Why opera has small market and what needs to be done- Results of small informal survey among friends

Why opera has small market and what needs to be done- Results of small informal survey among friends

Many of us (including myself) had a number of discussions in this community about why opera isn't gaining users, why many sites does not work and what should be done kind of thing. I thought well as being opera fan, may be our thoughts are bounded in vision of good things of opera. lets see what non-opera users say. I just recently conducted a small informal survey(no paper recording , just asked verbally) within my known community who do not use opera. The survey looks interesting to me.

I asked them 3 questions: "What browser they use"? , "Have they ever tried opera ? and "What are the major reasons they do not use opera and what needs to be done so that opera might get more users"?
I asked only 20 people and results are summarized below:

Category-1: Exactly 8 out of 20 have used opera sometime in the past and do admit that Opera is very good browser in terms of quality (I guess features). All these 8 users currently use both IE and Firefox. The major reasons they do not use opera anymore are : 1) Many of their daily usable sites does not work in opera and they don't like the idea of spending time on tweaking settings to make opera work either. 2) They need to use IE for many sites 3) They kind of like firefox being open-source. They like firefox extension feature and think that it is the right thing to do to keep options open for anyone willing to extend. Also believe firefox displays more pages better than opera.

They think opera should team up with big companies/corporates to get support for opera. One of them said opera being from outside US, is a negative point in terms of marketing in US.

Category-2: Exactly 12 out of 20 have never used opera

Category 2a: 1) 7 of them haven't heard of opera. Out of this 7, only 3 use Firefox and IE. Other 4 use IE only. They think opera should do more advertising so that people know about it. They said they heard people talking about firefox in TV tech shows but never opera. One of them asked me if opera is good browser, why I don't see it when I went to download yahoo toolbar (http://toolbar.yahoo.com/) ? IE only users told me that IE serves everything they does on the internet and why they should use something else.

Category 2b: 5 of 20 have heard of opera but they don't use it because 1) They mostly use IE and it serves their need both at work and at home. 2) They heard that opera is a nice browser but it is for advanced users 3) Their friends recommended firefox and they use it mostly at home. 4) Many of their tech geek firends convinced them that firefox is the next generation browser in development and thats why you see many schools have its mirror, they recommend users to use firefox and thunderbird.

They think opera should have more advertisements demonstrating why they should try it.


Well, many points expressed may be just useless as already known but it is just a raw survey feedback. One point sounded interesting to me is that users seemed to be "going with the flow or buzz" rather than doing feature comparison that we mostly do in this forum. ANother point is among 7 out of 20 never heard of opera but 3 of them started using firefox!

Originally posted by operafan2006:

They think opera should team up with big companies/corporates to get support for opera. One of them said opera being from outside US, is a negative point in terms of marketing in US.

I disagree. Why doesn't Opera have a high market share in Singapore, then?

It looks like the most important thing to do is to advertise Opera. We have a great browser; we just need to let people know more about us.

Two other major issues are Opera's perceived lack of ease of use, and many websites not supporting Opera.

yes, the thoughts are raw perceptions of people and not necessarily right. Also, all of them are non-opera user.

I majot point I found out is that people are not digging out for a feature-rich browser but the browser have to show up in front of them. Then they might try and stick. Equally important aspect is better advertising for what we have.

What does "low market share" / "high market share" mean, anyway? Some sites work well well with opera, provided that opera masks itself as IE of FF. Sometimes I forget to switch the ID back, shame on me I know. But I guess I'm not the only one, others might not even care and let it be disguised all the time. What I want to say: Opera's market share is bigger than we all know. We can only estimate the real market share, all we know is that it's higher than everybody reports.

Advertising: Yeah, that's maybe a bit of a "weak point" (so to say) of opera - but who cares? For sure, I don't! Advertising costs money, the Mozilla/FF guys passed the hat to pay for big advertising offensives. Does anybody want to see money put into advertising rather than into development of the browser?

@operafan2006 - did you recommend opera to those who did not know about it and perhaps watched them using it for 10 minutes, helping them to deal with the differences - what did they say?

I guess there are still people who say "Nice, but I'm used to IE, I don't need those features, I just want to surf the web."

That said, I use FF or mozilla from time to time, because there are some features I like better the way they do it...

Originally posted by DarkWorm:

Advertising: Yeah, that's maybe a bit of a "weak point" (so to say) of opera - but who cares? For sure, I don't! Advertising costs money, the Mozilla/FF guys passed the hat to pay for big advertising offensives. Does anybody want to see money put into advertising rather than into development of the browser?

