A way for Opera to harness the power of Opera users. Also memory/CPU issue.

A way for Opera to harness the power of Opera users. Also memory/CPU issue.

One way that the other browsers have a slight advantage over Opera is that they take better advantage of the programming and coding of it's users. Being open source really helps to draw in help from users. And even a lot of people who have some coding ability but don't feel comfortable tinkering with the base code can still try their hand at making a plug-in.

Now of course I know Opera is not a open source browser. But, there needs to be a better way for users to help then messing around with widgets and unite programs.

What I recommend is an easier way for people to make user scripts. Maybe something where someone could bring up some type of wizard, they could click on the page (or maybe even part of the browser?) they wish to effect and something could pop up with different options and ways they could effect it. If it had different options depending on the type of object someone wished to effect and could make real changes in the user experience then it could really be a good thing. Of course it would need a change back to default button so that people could use it without fear.

This would allow people without real coding ability per se to have an affect I think that implemented with care and so users can make real deep changes this could be a really good thing for users and Opera.

Now I myself am not a fan of the "freedom" Opera has given it's widgets, I, and many many others, would prefer an option to revert them to pre 10.5x. But I also know that Opera has no intention what so ever of doing that. They are committed to "making widgets first class citizens" and the fact that it would clutter up our OS's with tens and maybe even hundreds of useless programs if people installed all the widgets if we installed as many as we had before doesn't concern them. I strongly suggest that Opera provide an option during install to revert widgets and I know there are a good amount of people that agree with me. I'd even hazard a guess that widget use has fallen dramatically from what it once was.

Also I think there should be an option for the new "menu" button so users can change it to suit the needs of the user. Or Opera could make the word smaller and have it run on the right side from the bottom up. I think that would look rather nice as a matter of fact.

When I started this thread I had the intention of making it quite a bit longer then it is now but RL things need my attention so I will cut it short with these last few issues.

For quite a long time now I have been a sort of quiet snapshot tester, downloading snapshots and sending in bug reports but not posting, although I have read the posts other users put up.
Thats why I feel I must at least touch on the cpu and memory issue. I know that at least publicly Opera wants to pretend there is no issue, on the desktop blog I don't remember seeing anybody at Opera address this issue beside saying to delete private data or reset the pref.
I and many others feel it is a bigger issue then that, if the people at Opera wish to not talk about it thats fine. But if thats the case then they should fix it.
Many times I've had Opera grid to a halt after hours of usage and I've read way to many other posts to discount this as a settings problem. It would seem like it's in Opera's best interest to hunt down whatever is causing the memory and/or CPU problems. If you don't wish to address it out in the open then fine, but you should at least fix it .

Also I realize that Opera needed to rush the roll out of the 10.5 line for the ballot, but in doing so there are many small bugs and issues that have been over looked. One example is the search menu, a lot of people have said when they pull it down it's the whole width of the screen. That also happened to me, but since I refuse to use any windows OS past win2k I was able to use the classic installer which for some reason does not have the search menu problem when you install it.
It seems to me that since Opera usage is so low Opera has gone the course of trying to stay ahead of Chrome in speed so as to keep Opera in the news and have something that people will talk about. It doing so the browser has become less stable, buggier and less user friendly. If you wish to take part in this "arms race" don't let in come at a cost of what Opera has always been (at least to me), a fast, user friendly browser that did everything I needed without needing 20 or 30 plug-ins and with a small memory footprint. Lose sight of that of you've lost sight of what makes Opera the browser it's always been.

I say all this as a long time user of Opera with no malice intent.

aw, cmon, so much text? can't you cum it up in one paragraph?

Originally posted by serious:

aw, cmon, so much text? can't you cum it up in one paragraph?

Heh, believe me I tried to make shorter more then once, but I wanted it to be more then what I see most of the time which is saying this is a problem, fix it. I wanted to try and explain why I thought it would be in Opera's best interest.

But I do happen to find a User script wizard an interesting idea. If made the right way it would stop all the posts we see asking for FF or Chrome type options cuz users can do it all themselves. That would be a huge leap forward for Opera and make it WAY more customizable then FF and it's hundreds of mostly plugins, of which 20% or more of are pretty useless me in everyday use.

No thank you, the last thing we need is crappy user-made bloatware.

Users helping out from time to time with some issues and making a few widgets is fine, but lets keep Opera the way it is

If i wanted an open source user contributed plug-in heavy browser, I'll just use FireFox

How is a built in wizard made by Opera that users use to help shape their web surfing related to what your saying? Users wouldn't be making anything.

Users wouldn't make anything. The wizard would be made by opera for users so they don't have to use scripts other people make. I can make my own scripts but lots of time I've had other users of Opera ask me to check out some script they found because they didn't trust some strangers script....I can understand that. This would stop that and make it easy for people to affect the way the interact with the web and give them alot more control.
I think it's a good idea.

Originally posted by CartmansDad:

How is a built in wizard made by Opera that users use to help shape their web surfing related to what your saying? Users wouldn't be making anything.

are you talking to me or the OP?

HEY, wait just one damn minute! Cartman's Dad? But that's his Mom? So that would make you...a hermaphrodite?


edit: I see, so you're talking about something like this: http://unite.opera.com/application/401/
correct?

Originally posted by Muttsfan:

edit: I see, so you're talking about something like this: http://unite.opera.com/application/401/

correct?

No, I do use that Unite program to keep track of my scripts though. I mean something where users can click on sites or different content on the site and a Opera built wizard would pop up saying you want to do this with this? And have five or six options and depending and what they've clicked on the questions and what they could do would be different. After they were putting in all the options the wizard would write the script and load it. Bingo!New script..Opera newbie made to boot.

Originally posted by Muttsfan:

HEY, wait just one damn minute! Cartman's Dad? But that's his Mom? So that would make you...a hermaphrodite?

Heh..I didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Good question. Playing for both teams there are we?

Oh wait...to the first reply poster..there ya go. I just summed it up in my post above.

Originally posted by serious:

aw, cmon, so much text? can't you cum it up in one paragraph?

I hope that wansnt a pun for what I think it is.

I kinda skipped all the wall of text and just scanned (How I wish the speech thing worked again)

Widgets were always useless in my mind, after I saw the direction they are going with thier media player and ebook reader widget. A small program that runs beautifully.

We really need that unite application to manage the scripts by default. This needs to be done exactly like chrome. You see a install button for the script. Click it. It installs. Then you go to addons and disable/enable at will.

Yes CPU/memory needs optimisation(do not give me that "Memory is stagnant without programs taking space, needs to be used up bull")

Check out this

Originally posted by Desktop Team:

CORE-30317 (Excessive memory consumption (>1.5 GB))

Originally posted by Ichann:

I hope that wansnt a pun for what I think it is.

I don't know what you are refering to. I just meant that it was really much text, esp. for my usual late-night reading sessions and me not being a native speaker
k, now @topics:

widgets: I think the goal of widgets is not so much what is hosted in the desktop market but on embedded devices where opera runs as a platform rather than a browser. Desktop is more of a playground in that respect than the real "productive working environment"

memory/cpu: I don't see current memory usage as much of a problem and regarding cpu consumption I think that opera is esp. easy on the machine ... at least that's my experience when alternatively working with opera and firefox on my original acer aspire one (256mb ram, vga included, first-gen intel atom, 8gb ssd). OS of course is ubuntu