Not impressed so far

Not impressed so far

Completely new to Opera, currently a firefox user, have been some time now after stopped using IE6

First impressions it's very buggy!

After about a couple hours of use already found

Windows media player not found, ok with real player
Some pages don't display properly, i.e bits missing from from web page, some fix by reloading page but others don't
Seems a bit slower than firefox
Mail reader does not show mail list after reading a mail full page

I'll give it a few days use to get a better feel for it, I expect a bit of a learning curve when trying something new but this learning curve looks a bit steep to me!

A few days really isn't enough time to appreciate Opera. The main advantage of it is that you can customize it, and that takes more than three days to master.

Windows media player not found, ok with real player
Windows media player has always worked fine for me. You may want to try reinstalling it to make sure the plugin installs to Opera.

Some pages don't display properly, i.e bits missing from from web page, some fix by reloading page but others don't
Make sure everything is enabled (IE, when I installed the most recent Opera version Java was disabled.)

Seems a bit slower than firefox
Mental bias?

Mail reader does not show mail list after reading a mail full page
I don't use the mail reader so I can't help you there. I use Gmail POP access with Outlook.

@Shamwell
I agree with you. I'm currently Netscape and Firefox user and have installed Opera to help a friend with his browserproblems. Opera is far away from beeing competitive....
SORRY fans

Originally posted by shamwell:

Windows media player not found, ok with real player

http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=434

Originally posted by shamwell:

Some pages don't display properly, i.e bits missing from from web page, some fix by reloading page but others don't

Such a report is useless if you don't tell which sites don't display properly, and which version of Opera you're using.

Originally posted by shamwell:

Mail reader does not show mail list after reading a mail full page

New users sometimes think the mail view under the message list is a preview pane and thus double-click to open the message full-screen. That is not necessary, unless you find it more comfortable to read your messages that way. What do you expect Opera to do after you mark that message as read?

Originally posted by Gerry_Viking:

I agree with you. I'm currently Netscape and Firefox user and have installed Opera to help a friend with his browserproblems. Opera is far away from beeing competitive....

And your post is far from informative. Any specific complaints?

I can't stand it when people just won't even give Opera a fair chance. As I always say, it's people that haven't tried Opera in its fullest that don't fully appreciate it.

If I would have only used Opera for a week when I first downloaded it back as version 7.11, then I probably wouldn't use it at all anymore either.

What does everyone here do when a first-time poster/flamer named, "shamwell" leaves a message like this?

Hello guys!

I've been using NetCaptor for over 5 years and I'm totally satisfied with it. It also has tabbed browsing just like opera.
But NetCaptor also has a geat option for blocking NOT ONLY unrequested pop-ups, but also banner blocking.
For example it can block all jpeg or flash banners from a specific site, for example: www.bannerbank.com/*.jpg
It can also block any other banners or anything else from any sites.
As far as I understand, this option is NOT available in Opera? If it is not, then... hmm... well... I'll just press @uninstall@ ))

Hi alex4alex, do a forum search to find out that Opera has no integrated ad-blocking. There are other ways to block ads though.

Originally posted by scipio:

Hi alex4alex, do a forum search to find out that Opera has no integrated ad-blocking. There are other ways to block ads though.

wow thanks for a rapid reply
I've already seen one way - editing the ini file, what other ways could you recommend?

Originally posted by alex4alex:

I've already seen one way - editing the ini file, what other ways could you recommend?

Besides filter.ini, there are other ways that allow you to control CSS and/or plug-ins.
e.g. http://www.diplo.co.uk/design/operatools.php

Again, a forum search is your friend.

thnx a lot

Another link: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/BlockAdvertisements

Thanks for you guys who made constructive comments

After playing a little more:

The issue windows media player not working is not the media player itself, it seems some sites can't seem to locate it when using Opera but ok with IE6/Firefox, it was misfortune that it was these sites that showed the problem when I first started using Opera!

Example www.blueyonder.co.uk select blueyonder tv on the left, it will open up another window which will give you the opportunity to view several cable tv channels along with a programme guide to select past or live programmes, in Opera media player is not found.

