Sparing the forum users from a rant
Monday, 19. January 2004, 20:41:54
each time I filled out the reply I ended up deleting the accompanying rant that I typed in & just left a short message poking fun at the original statement.
But now as an exclusive for Opera journal readers here comes the rant!
The first thread that I linked to asks what features are stopping people from buyiong Opera. I don't mean to criticise Tomcat76 personally, I know full well he started the thread with the best of intentions - to start discussion about things Opera software could do to generate more sales.
I stand by my comment though that people will just look for new excuses to not pay for the software.
What gets me is people completely independant of that thread seem to monotonously use the line "if you fixed this I'd certainly buy Opera." It is just another tool that some people use to get what they want.
Or could it just be that they are trying to goad the coders into fixing their personal issue? Are they just dangling a carrot in front of the donkey? Would the number of registrations spike after each new bug fixing version? I don't think so.
The ad isn't all that intrusive, I used Opera 5 for a good few months before registering. It never bothered me once & I know a lot of other unregistered Opera users feel the same way. What prompted me to register was not that I got fed up with the banner, it was that I realised that Opera Software is a company worth supporting. They are working really hard (remember the frenzied beta period with the Opera 7.2? Remember the new betas being released at 11pm on a Friday night? On Saturdays too?) to produce a great product that is relevant to today's internet.
Luckily evidence suggests that Opera Software aren't stupid enough to let themselves get sucked in.
Another common tool of persuasion is "Why is Opera so utterly shit? it doesn't even support this bit of code:
blah blah blah</p
Sort it out then I won't go back to IE."
I find both persuasion techniques equally irritating.
Sidenote: I just tested that bit of pseudo HTML in Opera & I can't believe it actually does display the text!
As for the second thread: browser only for $19? Who's kidding who?
As I commented this would make M2 available to buy at the price of $20, even though the M2 part of Opera is only 200kb in size. If you could buy the browser for just $19 very few people would bother to upgrade to the full suite.
Simply put:
Seperate disabling & registration for the two modules = (small amount of) code bloat = more possible vulnerabilities in the code = more work for the coders
One reason why Opera works so well is because it is very tightly written.
I think this guy is just trying to barter the price down for himself & screw all the M2 users in the process.
How about this for an idea:
/me places tongue firmly into cheek
Opera comes available for download with no adverts & all features working. Then after 30 days all of Opera's selling points are crippled - no MDI, no mouse gestures, no pop up blocking, no panels, no M2, no keyboard shortcuts, no skins, no customisable menus, no draggable buttons, all the toolbars fixed as they are. Then the customer has to pay $5 per feature to get it back. How is that for a graduated "on-ramp"? Very easy for people to get started on plus more income for Opera. Everyone is a winner! 
On a positive note, the fact that these types of message seem to be appearing more frequently might just be because more people are realising that Opera IS worth paying for (& if anyone is truly honest with themselves it certainly is worth the money).
Some people will pay others won't. Some people can't afford it & I respect that. But to most people, $39 is not a great deal of money for a piece of software such as Opera. Convincing people to pay for what they have is not an easy thing to do but it looks like it might be happening.
WIDGETIZE
Thomas # 19. January 2004, 20:41
I wanna comment on something that you wrote. I'm taking it out of its context and it's not in relation with "my thread"...
You wrote:
"What prompted me to register was not that I got fed up with the banner, it was that I realised that Opera Software is a company worth supporting."
I also believe Opera Software is worth supporting, but one doesn't do that by paying 34 euro. As far as I'm concerned, 34 euro is to get rid of the banner while "support" consists of a much larger figure, paid periodically. I certainly intend to do that once I get a job, which should be pretty soon.
(* More in relation with my thread *)
What has always "bugged" me the most about Opera is its bugs. The rendering bugs and "inconsistencies" have made me lose quite a lot of hairs when designing sites.
It must be noted that I code with the following two things in mind:
- valid (X)HTML
- WYWIWYG (What You Write Is What You Get)
In the many years I've "evolved" as a self-made web designer, I've been making advanced use of "advanced CSS" for like two years now. In that time, I've only been confronted with one "annoyance" in Mozilla but a massive number of bugs in Opera. Two examples:
1) [bug] When styling an element with "position: fixed; bottom: 0" and the page content is so large that a vertical scrollbar is required, Opera will display that element about 15px higher (the height of a horizontal scrollbar) after minimizing and maximizing the page; moving the cursor over a hyperlink anywhere on the page makes Opera place the element in its intended position again. This has forced me in one occasion to use an iframe to have the content scroll in the middle of the page instead of the entire page, ie. avoiding the bug.
2) [inconsistency] Opera can't handle Quicktime content presented in a "W3C valid" <object> construction; it requires the non-standard <embed> tag, forcing me to use JavaScript's "document.write" as I want my pages to comply with the XHTML specs. This is already an inconsistency, but it becomes even more clear if I add that Flash animations and Java applets ARE supported when served in a valid <object> tag.
The end product isn't to my liking, but I want it to be to my liking because it's clear to me that Opera has the potential. This means that I "refuse" to pay the 34 euro for now but am completely in favor of donating "a larger sum of money" periodically to improve development on the rendering engine until I can say "I'm more or less satisfied"...