@ionbulgar

If we're talking about the same thing, you can. Tools>Appearance then drag a button onto the address bar.

A video tutorial about the gui should be compulsory in the next release.

It’s really scary to see so many people that do not know how to modify Opera’s interface.

Originally posted by FataL:

Some people usually have more than 50 tabs opened.

I still don't think that people really use a single-row tab bar with 50+ tabs to actually access tabs... Do you really click on those tabs?

Originally posted by Nebli:

I have Opera 9.27 installed on winxp, download and execute o950s_10051m.exe from Downloads tab of 9.27 and the installer shows a warning for closing 9.27 Downloads tab, because something files will be updated. After closing this tab, not closing Opera 9.27, the installation can ended and I started 9.50 without closing 9.27.

If you try to upgrade the 9.27 installation, you should close it first. Really. If that is not the issue, I don't understand what you are telling

Originally posted by John164:

I created a bug report this week about this problem, should I create another or will that confuse things? I suppose it could be a problem with the design of the page ? As it works fine on http://nontroppo.org/wiki/CustomButtons

One report is indeed enough. And it looks like a problem in Opera specific for that (kind of) page.

Originally posted by ionbulgar:

I still don't understand why I can’t add icons in the address toolbar like I used to before 9.50.

Because you don't understand the replies you get... Either hold the Shift button while dragging, or open the Appearance dialog first.

I like the small red close button. Please let it in this size, don't make it like Firefox [again].

In the previous versions it was the first thing, which I disalbed, by the way.

Use glases, if you don't see it! :@

I took a look at the 9.5 betas today for the first time with this and the previous snapshot, and I was shocked. I always use the Windows Native "skin", and it is glaringly obvious the new icons were not made to be used without fancy coloring and have never been tested with the native skin. They are ugly against the normal grey background. Some of the toolbars have unnecessarily thick borders as well.

The showstopper BUG for me with this 9.5 beta (Windows) is the tab behaviour that is a complete departure from the style of ALL previous versions in the history of Opera. At least on my Eee PC running linux, 9.50b2 (build 1933) the active tab is still properly depressed just like before, but on Windows, my main system, there's no longer a quick way to tell which one is the active tab, especially when there are enough tabs open. I always have enough to make the width of the tabs quite small.

A depressed active tab like in 9.27 is easily spotted among the otherwise grey mass, but in this version it is very, very hard and very quickly approaches impossible as tabs increase. This has to be fixed or I won't be able to use 9.5 at all. Why and when was the tab behaviour differentiated from the old style in the first place? Why the extra work making it look different, at the same time ruining usability? At this rate, I'll have to stick with 9.27 or whichever beta precedes this blunder, and hope it eventually returns back to the proper style. I am disappointed.

Please, make bars 20 % smaller, or something around that! Make close tab button bigger... Remove the squares from the buttons.

I actually think that opera really needed a new design badly not that the old one was bad looking or not intuitive but to set the 9.27 and 9.50 apart. But i do think that going all black with the default appearance could be raging for some. Browsing to some should be a pleasurable experience not a dark one. There is enough contrast in tabs to tell the active from the non active but i think it is going back a step with black and white icons. Also the scroll bar should be made to where atleast the top and bottom of the scroller should be highlighted to reflect the theme used, in default may be black horizontal bars at the top and bottom of the scrollers. I think maybe going shiny light blue color (like the default vista blue green color wallpaper) for the tab bar would be a better alternative than the the current all black.
This developmental build is great in terms of aesthetics despite of some of the things mentioned above but the main reason opera was known superior over Firefox from version zero was memory management and faster browsing. The battle is currently efficiently won by firefox in both grounds. i would like to see more improvement in trademark opera recognisition-speed and effiency(memory).
Despite all that Great work Guys!

Uggh... the blackness really hurts my eyes - I had to actually switch to windows native. Is the classic skin even available for download? If so, can somebody tell me where is it?

IMHO the new buttons and icons are not suitable for the Windows Native theme. Will we get a Windows Native theme with all the old buttons and icons?

Originally posted by Jokoto:

Why and when was the tab behaviour differentiated from the old style in the first place?

Because we got complaints that the 'active tab' looked ugly as a pressed button in that case. If you don't like a gray mass, maybe the Windows Classic theme isn't a good choice. It is unfortunate that Windows doesn't offer a standard way to show active tabs. AFAIK, the only tab widgets in Windows are meant for tabbed dialogs; we have to add a close button from elsewhere and invent some active state indicator ourselves.