Of course the browser must be continually improved and developed, but what's the point if no one will use it?

We need to spread the word about Opera.

Originally posted by DarkWorm:

What does "low market share" / "high market share" mean, anyway? Some sites work well well with opera, provided that opera masks itself as IE of FF. Sometimes I forget to switch the ID back, shame on me I know. But I guess I'm not the only one, others might not even care and let it be disguised all the time. What I want to say: Opera's market share is bigger than we all know. We can only estimate the real market share, all we know is that it's higher than everybody reports.

Reports estimate Opera's market share to be between 0.5% and 0.9%, while Firefox's market share is estimated to be about 10%. I always ID as Opera. An Opera Myths website states that when Opera decided to identify as itself by default, there were no reports of a sudden increase in Opera's market share.

Originally posted by Ace Jack Neo:

An Opera Myths website states that when Opera decided to identify as itself by default, there were no reports of a sudden increase in Opera's market share.

This makes sense, since most webstats packages have long been able to recognize Opera even when it's identifying as IE or Mozilla. Not when it's masking, of course, but the default was always "ID as..." and not "mask as..."

I think if MS had actually properly taken care of its browser's problems, Mozilla, (and even Netscape) would not be where they are now...

While netscape (upto version 5, I think..)was great, IE knocked it for six... and all the companies were too busy buying it up, and adding hopeless new things to it, it could not compete.. It was given a lot of support by being 'bundled', giving the big companies the confidence to use it everywhere...

But bad design and tech decisions didnt help, so IE killed it with 5 and 6... more about Netscape.. (see the third para of 'The rise of Netscape' ....)
-- I only speak from my experience at university, trying this overdone thing on the underpowered Uni PC's... Myself, I was still using NN 4.7, after being shocked by the underhanded poilicy about IE4 - 'only 10k on CD' - then it starts up the internet (luckily leased line at work) and starts downloading another 40 Meg!!!

(I had already started searching for a better browser, thats how i found Opera!! )

and then MS just seemed to say 'the battle is won' and seemed to forget about it ....
and so the 'bug found' & patches started... (I dont beileve this company didnt do anything 'visible' until 2005...)

- a lot of peeps got fed up about 'no new MS browser, etc, and remembered the good old netscape by mozilla - just when Firefox etc was coming out, to massive campaigns....

- and opera was still 'web-bound' , no news except in small, niche publications.....

- the last two items are why netcape is only now creeping into the 'best viewed with' category... people remember the netcape of old, and are *very, very* picky.... and as more and more peeps are getting computers, without hardly the knowledge to switch them on, they just go lamely trusting the software that came with them....


- again, *if* MS had kept 'renewing' it's browser with new tech, etc( If IE7 had been released in 2002!! - followed by 8, 9, 10...??) , I dont think Netcape or mozilla would have had a chance... it would be another 1 or 2% browser like the rest of us....

- this is how I see it... please correct my history!!

Just a thought, but marketshare should come from current IE users, not Mozilla's Firefox. While Opera is undoubtedly a superior product compared to both, the difference between IE is far greater and so is the number of potential users.

Question is how to reach out to non-geeks (every IE user?), which excludes probably everyone contributing more than 3 posts in this forum.

Originally posted by Niddhogg:

marketshare should come from current IE users, not Mozilla's Firefox.

Why is that? I'm not a big fan of open source either, but hey, it's not like we should send people to hell for one little mistake! A user is a user, even is her past isn't immaculate.

Because the difference between Opera and FF is there, but their users are harder to drag over, having used/personalized/merged/rooted to FF for a long time, something that no IE user would ever do. That might very well change with IE's latest version (dunno actually since haven't tried it, but reviews indicate it is somwehat better), so it's probably good idea to catch them before they settle into something that is an improvement.

Likewise, have to admit, I would find switching to FF as a permanent browser a hard thing to do.

... and there is that 'fame' thing.... the history of netscape supports FF, even though the only thing that is the same is 'mozilla'... dunno if any of the same people are on the FF team, it was confusing enough trying to see where mozilla started, and netscape ended....

Opera will have to get a *lot* more aggressive at marketing to get that sort of following...

Firefox users have already switched, and average IE users aren't likely to switch.
Opera must be an option for those that are likely to switch.
So, no need to target these or those browser users... Just clear misconceptions about Opera and

Originally posted by Ace Jack Neo:

spread the word about Opera.

the good news about 'FF vs Opera' is that FF users are much more aware of us!!
- and any FF glitches throw them in our direction.......

