New Opera Alpha Out!

[MarcLister]

the torrent thing really is negligible but agreed it would be nice as a custom install to leave it out.

Apologies if you already know this but http://www.opera.com/support/search/view/840/.

 

[LeperousDust]

I'm not talking about the tab bar or popup thing which I have disabled because there is absolutely no need for it and leaves an even thicker line which really REALLY drives me mad haha. I mean this line, which does nothing. IE does it too, Firefox does not.

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/9358/fromorbittbhcv4.th.jpg[/



I've tried mouse gestures a lot, yes. I don't see the need for it when I can click back etc with my mouse buttons and click home to go home etc. To me it is no faster (in the case of back/forward its a lot slower, actually) and is just annoying trying to remember what action does what.

Opera has a less than 1% market share last time I checked, though growing slowly, but so is everything except IE I think haha.

I see what you mean, funny i've never noticed that, i assume thats how its meant to be though, what does it look like in FF3?

Thing is with mouse gestures i dont have to navigate my mouse to a specific button, i just know if i hold right and then click left ANYWHERE on the page thats it i've gone back. It's a much more elegant solution I can't see how its slower though? Thats another thing the Opera cache is lightening for going backwards and forwards through pages too, i love that

 

[LeperousDust]

Apologies if you already know this but http://www.opera.com/support/search/view/840/.

Haha no i didn't you learn something new everyday! What i mean though is upon install i should be able to go custom and choose to leave out the modules for mail/RSS/torrent/widgets and the general crap they haven't quite got right yet... Its a great browser, but i agree with everyone when they say it comes with stuff you just dont need, but if you dont use it, it doesnt actually use anymore system memory or anything so thats not a reason to avoid opera...

 

[LeperousDust]

disclaimer: I personally don't see any need to remove the communication client, it is tiny and does not 'bloat' Opera in any tangible way (contrary to uninformed opinion), and you may even start using and liking it. People seem to have become, somewhat justifiably, over-sensitive to 'bloat'. I absolutely agree that software that includes too many functions overreaches it's purpose. M2 is a ~200kb client that is dynamically loaded - it does not enter that league. If you don't set up a mail account, then Opera doesn't even load that mail client, causing no bloat whatsoever. However user choice is paramount, and because of Opera’s great flexibility, it is very easy to disengage the mail client from the browser. Here is the information to do it.

Albeit thats from 7.5 but things haven't changed that much i dont think, so theres a generaly answer about the communications client, yes probably useless, doesnt impact upon operas use, can possibly be removed but probably more hassle than its worth!

 

[dbmzk1]

I see what you mean, funny i've never noticed that, i assume thats how its meant to be though, what does it look like in FF3?

Thing is with mouse gestures i dont have to navigate my mouse to a specific button, i just know if i hold right and then click left ANYWHERE on the page thats it i've gone back. It's a much more elegant solution I can't see how its slower though? Thats another thing the Opera cache is lightening for going backwards and forwards through pages too, i love that

Not tried FF3, but I will do at some point. I am happy with 2 so I've not really felt the need yet. Curiosity will get the better of me eventually though

It's slower because you have to click 2 buttons to go back, I just click 1. As for things like refresh, home, etc, I am pretty sure I can move my mouse to the top left of the screen and click a button at the same speed it will take to remember which movement does what you want then actually doing it.

As for the cache, yes Opera is faster, but luckily fx is not slow enough to annoy me lol

 

[GuruJockStrap]

One thing that annoys me with Opera.

With the personal and status bar enabled, the viewable web page area is considerably less than with Firefox's toolbar folders and status bar.

Might not make a difference to you guys with 1920 x 1200 but on a laptop with a 1280x800 display, it makes a heck of a difference.

 

[MarcLister]

Haha no i didn't you learn something new everyday! What i mean though is upon install i should be able to go custom and choose to leave out the modules for mail/RSS/torrent/widgets and the general crap they haven't quite got right yet... Its a great browser, but i agree with everyone when they say it comes with stuff you just dont need, but if you dont use it, it doesnt actually use anymore system memory or anything so thats not a reason to avoid opera...

Yeah I do agree with you there. It'd be nice to leave out the stuff I don't really use.

I still like Speed Dial though, but to be useful to me it would need to be automatic with the top 9 most-visited sites (pretty trivial in Fx3 with Places and some SQL, even the thumbnail previews).

Yeah an automated Speed dial would be cool. When I set mine up I always wonder what on earth I will use the most. Being able to set Opera to just list the 9 most used sites would save me loads of thinking and also show me my browsing habits.

Don't think I will go back to FF until FF3 is out. FF2 just seemed to ruin a lot of the potential that the 0.x and 1.x series promised.