Originally posted by Rijk:

I still don't think that people really use a single-row tab bar with 50+ tabs to actually access tabs... Do you really click on those tabs?

Yes. And tabs collapsing (Opera) or scrolling (Firefox) very unuseful to me.
Actually it doesn't matter 30, 50 or 100. Because it all this cases there are no title left on tabs.
I distiguish and remember tabs by fav-icons and their position on the bar.

Bug #3: Text input fields / form fields / etc (such a thing I'm typing this in here), are laggy when typing. This is really annoying when typing fast, the characters appears with a delay of 200-1000ms.

Anyone else seeing this? This changed for you between build 10048 and 10041?

I dunno if it's related, but yeah, these last few builds I have a related issue with Linux X64- at random times, text input fields just stop taking text- I can't type in them unless I switch away from Opera then come back (I can't even Ctrl-Tab or the like).

(I'm running Compiz and the Emerald WM, if that matters, but it doesn't do it in any other program, incl. FF3B).

The worst thing about that snapshot is, i really like the skin.
So i have to style my custom buttons simmilar to the new.
That's somethin i can life with

Its great that opera finally giving some attention to modernize its look. Users wanted it for long time.
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=219972
haha. cheers.

May be you may consider my old wish for a color chooser for opera now. This will certainly spice up the things.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=175412


my specific comment about new skin: I am not liking the dark(seems black) look of it. I don't know why. May be something else would be nicer. Also, I would like to see some red opera icon like feel or some shade or something more eye catching. I also thnk the "+" for adding new tab next to each tab is not required at all when you have it"new tab" at the left most place.

Originally posted by Rijk:

we got complaints that the 'active tab' looked ugly as a pressed button in that case. If you don't like a gray mass, maybe the Windows Classic theme isn't a good choice. It is unfortunate that Windows doesn't offer a standard way to show active tabs.

For me and many others it is an essential feature. Please include an option for it! You disabled single key shortcuts as well but, luckily, at least left an option to enable them. The power of customizability is (was?) the very reason Opera is the only browser that works and is capable of fulfilling my needs.

I don't dislike the grey mass; a mass of partial tabs is inevitable in any case. Colouring them differently with a skin I don't like would make things horribly ugly. In 9.27 my tab bar with hundreds of pages is just a tool, it works and it doesn't need to be flashy. If someone feels I should want it to be prettier somehow, well, I'm happy to disappoint. Glad to see others using large amounts of pages on a single-row tab bar here. I use 1 & 2, Ctrl-Tab and mostly right-click + scroll wheel to switch between tabs, and I also do click on them to minimize and middle-click to close them. Embedded icons help identify them in this one-dimensional landscape - they're usually not much different from smallish GUI buttons. (Except at the moment, when I have a few hundred open on a 1920 pixel wide screen.)

Please give us the option(s) to keep the look exactly like the previous versions.

The good:
http://files.myopera.com/Jokoto/albums/545477/tabs_good_crop.png -
The bad:
http://files.myopera.com/Jokoto/albums/545477/tabs_bad_crop.png -

Originally posted by webtax:

- how about a big BACK button, but this maybe requires some heavy work and skin incompatibility

No!
If there's one thing I hate about Firefox 3, then it's the big back button. When Opera copies too many GUI design wrongdoings of this browser, then why not make a FF clone in the first place? Or yet better, why not use FF instead of Opera?

I think it's a very bad idea to copy the look of other browsers be it Firefox or Safari like the Opera design team did with the latest skin.

Can the tabs be made shorter when the tab bar is on the side? And some of those buttons hidden/moved? I'd like to fit as many tabs on the side as possible (hence using the side rather than the top of the screen).

I find a bug when blocking new content: sometimes a single * is added as an independant item to block, so absolutely anything can be rendered. The browser goes null. It just happens alone when adding new stuff to be blocked!

Thanks for fixing the panel selector dropdown. However, the following problems roll over from the previous (new skin) build, along with one new problem:

1. When using my favourite Opera skin, Opersia-newrouz, the new buttons appear incorrectly styled using the (new) Opera Standard skin. Can we have the old "new tab" button back, at least as a new custom button?

2. In Customize mode, the new panel button can be removed (right click...remove) but the new new tab button (at the right) cannot be removed (no right click remove option). Customizing it to "off" still shows a thin vertical line where the button would be.

