Opera Dragonfly 1.1 Released, Core Developer Leaves Opera

By | September 7, 2011 | 22 Comments

Opera Dragonfly 1.1 Released

It seems that Dragonfly is not yet dead. 4 months after releasing the initial stable build of Opera Dragonfly, it has now been updated to the version 1.1.

In the official post, David Storey wrote, “around 3 and a half months ago we launched version 1.0″, which is not actually true as Opera Dragonfly 1.0 was releases on May 4th and that was 4 months ago. While that’s nitpicking, it looks like even its developers are ashamed of the release cycle train wreck that Opera Dragonfly had.

Furthermore, David Storey, a guy who is responsible for the Opera Dragonfly development, has announced that he will be leaving the company, right after 1.1 release.

For all the new features and changes, see the original post.

[Thanks, MarkG, Mikah]


About (Author Profile)


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.

  • Everybody

    “While that’s nitpicking, it looks like even its developers are ashamed of the release train wreck that Opera Dragonfly was.”

    Are you on crack?

  • anon

    He’s definitly on something…
    Should be ashamed to post something like that.

  • Mikah

    Train wreck ? 

  • http://www.rudivisser.com/ Rudi Visser

    What the F? I used Dragonfly the whole time even before it’s “official” release, and it’s always been great despite having a sucky UI.

    I’ve never really seen anything bad about Dragonfly as a tool, always seen praise about it’s interface and it’s really great to use in general. How on earth was the release of 1.0 a trainwreck at all?

    Anyway… I noticed the changes to Dragonfly yesterday and thought I could have been going mad. Should have read the blog, they’re subtle but very nice indeed. Especially the console!

    • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

      I am not talking about 1.0 as a train wreck, I was talking about release cycles.

      It took them 3 years to go from alpha > stable, three years…

      • http://www.rudivisser.com/ Rudi Visser

        In the same light, releasing a product that contains bugs as stable isn’t exactly good practice either. I’d rather wait 3 years than have a “stable” release which isn’t at all stable.

        Do agree with them not dedicating enough resources to it though.

      • Mikah

        Seems to have been received pretty well they must have been doing something right.

      • João Eiras

        Just like how gmail has always been beta ? Or wine took 15 years ? Version numbers are meaningless.

      • Cousin333

        What kind of release cycle are you talking about? Dragonfly 1.0 was the first, which cannot be called as a ‘cycle’. Besides, if you were in the beta or the experimental branch you got many updates in the last year or so.

        Well, 3 year period is long indeed, but keep in mind, that Dragonfly was built from the ground up, and it is a software that depends on and interacts heavily with the core. Hence the core development should also keep up with the work. Like JSON, which is used by Dragonfly as a communication between the core and the application is only supported by Opera 10.5 or later versions.

        It took them time to develop an architecture, that is extensible and forms a solid base for future development, while suits Opera’s needs. I mean do the other devtools support debugging of other PC-s, widgets, mobile phones or even TV sets? (I don’t know, I’m asking)

        • Nobody

          that last part is a reason of opera failure – they develop options for noone – debugging stuff on other machines etc is very good in THEORY in practice it does not work anyway. they spent a lot of time and money on something that does not work and is not needed,

          cudos, world ignored it anyway

          opera should have had this tool 5 years ago – now it is too late, all major webages ignore opera. too little too late. but it can debug mobile phones! hooozaah! why would anyone debug their phones, when they use webkit that happens to work just fine? :)

          ps. i know the value of remote debugging, but dragonfly sadly is useless in this aspect, and, please, it is webkit’ turf now

      • Cousin333

        One thing I forgot.

        “You have an unestablished product, assign less resources than your competitors and expect to have a competitive product? No way.”

        Well, it took more than 3 years, that’s right, but they do have a competitive product after all, don’t they? :) 

  • João Eiras

    a) David Storey was leader of the developer relations team, and started the open the web project. He was not a developer.

    b) “developers are ashamed of the release cycle train wreck” WTF ? Dude, seriously, drink water instead.

  • Anonymous

    “Opera Dragonfly 1.0 was releases on May 4th and that was 4 months ago. While that’s nitpicking, it looks like even its developers are ashamed of the release cycle train wreck that Opera Dragonfly had.”

    The blog post was written in advanced during the code freeze for the release preparations. I wrote it before I left so that it could be released when the final came out. There was a last minute show stopper (not uncommon in software, but spotted due to our rigorous testing during the cool off period) which delayed the release by just over a week. Thus the date ended up wrong. Hardly the sign of a release train wreck. The work on Opera Dragonfly has actually been going very smoothly.

    We took a long time to call Dragonlfy 1.0 final as we wanted to reserve that version for when we felt the product was competitive with the competition and had all the essential features. As someone else mentioned here, it was already possible to get the alpha and beta versions through the regular channels and the work in progress version through the experimental channel, so I don’t see what was a train wreck about that either.

    • Nobody

      david – i never liked you and i always thought that you failed as a pm of this project. id have sacked you years before if i were your superior.

      but – it takes some guts to trash your previous employer as you did in the summary – cudos, as your points are both valid and in line with mine

      as fo the dragonfly – it will NOT be competetive as long as it requires reload to get debugging context and cannot be ‘always on’ like firebug. noone will risk it catching a elusive bug and then requiring you to reload a page – sorry, time is money, firebug does it by default. performance cost my ass – it should just work that way. no matter what you say, no matter how youll try to paint it – it is something that kills dragonfly for any serious work. period.

      • João Eiras

        Another idiot. If you’re dissing David at least be brave enough to use a real name.

  • Anonymous

    Is this thing local? Or does it still use the internet?

    • Sirnh1

      If I’m not mistaken, is still uses the internet, but if you use it for the first time, it ‘caches’ dragonfly so that it can be used offline. It does check for updates every once in a while.

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      You can also download Dragonfly and point its folder on opera:config.

    • Anonymous

      Thanks guys

  • Anonymous

    Disband entire Opera brand. Enough. Waste of time. It stopped being even browser long time ago, in comparison to progress the other browsers already made. 

    Even IE9 is much better.

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