Missing parts of web page, www.bbc.co.uk/radio open up radio player and select a programme from listen again, once the (real) player connects to the stream you should be able to step through the programme in 5 & 15 mins steps using buttons marked as such, however in Opera the buttons are missing

Problems with fonts

www.macafee.com/us/

Very poor characters in the country drop down menu

I'm running Opera 8.50 7700 my win media player is ver 10 is up to date and I have checked the java site and my java set up is fully up to date

I await your constructive comments TIA

It appears blueyonder relies on ActiveX which Opera does not support.

Desk04-Nov05.jpg

On sites which require plugins, you are usually better off pressing F12 and selecting to identify as Mozilla or Opera. If sites believe you are using MSIE, they will try to use ActiveX.

I am identified as Opera.

Originally posted by Despero:

I can't stand it when people just won't even give Opera a fair chance. As I always say, it's people that haven't tried Opera in its fullest that don't fully appreciate it.

If I would have only used Opera for a week when I first downloaded it back as version 7.11, then I probably wouldn't use it at all anymore either.

Exactly, I see your point. People should give Opera a chance. Certainly now that it's free. Now b4 I continue I would like to mention my browser use which is about
70% FF, 15% Opera (and climbing since I discovered it has a good forum), 10% Netcaptor and 5% IE.
Now for those that come from FF remember Opera works quite different and you have to get used to it which might take some time. Also I must admit it can by far not be customized as FF can be.
Netcaptor is good too but lacks any possibility of customisation.
And IE .... not worth mentioning.

Error

Originally posted by shamwell:

This is the kind of problems I am complaining about and what I think is Operas biggest fault. The sites the average user surfs on do not work properly in Opera.
For example, when I try viewing a video on cnn.com (something really usual), CNN tells me it cannot identify my video player. Ok, for me this is not problem, I know which one it is, so I continue and it works.
BUT: What does the average user do? He already tried Firefox, saw that it worked there and will never run Opera again. I really do not understand why I have to reinstall the media player in order to work in Opera.
When I install Firefox after the media player has been installed, it works fine. Why not in Opera?

Do not get me wrong. I use Opera on desktop and Opera mini on my mobile. I LOVE it. But I assume, for the average user, it is simply no choice just because of these problems.

You are joking, right? I get the same warning in both Opera and Firefox.

You don't have to "reinstall the media player" at all. It works fine. "Reinstalling the media player" wouldn't remove the message on cnn.com anyway.

Thats interesting, maybe then it is a problem of cnn.com, and nothing else. Because in FF, this does not happen here. (I have tried it only once as I do not use FF normally.)

Originally posted by Sigup:

You don't have to "reinstall the media player" at all. It works fine. "Reinstalling the media player" wouldn't remove the message on cnn.com anyway.

No, not on cnn.com. But I had to do this to make it work in Opera 9 tp1, for example.
I never had anything like that to do with FF.

Originally posted by Despero:

I can't stand it when people just won't even give Opera a fair chance. As I always say, it's people that haven't tried Opera in its fullest that don't fully appreciate it.

I used it for a day and haven't looked back at the less worthy browsers. Thank God to, now if I only wouldn't need them for webdesign

I love it when people post here who know absolutely nothing about anything. I was a loyal, defend it to the death, Firefox fanboy. I tried Opera because of Firefox's major memory problems. Let me be the first to tell you, Opera is the best browser going. It IS faster providing you do a couple of quicky tweaks and it IS way more secure. Shamwell, if you have it in your head that FF is better, go back to FF. And Gerry, go troll elsewhere and try to find a clue. Oh, before you try to flame me Shamwell, I own 5 computer repair centers and I DO know more than you do about these things. Go away, you bother me.

WoW! other people speaking their mind in less than a few thousand words I like it

Hey! I don't care what browser anyone uses. A lot of the new posters in these forums threaten to uninstall Opera if someone does not give them the magic key to fix all their problems.

I feel so good when they say "good-by" and never come back. Farewell to bad trash!

We all know where we are, if you have to act stupid about it then I want to reserve the right to give you a good Whack!

Originally posted by Saddle Magic:

Hey! I don't care what browser anyone uses.