3. With regard to the new skin, I too am not a huge fan of the Vista stylee glassy black bars, buttons and tabs. I didn't try windows yet, but it all looks a bit wrong on KDE/Linux, and on the Mac too. Although I like the style itself, I think there should be two versions, one darker (as current) and one light (with light glassy backdrops and dark text/pictures). This would keep most users happy and integrate better across platforms.

4. The new tab button makes no sense to me at the right, sculpted as it is. Since its graphical cue is to create a tab at the right of the tab list, it makes no sense for the setting "open new tab next to current". In the old style, as text and to the left, the style of the cue is less misleading. Actually, since it's treated as a bar, it has options for "left" and "show as text", couldn't these be used to replace/restyle it ?

5. One new skin problem, with the panel selection iconbar at the bottom, the "+" symbol for adding panels has moved up and occludes the other buttons (especially when they are text as well as icon). This did not occur in the "stay sharp" build but does in this build. It only looks correct when the containing panel is set to "left".

6. I'm not too keen on the new icons on the mail view panel for the topmost items (there were no icons before) - can we turn them off?

7. Using 9.2x skins, background for the panels in the new builds has changed from the normal background colour to some grey shading (as used in the new skin), I would like the normal background back in 9.2x skins please.

To me, the current dark backgrounds - the new icons, fonts and colour combinations - definitely look less tasteful than my normal skin, but that is just my preference. I dislike high contrast dark black bars when everything else is light, my reason for avoiding dark-background skins generally. In the end, so long as the 9.2x skins work properly I am happy; this is not quite so at the moment. I'm hoping that these changes get refined to allow us longstanding users to keep using our favourite skins and have our familiar look and feel without breaking all the 9.2x skins.

Interestingly, the new "+", ">" (new tab) are both customisable panels and not just buttons. I think there is a little work needed since I'm not sure it makes sense to treat these buttons as toolbars??

Any news on PGO under Linux?

Keep up the good work

Originally posted by grogge:

If there's one thing I hate about Firefox 3, then it's the big back button. When Opera copies too many GUI design wrongdoings of this browser, then why not make a FF clone in the first place? Or yet better, why not use FF instead of Opera?

Well, UI studies indicate otherwise. It's the most-used button there is. And if you don't like it that size, simply right-click that area and select small icons.

Some suggestion of mine:

(1)I'm hoping I can close tabs by just double clicking them too.

(2)If I can choose to open the search result in a new tab but not to interupt the process in the tab I 'm watching. That will be better.

(3)Same suggestion as the above. This time is for the web address typed in the address bar.

Harry Wang
China

Any chance the new page button can be made static (either end of the pagebar)? I dont like chasing the thing when I want to open a few new pages at once.

Big improvement in the filter properties dialog and no longer adding quotation marks around a copied from or to header.

But it would be nice if you could resize the rules "box".

Sorry, but big green back icon may want only idiots.

Opera, keep your style and don't copy anything. Thanks

Thankfully, I was able to find another skin with icons that are somewhat close to the old ones. The new icons are just too dark for me to see clearly enough to make out without having to really work at it.

If nothing else, please add another skin with the old icons, say, a 'classic' windows skin, that way we can at least go back to the old icons without so much hassle.

@grogge: how did Opera copy other browsers with this skin?

I was doing a bit torrent download and Opera locked up. I had to use task manager to shut down.

http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/05/safari_carpet_bomb.html

fails to render right

also fails in 9.27

Originally posted by "Zajec":

Don't even imagine what happens when visiting page with black background...

Nothing, better said it will happen the same as with Opera old standard skin.

I have a button to show my current transfers:
Button3, "T"="Focus panel, "Transfers", , "T", "Panel Transfers""

After viewing the transfers, I used to be able to click the 'x' (or I think pressing the button again) and the transfer window *AND* the panel toolbar would disappear.

With these latest releases, the panel toolbar stays visible, and its a pain to close.

I love the skin and I had an easy time customizing away things I didn't want to see (the extra toolbar at the bottom, the trash icon, and the new tab icon).

My only complaint is that my "close tab" buttons randomly decide to work and not work in Ubuntu 8.04.

I just went through and read all of the comments up to now (185 in total as of the time of posting) and I can see everyone's different points, but these are some things I would like to mention:

First, I am running opera-static_9.50-2025.gcc4-static-qt3_i386.deb on Kubuntu 8.04. The qt4 version didn't seem to integrate nicely into my theme with everything in the menu being an ugly gray.

The colors are getting better, but still there is too much black/monochrome everywhere. It may fit with Vista, but many people use other OSs. Icons are still too black, especially in the panel. I know this has been mentioned before many times, but I wanted to say it again.