- and as for the final IE7, do you think MS will play it straight??? flying pig time???

if it did, a *lot* of websites will start 'malfunctioning' and they wont be blaming us!!!

Originally posted by illiad:

and as for the final IE7, do you think MS will play it straight??? flying pig time???

if it did, a *lot* of websites will start 'malfunctioning' and they wont be blaming us!!!

Well, anyone who relies on a number of CSS hacks* and hasn't updated their site in the year since Microsoft warned us all to switch to something more reliable is going to have a rude awakening when IE7 users start showing up.

I expect there will be quite a lot of these, despite the lead time.

* Short version: Microsoft has fixed some of the bugs in IE that people were usng to, well, work around other bugs in IE.

Originally posted by barulheira:

Firefox users have already switched, and average IE users aren't likely to switch.
Opera must be an option for those that are likely to switch.
So, no need to target these or those browser users... Just clear misconceptions about Opera and

Originally posted by Ace Jack Neo:

spread the word about Opera.

Agreed, just how?

One thing that won't work is articles with miles of text. Pictures are an improvement, better may be captured movies highlighting typical Opera features that many potential users might actually care about. That doesn't include standards and security.

And bring a copy on USB along and show-off Opera.

My personal feeling is that opera has to do two important things with best prority:

1. fixes for major sites like news(terrible in news videos), mail,secured sites etc and get the users the best out of the box. On a lighter short term priority, html support for mail to make it something worth mentioning.
2. Aggressive advertisement campaign before IE7 arrives. Average users do not see much of need for alternative browsers in the first place. Secondly, if IE7 shows the dramatic change in look, it will be even much harder to justify a switch for an average user. They are much less likely to even try opera discarding IE which works for almost all sites and apparantly giving state-of-art features.

Improving opera feature to the finest degree will go nearly useless once IE7 gets settled down.


** I would even request opera to consider suspending new feature developments for a month (for example) if necessary and investing money for advertisement.

To an extent, the "average user" might not even worth having in the first place. These tend to be whiny consumer types that can't be arsed to read any documentation and will switch back at the drop of a hat. When they d switch back the first time something doesn't go their way, they'll bad mouth the product to all their friends and family. This goes for just about any product, not just web browsers.

At my job, many users accounts are not even eligible to try to save when they want to cancel because unfortunately they cost the firm more money than they bring in. Sometimes people cancel change their minds. We'll set them up and everybody is now happy, right? Wrong! Some users accounts are not even eligible to be reinstated once they cancel because for whatever reason they weren't profitable.

So, the point is, what type of user does Opera even want? The same type of user that my firm will won't even try to save as a customer might be better to let Microsoft deal with and lose money on. So, I'm not sure the "average user" is really what Opera needs. My suggestion, instead of trying to appel to the "average user" would be define the demographic that they want to target; trying to be all things to all people never works.

HTML email as been disgussed before. Lately, I've actually been using Kmail for my email needs. What Kmail does is that it renders html email in plain text, but provides an option to render it as html. This might not be a bad idea for Opera, HTML has a good chance of just being spam anyway

mproving opera feature to the finest degree will go nearly useless once IE7 gets settled down.

This I feel is completely wrong. For the users that understand that just because a browser has a search field and looks like the bastard offspring of Safari and Firefox but uglier than either (Yes, I've seen and used it under emulation using vmware) setting Opera apart with the feature set will be more important, not less.

Orginally posted by Niddhogg

That doesn't include standards and security.

Maybe not standards, be security is an increasingly big issue.

From Kelson

Well, anyone who relies on a number of CSS hacks* and hasn't updated their site in the year since Microsoft warned us all to switch to something more reliable is going to have a rude awakening when IE7 users start showing up.

Yup. Not that IE 7 will really be standards compliant though. It renders the Acid2 test a bit like Opera 6. But that is a huge improvement.

Well, no need to argue that opera is great itself as a quality browser but all my point about seling it. Now if you start categorizing user, then you will only find elligible users within 1% as we have right now. If thats the happy market point for opera, then probably nothing new required. Opera will surely have within 1% market from those with high tech knowledge and the scarp rhetoric by Cnet reviewer will be true "opera is good browser but not for everyday use,. For everyday we recommend firefox..".