Most people of the internet population might second that indeed.

Any site that uses active X and VB script will not work on non microsoft browsers.
But as for plugin problems, well what I do is just borrow the plugins from my firefox plugins folder and port them to the opera plugins folder.
of coruse this works better if you have your plugins installed correctly.

another helpful thing is user JS, but we see how plugin re location will go.

Hi there,
I have been using Opera for Windows since version 3.51, currently 8.51
I am well used to the speed, keyboard shortcuts, everything.
The problem is now, and it is a major problem: more and more web sites do not display properly with Opera, either there is nothing at all on the scree, or most of the pictures do not show up, or the page is completely spolied.
The result is, I have more and more to use IE (blah) to use www.sncf.fr or www.southern-charms.com
and the people at Opera do not care too much
Too bad

What specific problems are you having? The SNCF site looks fine so far, but as I'm not sure where to look ...

For me personally, there are two major issues forcing me to prefer Firefox over Opera. If it were not for these two issues I have, Firefox would be discarded into the virtual dust pile, but as it stands it's the other way round.

1) Adblocking - There are ways around this I know, but none of them come close to the ease of use of Adblock Plus. A proxy filter is a solution, but the problem is there is a hugh learning cure associated with those types of programs. Using filter.ini still leaves pages messed up where all the previous ad's were.

2) This is my biggest gripe. I could overlook the Adblock issue, if it were not for this. Site rendering. There are so many sites that just render incorrectly. I am not talking about the IE exclusive sites either. On Reuters News site for example the underlines cut into the text. There are issues on other pages where fonts are different and some sites just don't bother redering at all correctly.

I would use Opera even without the ability to filter ad's if it were not for the rendering issues.

Originally posted by Totem:

1) Adblocking - There are ways around this I know, but none of them come close to the ease of use of Adblock Plus. A proxy filter is a solution, but the problem is there is a hugh learning cure associated with those types of programs. Using filter.ini still leaves pages messed up where all the previous ad's were.

2) This is my biggest gripe. I could overlook the Adblock issue, if it were not for this. Site rendering. There are so many sites that just render incorrectly. I am not talking about the IE exclusive sites either. On Reuters News site for example the underlines cut into the text. There are issues on other pages where fonts are different and some sites just don't bother redering at all correctly.

1# The filter.ini simply prevent Opera from retrieving that content to spare bandwidth and lag, which is good. The html engine then treats the content as unavailable and leaves the space to keep the original layout. Collapsing the ad space may too mess the layout of the page. To prevent this yo may use a user.css to override ads o r a user js.

2# If you find websites that display badly, please post them here, and report them with "Help->Report site problem"

Note that ad-block is a Firefox extension but unsupported and unrelated to Mozilla. It'd be very bad for browser to start blocking ads, depriving webmaster from their revenue, and enabling the browser to be blocked by websites for those same reasons.
Thank you.

Originally posted by Tolque53:

Originally posted by shamwell:

This is the kind of problems I am complaining about and what I think is Operas biggest fault. The sites the average user surfs on do not work properly in Opera.
For example, when I try viewing a video on cnn.com (something really usual), CNN tells me it cannot identify my video player. Ok, for me this is not problem, I know which one it is, so I continue and it works.
BUT: What does the average user do? He already tried Firefox, saw that it worked there and will never run Opera again. I really do not understand why I have to reinstall the media player in order to work in Opera.
When I install Firefox after the media player has been installed, it works fine. Why not in Opera?

Do not get me wrong. I use Opera on desktop and Opera mini on my mobile. I LOVE it. But I assume, for the average user, it is simply no choice just because of these problems.