Memory usage seems ok, but I think it might be leaking a bit (112 megs with 13 tabs open an hour ago and currently 201 megs after opening and closing multiple websites and then back to 12 tabs, not to mention about 125 megs more for the plugin wrapper), however CPU is good, around 1% and things seem to run relatively quickly for me and some things are quicker than the previous builds.

Personally, I like the small tab close buttons, however they may not be good for people who do not have good hand-eye coordination or someone with a physical disability. The space below the button is not used for anything and the close button could easily be expanded without sacrificing anything. Alternatively, the space below the button could be included within the margin of the button so that if someone clicks below the button, it also closes the tab. This would also have its other problems as well since people may not be trying to close it.

Icons are not scalable (e.g. zoom to 200% and everything looks pixelated). All icons should be done in SVG or similar - this should also decrease overall filesize.

Scroll bars - greatly improved over the last build, but could be a tad darker still. Maybe add some color to it as well to make it really easily distinguishable. I should be able to see the scrollbar with my eyes focused on the middle of the monitor and light gray with a background of even lighter gray is hard to distinguish. My current KDE theme uses light blue scrollbars. Maybe adding a little color would help.

Make the currently active tab more visible, possibly adding a blue glowing effect from below (something similar to http://boonage.pjss2.net/images/content/tutorial-4/tutorial-19.png if you're going to keep the current black glossy look) and also another thing to help aid this would be to put a 1px "neon" line around the left, top and right edges of currently active tab. This would look nice if done well.

Make placement options for the "new tab" button more obvious (put an option in right click) and allow it to be placed to the left, right of tabs, right of screen and off as the four different options.

The option to use only one close tab button on the right hand side of the toolbar instead of one on every tab should be implemented, but disabled by default.

As I stated in the previous build, << and >> buttons should be in one color and < and > buttons should be in another color different from the first two.

Ability to change skin colors to a "light" version using lighter colors is needed. The same look should be maintained, but the icons need to have more color and use light colors in the tab bar instead of black everywhere.

Many people have stated that the tabs take up too much space visually - I'm undecided on this one since I have a 24 inch monitor running at 1920x1200, but an option to set the tab's upper and lower padding would be great, especially for very small resolutions (< 800x600). Even giving three default options, such as "compact", "normal" and "thick" (the current one being thick), since I don't think many would want it bigger.


UI bugs:
- When setting placement for new tab button to "left" the background on it goes really dark
- When new tab button is turned off and many tabs are opened, the tab on the far right is truncated by the ">"
- When editing the panel preferences and toggling between showing icon only and icon with text below it, it should resize immediately, not when you push "OK".
- When opening/closing the panel, I have a really weird scrollbar effect for about 1/10 of a second. The scroll bar moves about to the left or the right the same width as the panel. Maybe the process of opening/closing the panel needs to be streamlined a bit or you could try rendering the page first with the correct width and then display the panel second instead of what appears to be the other way around now with the panel appearing/disappearing and then the page width being changed after.

One more thing I would really like implemented in Opera that hasn't been in any of the previous versions ever is a simple right click option in the Bookmarks menu to delete the bookmark. I don't think this would be super complicated to do.

I'm a Graphic Designer, in no way I mean that my opinion is more valuable than anyother's opinion. But I've to say that the new skin is great, it feels made by Pros, the icons for every task are well designed and make their work helping people understand how to use Opera, but it has a problem: it wastes a lot of space.
I hate to compare, but I have to, IE7 has a great default button to hide/show the Menu Bar
We can get a similar button in: http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons
so we'll get something like this:
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/8337/hideshowhi6.th.jpg -
And is also cool that you can toggle the Menu Bar (note that the same button lets you toggle Menu Bar or Show Menu Bar as normal.
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/4854/hideshow1ur8.th.jpg -
I think it would be great to have a native hide/show menu button.
Even more if you look at Safari you notice that they save even more space and gain some more "style" been able to get rid of the "title bar" (I think that's the name of the Top bar that shows the name of the program, icon, and minimize, restore and close buttons). Maybe Opera won't do that but the hide/show menu Bar button is a real need.
I hope you agree.
PD1: I'm pleaesed to see that the Status Bar saves a lot of space.
PD2: It's really bad and sad to notice that Opera Kestrel uses much more RAM than Firefox 3 and Safari, please solve it.

