5 things I'd like to see in Opera
Wednesday, 8. August 2007, 20:45:22
This summer the Opera community has been compiling a wish list of improvements they would like to see in the browser. Since I was once a test manager for the Macintosh product I thought I might be included in this little meme but, alas, that does not seem be happening. I suspect no one actually reads my blog any more 
After having switched to Firefox when I started working at the university last year, I migrated back to Opera earlier this summer when a campus-wide upgrade to the start-up scripts running on our computers rendered all Mozilla products on the Mac unusable (I think this is USIT's way of getting rid of the few remaining Macintosh users on campus). In many ways my return to Opera was relief. I was really delighted by just how fast Opera feels relative to Safari and Firefox and I don't know how I ever got by without some of Opera's more hidden features like the Links panel or the flexibility of being able to open new tabs next to the active tab. There are, however, several things I encounter on a daily basis that make me roll my eyes in frustration so I am taking advantage of the opportunity lachralle gave his readers to self-nominate and hereby present my wish list for the five things I would like to see in Opera.
Address Bar (Mac specific): The drop-down menu in the address field is often much longer than it should be, extending under the search field to the full width of the window. Regardless of any long addresses contained in the drop-down menu or Opera's "memory" of the maximum window size, the drop-down menu should only ever be as wide as the address field. Yes, this has long been one of my pet bugs
Content Blocking: I really prefer Opera's manual content blocking (relative to the Firefox extension Adblock Plus, for example); it makes me feel much more in control of what I do and don't see on a page and less vulnerable to decisions made by others. Opera could, however, be a lot more sophisticated by blocking the object containing the image or plug-in content thereby avoiding those ugly blocks of empty space that are often left on the page. This is something that Adblock does really well.
Blogging and Rich Text Editing: I maintain a couple of web sites that make use of web-based WYSIWYG editors like Kupu and the interface for WordPress, and unfortunately none of them perform at all well in Opera. There are trivial issues like not being able to follow "Previous Entries" links on a WordPress blog, to annoying things like editing buttons not being responsive to mouse clicks, to really devastating things like losing content while editing. I've lost one too many posts while editing in Opera and I simply cannot do my job while this feature remains so buggy.
.Mac/Yahoo/Flickr: The webmail interface for .Mac members is unusable in Opera. Yahoo is beta testing its new mail interface and blocks Opera completely. Flickr wants to block Opera users from organizing their photos but offers a "proceed at your own risk" warning instead. I know these issues do not exclusively have to do with limitations in Opera. There is probably some middle ground between Opera adding support for specific technologies and these content providers testing more broadly, but the reality is that I spent a lot of time on these sites and if they don't work in Opera then it will never be my primary browser.
Synchronized Bookmarks, a bona fide feature request: Like most computer users these days I have access to more than one machine and wish there was a way for me to access my bookmarks regardless of where I am working. I am a big fan of the Firefox extension Foxmarks. I can be at home, in the office or working in the GIS lab, on my Mac or using a Windows machine, and my bookmarks move right along with me. It's a pretty nifty way to stay in synch
I hope that both of the Opera employees who still remember me appreciate the fact that I did not mention that telnet.exe is still coded into the Macintosh Preferences by default, and although you can now edit the helper application (by setting it to Terminal.app) telnet links still do not work. I have, believe it or not, finally come to terms with the fact that telnet addresses hyperlinked from web pages are non-existent (rendering a fix for this unnecessary) and am totally comfortable being the only person in the world who believes that Opera will never be taken seriously in the corporate marketplace when such silliness is allowed to persist over three version numbers!
After having switched to Firefox when I started working at the university last year, I migrated back to Opera earlier this summer when a campus-wide upgrade to the start-up scripts running on our computers rendered all Mozilla products on the Mac unusable (I think this is USIT's way of getting rid of the few remaining Macintosh users on campus). In many ways my return to Opera was relief. I was really delighted by just how fast Opera feels relative to Safari and Firefox and I don't know how I ever got by without some of Opera's more hidden features like the Links panel or the flexibility of being able to open new tabs next to the active tab. There are, however, several things I encounter on a daily basis that make me roll my eyes in frustration so I am taking advantage of the opportunity lachralle gave his readers to self-nominate and hereby present my wish list for the five things I would like to see in Opera.
Address Bar (Mac specific): The drop-down menu in the address field is often much longer than it should be, extending under the search field to the full width of the window. Regardless of any long addresses contained in the drop-down menu or Opera's "memory" of the maximum window size, the drop-down menu should only ever be as wide as the address field. Yes, this has long been one of my pet bugs
Content Blocking: I really prefer Opera's manual content blocking (relative to the Firefox extension Adblock Plus, for example); it makes me feel much more in control of what I do and don't see on a page and less vulnerable to decisions made by others. Opera could, however, be a lot more sophisticated by blocking the object containing the image or plug-in content thereby avoiding those ugly blocks of empty space that are often left on the page. This is something that Adblock does really well.
Blogging and Rich Text Editing: I maintain a couple of web sites that make use of web-based WYSIWYG editors like Kupu and the interface for WordPress, and unfortunately none of them perform at all well in Opera. There are trivial issues like not being able to follow "Previous Entries" links on a WordPress blog, to annoying things like editing buttons not being responsive to mouse clicks, to really devastating things like losing content while editing. I've lost one too many posts while editing in Opera and I simply cannot do my job while this feature remains so buggy.
.Mac/Yahoo/Flickr: The webmail interface for .Mac members is unusable in Opera. Yahoo is beta testing its new mail interface and blocks Opera completely. Flickr wants to block Opera users from organizing their photos but offers a "proceed at your own risk" warning instead. I know these issues do not exclusively have to do with limitations in Opera. There is probably some middle ground between Opera adding support for specific technologies and these content providers testing more broadly, but the reality is that I spent a lot of time on these sites and if they don't work in Opera then it will never be my primary browser.
Synchronized Bookmarks, a bona fide feature request: Like most computer users these days I have access to more than one machine and wish there was a way for me to access my bookmarks regardless of where I am working. I am a big fan of the Firefox extension Foxmarks. I can be at home, in the office or working in the GIS lab, on my Mac or using a Windows machine, and my bookmarks move right along with me. It's a pretty nifty way to stay in synch
I hope that both of the Opera employees who still remember me appreciate the fact that I did not mention that telnet.exe is still coded into the Macintosh Preferences by default, and although you can now edit the helper application (by setting it to Terminal.app) telnet links still do not work. I have, believe it or not, finally come to terms with the fact that telnet addresses hyperlinked from web pages are non-existent (rendering a fix for this unnecessary) and am totally comfortable being the only person in the world who believes that Opera will never be taken seriously in the corporate marketplace when such silliness is allowed to persist over three version numbers!
WIDGETIZE