Removed Windows Native skin

Please, don't do it! It's too horribly for me.
I use native skin for many years and I can't use default opera skin because it's too ugly and bright for me.
I hate all opera skins. I tried to find normal skin for me, but couldn't.
Even Firefox has native skin. Why you can't???

Look at this. Yes, I use old style like win98, but on my Windows 7!
And now look at this shit.

Please, don't remove the native skin! Don't do this to me! PLEASE NO!!!


Moderator Note: Moved from My Opera: Feedback, questions and discussions

Wrong forum. And stop posting non-sense videos.

I wish they'd maintained the Windows Native skin properly, but since they didn't there's no point keeping it any more I suppose.

I expect there's only a small number of people using classic Windows desktop style nowadays (I'm one of them!), so its understandable Opera drop it.

Would be nice if someone else would take it and fix it for Opera 12 and beyond...

Originally posted by MossMan:

Would be nice if someone else would take it and fix it for Opera 12 and beyond...

I mean, I could do it. The last one I fixed a year? ago for 10.5 is this:
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=9191

Let me know, if you are interested.

Thanks

But try my fixed Standard skin, may be you will fall in love with it
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=9091

Why they removed Windows Native skin and keep Mac Native skin? Do they hate Windows? I'm pretty sure ~90% of Opera users is Windows users.
I used Windows Native skin since... oh, for so long I can't even remember.

Devs: Please fix Windows Native skin numerous glitches and come back with it!
And after that you can remove Opera skin instead

P.S. Someone should move this topic to different forum.

Originally posted by zoquete:

Originally posted by MossMan:

Would be nice if someone else would take it and fix it for Opera 12 and beyond...

I mean, I could do it.

I want it!)
I don't think that they return the native skin back. And unfortunately, we don't have a choice.

Originally posted by FataL:

P.S. Someone should move this topic to different forum.

Yes, my bad(
I wanted to post here. But when I did screenshots, I restarted opera twice and missclicked to wrong forum...

OMG. I have used it "forever".
Yes, Native Skin wasn't perfect but for me it looks better because program looks as native.
I can't use programs with silly not-native UI (like Quicktime, Kaspersky and so on).

I pretty sure that they make their decision and will not put Native Skin back. So sad

Same goes for me. I have used Windows native skin always. I simply don't like skinned stuff, regardless of the program.
It makes my Windows a clown circus, removing it is a very bad decision.

Cheers.

Originally posted by Fifonik:

OMG. I have used it "forever".
Yes, Native Skin wasn't perfect but for me it looks better because program looks as native.
I can't use programs with silly not-native UI (like Quicktime, Kaspersky and so on).

I pretty sure that they make their decision and will not put Native Skin back. So sad

In modern windows (windows vista/7 +) the opera standard skin looks far more 'native' than the windows native skin. You guys are really overreacting, if you weren't using xp the native skin was ugly as hell. There's no reason for them to keep maintaining that relic anymore and the removal was a long time coming.

I understand a lot of old opera users(windows of course) are upset since they used the native skin for XP(maybe even in 98,95,2000 windows version)

but its too old now..its time to upgrade and move on to the modern one

since opera is a modern browser this is a 1st step for the team

besides, the standard skin looks more native when using vista or 7(XP users..its time to move on and upgrade your OS)

and dont forget the "FEATHERWEIGHT" fixes from time to time..

i think opera should renamed the "Opera standard" to "Opera featherweight" in appearance dialog

Originally posted by supertrol:

XP users..its time to move on and upgrade your OS

Why? Windows XP is still capable to run today's applications. And the Opera standard skin looks nice on Windows XP too.

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

Originally posted by supertrol:

XP users..its time to move on and upgrade your OS

Why? Windows XP is still capable to run today's applications. And the Opera standard skin looks nice on Windows XP too.

horrible memory management, horrible window manager, distracting ui, incompetent file manager, just to name a few

Originally posted by FataL:

Why they removed Windows Native skin and keep Mac Native skin?

