b # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:16:09 PM
greenpoise # Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:23:40 PM
Originally posted by oracle2b:
Thats how I see it as well. I think that they expect developers to come up with equivalent extensions. That is my guess from what I read.
pwong # Friday, April 27, 2012 1:13:47 AM
I think functionalities of widgets, unite and extensions separately are not powerful enough. But if their abilities can be combined into a single API, that will be very powerful.
Besides urlfilter, please add more ability to modify opera's functions, settings and UI (eg. menus).
eonblue # Friday, April 27, 2012 3:03:32 AM
Magnorodian # Friday, April 27, 2012 5:49:17 AM
hasta siempre Unite QEPD.
Fernandomorphors # Friday, April 27, 2012 6:17:01 AM
FransFrenzie # Friday, April 27, 2012 7:22:06 AM
Originally posted by greenpoise:
Except for the part where I said I don't care if it's in Opera or not that's exactly what I said: all the things Unite did were possible prior to Unite and are still possible now, but they require much more configuration and knowledge.
Julio GonzálezLoko0 # Friday, April 27, 2012 10:02:37 AM
Wildnfree2011 # Friday, April 27, 2012 1:26:57 PM