A massive marketing campaign will be ineffective, though. You'll reach out to people that have no interest in the browser or see that it looks a bit different than Explorer or FatFox and reject it. So what I'm suggesting targetted marketing, getting users that will be cost effective.

As far as cnet goes, I tend to be unimpressed by their opinions and leave an article wondering how that person got to be a technical writer at all.

marketing campaign is a must now no matter how you do it either targetted (I don't know whom to target) or massive. I know Cnet is just garbage but I referred that if we sit idle and categorize people like Sanguinemoon said, we may very well find ourselves in that position.

- just to get opera to take out a simple half or quarter page advert in a 'non-enthusiast' mag
(I mean 'computer active', 'PcFormat', even 'T3' gadgetmag, PCGamer, etc.... *not* linuxuser, etc. they already know!!!)
would be a start... even get some good adverts on TV, to make peeps ask, 'what is Opera??'

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

As far as cnet goes, I tend to be unimpressed by their opinions and leave an article wondering how that person got to be a technical writer at all.

Unfortunately, many others will be brainwashed by Cnet, and won't adopt Opera.

Opera must be able to appeal to the average user as well as to technically-inclined users.

I just hope opera understands the need for active marketing and act before it is too late again. They were late to remove the banner and now if they are late to act before IE7 settles down, I am afraid we will continue to debate among ourselves. But can't spread the word.

It is product placement!! the more appearences of Opera ads in '**non-computer** locations, the more it will get 'into the conciousness' ...

here is my bit to show how it could be...

opera-hmpg.jpg It may seem a bit familiar... competitors webpage, made Opera-ble!!!....

Operafan2006, I think the main reason why users' attempts to promote Opera fail is because Opera Software does not seem to support them. Some good ideas must be officially implemented. Such as my "list of major websites which support Opera".

er, *user* support is good, its **official** support and visibility that is needed!!

Exactly, Illad.

Marketing everywhere is crucial!

I managed to demo how Opera is better by showing just how fast it loads Google Maps and when my co-workers felt how slow IE was, they realized the difference. Interestngly enough someone said they felt Firefox/Mozilla was less secure, because of the more frequent updates. So more frequent publized updates can actually be a turn off for some.

Another area is torrents, a new convert to Opera asked me why it took soo long for Opera to start Torrents, Now this guy had little understanding why Azureus is so powerfull all he cared about why his torrents didn't start or were realy slow. Personally I think if Opera manages to meet and exceed Azureus' core feature set, new users will start out with that and in the process start surfing too.

symantec would agree.....

I just tried to make the point to everyone and specially to opera people that this is the golden time to take aggressive step towards marketing. This time will run out or become more challenging once IE7 in the market. many can disagree because IE7 is not superior but I personally feel, if IE7 gives any new taste to its so called average/don't care/corporate users, they are going to stick to it.

hey, I know.... I guess they are happy being no. 3 or lower....

perhaps you are right and hope it does not happen.

Originally posted by illiad:

symantec would agree.....

That article sounds a lot like something from BBSpot or The Onion.

well, here is the original article...

and the full symantec report....

the Inq has condensed it down...

do you know the quote 'there is no such thing as bad publicity' ??? It sure keeps it in the public conciousness....

the Inq has condensed it down...

lol, I love the way that article is written.

A couple of things.

One I brought up when I first started posting here is promoting Opera in your e-mail signature. I don't actually use my signature anymore - I right click at the end of an e-mail and pick and choose any one (or a combination of) notes.

Multiple e-mail signatures made easy - get yours FREE at http://www.opera.com

Happy surfing! Zap those annoying ads for FREE at http://www.opera.com

Note that this doesn't mention what Opera is. People want useful stuff for free. HTML e-mail would be a big help here so you could hide the url behind a link name...

Want to know a secret?

Although I'm not a big fan of HTML e-mail - you can waste a lot of time twiddling about with the look of things, I agree that some sort of basic formatting capability in M2 would be an advantage. I think the formatting possibilities here are more than adequate. I'd be happy if Opera could implent some sort of code to allow large, bold, italicised and underlined text.

The other thing is the question of the future development of Opera. We all know that Opera has been a market leader in innovation (if not "take-up" of the product). Can Opera maintain this? Are we all secretly worried that Opera will got the way of Betamax or something? I think it would be a good idea for Opera to spend a little money strategically (and leave the advertising to word of mouth). Something which was brought up on a forum here about a week ago is the possibility of integrating a file system explorer (a proper one - like Windows Explorer) into Opera. I've been using CubicExplorer this week - a tabbed alternative to Windows Explorer with a built-in notepad. I like it. It would be great to have some sort of plugin to use that within Opera - or for Opera to work with the guy who wrote it to see if it could be built in to a future version of Opera somehow. File explorer tabs (e.g. one for each drive), e-mail and web page tabs open in Opera. What a great application that would make.

