WildEnte,

Thanks, I just found the "Open In Background Tab" item in the context menu right below the one I had been clicking this whole time. (How embarrassing...)

The status bar, however, is still a problem. I already had the status bar turned on. It doesn't give any status information, though. It appears that it's only purpose is to show URLs when I hover over a link. I want it to tell me what it's doing AFTER I click the link.

Just a moment ago, I clicked a link, and the page just sat there, unresponsive with a "0 KB" indicator in the progress bar. In firefox, it would have told me that it was trying (and failing) to locate the page with a "Locating page..." message. In Opera, there is no indication, at all, of what the problem might be. Is it a valid page that is just getting hammered? Is is a URL that isn't resolving at all? I don't know in Opera, because the status bar doesn't tell me the status (which is, ostensibly, its purpose).

i didn't know the default fit-to-width option existed until now.

anyway, it doesn't work well with gmail!!!

but it would be great if this option can be added to site preferences!

and pls do something like the del.icio.us firefox plugin for opera!

smitty: go to shift+f12-advanced-status and drag and drop the words "status field" and "progress status" to the status bar. And all the rest too, you can remove whatever you find you don't need by right-clicking the field and choosing "remove from toolbar".

A preference we added by popular request, the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%

Didn't know about it. Enabled it now, it's great!

I use "Fit to width" quite a lot, I'd even appreciate it if I could set it by default for some pages (via edit site preferences)

WildEnte... Wow. I didn't expect that sort of configurability. When I saw mention of status bar in the preferences menus, I just assumed it was to turn it on or off (and I mistook your previous post for instructions on how to turn on or move the status bar).

Okay, I am officially converted, I think. Those were the only two things bothering me, and neither is a real issue!

For the records... FTW

One of my favorite features, turned off by default, as too many sites don't work well FTW (regression from v.7 via v.8 to v.9)...

Thus the wish of many for site specific FTW setting.

Best sollution is to make it work, of course

Folders for contacts!!!! It's so obvious I haven't thought about it!!!! What a great tip

(Feeling really stupid now).

the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%

i'm use it

welcome to the club smitty

"A preference we added by popular request, the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%"

It's my killer option of Opera. Maybe you could place it more easy to access?

It is located now in my toolbar. But on every Opera installation that I use (on different computers) I always need some minutes to install it there.

khm... question to developers: is it possible to add such feature as folders for RSS Feeds?

The home page is more popular than we maybe thought, 51% actually change the home page address.

I've always changed it just so I can use ctrl+space (or double-click on a blank new page) to get to a site easily. It's become pretty redundant since adding speed dial though, so I don't need to change that anymore :)

I think no one uses torrents

I use torrents in Opera, and I'm hardly the only one.

JavaScript and Plugins are both used by more than 99% by default

Well duh, why would you NOT run them.

To get rid of annoyances on web pages. I have plugins (and gif animations) turned off because they are too annoying. Flash ads and anything that plays sounds are the worst offenders. I only turn on plugins for sites like Youtube where it's necessary.

Javascript can be annoying too, but I keep that on because it rarely bothers me.

Glad you're getting some good feedback from the stats. Probably a lot more reliable than what postwhores will scream for!

I would use the master password more often if I didn't have such problems with Opera using up all the resources while waiting for a password to be entered.

Widgets... what's the point? Some of them look very nice but they just add to clutter.

The UI needs some work on it to make managing bookmarks, filters, etc. a bit easier to work with. Do you get some feedback on why people don't use stuff? Why is there no default key binding for zoom +/- 10% Some of the most powerful features of Opera are pretty well hidden.

I am very tempted to disable Javascript.

Keep up the good work!

Originally posted by WildEnte:

smitty: go to shift+f12-advanced-status and drag and drop the words "status field" and "progress status" to the status bar. And all the rest too, you can remove whatever you find you don't need by right-clicking the field and choosing "remove from toolbar".

But "Status field" is what's on the status bar by default -- its purpose is to show the URL -- so why would you add it again?

Also, if someone has the Progess Bar set on "Pop up at bottom" you're getting "Progess Status" already with it.