 

[LeperousDust]

One thing that annoys me with Opera.

With the personal and status bar enabled, the viewable web page area is considerably less than with Firefox's toolbar folders and status bar.

//Edit: Actually i've just realised i do without the personal bar, why do you need that?

Might not make a difference to you guys with 1920 x 1200 but on a laptop with a 1280x800 display, it makes a heck of a difference.

I'm using a Dell M1210 (1280x800) i survive, but i can see your point, i set loading bar to only appear when needed, and i like the status bar on the bottom anyway its nice to have, i throw the tabs bar unconventionally on the bottom out the way too. If youre that worried about screen size hit f11 and use mouse gestures you won't need the buttons!

Not tried FF3, but I will do at some point. I am happy with 2 so I've not really felt the need yet. Curiosity will get the better of me eventually though

It's slower because you have to click 2 buttons to go back, I just click 1. As for things like refresh, home, etc, I am pretty sure I can move my mouse to the top left of the screen and click a button at the same speed it will take to remember which movement does what you want then actually doing it.

Yes but you have to aim at the back button, which doesn't sound much but takes more time than aimlessly clicking right-left. I would put a HELL of a lot of money on the mouse gesture setup being infitnitely quicker than general GUI. Once you start recalling them naturally and not stopping and thinking, your browsing speed increases substantially. I know this because everytime i end up using IE/FF i can see how much slower it really is...

 

[tolien]

Yes but does it resize the contents of the window?

Yes, to a point: the left pane resizes, the right one doesn't.

I very rarely stray into the DOM inspector at all, Chris Pederick's Web Developer Extension has a feature which does what I think you're trying to do:

Hover an element (which is highlighted by the red box), and the CSS selector appears in the box.

Firefox has a hold on the market and a lot of fanboys too

I dunno, Opera has its fair share of...evangelists.

has had the real page zoom thing for about 3 versions or more i think

Oh yeah, it's just something that's done (besides the UI work, but that's not a huge priority) for Fx3.

i don't care what it passes as long as it works, but i can't be bad!

I'm inclined to agree; fixing rendering bugs in the real world is far more important than passing a contrived test - steps made to deal with the former by any browser are worth applauding.

I see what you mean, funny i've never noticed that, i assume thats how its meant to be though, what does it look like in FF3?

The empty space? It's the same - I expect that's how it's meant to be.

FF2 just seemed to ruin a lot of the potential that the 0.x and 1.x series promised.

I dunno - the biggest complaints about Fx2 was the lack of a major new end user feature (yet Firefox's original purpose was getting away from the bloat and feature creep of the Mozilla Suite) and the theme refresh (which is like Marmite IMO). Places having to be put back didn't really help.

 

[dbmzk1]

For the back button I just click the back button on my mouse! As for the rest, I guess there would not be much in it at all, all I have to do is wizz my mouse up there and click refresh. Or just press F5. Etc. Which is pretty damn quick. Maybe you're just slow hehe j/k

 

[LeperousDust]

I dunno, Opera has its fair share of...evangelists.

Doesn't every walk of life! But with FF having a bigger instal base it usually has more nitwits sticking up for it

For the back button I just click the back button on my mouse! As for the rest, I guess there would not be much in it at all, all I have to do is wizz my mouse up there and click refresh. Or just press F5. Etc. Which is pretty damn quick. Maybe you're just slow hehe j/k

Oh i see what youre getting at, yeah same function i suppose. I have back buttons on my microsoft mouse, but i find it more comfortable and easier to use the mouse gesture. The back and forward buttons aren't always placed great on some mice. I'm inclined to agree that f5 is very quick, but its still somewhat easier to learn the gestures and not need to touch the keyboard at all. Also ive got the MS Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000, and it has possibly the WORST touch sensitive F-Keys that you can't find by touch p) in the dark! Thus the mouse works better!

 

[dbmzk1]

I just downloaded Firefox 3 and like Firefox 2 it does not display the line, unlike Opera or IE.

 

[LeperousDust]

So thats 2 all then, and technically FF is the same team i suppose
I'm still unsure why you're so hung up about it! Have you not seen your shrink recently?

 

[tolien]

I just downloaded Firefox 3

I hope you backed up your profile first

But with FF having a bigger instal base it usually has more nitwits sticking up for it

MoFo became the poster child for a lot of people, not least the OSS world - product that's gaining usershare, and making a load of money in the process.
It's attracted its fair share of unjustified crap though, like MS in many ways - the majority of memory use isn't a "leak", and a good bit of it has nothing to do with the browser itself.

 

[dbmzk1]

I hope you backed up your profile first .