Because the standard skin fits fine on modern Windows versions (including the default XP theme)? The native skin isn't needed on Windows because the standard skin already uses native controls there.

The standard skin on Mac and Linux probably do NOT use native controls because the standard skin was created with Windows in mind.

I'm pretty sure ~90% of Opera users is Windows users.

I'm pretty sure ~99% of Opera users on Windows don't use the native skin. I'm pretty sure they have usage statistics for that.

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

Originally posted by supertrol:

XP users..its time to move on and upgrade your OS

Why? Windows XP is still capable to run today's applications. And the Opera standard skin looks nice on Windows XP too.

It's capable, but you can't expect software developers to support it forever. We're just talking about a skin here. XP was released over a decade ago. Since then there has been:

Vista
Win7
and now people are complaining when certain skin/features aren't working in Win8 now.

This isn't even about Vista or Win7 at this point. It's looking forward to Win8 which many people already seem to be running.

Originally posted by Vecanti:

It's capable, but you can't expect software developers to support it forever.

Yes, at one point in time there would be a very few programs that will be available for Windows XP - but Windows XP will be supported till 2014 by software developers - that's for sure. But surely Opera will go a step further and support Windows XP till 2015; Opera has a record of supporting each platform version for the maximum time - Opera discontinued Windows 98/ME/98 SE support in 2010 while all other browsers had support terminated within 2008 (Firefox was the only browser in 2006 except Opera to support Windows 98/ME/98 SE though with Firefox 3 support was discontinued). Similarly, Mac OS X 10.4-Intel support was discontinued in mid-2011 with release of Opera 11.50 while Mozilla discontinued it in early-2011 with Firefox 4.

Anyways, getting back on topic. It is expected that some users will always have problems with a change or removal of a feature - but they never look at the positive side; lesser work for Opera team.

Not to one-up everybody here, but....

I run Windows 7, I use the Windows Classic theme to make it look like XP, and I'm far happier with that than I would be using the resource-sucking, eyeball-distracting nonsense that is "Aero". The Opera browser's Native Skin is not only for people who "just need to upgrade" – it's for people like me (designers!) who don't necessarily want their work environments to look like Hollywood schlock.

My issue with the Native Skin is that it's been consistently incomplete with each new version of Opera, leaving random window frames and buttons looking like the same gradient-and-glow-riddled absurdity as every other app that would rather woo new users with candy than with purpose. Still, it's been better than nothing, and I've been a fairly happy Opera user.

The Native Skin... going away? Yes, that's an annoyance to me. It's still not as much of an annoyance as having to work with one of those other nonsense-riddled browsers, but could we please stop trying to close the gap? *sigh*

Originally posted by electrickeet:

I run Windows 7, I use the Windows Classic theme to make it look like XP

Except the classic theme is not what XP looks like. The XP look is Luna. The one with toy-like colors. The classic theme is back to Windows 9x, Me and 2000.

and I'm far happier with that than I would be using the resource-sucking, eyeball-distracting nonsense that is "Aero"

Actually, the default Aero UI is much more efficient than the classic theme because Aero is hardaware accelerated using the GPU. In fact, turning off the glass transparency will make Windows 7 significantly slower on most computers because it isn't running through the GPU.

My issue with the Native Skin is that it's been consistently incomplete with each new version of Opera, leaving random window frames and buttons looking like the same gradient-and-glow-riddled absurdity as every other app that would rather woo new users with candy than with purpose.

Exactly. It's a chore to keep updating an outdated, crappy skin that doesn't belong on modern Windows versions. It's pointless to waste resources on a dead end like the native skin.

Originally posted by electrickeet:

Not to one-up everybody here, but....

I run Windows 7, I use the Windows Classic theme to make it look like XP, and I'm far happier with that than I would be using the resource-sucking, eyeball-distracting nonsense that is "Aero". The Opera browser's Native Skin is not only for people who "just need to upgrade" – it's for people like me (designers!) who don't necessarily want their work environments to look like Hollywood schlock.