Well the problem with CNN it's not Opera's fault

// Taken from Netscape's Devedge Site
//http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/windows-media-in-netscape/index_en.html
function detectWMPSupport(){

    var wmp64 = "MediaPlayer.MediaPlayer.1";
    var wmp7 = "WMPlayer.OCX.7";
    if((window.ActiveXObject && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Windows') != -1) || window.GeckoActiveXObject)
    {
        if(createActiveXObject(wmp7)){ 
            return true;

        }else{
            if(createActiveXObject(wmp64)){
                return true;
            }else{
                return false;
            }
        }
    }else{ 
        return false;
    }
}

function createActiveXObject(id){
  var error;
  var control = null;

  try{
    if (window.ActiveXObject){
      control = new ActiveXObject(id);
    }else if (window.GeckoActiveXObject){
      control = new GeckoActiveXObject(id);
    }
  }
  catch (error){;}
  return control;
}

some standard verification wouldn't hurt.
fix-cnn-video-detect.js

Originally posted by Totem:

1) Adblocking - There are ways around this I know, but none of them come close to the ease of use of Adblock Plus. A proxy filter is a solution, but the problem is there is a hugh learning cure associated with those types of programs. Using filter.ini still leaves pages messed up where all the previous ad's were.

Admuncher seems to be as easy as AdBlock Plus. I, however am a diehard proxomitron user from well before using Opera, and have no need to change (my biggest plus to proxomitron, when I had it all set up and was using IE, and decided to switch browsers, I didn't have to relearn everything to block ads. If I ever have to change again, I still get to keep the adblocking the same).

EDIT: For any of you who do try proxomitron, and run accross sites that don't have ads blocked - feel free to let me know (preferrably in the proxomitron thread) and I'll see what I can do about it. I've basically blocked all ads in my set on sites I actively visit.

Originally posted by xErath:

Note that ad-block is a Firefox extension but unsupported and unrelated to Mozilla. It'd be very bad for browser to start blocking ads, depriving webmaster from their revenue, and enabling the browser to be blocked by websites for those same reasons.
Thank you.

what good is revinue when the adds say "get live nude sex!!!!" or "shoot (insert figure here) and win a (insert prize here)
I use that extension quite a lot, very useful and I wish Opera had something simular.

Originally posted by SunnyRabbiera:

I wish Opera had something simular.

See http://www.diplo.co.uk/design/operatools.php

nah, that would be useless on my Linux partition...
meh, I am sure Opera 9 will have that soon

it should be possible to completly block a url in Op9 with per website specific preferences. Lets hope.
Meanwhile filter.ini does just fine spares my bandwidth a lot.

I suppose there's also always proxomitron that runs under wine, or privoxy as well, though they aren't point + clickable.

Your tone was a unnecessary yfan.
But you make good points regarding Opera imo.

Originally posted by yfan:

Opera also has a steep learning curve. I know that from personal experience.

Except your experience is from before Opera got the current streamlined UI, so it doesn't really count anymore.

Currently Opera is a lot easier to learn than Firefox since there's no need to mess around with buggy extensions.

personally I think customization in firefox is greater then Opera's, say what you will about the extentions but currently I think Firefox is more versitile in some areas, like in being able to install a google toolbar instead of what opera has currently, or something cool like foxytunes...
I especially find Opera annoying in the search area, whenever I want to search I always pull up Firefox with googlebar lite, I find oera very weak in this area as you cannot define your search to things like searching webages, searching images... et cetra.
now of course there is the google ultimate interface panel for opera, but I dont find it nearly as good as what firefox offers...
at this point that is.

If its one thing I will give firefox over opera is its customization capibilities, as opera has yet to open dialog for a decent search toolbar, nor have they offered anything like foxytunes, sage (that I like better then Opera's RSS feeder), customize google, and a few others I make great use out of on the firefox side of things.
sure extensions are buggy sometimes, and most have lagged behind as of late... but then again you can always code your own, that is always a big advantage of open source programs and apps.

Originally posted by SunnyRabbiera:

personally I think customization in firefox is greater then Opera's, say what you will about the extentions but currently I think Firefox is more versitile in some areas, like in being able to install a google toolbar instead of what opera has currently, or something cool like foxytunes...

It's possible to control Winamp from Opera, and Opera has User JS, and you can add stuff like buttons to toolbars. And you can change things without having to restart Opera of course.

I especially find Opera annoying in the search area, whenever I want to search I always pull up Firefox with googlebar lite, I find oera very weak in this area as you cannot define your search to things like searching webages, searching images... et cetra.

Yes you can.

