A plea to restore broken & missing functionality in Opera

Here's a list of things that should be (or used to be) in Opera that I feel needs to be returned to the browser if Opera is to stay as user friendly as it used to be.

Automatic image resizing needs to be configurable within the settings panel, it currently cannot be disabled. Even IE5 had this feature.

Tabs need to be drag & drop capable across multiple Opera windows. This was broken in Opera 11 and has received many complaints from users.

The yellow bar that pops up at the bottom of the webpage asking to hit spacebar to move to the next page also needs a disable function. It only shows up on pages it doesn't function correctly with, and is completely useless. I have yet to find a website or forum it works correctly with, and right now it is just another annoying popup to close. Nobody likes unwanted popups, and if I wanted to use this "functionality" I would just hit the keyboard or mouse-gesture shortcuts. So why make it an in-your-face popup?

Re-adding the dropdown arrow in the webpage address field to view recently typed addresses. There isn't any new feature that replaces this missing functionality and I can't figure out why the it would be randomly removed.

This one may be more of an OS problem than a browser specific issue, but I would really not wish to see a blinking cursor in a text field when the text field does not have keyboard focus! It is extremely irritating to type something and hit 3-4 opera shortcuts instead of typing in the deceptively out-of-focus text field. (no, I don't want to install opera voice!) When I first began using Opera text fields used to gain focus when a new page loaded, but now it seems that even when I see a blinking cursor, I must first click in the same box to change keyboard focus to it.

My last request is that features and current functionality would quit being arbitrarily broken for no actual reason. It's been a trend started since 9.5 and it's only grown more prevalent with each major release. I love Opera as it is the only browser that allows sidebar tab stacking that actually works, but if Opera 12 rolls around and continues breaking longstanding functionality I depended on (without any rhyme or reason for doing so), then I'm going to have to start reconsidering browsers. I continue to stick with Opera because I've seen the stability & resource usage performance improve, but if I have to resort to micro-managing Opera "extensions" to restore removed functionality then Opera becomes little different than Firefox with its add-ons.

So not a feature request at all, just the usual whinging.

1. Install the image resizing extension
2. Not important, but yes, this should be fixed
3. Disable it in Customise, Appearance
4. Yes. Show Dropdown Button really should be enabled by default. There was no good reason to remove it in the first place.
5. Not noticed this, but why not blink over a text field to indicate that it is editable?
6. Nothing is ever arbitrarily broken for no reason. That things change is part of the development process. New bugs sometimes get introduced. Without specific details, such reports are useless.

I love how any sort of criticism is automatically called whining. At worst my post was intended as a complaint, but the focus was on real criticism.

1) I installed the extension. It worked for a few weeks, now it doesn't work at all. Just like add-ons in FF which were unreliable, hence my comparison.
3) Tried and haven't found any apparent way to do so
4)Thank you, didn't remember to check opera:config.

Still, settings like this need to be in the Preferences menu, or even the Appearances menu. Not a relatively unknown opera:config area. Again it feels like random arbitration without any method or reasoning as to where things are ending up. The level of complexity is at the point that most people I get to try Opera give up trying to find settings they wish to modify. I enjoy the complexity, but it does need a more organized structure for people to navigate to settings they need to modify. The current system is so chaotic even a power user can't find settings.

5) Not sure if I'm following, but I'd welcome anything that helps this. I routinely use forum software and text fields in websites all the time, and it simply slows me down to have to stop, reach for the mouse to select the box the blinking cursor is already in, then resume typing. And if I mistake the typing focus on websites I still end up hitting a slew of single-key shortcuts. Even something as simple as making sure there is no blinking cursor when a textbox or text input field does not have focus is all I'd ask for.

6)Breaking tab dragging was pretty major, at least in my personal opinion. It's been broken multiple times... it was some version of Opera 10 that forced users to right-click to drag instead of left clicking to drag tabs, as well. That confounded a lot of users. Again, it's been a repeating issue since 9.5 onwards that's happened at least four separate times that I can recall. Similar issues with dragging tabs into the bookmarks pane have come and gone as well.

If Opera ever wishes to grow its market share beyond a flatline of a few percentage points, then they need to address most of these issues.

Originally posted by Kougar:

I love how any sort of criticism is automatically called whining.

jeah, pesala is really good at that anyhow, he has a valid point that this should go to the Opera Browser forum.

Originally posted by Kougar:

I love how any sort of criticism is automatically called whining.

Actually, I called it whinging, but it amounts to much the same thing.

There is a difference between objective criticism and whinging (complaining repeatedly about something that is already a known problem).

If a descriptive thread title is used, if the thread is in the right forum, and if specific problems are enumerated and described properly, then I won't criticise you for whinging or whining.

Bugs like the blinking text cursor should be reported in the bug tracker after getting confirmation from other users. Problem reports are generally best posted in the Opera Browser forum, or if an extension is broken then post in the extension author's blog.

The wish-list forum is for Feature Requests. Its best to search before posting and just add a comment to an existing thread. There are no Feature Requests in your post. All I can see is a repetition of existing complaints about broken features or hard to find options.

Originally posted by Pesala:

The wish-list forum is for Feature Requests.

Says who? The forum is called "Desktop wish-list" and the description reads "Post your wishes here." It doesn't say the wishes absolutely must be feature requests. A wish to "please bring back function x" is just as valid as any feature request.

Originally posted by nftaDaedalus:

Says who?

Says the voice of experience. I have seen many threads like this closed. If your thread title focused on the wish to re-enable drag and drop of tabs to other windows it might be a valid topic, but that is already there so another thread on that topic might just be closed as a duplicate. All of these topics were closed in recent months. If you want your topics to stay open long enough to gather some support, think about why they were closed.

• Memory Leaks
• Focus on Core Functionality
• Old Speed Dial
• I want the button and the drop list back
• Status of Bug Reports

The threads you linked were bug reports or incomplete or duplicates, I believe that's why they were closed, not because they did not contain a feature request.

Anyway, to stay on topic, about the yellow bar that pops up, as mentioned by the OP, I too would like that gone, but I cannot find where I should disable that. "Disable it in Customize > Appearance" WHERE? I don't see it.

Originally posted by nftaDaedalus:

I don't see it.

Just "show hidden toolbars when customising" and set the placement to "Off."