Reality Show Results...
By Huib Kleinhout. Friday, 6. July 2007, 14:33:40
Back in January we added the ability to report usage of different features and preferences so we could learn more about how the browser is used in general. First we invited you, our weekly users to help us and in 9.2 we started asking one in 100 users if they want to participate. We would like to share some of our findings with you 
The first conclusion was a bit surprising: Weekly users are in general less active users than the average user. What? Well, we suspect that many weekly users simply have both a weekly and a final installed, so they don't use as many features or change as many preferences.
There was one area where weekly users seemed more active: More of you have proxy servers set up. What we forgot to check was if the proxy goes to localhost or not (is it a central proxy or just an adblocker on your own computer?).
Not all of the data tell us much, but some are clear enough
to draw conclusions:
The first conclusion was a bit surprising: Weekly users are in general less active users than the average user. What? Well, we suspect that many weekly users simply have both a weekly and a final installed, so they don't use as many features or change as many preferences.
There was one area where weekly users seemed more active: More of you have proxy servers set up. What we forgot to check was if the proxy goes to localhost or not (is it a central proxy or just an adblocker on your own computer?).
Not all of the data tell us much, but some are clear enough
to draw conclusions:- Quite a few people have installed widgets, but virtually noone arrange them in folders.
- A preference we added by popular request, the ability to turn on Fit to Width by default is used by 0.0%
- 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...
- You're not left-handed
Well... 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.
- The home page is more popular than we maybe thought, 51% actually change the home page address.
- The status bar is quite popular, so we consider turning it on by default again.
- When using the Master password, about half of our users want to be asked every time needed, the other half once per session. Only one in 5000 users set a fixed interval instead. It sounds like a useful choice, but in practice the two basic options are enough.
- JavaScript and Plugins are both used by more than 99% by default
- 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.
- A lot of people hardly use bookmarks at all (30 bookmarks and less). A lot of people use bookmarks a lot (300 bookmarks or more).
- Folders are actively used for bookmarks (the average number of folders is 17), while they are rarely used for contacts.
WIDGETIZE