I see the Opera browser as reflecting a time of day, after civil twilight, namely nautical twilight. I do not see Opera portraying a time of life, namely funeral time. I exercise by walking a lot after sunset for 1-3 hours, when there are no ultraviolet rays. When walking, I see a still bright blue sky and only black trees, black homes, or black ships. Nautical twilight is a normal part of life. It is not subversive or weird in any way. I suggest Opera is encouraging people to walk after twilight. This is helpful for overweight or obese people, by showing them what they will see at this unknown time of the day. Of course they could make Opera simulate the cockpit of a jumbo jet, or the control room of an atomic submarine, but spring time or autumn time or nautical twilight shouldn't be missed, but appreciated in this hectic world. I will probably try the new build 10051 now, I hope it's as good as build 10048. Opera could vary the colors, in real time, in their browser according to what time it is outside. For instance be real bright at 12 noon, or portray beautiful red sunsets.

Some suggestion of mine:

(1)I'm hoping I can close tabs by just double clicking them too.

(2)If I can choose to open the search result in a new tab but not to interupt the process in the tab I 'm watching. That will be better.

(3)Same suggestion as the above. This time is for the web address typed in the address bar.


Harry Wang
China

It was bad and it is still bad. Thick black line that draws attention abd you can't focus on browsing itself, but on browser (and that's bad). + Now there's 2 bright icons that draw unnecessary attention, not 1 as it was before (who cares of Home button, when we have Speed Dial).
Ugly black icons in menus in High Contract Windows Theme style. X of tabs is too small for intuitive actions.
Please, return New tab button to its place and kill this button after tab.

There's no Classic theme anymore!? I can't find it, ofh my, have to back to build 10034.
Please, leave it to 10, let interface of 9.5 without new themes (especially as defalt). If Final will be as 10051 in terms of interface and without complete (i mean complete) swith to classic theme, i will have to stay with 10034. Sadly.
Where can I vote against this new theme???

How do I remove the new tab button? I want it back in the old, fixed, position. I made a new button on the left but can't remove the old one.

ps: the close button in the mdi interface is still broken (under linux) forgot the bug number....

Where did the classic skin dissapear under
Tools: Appearance ?

This feels like running on Win2K - dark and gloomy.
Every other app I have is bright, this skin makes Opera look ancient and dull.

I won't use it - sorry.

....and where is the classic skin so I can go back to have a light and bright Opera ? I only see the default and windows skin

Well, UI studies indicate otherwise. It's the most-used button there is. And if you don't like it that size, simply right-click that area and select small icons.

lol - why do people still use these buttons??? ctrl+left, left after right mouse-button or just hit the backspace. i don't like the big buttons either. keep everything small and clear. i love space for the picture and a small frame :-)

the new skin needs some time to get used to it, but in the end its nice - still not perfect, but it's a snapshot. so long

There is no way to differentiate tabs with updates and those without. By update I mean not-yet-seen content, like if you start reloading and then switch to another tab (a bit similar to unread mail). The Freestyle theme shows this very clearly.

There's a loads of drawing bugs, for example right click over tab you can see one next to 'Arrange', also I have an extra 'open new tab' button next to my trash can button which I seem to be unable remove (new tab button not the trash can...)

Also when moving mouse cursor top of menus options are not hilighted as usually

linux build

Previous build has 83/100 on acid3 and this one has... 80/100... what happened?

lol - why do people still use these buttons??? ctrl+left, left after right mouse-button or just hit the backspace. i don't like the big buttons either. keep everything small and clear. i love space for the picture and a small frame :-)

i dont use them neither.. i use single key shortcuts (z,x,1,2)
but the average joe does use the buttons. I think the logical move is to use the big back button, while leaving the option for the rest of the user to go back to a normal button.

Most of the problems or opinions can be fixed by a new skin and buttons.
http://www.dojotech.com/InstantUpload/2008-06-07_111200.png
One thing that doesn't work is disabling the tab bar when not needed. Or I need a button for that, but it's not the same thing.

Previous build has 83/100 on acid3 and this one has... 80/100... what happened?

Not confirmed, this build HAS 83 points...

Light gray and blue text on dark gray. Sorry, but this is shit.
You wan't aim an easy operation. => So you should use contrasts and clear symbols (e.g. the trash bin for closed tabs is nearly invisible).

You wan't many downloaded browsers. => So you should use less morbid colors.
Also the color schemes doesn't use clear clean colors. At the moment this new skin is really big drawback of new 9.5.

Number of emails in the sidebar is not readible in most color schemes.