I got same problem as Kildor said. LOOLOLO

Imo, the strategic decision is bigger than the question of “open source” or not. Opera are a business and the desktop browser is a platform with which they develop other products/modules which they sell to companies. Eg. adobe and nintendo both pay for operas engine to be used in their products. there are many such companies that buy and use opera tech. The mobile side of things is also a big part of the strategy, and opera are also at the core of setting standards for the “open web” platform. Having the dominant desktop browser is not their main business, but obviously it serves as their main development platform, and it is true that some areas take longer to develop than others.

Personally i dont really buy the extensions thing, although i see lots of ppl are fanatical about it. i use ff with roboform and lots of other extensions but i didnt find anything that is really any better, just different. Sometimes, ff extensions are nicer than operas implementation, sometimes the other way. the problem for me with extensions is they dont integrate together very well, they are not secure, and it takes a long time to set up ff with everything the way you want. operas mail, irc, gestures etc etc all integrate nicely together so you work in one environment.

i disagree that 9.5 has been no real progress. the big backends have had a major reworking and the time taken has not been so far behind FF. look at how long FF3 has been in development, and out of the box, it doesnt really look any different either.

dragonfly is new and in early development, ur right that the old dev console does more right now but there is a lot of focus there atm, and it shows a lot of potential if the promised developmen happens. i dont see dragonfly as part of the core of opera, its like an extension, time will tell how good it is.

i also dont agree that FF3 is much more polished. FF3rc3 is still crashing for me a more than opera, takes much longer to start up, and feels slower even under linux where profiling is not yet in Opera and it is in firefox. Features in opera are more accessible to most users since normal users dont want to spend lots of time finding the right extensions for this and that.

Also, opera still feels faster all round, to me. This is not just the engine but the UI – the whole package. Factoring in nicknames, mouse gestures, spatial nav, search shortcuts and the best keyboard interface i can fly around the web. The instant back/forward still feels much quicker in O than in FF. The zoom feels much faster (esp. on older kit) and is essential for me. Ctrl+mousewheel roll feels horrible on FF and suddenly everything gets much slower since FF engine takes many shortcuts at 100% zoom. Although sunspider JS tests are faster in FF3, at default settings, try them at another zoom than 100% ;) I can also show you a number of other independent JS tests that are faster in O. Other speed tests like loading and rendering complex pages always win in O and I dont see browser speed as just coming down to some JS functions.

FF is certainly a great browser and its clear that some users like the leaning of FF while some prefer the leaning of O; in the end the web itself is becoming more open and standards compliant which is the real victory here. For me, security and performance are a big deal, followed by power user features and O seems to have the right balance. And its all there, out of the box.

Clever customisation of O with UserJS and UserCSS needs nicer UI’s for sure, but for power users, these are the great dark secrets of O that make it extensible and customisable without compromising security, and in an open, standards compliant way. Even the widgets are all built on open technology which means nothing that extends opera is locked to the platform.

in the end, we all win the argument because these browsers are excellent and driving the internet platform forward as a whole. i need to use all the browsers a lot and for development i find that things that work in opera work in everything else, but not the reverse. That’s a good testament to the open web ideology and the fact that O are supporting it.

i still support my initial thesis about opera not supporting its features over time (it is general observation, there are some exceptions). it is because doing it is a non-trivial task, that they dont have manpower for. withfew features you can manage to support all of them, with lots – and opera insists on having lots of stuff, and doing it all by itself, you either let most of them to rust, or dont spend any time on general improvements

mozilla knew that, and delegated lots of small and niche functionalities to extension makers, giving itself lots of manpower to improve browser itself.

strategic decision opera made years ago to close itself, and not deliver extensions api is now backfiring. opera is very slow to introduce new features, it is very slow to improve rendering engine, it is also very slow to improve existing stuff – and they still insist on doing it all. effects? ff3 already surpased opera in everything, and their product is VERY polished. yes, opera out of the box claims to have more functionalities, but most of these are outdated, nonfunctional or simply badly designed

solution isnt going open source, solution is allowing opera users to write extensions for it. bringing security here isnt an answer. ff somehow did that.

if not, all future releases of opera will be like 9.5 – two years of work but no real progress. you can list new opera stuff in a very short list, and most of it is really only a sketch (dragonfly and link – both semi functional, dragonfly isnt functional at all to be honest – their old ‘developer console’ can do things that this stuff cant)

Actually I agree that some features have been left to “rust” as you put it (mail UI and userJS being 2 good examples), but I wouldn’t agree that there are that many and that no effort has gone in. Operas priorities are just different to yours, and resources are limited – in the end they have to decide where to prioritise the work.

Opera could spend all their time improving, refining and bugfixing existing features – i’d really like that. The only downer is then we get a bunch of other moaners complaining that its just the same as before after a year of work.

The other wrinkle is that some improvements need a lot of work under the hood, like eg. keeping up with the latest standards in CSS, JS and ECMA, so they couldn’t just focus on bugfixing and refining.

I think in reality opera have tried to strike a balance. Some nice new features (link, quick addressbar search, tab-closing ala FF), some big engine improvements (site performance, memory, site compatibility, better threading, acid3), some reworking of old stuff (mail back-end, content blocker), some security (EV and malware detection). Although the balance is not to everyone’s taste, a lot has been done to please a lot of users.

Although, eg, Mail has not seen much on the UI side the backend has been completely revamped and some big frontend changes are promised for 10. 9.5 does deliver on its original promises, even tho the release has been rushed, and I hope and expect some .01 versions over the next month to refine any remaining stability issues and shore up compatibility. A wide user base is needed to get the necessary feedback to prioritise that work.

9.5 was always about evolution not revolution, mainly backend work. In terms of frontend UI featurising, opera 10 focuses on that.

nb:
- favicons for bookmarks is a skin issue. choose a different skin if you want to see them (shame the option to have them isnt in the new skin, but you could always roll one up)
- favicons for search engines is an issue for upgraders, mainly from the betas/weeklies. its fixable if you copy all *redir* files from a blank profile/images dir to your profile/images dir.

peace :)

lol how can so many of you get it wrong? I bet half of you updated from snapshot/beta/rc versions. But that must be the shortest lifespan of a RC ever :) A bit strange, I guess they just wanted a quick check for very major showstoppers, and the term RC was for once actually used correctly.

Oh, and 25% of you seem to be known opera trolls from eastern european countries whom will keep complaining forever until opera goes open source and adds extensions.

but where they fail miserably are areas called ‘implementation’ and ‘improvements’

how many opera features were invented, introduced and then left to rust for YEARS without any maintenance? cookie manager hasnt seen ANY changes since version 7. and it requires these BADLY. adblocker, userjs implementation, tab management, site-preferences etc etc etc there are tons of things opera invented and then let it die. others took the idea and improoved it. mainly ff, but avant browser also did its share of improvements it must be said

If you read my post, I’m just pointing out that if you had your way you wouldn’t be enjoying half the browser you take for granted.