Opera Downloads Triples, Ballot Screen to “Blame”?

By | March 4, 2010 | 18 Comments

Opera Downloads Triples, Ballot Screen to According to Rolf Assev, Opera’s chief strategy officer, desktop browser downloads has tripled in some of the countries, since the launch of ballot screen.

Although Opera 10.50 Final was released at the time of ballot screen debut (1 day difference), he added: “We compared the downloads against previous launches, such as Opera 10.0, 10.10 and 9.5, and the tripling is above what we would normally expect with a new version launch”.

Waiting for download numbers…

[digg-reddit-me]


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Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • k3m15a

    mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

  • ichann

    According to peacekeeper. Opera is now the most tested browser.

    Seems like opera is gaining some market share after all.

  • Pingback: Opera Downloadzahlen verdreifachen sich « Browser Fuchs

  • Harsha

    Yeah, but opera still is not open source and therefore cannot use the whole bunch of ad-ons out there. The 10.5 is still not out for Linux yet.

    • Crackerflack

      What are you talking about? An application doesn’t need to be open-source to support add-ons.

      FOSS zealots should at least read up on basic technology before speaking up..

  • ichann

    You know Mozilla as a cooperation cannot be classified as open source.

    What is with this open source mantra? It has nothing to do with open source and addons. That is up to Opera wether to support addons or not. How long will it take for someone else to make a addon system for Opera without them bound to break anything? Have you tried the new widgets yet? I myself did not use widgets on the basis that they ‘sucked’, but now opera have released two sexy widgets featured on their widgets.opera.com page. There is a Ebook reader and it is basically like a standalone application. Simply beautiful. http://www.mediafire.com/?gg5dwdzmfyr

    I have built in features and scripts that do most if not all the things other browser boast with their 100 ad dons. Some even are pale in comparison to the built in ones.

  • opera fan

    ichann, maybe you could share your custom scripts and etc.? ;)

    • Daniel
      • ichann

        I prefer Usuable tube fix for opera instead of HD youtube.

        http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=250627

        Depends on what you need.

        I love linkify and wot for opera Image thumb is another I like. I use fanboys url filter list to block ads, Yousable tube fix to download vids and view a better qality stream. There are ones that make depositfiles waiting period instant. There are rapidshare link checkers, Forum enchancers. Bug me not script, google preview to view site thumbanils next to google results (there is another one that works with all major search engines).

        I believe thats all I need for now. My firefox install has vid helper and all those miilion extensions that are useless for this version.

        can anyone reconmend me any good FF extensions? Cooliris, Tab mix plus. I know all these major ones. I mean why does FF need a tab extension when it should have all those features built in. Lasy programmers. They let the public do the hard work for them.

        • nobody

          “Lasy programmers. They let the public do the hard work for them.”

          and public makes that hard work. ff extensions are supported over time and are of far better quality than some of opera’ built in features.

          opera introduces a feature and never looks back.

          cookie management had its last update in version 7?
          ad blocker? version 9.x, not touched since
          userJS? introduced than dropped
          userCSS? introduced than dropped

          there are 100s of similar examples.

          if that basic functionality suits you – ok, you are in luck.

          if it doesnt, you can be sure, that opera will not upgrade it. and you cannot extend it yourself!

          only speed dial (barely) and widgets were improved after release. others are pretty much the same as in the day they were launched.

          why? because opera ARE NOT lazy programmers. They DONT let the public do the hard work for them.

          and they try to do 100s thigs at once with very limited work force.

          firefox outsourced all non-essential stuff to free enthusiasts, and concentrated on core stuff.

          i think that overall quality of their (ff programmers) work is better, just because this stuff is maintained over time.

          • Ichann

            define dropped.

            What more do you want? Whey not make browsers the next OS. ohh wait I think someone is already trying that.

            and they try to do 100s thigs at once with very limited work force

            Yes. It is called projects. Mozilla does em too. Google does em too. Without them the ideas you see implemented with each release will not exist. What has FF focused on really? Extensions are handled by people. They have their lab projects. Mostly they work n fixing the core. Hey wait I think Opera does the same thing. What is the gist of your argument?

          • nobody

            projects? no, you havent understood the point.

            ff team lately introduced a much better ‘get me the plugin experience and keep them up to date’, developed VERY robust extensions framework, with auto updates, dependancies etc. developed very efficient autoupdate mechanism for the browser itself. and is developing rendering/js engine.

            all this stuff WORKS perfectly, and these are CORE functionality.

            opera meanwhile has it all ‘under construction’. autoupdate system quite often fails, and still requires a lot of user attention, you have to update and install plugins manualy, and extensions are still not there.

            what was my point? that opera would have had its core functionalities much more polished if they had outsourced most of minor work to community. instead of them implementing each and every little feature out there.

            and opera core functionalities – like cookies handling, plugin handling, autoupdate, spellchecking etc still are ‘work in progress’. ff had them finished and closed years ago, mostly because they focused on them, leaving the less important parts to others.

            that was a very wise decision, with very little side effects. people like to scream ‘security’ and ‘extensions fail after i upgrade to new version’.. well, when was the last time extensions failed after upgrading to new official version? extensions are maintained by their owners, unlike most of opera features. when was the last time something was fixed in opera notes? or irc handling?