There's nothing else I've found available in Opera that I want to add to the Status bar, so I wish Opera would bulk it up a bit, particularly if they enable it by default (which is a no brainer, since off by default is alienating).

Maxthon is a good example of it done right out of the box, and they make excellent use of the dead space on the right side as well.

Fit to width by default isn't useful when fit to width doesn't work on windows larger than 1597 pixels wide...

My uncle, who's got a very poor sight, relies on "fit-to-width" by default, because he uses 180% enlarged pages by default.

So maybe that's 0.01%, but very very useful for those who need it!

Yes, status bar is a must have.

Quite a few people have installed widgets, but virtually noone arrange them in folders.

OK, but it's not a reason to remove folder arrangement for widgets -- I use it.

A preference we added by popular request, the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%

I'm not surprised at all, since this preference _must_ be site-specific.

The status bar is quite popular, so we consider turning it on by default again.

OK, but keep showing the href addresses in the tooltips.

Folders are actively used for bookmarks (the average number of folders is 17), while they are rarely used for contacts.

Interesting. I use folders for both contacts and bookmarks -- and widgets, too. ^^

Why is there no default key binding for zoom +/- 10% Some of the most powerful features of Opera are pretty well hidden.

What are you talking about?

There are two default keyboard short cuts for this:

+/- (obviously) and 0/9

The status bar is quite popular, so we consider turning it on by default again.

OK, but keep showing the href addresses in the tooltips.

Nooooo!

Im so glad to have a way to disable these giant, ugly, and often annoying address tool tips while still be able to keep nornmal tool tips.

The best solution would be to reintroduce the option to configuere the tool tips in detail, as in Opera 6.

Smitty,
As for the status bar--I agree, some more info would be helpful. Currently it serves only to show the URL of a link or tab, but I think it would be useful to have an option that would make it so it also provides information about the goings on of the current page (more than the progress bar shows--it shows percent of progress, but does not describe the progress--go compate to FF; it says stuff like "transferring data from http:..." while it's loading the page). However, I would only make this status bar alteration an option and not mandatory so people could choose what takes precedence when the two functions conflict. i.e., if the page is transferring data and you roll your mouse over a link, should the status bar show the link URL or should it show that it is transferring data? I think this will be a personal preference that we should be able to choose.


Devs,
I think you guys may have misunderstood the request for fit-to-width (FTW) to be able to be turned on by default. I think we want the ability to turn FTW on by default for certain pages. My laptop monitor is only 12.1 in, so I use FTW a lot, but there are also a lot of pages that look better with it turned off. I turn it off by default because I find that fewer pages need it than don't need it. However, the sites where FTW does come in useful are consistent--if I could edit the site preferences to always enable FTW for that site, that would be wonderful!

Also--FTW for Mail would be great. I arranged my mail reading pane to the right of my folder view pane (so the screen is split, list of emails on the left, individual emails on the right) so I can see emails over a longer period of time, but someone sends me an email written in HTML that is wider than this pane I can only see the half of the email that fits in the pane. This is a "pain" because there is no scrollbar that allows me to scroll over to see the rest of the email. A scrollbar would be helpful, but FTW in that instance would be even better.

As for arranging contacts in folders--you can do that? I think I'm going to start: "school," "work," family," etc...


Those concerned that options are getting deleted,
Don't worry--I think they're just redefining defaults and rearranging preferences, and determining what you've gotta go into opera:config to change.

M2
- how may have configured at least one e-mail account (is it 30% of opera users) ? What is the average number of e-mail accounts people who use them have configured ?
- how may have subscribed to at least one RSS feed (same as above) ? (same as above) ?
- how may have subscribed to at least a newsgroup (same as above) ? (same as above) ?
- for those who use at least one of the features above, how many of them use also other ?

IRC
- how many use it ?

NOTES:
- how many use this feature ?

Weird... I am not a user that fits that profile at all!

I use SDI and still hate tabs with a passion.

I do not use any .js add-ons at all. I haven't heard of any that sounded useful and installing/managing them seemed like more trouble than it was worth last I checked.

If flash / quicktime count as plugins then sure I use those, but I seek them out -- they're pretty much required for web browsing.