If its one thing I will give firefox over opera is its customization capibilities, as opera has yet to open dialog for a decent search toolbar,

Search toolbar? You can add any search to Opera.

nor have they offered anything like foxytunes,

Sure they have. It's possible to control media players from Opera using toolbar customization.

customize google

Sounds like something that would be trivial to do using User JS.

well yeh user JS is useful and all, but there is really no tutorial on how to make your own toolbars and such.
as for the restarting issue, yes thats a weakness in firefox... but to customize IE you normally have to shut your whole computer down sometimes,thats why I perfer Firefox's extentions.
now of course you have the option of adding more search engines on your own to opera but its a pain in the neck if you dont have a windows system as most of those modifyer programs think of windows only... cross platform is a big issue with me as I test out browsers for many operating systems and such.
I have used opera, I have used firefox, I have used IE, I have used safari... all are weak and strong in thier own ways.
For me yes currently the best browser for windows right now is opera, while on Mac and linux I use Konq and safari, with firefox on the side with Linux.
now mind you I am not bashing opera, yes I admit I am an open source supporter but I would say that currently Opera is one of the best closed source apps. but there is always room for improvement.
actually I have quite a lot of negative comments about all the major browsers...
for IE, I say "FIX YOUR SECURITY HOLES ALREADY!"
For Firefox I say "BECOME MORE STABLE!"
and for opera I say "BRING ME A DECENT SEARCH BAR!"
I think opera should re assess itself on making something like extentions, perhaps a cross platform modifier program so no one feels left out.
and if you really want to know what my real favorite browser is, I am very pro safari and I think it does better then opera in a lot of ways...
for one I always liked KHTML, its small and versitile and I find it renders a lot of stuff wonderfully.
but the biggest thing I really liked better in safari is browser identification, it seems to work a lot better with safari then with opera...
But hey presto is excellent, and the closest thing you will find to a KHTML browser on windows thats for sure, still needs work in my eyes without the need of stuff like user JS but meh even safari has its issues in places.
I just really wish browser identification was better, most sites that are IE/ Firefox only refuse opera no matter what you do, but I am always able to open at least 10% more pages in safari then in Opera, but thats anything but a vast margin.

Here is the on-topic part:

The OP's comments about Opera are valid. When sites don't work with Opera, even though for the most part it's not Opera's fault, site's just don't. To the user, it doesn't matter much whose fault it is. If you have got a site you check every day, and it won't work in Opera, Opera is probably not going to be their browser of choice. And secondly, Opera's interface and the application as a whole does have a steep learning curve, as I know from experience. Contrary to Sigup's assumption above, I currently have Opera 8.5 running on both my Windows XP and Mac OS X Tiger machines.

Originally posted by yfan:

Contrary to Sigup's assumption above, I currently have Opera 8.5 running on both my Windows XP and Mac OS X Tiger machines.

That's hardly relevant, now is it? We were discussing learning curves after all.

Originally posted by SunnyRabbiera:

but then again you can always code your own, that is always a big advantage of open source programs and apps.

Originally posted by SunnyRabbiera:

of course you have the option of adding more search engines on your own to opera but its a pain in the neck if you dont have a windows system as most of those modifyer programs think of windows only

Since you don't consider it being a problem coding your own extensions, why do you find it so hard to code a linux (or other platform) equivalent to Opsed?

actually I am writing one, will take a while to figure what might work out but I think I can do it.
maybe in a few months I will finish my coding for it, I am probably going to have to do it in GTK as thats the easiest way for me...
I have written some useful GTK codes for certain programs, the only thing slowing me down is my everyday life

Well, with Opera 9, the whole search editing will be a moot point as it will *finally* be a part of Opera.

Originally posted by yfan:

When sites don't work with Opera, even though for the most part it's not Opera's fault, site's just don't.

True. But I find that there are less and less sites like that, and with the overall growth in alternative browsers, more people just find a site that does work, or complain to the webmaster. Also, with the advent of help-> report a problem in both firefox and Opera, people are also much more directly informing developers of what doesn't work, and fixes on the browser end can also happen quickly - with browserjs and such.