Opera News

Focusing on one add-ons platform

By Espen André ØverdahlEspenAO. Tuesday, April 24, 2012 3:03:33 PM

Opera 12, opera unite, opera widgets, opera extensions, add-ons

Today we are announcing the beginning of the end for two of our current Add-on platforms. Starting with the upcoming Opera 12 release, Opera Unite, Widgets and Voice will be turned off by default for new users. The two Add-on platforms will be completely removed in a later release expected before the end of this year. Read more on the Add-ons blog about this change of focus.

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, we also shipped an Opera 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.

We would love to hear your feedback on use cases for Opera Unite or Opera Widgets you think should be transferred to Opera extensions or other technology. Please visit our forum for further discussions.

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Comments

Alexodius PrimeAleksOD # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 3:18:48 PM

Thank you, I have been waiting for this! Rather than having 3 so-so supported platforms, we need one of high quality. Some widgets are incredible, and I hope that they can be ported to web apps or extensions in the future. Opera Unite is a great idea ahead of its time, but the non-existent support and low developer adaptability was very disappointing. I am confident that the technology will make a comeback in one way or another at some point in the future.

Cristiancristianer # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 4:05:40 PM

Originally posted by AleksOD:

Thank you, I have been waiting for this

Idem

FavDjiXas # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 4:13:02 PM

Finally,

eonblue # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 5:04:35 PM

comment your disconformism here:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1374852

CrsCrsmsg # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 5:39:03 PM

Not a good decision

Opera Unite daily user here

Camiloann # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 5:51:15 PM

Please save the Torus widget and Unite Photo Sharing

Ilgaz # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 6:11:42 PM

Hope these robot like "great" comments doesn't fool you. Ask unite users, widget developers or enhance the extension platform in an secure way that they become really needless.
I don't use unite and widgets but knowing how opera does things, I don't think they would really become that hard to maintain.

Ilgaz # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 6:14:05 PM

Originally posted by DjiXas:

Finally,

Care to explain what kind of harm did these optional features did to you?

MyOpera team, please fix this!fearphage # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 7:18:28 PM

Congratulations! I'm happy to see this moment come.

Originally posted by Ilgaz:

Care to explain what kind of harm did these optional features did to you?

I've always hated the fractured nature of Opera's personality really. Extensions are the platform that can support all the outliers. If given the right tools, Unite can be realized as an Opera extension. That same can be partially said for widgets. They are just weak and watered down versions of what I picture an extension API and platform can be (see Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). I would personally like to see the mail, chat, and torrent clients relegated to extensions one day leaving behind a svelte web browser. A man can dream...

ErikshaktiIIIgta # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 8:36:21 PM

OMG ! just turned off or removed completely as in start saying goodbye to them ?

That was unexpected, such nice features, RMF RDS radio widget and Unite gone is really hard to imagine, a nice online library also left... what's going on

JamesSharkfinUK # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 10:22:45 PM

I will mourn the passing of Unite, as I think it was an amazing idea that never quite took off. Hopefully, as someone has posted already, it will make a comeback in some new form.

That said, you do need to cut out the confusion of Widgets and Extensions, so overall I think it's a good decision. Short term pain for long-term gain. Long live Opera!

Patrick H. Laukepatrickhlauke # Tuesday, April 24, 2012 11:42:18 PM

Opera Unite should, in my opinion, simply have been a set of extra APIs for widgets (allowing incoming external connections) ... it simply didn't have enough appeal to be a "product" in itself. In a time where browsers moved away from the monolithic suite approach, we should have started a lot sooner to decouple features, rather than adding not one, but two extra kitchen sinks into the browser. I'd actually welcome further decoupling, for instance splitting out M2 into its own executable/download. Widgets could have been great as complete standalone products too, but tightly integrated with their host OS - particularly on mobile, where smartphones already have the concept of app launcher / home screen, it seemed strange having to then start a new app that acts as a separate launcher just for widgets...

But yes, if the effort required to maintain Unite and Widgets is now refocused into making extensions even more kick-ass, I'm all for it.

d4rkn1ght # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:57:00 AM

I can understand for those coming from Firefox or Chrome wishing for Opera to strip their classic features. But these features (Widgets, Unite, or even, M2, IRC, BitTorrent, Notes, and many more...) are what make Opera special and original.

I don't want Opera to become Firefox and only rely on extensions, or like Chrome, an empty strip-down browser with no features.

Unite is one of those feature that is very valuable to my daily use.

This is indeed a sad day for Opera.

Abhinavdecodedthought # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 5:40:12 AM

Originally posted by d4rkn1ght:

Unite is one of those feature that is very valuable to my daily use.

This is indeed a sad day for Opera.

even though I use Unite occasionally ... I really am sad for the fact that it is being removed once and for all !!

removing Widget is a good move though. I really want to see a much better Javascript engine ! when it comes to handling heavy js pages Opera falls behind chrome

Z1-AV69 # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 6:51:30 AM

Hoping this is part of a general switch to an "do only what you can do right" approach. Unite had potential, but given how small the opera community is you would have to develop a lot yourself without much help from the community. This will probably be the same for future developments, so stick with things you can manage to develop yourselves.

Rommel G. Atienzarommelatienza65 # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 6:53:14 AM

always failed.;(

Yeni Setiawansandalian # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 9:33:15 AM

I was confused which one should I develop. Now there is just one extension, confusing no more.

Przemek Zawadzkizapsharp # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 7:09:14 PM

I think there are some people who may miss Opera Unite. In my opinon: it will have more power and more users as a stand alone application...

Ankuryadavankur # Wednesday, April 25, 2012 11:02:13 PM

Originally posted by zapsharp:

I think there are some people who may miss Opera Unite. In my opinon: it will have more power and more users as a stand alone application...

Actually I was always surprised why Unite was not more popular. Though I think one reason is that people do not want to slow down their browser by having unite running all the time, or slow down their computer by having Opera running all the time. So having Unite as a stand alone application may not be such a bad idea. In fact it would earn Opera some respect if they release Unite standalone instead of completely removing it, but I cant imagine Opera putting any effort into running Unite (especially due to how closely tied it must be with Opera browser).

Really though, the only Unite App I have constantly running was tempbin to share small notes between my laptop and desktop and now notepad++ has a plugin that lets me do that too.

Alexodius PrimeAleksOD # Thursday, April 26, 2012 4:26:30 PM

Can you make Unite and Widget apps open source and stand-alone platforms?

techlawsam # Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:06:35 AM

guys really this decision is for the best reasources can be shifted to a add on platform that is more powerful and easily understandable. Unite and Widgets were a good idea but NO ONE (okay few) people use them

onsen-00 # Sunday, April 29, 2012 8:30:55 AM

"No one" who cared knew about them. I only found out this week and came to love unite. ..was already telling friends* and family how awesome opera is.... not anymore.

*I know lots of people that need an alternative to Firefox 3.6. Can't be chrome. Google is evil. Can't be safari. Apple is evil. Can't be Firefox, too many updates and following incompatibilities. And now... can't be Opera either. Darn it.

Alexodius PrimeAleksOD # Monday, April 30, 2012 2:21:59 AM

Originally posted by onsen-00:

Can't be chrome. Google is evil. Can't be safari. Apple is evil. Can't be Firefox, too many updates and following incompatibilities. And now... can't be Opera either.

Chromium (open-source Chrome portion), Maxthon (although, potentially evil, due to being Chinese)?