Widgets are like .js add-ons to me: pretty useless... but I haven't looked through them since they were added to opera, really. Widgets EVERYWHERE (Konfabulator, OS X, Vista, etc) all seem pretty worthless... I expect Opera's to be the same.

Okay, I do love the status bar. I check it before I click links!

I hate when a program asks me if I really want to exit -- I clicked close / mouse gestured it for a reason!

I do not keep two installs of Opera. I just install the weekly and go!

Please, PLEEASEEE don't remove SDI.

Hi!
All the left-handers I know use their mouse on the right hand side. It's just easier to install, almost every application or game is made for right handers. It would be a pain in the ass if they had to chance the preferences in every application, also it's easier for other people to use their PC, and for them to adjust to other PCs.

Also I thought that turning the status bar off by default was just a big mistake.

Still waiting for 'useless usage statistics' . I'd love to see how much data(total kb)transferred via Opera. The length of a surfing session and/or total usage time would be interesting to see too...

If 'fit to width' was in site prefs, it would be used much more...

"JavaScript and Plugins are both used by more than 99% by default" -- the only reason for this is sites using JS to enhance their mediaplayer...

I think the reason not many use "Open windows instead of tabs" is that it does not really work in that way...

as said by the posters here, It may not be used because they have not found it!! 'tips & tricks' pop-up would help this..

NOTES are very useful for saving a lot of stuff, as it is saved *straight away* instead of when you exit the browser, or it crashes a few hours ;later, due to too many dubious sites mangling the JS...

The "Since most people only use a single window, this setting is very close to the warning in Firefox that you are about to close a window with more than one tab." is a wrong assumption. This is the most missing option for Opera.
The program exit confirmation is an annoyance, but this has nothing to do with the exit confirmation *if* the program window has more than one tab open.
The general program exit confirmation should ask something like "Are you sure you want to exit ?".
The more-than-one-tab closing / exit confirmation should ask something like "There are more than one tab still open. Dou you really want to exit ?" or something like that. Or copy the string from Firefox

Cristi

So I hope you will improve the bookmark manager, right? The creation of folders in empty folders only works when the bookmark manager is maximized, it doesn't when it is in the sidebar (which is the position most people use I can imagine.)

PS: also selecting single bookmark entries totally sucks. It will open that page instantly which makes managing the bookmarks very tricky, since that's not the default behaviour in other software (i.e. Windows Explorer). Map "open" to double-click!

PS2: These two inconveniences are the reason why I still haven't re-organised my huge bookmark collection... a thing I wanted to do for years. I tried external bookmark managers but I missed being able to check the pages next to the bookmark manager, like it is possible with the sidebar in Opera.

"A preference we added by popular request, the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%"

i felt that this wopuld be a desireable feature, but i found that it caused display errors in a few web sites. i instead put a "fit to width" button on my status bar, where i have a lot of other quick preferences such as images, javascript, plugins.

"Only 1.8% ask Opera to confirm exit. Since most people only use a single window, this setting is very close to the warning in Firefox that you are about to close a window with more than one tab. The low number might indicate that asking by default (like we used to do and like Firefox still does) is annoying more people than it helps."

instead of closing Opera, i press ctrl-h (or the custom toolbar button i made) to hide it to the system tray. i prefer the exit notification, since in most cases i never intend to close it! (on a somewhat-related note: exiting opera can take a very long time for my old computer, and if i close opera i risk overwriting my settings if i start it again too soon, so i avoid closing it.. also, i just like to have it open)

Thanks for sharing.

wow, lots of comments already - haven't read all of them thoroughly.

The option to "Open windows instead of tabs" (SDI if you like) is the *least* popular of all the tab options, which tells something about the popularity of tabs...

it might be that this setting is not used as it delivers only incomplete use of windows only interface (SDI) - see my post about all necessary and optional settings for Opera SDI.

Limited functionality may also apply to the default setting towards Fit-to-width: I tried it for some days but as some pages had bad rendering and especially some functionality was hidden in a few cases (e.g. login fields) I had to switch it off again as it is not always obvious at once that FTW causes this trouble. I had similar experiences with higher default Zoom.
I'd highly appreciate Fit-to-width together with Zoom as site specific setting.

