unBlogged

Hello!

Here's my wish list for Opera 10, sorted by importance. Opera Internet Suite is already very big, so many things can be improved. This wishlist is big. I have included things from Opera Watch too, things I also consider needed.

Be warned: some items are asking for too much!

Must have:

*1. Fix the bugs. Not just rendering bugs.

There's one particular rendering bug I want fixed: PNG transparency (when the image file loads slowly).

*2. Speed: cut down the "fat" when starting Opera with a big cache, lots emails, contacts, whatever. There are also pages which scroll slowly (I can provide examples).

Another speed issue: PNG transparency .

Yet another speed issue: high number of items in address bar autocomplete.

*3. Site compatibility. Yes, some sites still don't work.

I know these problems are not caused by the browser. Somehow get all Yahoo and all Google working. That's what matters most. It's very "sad" to say "uhm, dude, the site you are trying to view does not support the browser I just recommended to you. No, no, wait! It's not Opera, it's Google/Yahoo the one to be blamed!" That's what usually happends, and ... when you start with the technical details about why the site works differently in Opera, you've lost the case. The usual saying goes "yeah, awesome browser, but it can't even fully support two of the most popular sites".


General:

*1. Better BitTorrent client. Allow more connections at once (provide an option to change max. connections for the BT protocol). This is needed because I can't currently use Opera to download torrents, since I only get to download from 5 people, which each sends me 1 kb/s. Verrryyy slow.

This basically asks for a usable BT client .

*2. Trackerless DHT support for BT.
*3. Allow selecting individual files from a BitTorrent file.
*4. Add more options for Site Settings.
*5. Make Search engines editor usable. It currently adds separators on a "per-guessing" basis. I have to manually clean search.ini. Allow us to edit separators too.
*6. Rich text copy/paste.
*7. Allow using wild cards for Server in Site Settings. For example, I can't disable cookies system-wide and just enable them on all yahoo.com (they have many subdomains).
*8. Remember all form inputs between sessions and when closing tabs.
*9. Autocomplete/suggestions drop-down in Search field (same as in upcoming Firefox). Allow us to add other search engines with autocomplete.
*10. Implement a serious form autocomplete feature (wand is not enough).
*11. Overall better drag-n-drop support. Under Linux I can't drag a file in an Email Composer window to attach a file .
*12. Import/export/sync emails, contacts, bookmarks, settings, every from/to online, files, Outlook, Thunderbird, Firefox, Evolution, Eudora, The Bat, iCal, PDAs, etc.
*13. Inline spell checker (for any language, not just engrish): for any input type=text, textarea and any field in Opera browser (email/notes composer, chat, search, etc).
14. Add to Search engines editor alll features from the ini file.
15. Bookmarks database with tagging, integration with online services. Allow easy installation of new services.
16. Wand should not ask for remembering the password until the submitted page is not loaded. This is because users sometime type the wrong username/password.
17. If you guys added BT, it shouldn't be a big deal to add threads for HTTP/FTP downloads.
18. Speed limit for downloads.
19. FTP Upload/Rename/Delete. Awesome!
20. SOCKS proxy support.
21. Widget transparency support for Linux.
22. Make printing better than the one in IE 7. Again, not something I use.
23. Backups for everything as a single package, or each feature: emails, contacts, bookmarks, etc.
24. Page rendering output to PNG/JPEG/TIFF files, with included command line option for automation.
25. Better EXIF support for JPEGs. Show more info, IPTC, comment, etc.
26. Cache browser: per server, per date, etc. Similar to history.
27. Make the search field automatically search everything in Opera. When I start typing I want to see results from notes, chat logs, history, bookmarks, contacts, emails, feeds, cache files (yes, even the HTML content), and everything one can think of . This would simply rock, if properly implemented.
28. Add to the opera:// protocol the possibility of adding menu items, keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, voice commands and more (same as for toolbar buttons).
29. Delete private data based on a selected interval. For example, this would allow me to delete data generated this week. This would prove to be a really nice feature. Or... delete private data on exit.
30. Right-click Widget > Uninstall (quick way to remove a widget, useful for development).
31. Save page with images should be the default option. Even "experts" fail first time to save pages with images included. It's not "intuitive" to have the Type dropdown. So make "Save page with images" as the default, or ... add a checkbox in the dialog, or add a separate option in the File menu.
32. Open Document Format support? Anyone?
33. My.Opera Center. This is the ultimate Update Manager and lots more.
34. Maybe ... add SCP support. This should work as FTP does.