Sorry, drifting off into wish-list territory there.

Another thing to think about, in relation to advertising, is to get a little creative about it. How about humourous publicity stunts that would make the local news and make people smile, like a slow bicycle race for charity with 50 riders all sporting the Opera logo. How about a one-man "flash mob" who posts his videos on YouTube?

Originally posted by Falesh:

lol, I love the way that article is written.

Idem.

I recently discoverd a novel way of introducing people to Opera. Now this will even work for people, who just use Firefox because of word of mouth.

It has more impact where there's restricted net access, namely most Arab countries, universities, large companies etc. I just tell them to bypass the filters with OperaTor (Opera + Tor + Privoxy). Now these people are actually trapped, henece they'll gladly try anything, considering there's no installation required. It also makes people feel like they're hackers

OperaTor - Opera + Tor + Privoxy

tatepa: I think the problem for 'average joe' users is the unconventional way M2 works... its only the 'googlemail' lovers that would understand it!! - most much prefer explorer-like folders than filters, unless its their first email ...

Originally posted by illiad:

tatepa: I think the problem for 'average joe' users is the unconventional way M2 works... its only the 'googlemail' lovers that would understand it!! - most much prefer explorer-like folders than filters, unless its their first email ...

The trouble is does that mean companies should not innovate as the average joe will always find it easier to use what is already in existence? I'd rather Opera kept it's M2 the way it is, after all users who do not want to try new things can stick with their web mail or Outlook Express.

the point is, if it is made more like outlook express, a lot more people will switch.... especially if it can directly import the mail & settings...
- It could be made switchable to filter OR folder mode... ??

Originally posted by illiad:

the point is, if it is made more like outlook express, a lot more people will switch....

You could try at least to give people some good reasons (if you know any) for switching in order to convince them.
Though I like the browser very much I can't see any reasons for switching to Opera's mail client.
I could start to enumerate a lot of features I'm missing in M2 and end up by telling that I don't want my mail to be fetched and processed each time I start the browser or to keep stored fragments of already deleted mails on my hdd for ever...

well the 'check mail on start' is a part of many email programs, and is of course selectable.. the 'compact mailboxes' in eudora will clear up any remnants of deleted mail, I think (I keep 90% of my mail, on a USB drive, so I can use it at home and work..)

Of course many people have their own fav email, but 'all-in-one' would be the main reason for switching..

If the email was as 'robust' as eudora(all the config and mailboxes are basic text format, and *any* folder can be used to store them and the attachments..), I would switch straight away, due to the ability of using the *same* email on both Linux and windows....

yes, there are 'workalike' versions of eudora for linux, but the similarity is only skin deep...

Originally posted by tatepa:

Another thing to think about, in relation to advertising, is to get a little creative about it. How about humourous publicity stunts that would make the local news and make people smile, like a slow bicycle race for charity with 50 riders all sporting the Opera logo. How about a one-man "flash mob" who posts his videos on YouTube?

In this aspect, we can learn from Spread Firefox. What if something (such as a video) we use to promote Opera becomes an Internet phenomenon?

Originally posted by Ace Jack Neo:

In this aspect, we can learn from Spread Firefox. What if something (such as a video) we use to promote Opera becomes an Internet phenomenon?

My thinking too. Wonder if there's any mileage in Opera considering expanding the community to include an area just like YouTube? I know there's next to no chance of catching them up but you see a lot of "copycat" sites appearing now e.g. google videos. I think it would be a good way to spread the name of Opera around, and maybe generate some revenue. People could even post a short video showing what their problems are then ask a question which appears in these forums with a link back to the video. If a picture speaks a thousand words what would a video do? Also, more experienced users could post short demos showing all the cool "features in action".

Microsoft used to have a screen event recorder called Microsoft Camcorder. With this you could perform a demonstration of something on your screen and record it as an avi or exe file. I think you could record your own running commentary with it at the same time. This would be a fun thing to play about with, with Opera. Instead of telling a newbie "Do this, do that" and confusing the hell out of them, you could just do it on your own computer (I'll bet most of us do it anyway, just so we know we're getting all the menu and ini file entry names right!) and record it. Then you could post your "video answer" and link to it in your reply to the user.