          • nvm

            Whoa! Wall of text from “n” again. Does anyone actually bother to read his obsessive-compulsive posts about Opera?

          • Ichann

            ff team lately introduced a much better ‘get me the plugin experience and keep them up to date’, developed VERY robust extensions framework, with auto updates, dependancies etc. developed very efficient autoupdate mechanism for the browser itself. and is developing rendering/js engine.

            Look at me I know complicated words which makes me SEEM like I know what I am talking about.

            What are you on about? Installing plugins manually? The update feature worked for me but unlike the Google Update I have a choice to install a fresh copy when an existing copy is already installed. As I recall Opera notes did not work in some snapshots and was fixed. Why do we need to fix IRC? is it broken? Seems to work fine here

            ff had them finished and closed years ago, mostly because they focused on them, leaving the less important parts to others.

            FF focused on these? What do you mean by cookie management? Where the hell is this famous cookie manager for FF anyway?

            A mature company does not rely on the community 80% of the time to make their product shine.

  • TTT

    The core of the browser is its rendering engine not something that handles extensions and so on.. this core, Gecko, gets a major rewrite once in a century. Opera at the opposite just got a big update to their core, created a new javascript engine and a new graphics library..

    so at mozilla they aren’t really working on core stuff.. they are working day and night to make the extensions system work while maintaining their browser secure and stable.. and it is not really an easy task.

    outsourcing to random people is just a bad idea because you lose every control over the direction your product is going and slow down all the development process.. it took 7 month to pass from 3.5 to 3.6 with a not-that-big change log..

    such a development model can’t compete with the fast pace “browser war 2″ is taking thanks to google..

    • nobody

      well, for firefox business model extensions ARE core functionality. for its users it is its main selling point, others being ‘open source’ (god knows why..) and ‘the not-IE one’. mozilla has to and had invested heavily into extensions.

      doing major rewrite isnt something good. it is risky, very very expensive and should be done only when really needed. firefox does not compete in speed race (it doesnt have to, it puts emphasis on its other qualities, and has a market position that only needs maintaining, not rapid growth).

      opera rewrite was needed (old presto and GUI toolkits werent up to the job), and i still think that it hasnt managed as much as it should (compatibility is still a major problem). thousands of regressions and stability problems are a price opera paid for this bald move.

      “outsourcing to random people is just a bad idea because you lose every control over the direction your product is going and slow down all the development process.. it took 7 month to pass from 3.5 to 3.6 with a not-that-big change log.. ”

      yes, it took FF some time, but to be honest, there wasnt that much to change in FF after releasing 3.5. ff main problem, memory leaks, were fixed in 3.5. FF already implements much of the new (and old) html/css/js stuff, so what to add there?

      and outsourcing works for mozilla, because theyve managed to cut the responsibility part. people learned that that are the extensions to blame for extensions issues. and

      and i dont really see why outsourcing extensions to community slows anything down. one time investment (already done) in extensions framework, and voila.

      and this development model removed the burden of developing (and supporting!) each minor functionality. this bogs down opera development and makes using old functionality such a chore.

      opera has lots of (potentialy!) great features, but some of them vere last improved in previous century! just take any note making ff extension and compare it with opera implementation. it comes from 2000! no RTFormating in 2010? please..

      if it was an extension, i can bet that it would have been supported and updated periodicaly with new features.

      no wonder why chrome focus now are: speed and extensions

      • TTT

        Of course major rewrites are not good but sometimes they are needed as technology progresses.. as modifications are summed up code gets more complex and inefficient and just hunting down problems becomes more time consuming and the performance gains are small.

        I disagree that firefox doesn’t want to compete in the speed race: they advertise their browser as “faster” (than what?) and they are working on an update to their javascript engine “inspired” by webkit..
        this is also an example of what I said before: if they rewrote spidermonkey in the first place instead of just upgrading it they wouldn’t need a second update..

        Incompatibility in Opera is not that bad and is most caused by primitive browser sniffing: you identify as explorer and the problem disappears most of the times.. and 10.5 is pretty stable considering the accelerated development..
        Some firefox releases had much worse stability problems, not to mention security holes (secure is the second word used in firefox page to advertise it!) and they took much longer to be released.

        the addons model slows down the development because mozilla hasn’t found yet a way to constrain addons enough to make them harmless without making them useless and so they need to invest most of their energy and time on this problem (for me without any solution).

        Removing the need to support features using addons is not solving a problem, it’s throwing the problem to others.. as firefox market share will drop soon (because no-one can compete with google) do you think that developers will continue updating their addons? I don’t think so.

        I don’t believe in the addon model. I prefer an out-of-the-box feature-rich innovative browser that grants me a secure environement (with some drawbacks but not as many and as big as you picture them in my opinion) than a jungle of “no responsability” “no support” (your words) addons..

        just my opinion of course and I don’t pretend you to change yours.. as you won’t change mine.

        • Ichann

          I don’t believe in the addon model. I prefer an out-of-the-box feature-rich innovative browser that grants me a secure environement (with some drawbacks but not as many and as big as you picture them in my opinion) than a jungle of “no responsability” “no support” (your words) addons..

          You deserve a smiley. :)

          FF Extensions are a thing of the past. The only company that I’m seeing doing extensions correctly is Google.

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