User Interface:

*0. Status bar enabled by default. It is about time .
*1. The new WebForms 2 inputs don't look good enough. Improvements needed.
*2. Add a nice "callout" graphic for the RSS icon, for first-time users, quickly explaining the functionality. Many users don't know what's that, so you guys need to "advertise" this.
*3. When the first-time user closes Opera, inform him/her about the functionality of remembering the open tabs. Allow him/her the option to change the behaviour. Again, a nice feature which needs advertising.
*4. Fix the Accesskeys list. The order in which it displays the links is weird.
*5. Make the accesskeys list clickable.
*6. Add a border to accesskeys list. It's not very nice how it looks now.
*7. Some consistency issues: take a look at Cookies manager, Wand manager, Site editor, Search editor, Preferences > Advanced > Downloads. The "Add/edit/delete" buttons are some times ordered as: Add/edit/delete; other times they are ordered as: Add/delete/edit. Fix this!
*8. In the above dialogs: the position of the Add/edit/delete buttons should be changed a bit. Move Delete button at the bottom of the list, so users don't delete something by mistake.
*9. Error console as a tab and as a panel.
*10. Fix the Error console: for example, now if I pick to view just SVG errors I still see the network errors.
*11. The Windows panel must show the highlighted tabs (the ones which finished loading, the Chat tabs with new messages). Some users like using the Windows panel instead of the tabs: so, please provide similar functionality.
*12. The Windows panel must allow a single click to activate the tab. Same reason as above.
13. Show the number of emails in *current* view. For example, in Received folder Opera now shows 11268 emails, even if I have only selected to view unread messages (about 5 emails). This is not intuitive.
14. Resizable Search field.
15. The dialog asking for password remembering should not disturb my work. Make it non-modal.
16. Show a smiley in the address bar when a page is valid (no error generated in the console).
17. Improve native skin for Linux (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and probably for Windows XP/Vista too). Make it look really native .
18. Add thumbnails to the Windows panel?
19. Enable thumbnails by default for tab cycling and improve the interface (currently they don't look right).
20. Improve the looks of the thumbnail tooltip over the tabs. It doesn't look nice right now (IMHO).
21. The simplified Preferences > General dialog looks "empty" and "unfinished" when one knows how it looked in Opera 8. Maybe this needs rearranging the elements.


Email, chat, notes, newsfeeds:

*0. IMAP must work properly. Make all those guys who complain about IMAP happy for once and for all. I am not a user of IMAP myself, but this is really needed.
*1. Rich text editor for email and notes composer. No, I won't use it. However, it is important.
*2. Allow disabling external embedded scripts/images/objects in newsfeeds too (I do NOT like banners in newsfeeds). I currently have to change to text-only view to get rid of advertising.
*3. Chat logs with integrated viewer and search.
*4. Fix grouping of single discussions (threads).
5. Rework the filters. They seem OK at a first glance. Using them is not so OK. The problem I seem to have is with AND/OR/NOT filters. I can't get expected results.
6. Delete attachments.
7. The Newsfeeds drop-down in the Mail panel should also contain "All", so I can see all of them in one view. To get this functionality I have to use the menu "Flux RSS" > "Lire les flux" (en français).
8. Allow running UserJS in Chat and Mail.
9. The ability to keep an IRC channel open in Opera even if you close it’s tab, and then being able to re-open it as if you never closed it via the chat panel of the sidebar.
10. "Auto connect to this network at startup" checkbox for IRC networks, and the option to turn off automatic opening of IRC channels in tabs when connected/joined.
11. PGP/GPG/S-MIME support. Needed by many (except me).
12. Title for Notes.
13. Read newsfeeds in panel(s). Allow the user to group multiple feeds in a single panel. Provide a JS and a CSS we can edit to change the display and the behaviour.
14. Live Bookmarks.
15. Allow editing Contact birth date. Also, allow me to setup a reminder.
16. Make Contacts and Notes as the mail database. Add labels for contacts and notes, so they can showup in multiple places.
17. Allow me to set multiple reminders for a single note. All reminders should showup in the new Calendar panel, with a nice timeline. Reminders via email, via chat, via popup. Look at Yahoo! Calendar, that's good enough .
18. Rename labels to tags (read: make noobs happy).
19. Allow add/deleting/renaming labels/tags for Mail client.
20. Add GUI for editing the Reply/forward template, per account, per contact.
21. Add templates for new messages, per account, per contact.