Nope, nothing bad happened either. Though it didn't like it when I tried to open both 2 and 3 at the same time. Just uninstalled 3 and 2 continues to work just as it did

Stupid non-firefox browsers giving me a line, I blame them for everything!

 

[MarcLister]

Yes, to a point: the left pane resizes, the right one doesn't.

I very rarely stray into the DOM inspector at all, Chris Pederick's Web Developer Extension has a feature which does what I think you're trying to do:

Hover an element (which is highlighted by the red box), and the CSS selector appears in the box.

Ah looks good. Bit late though. No more FF on my PC. I'm an Opera evangelist don't you know!

I dunno - the biggest complaints about Fx2 was the lack of a major new end user feature (yet Firefox's original purpose was getting away from the bloat and feature creep of the Mozilla Suite) and the theme refresh (which is like Marmite IMO). Places having to be put back didn't really help.

I didn't really care about lack of new features for Fx2. I just wanted Mozilla to keep producing a fantastic browser low on bloat and high on efficiency. I just feel that as FF moved along its development path things got worse. Perhaps it was because the IE team realised what FF was doing and could work some new stuff into IE7 and FF became popular enough to be targeted by viruses/hackers yadda yadda yadda.

And I vaguely remember the theme change. Didn't like it.

Edit - Anyone using Kestrel, can they try on the main forum page clicking on the arrows to hide/unhide sections of the forum. On my PC its not working properly with Kestrel. Clicking on the arow for the Hardware section hides some other sections lower down the page. Anyone else able to replicate this?

 

[GuruJockStrap]

With the personal and status bar enabled, the viewable web page area is considerably less than with Firefox's toolbar folders and status bar.

//Edit: Actually i've just realised i do without the personal bar, why do you need that?

I have about 700 bookmarks and place the most frequently visited sites on the personal bar. Like internet banking, google mail, etc. I've also got a few folders. Ones called forums. Saves me an extra mouse movement/click by not having to go into the Bookmark menu.

Even with Opera's status bar just popping up at the bottom, I find the viewable web page area still less.

 

[MarcLister]

By the way can I ask all the Opera users a question? I was going to make my own thread about this but I might as well use this.

I was running Opera last night and was a bit perplexed to see an icon for Opera in the task bar, where the clock is. Not the main bar but the one on the far right. I've now hidden this but is this meant to be happening?

 

[LeperousDust]

I have about 700 bookmarks and place the most frequently visited sites on the personal bar. Like internet banking, google mail, etc. I've also got a few folders. Ones called forums. Saves me an extra mouse movement/click by not having to go into the Bookmark menu.

Even with Opera's status bar just popping up at the bottom, I find the viewable web page area still less.

Ahhh thats what i use speed dial for now, 9 pages hidden unless i open a new tab (click new tab or ctrl + t) also the speed dial relates to ctrl + number so you don't even need to open a tab if you remember what number your bookmark is. Also have you given your popular bookmarks nickname? If not do so, for instance i've got the forum front page bookmarked and its nickname is "OcUK" if i just type this in the address bar it takes me to the bookmark. Through using all those features i've found little use in the personal bar now days.

By the way can I ask all the Opera users a question? I was going to make my own thread about this but I might as well use this.

I was running Opera last night and was a bit perplexed to see an icon for Opera in the task bar, where the clock is. Not the main bar but the one on the far right. I've now hidden this but is this meant to be happening?

When Kestrel is running it now shows an icon in your system tray at all times, this is actually bug fix i think. Because if you hide 9.23 (ctrl + h) it gets sent to the system tray for quick opening the next time, but when you do open it, the icon in the system tray never leaves after that. At least theres some consistancy, although there should be an option able to turn it off...

Edit - Anyone using Kestrel, can they try on the main forum page clicking on the arrows to hide/unhide sections of the forum. On my PC its not working properly with Kestrel. Clicking on the arow for the Hardware section hides some other sections lower down the page. Anyone else able to replicate this?

Yeah i get this as well, it does actually work but the rendering is updating. Scroll down and scroll back up again and its fine. Not sure why its doing that, i assume its a bug but i wouldn't know exactly how to explain it

How do the show/hide buttons work? Javascript i guess, Kestrel has had big javascript/ajaxy changes to this build, and they can't/haven't got everything right changing so much so that will probably be why. At a guess anyway.

 

[MarcLister]

When Kestrel is running it now shows an icon in your system tray at all times, this is actually bug fix i think. Because if you hide 9.23 (ctrl + h) it gets sent to the system tray for quick opening the next time, but when you do open it, the icon in the system tray never leaves after that. At least theres some consistancy, although there should be an option able to turn it off...

Ah so its meant to be doing that then. I was just confused, could have sworn I hadn't seen it before.