For the home page setting I'd also suppose that some people change it in a habitual way although they don't use it.

Oh, about the Exit/"Tray"/Ctrl-H thing...

I never use the hotkey Ctrl-H, for a simple reason: the icon in the notification are won't go away after I have maximized Opera again. That kind of GUI behaviour annoys the crap out of me.

What I'd like Opera to use is what 90% of all other (Windows) applications with "notification area support" do:

• An option "Minimize to tray"
• An option "Close minimizes Opera to tray" - if checked pressing the X button will put Opera into the Notification Area, if not checked the Opera process really terminates.
• An option "Always show tray icon" or "Show tray icon only when minimized" - THE most important option of all besides the first one.

I think that's already quasi-standard, and I hope it will be adoptet in Opera 9.5.

Thanks for the statistics.. it's quite interesting to see the conclusions.


"A preference we added by popular request, the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%"
I think this may be because it isn't needed on most pages, and on some pages, like Gmail, it slaughters the page. It's nice to turn on when I need it, but otherwise, I don't need to use non-standard rendering (that likely isn't W3C compatible) to display my web pages.

I've got Fit to Width as an icon to make it easy to view using MSR.

PS: also selecting single bookmark entries totally sucks. It will open that page instantly which makes managing the bookmarks very tricky, since that's not the default behaviour in other software (i.e. Windows Explorer). Map "open" to double-click!

It has been doubleclick for years, but was changed for a reason noone knows.
You can still change it back to doubleclick:
deactivate opera:config#HotListWindow|HotlistSingleClick

grogge, you can improve bookmark management:
disable opening bookmarks with single click by unchecking opera:config#HotListWindow|HotlistSingleClick

creation of folders in empty folders

workaround: after the (to be nested) folder is generated on the same level you can drag&drop it to the right place


Opera devs: IMHO it looks like bookmarks should open with double click by default as according to your research lots of users have lots of bookmarks and folders what most probably often doesn't work properly with single click, and another lots of users have only very few bookmarks what makes me think that they gain very few advantages of single click in panel (especially as there are other ways to access bookmarks with single click: Bookmarks menu, Speed dial, Personal bar, any other toolbar).

What about having the button "go"; next to the adress bar, by default ?
I think it's quite disturbing, for a new user, not to have this button, even if it's not necessary.
I hope you don't consider to remove all the feature not really popular, are you ?

Thanks gun & ResearchWizard!

To this day I don't understand the purpose of the "go" button. Is it equivalent to hitting return? Having never seen it's purpose, I've always done whatever I could to get it off my GUI (I have a thing against clutter). Now it's been gone for so long I don't even know what it does. Maybe now it's functionality has progressed--hitting go really takes you there!

"Beam me to the Opera Developers' office my good 'go' button!"

The "Fit to Width" on by default, I had no idea was available. When did that get added? Now I'll turn it on, I think .. as long as it doesn't start messing displays up even more than some already are.

Widgets, as far as I can tell, are completely useless. The only one I've ever actually used, Pandora, last time I tried it, was completely broken .. I've tried a few others, but the usefulness of them seemed exceptionally close to zero. I think it'd be great if you could open a page that had all the widgets attached to it, like a desktop, kind of. But, having them be seperate from Opera .. why bother?

The "ask to close" is exceedingly annoying - especially with a browser that returns to virtually exactly where it left off. More annoying is the fact that Microsoft puts the damn Close button right next to min/max, but after several years of using it, I've finally become used to that. If I ever do accidently close Opera, I can wait like 2 seconds for it to finish shutdown, and then re-open it. FF, on the other hand, needs that warning, otherwise if you accidently hit close, you lose everything. (at least, last time I used FF)

I have a ton of bookmarks, but I hardly ever use more than a few of them. The "Speed Dial" makes most of my browsing.

I also use the weekly builds as my main - I trust Opera.

Charlie_X: "Why is there no default key binding for zoom +/- 10% Some of the most powerful features of Opera are pretty well hidden."

Ctrl-Mousewheel


Addendum: I can't Fit to Width on GMail, so turning that option on by default is useless.