Developer-related:

*1. JavaScript debugger.
*2. DOM Inspector. At least as good as the one in FF.
*3. Live HTTP headers monitor and requests generator. Like LiveHTTPHeaders extension for Firefox.
*4. UserJS files must be given personal storage, similar to widgets.
*5. All links in Source Viewer must be clickable. The ones pointing to JS, CSS, iframes, frames, etc. should open in the source viewer (hold shift for new tab).
*6. Make the source viewer faster (scrolling is slow).
*7. Quick search in source viewer.
*8. Line numbers, find & replace, tab size setting, and word wrap for source viewer.
*9. opera:config must provide descriptions for all options. This can be done by connecting to opera.com and fetching the description of the INI setting the user wants (show "?" for each); by fetching all descriptions automatically (no "?" for each setting); by including the descriptions in the installer (this might not be nice for you guys, since this slows down the release cycle). This can be done, you guys already have a page with all the needed information: Opera's settings file explained.
*10. The Info panel must show the sent/received HTTP headers.
*11. The Info panel must also make all the URLs clickable with two "versions": online (the real URL) and local (from cache). The locals must open in Source Viewer and allow us to quickly edit and save.
*12. I like the iframes list from the Info panel. I would also need lists for: images, objects, CSS files, and scripts. As above: local (from cache) and online (real URL).
13. Source viewer as a panel.
14. Better source highlighting (it's not good enough right now).
15. A bundled set of UserJS scripts and UserCSS files for aiding development (mostly debugging). This should be included in Opera by default, or very easily available on the opera.com site (it needs advertising, otherwise developers won't ever know of them).
16. 3D Canvas.
17. Microformats (like hCard).
18. Maybe Python, Perl and/or Ruby alongside JavaScript.
19. Give higher powers to UserJS, extension-like. More details in "My Opera Center".

CSS:

*1. css3-background (this would prove very helpful in many cool designs)
*2. column layout
*3. more css3-selectors
4. Anything new and fixed is good. This list could be really big, with each property I want. Just add more, because that's what matters.

Voice:

Hehe. No, I didn't forget about this .

1. Support for SAPI 4, SAPI 5 and Festival (for Linux).
2. Support for Linux.
3. Support for CSS generated content with media type speech.

Almost impossible, but worth asking for.


Security: phishy filter . Make n00bz happy.

Last, but not least, if you guys implement half of the above, rename Opera 10 to "Operateng System" .

Nice to have: read-only access to the parts of the Bug Tracking System, without signup.


Read more in the "My Opera Center" post. This is something new which would integrate update manager, remote settings, remote backup, etc. It also integrates developer features.



* is a "must have" for Opera 10

Internet Explorer 7. What is this in essence? Is it an Opera and Firefox killer? Microsoft would like us to believe the latter, but I don't, even if I wanted to believe they'll bring IE to a decent level.

Almost all the CSS-based layouts look almost the same in IE 7 beta 2 as in IE 6. No big difference. I still can't drop *any* of those hacks I have in my layouts. I know they fixed *some* bugs, I know some pages render perfectly, or even better, but it's not enough. Why urge developers to drop the hacks when they are still needed?

The Internet has become the central part of computing. To me, the computer is almost useless without the Internet. When I boot I also start my favourite browser. I generally don't close it unless it crashes (which doesn't happen more than once a month or so), or I upgrade it .

The web and communication capabilities of the Internet are invaluable. Microsoft seems to get the trend, since there was some buzz around Windows Live and other Microsoft Fluffy products.

Having that in mind: why does IE 7 suck? Is it on purpose? Is it because they don't have the time to make it much better? Take your pick. I'd go for the latter option, since ... Microsoft initially didn't plan to have any updates for Internet Explorer, except updates bundled together with Windows. A huge mistake that even Bill regrets.

