My Opera Interviews

I'm here with Ivan Minic, known as SerbianFighter in the Opera Community. If you've been around the OC very long, you will remember Ivan for his many contributions to the OC, including his popular Pimp My Blog series, along with a variety of desktop wallpaper, gravatars, buttons, banners and other graphic elements that spruce up your blog or help you to promote the Opera Browser.

I'm here with Ivan Minic, known as SerbianFighter in the Opera Community. If you've been around the OC very long, you will remember Ivan for his many contributions to the OC, including his popular Pimp My Blog series, along with a variety of desktop wallpaper, gravatars, buttons, banners and other graphic elements that spruce up your blog or help you to promote the Opera Browser.

Are you still using Opera today?

Yes. I have Opera for Mobiles on my primary cellphone (Nokia N70 I got from Opera some time ago), Opera Mini on my secondary cellphone and have few versions on my desktop, using 9.20 build: 8732 as primary.

In a nutshell, what features set it apart from Firefox and IE?

Opera is fast, safe and great looking. It has every feature I need from an internet suite, and it is quite small. I used to be active user of Mozilla before Firefox was released, but once that happened and all attention turned to that project, I lost interest. I didn't like the way it looked, the fact that it was big, and sometimes very slow, and lacking in functions.

To keep it short. I like Opera because of great news, e-mail and integrated IRC client, torrent and widgets, site preferences and by far the best tabs in any browser. I also couldn't live without zoom, notes and trash can.

How powerful do you think the user.js function is? Do you think it's under-utilized?

I think it is very powerful yet also very user unfriendly and highly under promoted. I believe it should be much more user friendly and have much stronger "official" support than it has now.

And .. have you had a chance to see the Opera Community face lift? What's your initial reaction?

Clean and light. Very nice. Good job Fred!

What customizations have you done to your Opera browser setup to make it more functional for you?

I use couple of widgets, but nothing spectacular. Use default skin with some custom buttons and menus. But all in all it is pretty much default.

You've always been a promoter of Opera. Do you think it has a chance of ever becoming the second most popular browser -- or even the most popular browser?

It all depends on which way it will go from here. Opera is already the most popular browser for some part of browser market, we just need it to get more popular among average desktop users. I believe that would ask for rebranding, new logo, new concept for its releases. Opera has great community to back it up, great developers, designers and just needs to figure out what do they exactly want to accomplish regarding desktop browser market. Then users can maybe express their opinion on how that could be done.

You were very active in the OC for a long time, until this past year. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've been up to lately?

Life has a funny way of getting in the way of the internet. I've been working on my forum and trying to improve the quality of my life. It's a tough ride over here, but somehow I think I'll make it.

I still visit OC regularly and check Opera blogs on Planet Opera.

I think you will, too! Finally, I'll just hand you the virtual microphone now. Go:

Proud to be a user, proud to be selected, proud I made some difference.

Keep up the good work, people; I'm always there watching over you.