My issue with the Native Skin is that it's been consistently incomplete with each new version of Opera, leaving random window frames and buttons looking like the same gradient-and-glow-riddled absurdity as every other app that would rather woo new users with candy than with purpose. Still, it's been better than nothing, and I've been a fairly happy Opera user.

The Native Skin... going away? Yes, that's an annoyance to me. It's still not as much of an annoyance as having to work with one of those other nonsense-riddled browsers, but could we please stop trying to close the gap? *sigh*

What he said!


Although in my case I left it "Standard" on the Win7 box at home (which the wife uses much more than me) but use Native on several other XP machines (including at work)... and on all of those I changed to the classic Windows theme instead of the Fisher-Price XP look. And why? *Because it's more efficient to use!*

I left the Win7 machine at mostly default settings so I get to know them (except for the over-sensitive file-security with respect to home-networking... man, did that get annoying quickly!). But it's been over a year now and I've recently thought about adopting my "classic"-style settings there too.

Originally posted by Vecanti:

This isn't even about Vista or Win7 at this point. It's looking forward to Win8 which many people already seem to be running.

No one is running Win8 - it isn't released yet. What people are testing is an alpha build for testing software compatibility, but I would expect there well could be major changes before it's even a beta release ...

Originally posted by MossMan:

I wish they'd maintained the Windows Native skin properly, but since they didn't there's no point keeping it any more I suppose.

Indeed.

* It never really looked native, not even close.

* It never received as much attention as the standard skin.

* Not too long ago, Opera totally destroyed the look and feel of the native skin to the point that it's almost the same as the standard skin. And, it hasn't been fixed.

* Developers have said it's a major pain (time consuming and hard work) to maintain the native skin.

Given all that, it's best to just put the skin up on the skin site in its current state and remove it from the default installation.

I understand how native skin users feel though. Change sucks sometimes. For example, Opera messed up the standard skin so bad that it looks horrible with the WinXP classic theme. I was *forced* to switch to (and get use to) Opera with the windows default theme. (I'm on Win7 now so I don't care about that, anymore.)

Originally posted by FataL:

Why they removed Windows Native skin and keep Mac Native skin?

Does the Mac native skin look good?

Originally posted by burnout426:

* Developers have said it's a major pain (time consuming and hard work) to maintain the native skin.

And that's something I've never understood! In Opera standard, you have some "fancy" radial-gradient on a rounded button with shiny highlights... and it's then a "major pain" to make a plain rectangular box for the Windows Native version...?

All Native needed to keep it looking okay was some lines properly marking the edges of the document windows, menus and panels (why did they even get rid of those?) and some "plain box" alternatives for the newer labels in the panels ("all messages", "followed contacts", etc.) (why didn't they *ever* make these themselves?). That seems like a tiny afterthought for the guys maintaining the standard skin (basically take the standard structure and throw away the bitmaps!).

Originally posted by MossMan:

I changed to the classic Windows theme instead of the Fisher-Price XP look.

Oh, that's right... I forgot that XP had its own terrible look because I always switched it back to the 98 look that I preferred. It was so automatic for me that I began to associate the rectangles with XP! *sheepish grin*

My real concern here is not that Opera is no longer maintaining the Native Skin – really, they have absolutely every right to put development time toward whatever makes the most sense for the survival of the product, and I'm in a vanishingly small minority (ah, so very accustomed to that.) The big question is this: will we still be able to pick up that slack as the user community and maintain the native skin, or is it just not going to work at all forever more? I've not attempted to dig into what goes into building a third-party skin (it's said that if you wish to keep eating sausage, never watch it being made) so I honestly haven't any idea what the effort level is or if this will be beyond possibility.

What, precisely, is being dropped? Opera's maintenance of the skin, or the ability for the skin to work at all?