One thing's for sure (IMHO): if they would like a much better browser (comparable to Opera and/or Firefox) they do have to start by asking the cleaning lady to clean their hard drives where they've stored the current IE engine. They should do this without blinking and without looking back. Look at what Netscape got after they did that: Firefox . Yes, I know, that was very stupid what Netscape Corp. did: rewriting code is a big mistake. Nonetheless ... they now have a much better product (erm, Mozilla Corp. does ).

Five years since IE 6, Microsoft should have had the time to do what Netscape did. But, if they did't want to screw-up like Netscape did, they could have taken on the daunting task of improving the rendering engine, every minute, every second, every night and day, sundays and saturdays too.

They didn't do so. They actually started working on IE 7 last summer or so. That's because if they would've worked on improving IE since 2001, then ... IE 7 would simply be much better than Opera and Firefox combined. Microsoft has the resources to do that, they did it with IE 4, 5 and even 6. At that time, IE was really better than Netscape 4. Microsoft really had a better product. It was even better than the Gecko engine which was in its infancy at the end of 90's and the beginning of 2000. Opera was better only as a browser (features-wise) and better at CSS rendering, but it was not coping with the tag-soup affecting the majority of web pages (hence it didn't gain much popularity).

Once all the vaporware, buzz and fuzz surrounding the release of this cutting-edge browser (IE 7), users who switched back from Opera/Firefox (IMHO quite many) will start missing the features they've got used to in the alternative browser, and probably most of them will feel disappointed by IE (after the "wow" factor dries). Plus, they'll continue seeing "too cool for IE" and similar "campaigns".

The main point of this post is actually to propose a new way of looking at Microsoft failing to deliver a good browser. It's not just on purpose (because things have changed since then and Microsoft seems to realize the importance of the Internet and the Web). It's also about the possiblity of MS losing the entire market share dominance in respect to operating systems. Will this ever happen? Yes, no doubt. The only question is "when?".

Losing the web browsers market share dominance is not that hard as some think so. It's not impossible. Lets take the example of MP3 players: Winamp versus Windows Media Player. Winamp is not integrated into Windows, but WMP is. Guess which one dominates? Everybody I know uses Winamp (including myself, actually I use Ubuntu now, but the point is I used Winamp with Windows). WMP is simply not good enough: it's slower and it's a resource hog compared to Winamp. Yes, I've tried WMP and yes, it has some nice features, but that's all.

The same can happen in the browsers world. I know it's very hard, but not impossible (nothing is impossible ). If browsers like Opera and Firefox start providing extremely advanced new features and capabilities that will render IE simply obsolete, out-dated, developers and corporations might actually make Opera/Firefox-only web applications (unless MS pays them enough not to do so). Users will switch, because the alternatives are better. Microsoft can't pay all companies, all developers to make IE-only sites because it cannot afford to so and it's not something anybody can do (not even Bill Gates).

Firefox is already being installed on new computers by geeks for friends and families who don't know much about computing. I also install Opera browser on all computers I have to setup and configure, I even try to remove IE shortcuts, so the user can't start it by mistake. This is the same approach used with Winamp. It's just standard procedure: stop useless services, install Opera and Winamp.

That's the first step to losing the operating systems market dominance. Why? Once users realize the benefits of alternatives, the fact alternatives are better, they are more and more interested in alternative operating systems too. That's what happend to me as well.

Browsers are probably even more important than any piece of software on any OS. If you no longer use IE, you can already make the switch easier. Many web applications also make it easier to make the switch. Does Jane use Gmail? No problem, that one works under GNU/Linux too. Does she use Firefox, Thunderbird or Opera? All function under Linux better and faster.

A good move by Microsoft would be to release IE 7 ASAP, but make it stable and with enough "wow" factor for gullible users. Then, in one year develop IE 8, which has the "wow" factor for developers too.

I don't ignore the improvements in IE 7. Quite good ones, except the interface which is worse than what IE 6 looks like. IE 6 actually has an acceptable interface.

If anything's going to be "blamed" for the fall of Windows market dominace, that's the Web. It's not Google, and no other startup nor corporation, because they'll all make use of the Internet and the Web.

P.S. Comments are very welcome and I am actually interested in your personal opinions regarding matters expressed in this post.