This doesn't seem to be supported by MS anymore and it DOESN'T open in XP (it thinks you're using something pre-Windows 95 ) but there's some download links for it here (the top link worked for me).

Perhaps there are better things out there these days, but this is only a 625k download in case anyone knows how to hack it to work with XP. - it might work on Win98. What you end up with is something just like a presentation given by someone with a laptop hooked up to a video projector.

EDIT: There appear to be a few programs out there which do the same job as camcorder - also these days you can record them as a flash movie.

Hmmm..... this sounds like we need a "killer" widget!

I dont see how **another** youtube or myspace clone would help Opera(the program, not the community website...)

as I said we need ***non-computer*** based action and publicity, that is why I think spreadfirefox was successful...
a good short and simple advert aired on peaktime TV would be worthit just to raise awareness..
Just put this onto film or whatever they want - you dont even need to say anything,
just finish with a screen showing where to get it.....

here is something tucked away on some seemingly forgotten area..... and another forgotten 'campaign'..

there are plenty of 'screencorder' progs about, even on cover discs!! and no, the people who like widgets are already decided in what they want, a lot finding them a reason to *not* choose Opera...

Originally posted by illiad:

Just put this onto film

Man, that was waayyy cool. Never seen that before - nice redirect at the end too! That's saved as my permanent e-mail sig.

I support the idea of a video demonstrating Opera's cool features.

I don't think an Opera YouTube would be useful; perhaps something like Firefox Flicks would be better.

Make an Opera commercial an Internet phenomenon.

In my view the following might be the possible areas/ways to take agreesive campaign:

1. Increased web presence in any possible way (for example: opera users putting opera publicity videos in youtube, myspace, facebook, google video,yahoo video etc to attract young users) or by advertisements in popular sites

2. Try to reach out school campuses (either sending flyers by opera fans, sending emails to web admins to consider opera, establish mirrors). May be sponsor some events(Technology related) to make the opera name familiar.

3. Try to form some partnetship to promote opera and disucussion to important companies/websites for not purposely blocking opera. This is perhaps most critical issue that some very popular sites started mentioning firefox as option but not opera in many small instances but those make impact. For example, in yahoo there is toolbar for firefox but not for opera. In amazon, if you want to see preview of table of content of a book, there suggest either to use IE or firefox. These small areas need to be reached aggressively rather than waiting that one day they will mention opera.

4. TV commercials are also great idea

5. Since opera earns money from mobile, it might not be bad to see if any team up with US cell companies(like verizon, cingular,t-mobile etc) is possible. This will promote opera among the young who are the best users of internet in cell phones.

6. Overall mission should give priority to young (I would say below 30 years) users who are most likely to try out something they think cool! Ofcourse, efforts will be there for all users ages.

7. Last but not the least, a redesign of opera help section to get users easier access to info. Let me give one areas which needs improvement- Opera plug-in. Since opera is not bundling plug-in, new user will be first struck by plug-in download popup. Now opera plug-in page is hard to find and info are listed as knowledge base past events. One will have a hard time to find how to install say media player plug-in for opera. So, I would suggest make clearly visible help section on this and others which need improvement. Many discussions were in this forum. My bottomline idea is to make help section available easily rather than expecting users to come to this opera community. Many common users have no interest in such web forums.

Perhaps you all can give more ideas but I personally think the golden time is running out now.You might disagree but only future will tell how opera can rise up once IE7 settles down. Sorry, I repeatedly say this thing and it may seem that I fear IE7 which is not better than opera. But my fear is not IE7 as a browser, but the marketing of MS/bundles advantage/User used-to MS experience/almost universal webpage display capability all will be enough to set the mind of users in IE.

My friend loves the opera community features so I persuaded him to try the opera browser as he currently uses firefox.

He thought it was OK but the first thing he noticed was the current sound issue as you can't adjust the volume while using the browser. There were other small things but in my opinion it's really hard to get people to change as it is without things like the sound issue which they don't have on other browsers. To be honest I didn't blame him for not wanting to change as why would someone want to change to this browser when the browser they currently use doesn't have that problem?

I'll try and get him to try opera again whenever that bug is fixed though and hope he will start using it.

I've only recently started using the browser myself and I really like it and the opera community and it's features so I'm willing to forgive things like the volume issue.

What is the sound issue? I don't fully understand what volume you can't adjust? Are you talking about voice controlled browsing?