A few days ago I was tagged by Christian. So here it is, 5 things I would like to see in Opera. Actually there are many things I would like to see in Opera. Because this is a widget blog, I decided to concentrate on widgets and one "feature" in Opera Mail which annoys me very much. So, I would like

1. to see an option to leave widgets opened even if you close all Opera windows - don't close Opera process, just free as much memory as possible (Opera GUI, mail, browsing history cache etc) leaving only what's absolutely necessary to display widgets and the tray Opera icon. The Opera engine could be closed with the last widget or via the tray icon menu. Browser window could be opened again simply by clicking Opera application icon or via the tray icon menu.

2. to see some annoying bugs in the widgets implementation fixed (not working audio object, getting pixel data from canvas with external images, plugins and Java support, problems with using AJAX on pages redirecting to another address etc).

3. to see all one-key keyboard shortcuts disabled when a widget is seleced / active.

4. to see the "widget shelf" in Opera again - as another optional location for widgets. Widget shelf tab shouldn't be visible if there is no widgets in the shelf. (Widget shelf was a cool feature present in some Opera beta version, it was a separate desktop layer for widgets.)

5. too see the ability to dock widgets in Opera toolbars. It should be detectable by javascript event (onDock, onUndock?) to make it possible to optimize widget size/look when it's in the bar. Add "dockable" option in config.xml (false as default). I remember Opera text ads when Opera was adware, it could be something similar, but shouldn't take all window width.

But there is one more thing. That's 6th, but very important

6. not to see a notification if a mail detected as spam arrives. I hate it when a "new mail" message pops up, I open the Mail panel and all the new emails are spam messages in the Spam view. I want to check the Spam view once per 2-3 days, not 10 times a day. I do not want to be distracted by spam.


I decided to tag:

Andol,
Anna Rajsman,
Gautam Chandna,
Helmers,
Thomas Ford.

OK, I'm quite proud of this one. A few day ago I released Big Ben widget. If you didn't download this widget, you can do it now! If you did download it, redownload it please, because it's much better now Big Ben widget is as useful as any other widget clock but after the upgrade it looks gorgeous (IMHO). It's quite big, (after all it's Big Ben) but it fits perfectly on most websites with fixed width. It has three skins to choose. I love the wireframe skins and I hope others will like it too

But that's not all yet. This widget plays Big Ben sound every hour. Or rather it would play, if Opera wouldn't have a bug in Web Applications Audio object. Sorry, Audio objects don't work in zipped widgets. So if you want to hear the sound, you have to unzip the widget and install it manually (simply open config.xml file).

The picture of Big Ben is made entirely by me, it's not a photo, not a picture from the Web. It's very detailed, quite accurate and took me a lot of hours to finish it. It almost looks like a pixel art though it's made in vectors

So what are you wainting for?
Download Big Ben 2.0!

Screenshots, changelog, GET IT!
I thougt this widget should have it's own homepage. Why? Why not? It's here.

I decided to start a blog. I will post here about updates of my widgets and about interesting new widgets (not only mine). Also sometimes I will post tips for widget creators and more general topics about widgets.