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Slightly ajar

Posts tagged with "Interface"

My Opera Wishlist

Tuesday, 24. July 2007, 00:02:47

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Everybody seems to be posting their Opera Wish-lists, so without further ado, here is the list from my point of view, with focus on developer relations/web standards issues, and a couple of pet peeves. No internal knowledge was used or is inferred by this post. No kittens or fluffy animals were also harmed.

  1. Replace the toilet seat. Please…I mean really.
  2. Improve and simplify the user interface, with special focus on platform integration, especially on a Mac where platform consistency is expected. I'd especially like the tab bar move to the correct position. Correct in that it is the place I think is correct, maybe not everybody (I know the reasons why it is where it is), and it is where most (none-Opera) users expect it to be. As more apps in Mac OS X are getting tabs (terminal for instance) and the move to unified toolbars, the current position of the tab bar looks out of place. I'd love to see the Mac version get the unified toolbar look sported by iTunes and Leopard, and to follow the Apple HIG (spacing between elements in the interface for instance). I'd also like to see integration with AddressBook, Keychain and such. I like my passwords to be in one place, same with contacts.
  3. Microformats integration across the board, from Opera Kestrel to Opera Mini. Imagine how much typing or cut 'n' paste that would save, for contacts and events alone, especially on Mobile where input takes longer. I'm sure there is some amazing things that can be done with XFN and xFolk. The challenge is how to present the presence of Microformats to the user without adjusting the layout of the page (changing how the designer intended the page to look can't be a goof thing) or add yet another icon to the URL field to go with the RSS, Widget, and Security/phising icons. There is enough already. Add OpenID into the mix and there are some great possibilities. There'd have to be some work with integrating OpenID into the wand and anti-phishing technologies to find a way to solve the phishing concerns though. Again, on mobile this would be a godsend.
  4. Developer tools. We have some basic tools available on Dev Opera but we need professional quality tools, especially a JavaScript debugger, which not only matches what the competition offers, but blows them away. They should also be useful across our range of products. Web Developers have said time and again that they want better tools, and we are listening. Please let me know if there are any specific features you'd like to see, whether they exist in another tool or not. We are building tools for developers, so it only goes to say that we need input most from those that will use the tools. Otherwise we are just guessing what developers need.
  5. Improved standards support. Specifically more CSS3, such as box-shadow, multiple background images, border-radius, border-image, RGB/HSLA and multi column layout. CSS2.1 is close to feature complete, but it can always improve and have bugs to squash. Our SVG implementation is the best in the industry, so it would be nice to improve it further, but I don't think it is in need of a high priority. Our DOM2 and DOM3 support is also up there or even beyond best of breed currently. It would be nice to get persistent storage from HTML5. We already have Web Forms 2 (the only browser so far) so we are currently ahead of the pack with HTML5 at present. We also have experimental support for the video element. Beyond CSS3 the main issues for me are squashing bugs and adding essential things that are not yet standard like JavaScript getters and setters (these may be part of a standard now?) that are used by a lot of major sites.

I guess I can't have a number six, but I'd like all that added and still make our engine faster (maybe a new logo or interface can have go faster stripes or Steve Jobs benchmark distortion field :wink:). It's already been stated that we are working on performance in Kestrel, and further in Peregrine, so there is no secret it'll be a fast bird.

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How to make Opera more Mac like

Tuesday, 27. March 2007, 20:55:48

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One of the problems many people find with Opera (myself included) is that it doesn't feel very Mac like. This is the unfortunate side effect of having such a cross platform product, that can be ported from anything from the Mac to a mobile via the Wii. It is certainly not a problem we face alone, but there is certainly room for improvement. There are people at Opera who are passionate about both the Mac and our product, such as Joen our Mac test manager, who work hard to get Mac issues fixed, but I'd like to share a few pointers and downloads to improve the experience in the current release.

Anyone who uses Opera on Mac knows how out of place our icon looks on the dock, especially with that hi-lighted shadow that bounces with the O on loading, and how it makes the icon look right aligned. While I'm not personally a fan of using the company logo as an icon, help is at hand to make it more aqua-fied. This thread on the MyOpera forums includes an updated icon that can be used to replace the current one. You don't need much technical knowledge to install it. Just download this file to your Mac, find your Opera install, and right click selecting show Package Contents. From there navigate to the Resources directory and drop the new icon into the folder. Once you restart Opera, the new icon will be in place. I think it looks like it is part of the Microsoft Office for Mac icon set with this icon. Now IE:Mac doesn't exist now, I'm sure we'd be happy for MS to distribute us with Office too :wink:

With the icon fixed, it is time to move on the the browser itself. I don't think that the current icons fit in too well with the Mac interface, so the first thing to do is to hunt down a new skin, which is easier said than done. The skin I selected, Entr'acte, by Dustin Wilson. I actually found this by accident when looking for Opera on Flickr, as i isn't in the top skins list. My only main gripe about this skin is that is steals the Transmit icon for transfers.

After installing the skin, I re-aranged things to make it cleaner and more Mac like. Firstly, I fixed the tab bar, which I feel is in the wrong place. To do this I had to do a bit of a hack. I enabled the Main bar from View -> Toolbars, and disabled the Address Bar. The icons from the Address bar can then be added to the Main bar, and the current icons can be removed. I like a clean look, so I only put on the forward, back, refresh, address field and the Google search field. I also added a home button and the panels button, as on Mac there is no easy way to show panels without going to the view menu or knowing short cuts. There is not enough white space between elements such as the search bar and the address bar, so I added a fixed spacer between these, before the address field and after the search field. Finally, I don't like how much space the New Tab icon takes up, so I dragged it to the right hand side, next to the waste bin, where it doesn't include text.

A screen shot of the finished result can be found here.

The finished result is far from perfect. The fixed spacers create too big spaces, but this is an improvement on no space at all. The rounded caps of the search field are not the correct shape. It would be nice if the address bar could be above the tab bar without hacks, and I'd love it if it was possible to have a unified toolbar, that was introduced in Tiger. Just these four changes would make the interface look more professional. I'd also like icons in the preferences toolbar, and to use the correct "about" window. While improvements can still be made, these few changes make Opera ft in much better. Let me know if you have any extra tips.

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