Opera devs: IMHO it looks like bookmarks should open with double click by default as according to your research lots of users have lots of bookmarks and folders what most probably often doesn't work properly with single click, and another lots of users have only very few bookmarks what makes me think that they gain very few advantages of single click in panel (especially as there are other ways to access bookmarks with single click: Bookmarks menu, Speed dial, Personal bar, any other toolbar).

Fully agree! I just hate single clicks "a-la-web" in apps. Especially it is a real pain to use single clicks on notebook with touch pad: accidentally open bookmarks or resorting them while movin mouse pinter over "bookmarks links". I'm shure most users will choose double click menus, because they just don't know that it is possible to change behaviour or just can't figure out how to do that.

> "the option to flip the buttons for mouse gestures is used by only 1% of those who enabled mouse gestures, which possibly indicates that many left-handed users prefer a right-handed mouse setup."

I don't see the point of 'left-handed flip gestures'. The flipback and flipforward actions are based on the common (western, LTR) notion that something from left to right goes forward, something from right to left goes backward. This has nothing to do with handedness.

Did you expect left-handed users press the left-pointing arrow on the toolbar to go forward as well?

WRT single- or doubleclicking bookmark entries: Windows Explorer has a preference on whether to single- or to doubleclick on items that can both be selected and opened. Opera should simply follow this preference.

Originally posted by OT:

The status bar is quite popular, so we consider turning it on by default again.

Actually, I enabled it only to disable hints on urls with no title... But i deleted all buttons on, it qo it has a very very small height (about 1 or 2 px)

"Since most people only use a single window, this setting is very close to the warning in Firefox that you are about to close a window with more than one tab."

That may be true, but for those of us who do use more than one window, the option of a warning would be very nice indeed. This is something that even Internet Explorer provides, and for me it's the single biggest Opera annoyance.

An even nicer alternative would be the ability to restore a closed window, in the same way that individual pages can quickly be reopened.

grogge:
Good point about the tray functionality. There is indeed a standard way programs handle the tray icon, and Opera should conform to this as it will be an improvement over what Opera already does.

It really shouldn't be that hard to implement.

We want graphs!

ftw is on here by default, off with the button by exception on sites that need to be maximised to avoid the scrollbar. I work in 800px windows, even at 1280x1024 and often use the panel (docked on the right) to narrow columns of text on the left for easier reading in a column.

ftw is one of those features that fall into the opera category, "damned if you do and damned if you don't". Portals like google and yahoo and too many other popular but complex sites forces opera to take the path of least resistance: disable the user-control features by default. Since dialog space is limited, the next step is to remove the option from the interface or leave it hidden. The more control opera offers the user, the greater the demand for simplification of the interface. Users who don't know about ftw or even suspect how sophisticated opera screen rendering really is can't be blamed for saying that ftw doesn't work. But developers know better, or should.

An ssp reverse-default option would be welcome. But I wish there were an easy way from within the Site Preferences dialog to change global defaults for ftw and all other existing and future ssp options -- whether the corresponding default options are selectable in general Preferences or not. Maybe that implies collapsing Quick Preferences and Edit Site Preferences into the present Site Preferences dialog and dispensing with the Tools > Quick Preferences (F12) menu hierarchy altogether so that Quick Preferences (F12) fires up the Site Preferences dialog. Other menu options (in Tools > Advanced especially) might benefit from similar integration of site-specific and general preferences in or through the Site Preference dialog tabs.

Not having read the others answers:

* I neither use widgets nor speed dial. Instead, I keep around 30 booksmarks and a few links in my personal bar.

* At startup, a collection of maybe 10 sites is loaded (several blogs, comic sites, news etc.)

* In case I need to restart Opera (happens rarely) I have another starter in my program panel doing this without loading the sites.

* Status bar is only turned on when loading a page (pop-up)

* Fit to width is used when necessary, not by default

* I don't have a master password, if someone manages to get to Opera, it's too late anyway

* JavaScript and Plugins (only Flash) are used. Question: Is it possible to turn of the loading of objects when there's no plugin for them? (e. g. embedded video files)

* I only have one window, but I try to know what I do and thus don't like it to be asked again when I clicked "close" already.

* Right-handed, thus no need of other kinds of mouse-usage