Originally posted by electrickeet:

What, precisely, is being dropped?

Maintenance of the skin. Install any old skin like my skins, which are based on the old Classic skin, but updated for Opera 11.50, and see how well it works with Opera 11.60. My Opera Glasses skin seems to have a problem with the extension toolbar, for example, because that is relatively new and I haven't fixed it yet.

Editing skins to make minor changes is fairly easy, doing a proper job is much harder, creating a skin from scratch is a major undertaking not for the faint-hearted or graphically challenged.

Skin Tutorial

Originally posted by burnout426:

Does the Mac native skin look good?

Sure, it's pretty good, because they brought some attention to it.

I don't see there any logic:
Windows (>90% user base I believe): custom Opera skin, native skin is not supported enough and finally ceased;
Mac (<10% user base or so): native skin development get good amount of attention (probably because all designers are Mac users);
Linux (~2-3% of users probably): I have no idea how good is native skin here, but it is not ceased.

I have been using the Windows Native skin only since (or after) 11.10, because the Opera Standard skin "broke" at that time:

If you use buttons in the Search panel those buttons are spaced too far apart with the Opera Standard skin, but are spaced perfectly fine with the Windows Native skin. So if Windows Native is gone forever, please fix the Opera Standard skin!

I can't live without native skinning, "eyecandy" of any degree makes my eyes bleed
Windows native skin still works with 11.60,
Just copy the skin from an older version of opera.
I have been using the skin files from version 11.11

I fear this will not work for much longer however as the native skin requires software support
Most of the native skin file contains the lines
Native = 1
The last version which supports native skin is the last version I will use

didn't read what was written above, this was the first link that came up in a search for "windows native skin opera", and just wanted to have my say on this.

Been using opera since 2001 (when it was adware), and been using the windows native skin for all that time. Even though there are no real benefits to be gained now from using the native skin, I was used to seeing opera that way and every update to the browser always respected that customization.

Until that is 11.60.

I'm sure there's a way I can get back to the way it looked before, it was wrong for the update to ignore the modifications I had made. I've been sticking to opera for so long out of pure habit. I'm sure the level of customization I adore in opera can be easily attained with Firefox and Chrome with the help of plugins and extensions.

I'm sure Opera would rather focus on the mobile browser market now but don't ignore those of us who have stuck with the desktop browser for so long.

Originally posted by shijithpk:

I'm sure Opera would rather focus on the mobile browser market now

Opera is focusing on desktop AND mobile AND TV and other devices. Desktop is more than 1/3 of Opera's total revenue!

Having several different default skins is not "focus" - it's taking away focus from improving what needs to be improved. Opera needs to settle on one single skin and maintain that. That's how you "focus."

This is beyond annoying. First they “forget” to fix bugs in the skin (like unnecessary border around URL in the status bar), now this.

I've fixed the status bar issue (if anyone needs this version, I can share it) and I use this copy of the skin, so I didn't even notice at first the original skin is removed.

Oh well. I believe the native skin can still be maintained by us, like any other skin. But why it's so hard for Opera developers to do it, is beyond me.

Originally posted by atharip:

Oh well. I believe the native skin can still be maintained by us, like any other skin. But why it's so hard for Opera developers to do it, is beyond me.

Not all the handling/look of the windows native skin is done in the skin zip file. There's native platform code that has to be written and maintained for some of the stuff.

Originally posted by Slamdex:

Having several different default skins is not "focus" - it's taking away focus from improving what needs to be improved. Opera needs to settle on one single skin and maintain that. That's how you "focus."

Yeah, you sure told me off. The thing is you're conflating what the desktop browser development team should be 'focusing' on and what segment Opera as a company would rather 'focus' on for its future (viz. mobile which would subsequently affect those of us still using the desktop version). But I guess such distinctions are lost on you.

I wish some developer could come on the forum and weigh in on why dropping the native skin after these many years was necessary. Did Slamdex in his nitpicky and tedious way actually hit on something there?