Opera’s code has been reworked from the rendering engine and up, it includes new features such as the new e-mail and news client, a sleek new interface, improved Hotlist, skinning or drag-and-drop and more. Download Opera 7 Beta 1 here.
Opera 7 Beta 1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’ve found the beta to be excellent in terms of page rendering, and it also uses less than half the system resources of 6.05 – excellent work Opera.
The jury is still out on the new ‘funkier’ interface though – the default icons do have a very KDE look to them….but I haven’t found how to show the transfer winddow outside of opera, plus the comboboxes/scrollbars no longer conform to XP visual styles and rather adhere to Opera’s own idea of ‘looks’.
The new tabs are growing on me, but the overal ‘netscape’ look isn’t too great.
The new email client is fantastic – a much needed change, and the simple newsgroup viewing ability is still there for when all you need is the information…
I’ve noticed the javascript implementation is much better, and page rendering as a whole has improved (even http://www.microsoft.com renders properly now) – however is this due to greater standards support and the DOM or simply giving in to ‘extensions’ to standards?
I miss the normal ‘buttons’ at the bottom for open pages (I know the new tabs can be displayed down the bottom, but its jsut not the same)….just what I’ve become used to I guess. Also the ctrl+tab menu doesnt come up anymore – Opera just decides to scroll through each open window in turn which I’m not a big fan of, especially when there are multiple pages open.
The beta is definitely promising. I will look forward to further adaptations – I hope they don’t come at a cost to that fantastic drop in system resource usage. Shame the back+forward buttons on my intellimouse explorer don’t work in Opera 7 too….I’m hoping that is just because its beta rather than a decision. Mouse gestures still rock though ;o)
JC
The speed and rendering is wonderful, but the icons must have been designed by an elephant! They are oversized and really look gloomy. Or is this just my personal taste? Again, the speed is wonderful though -beats IE and Mozilla hands-down.
Where did all of that Blue come from?
Interesting interface choice.
The speed of the browser though is great.
Since this is just beta it is pretty good. Can not wait for the full release.
Rendering is excellent and fast, I run Phoenix on my Linux machine but are considering changing to this once the Linux version comes, BUT why in the hell are everyone so hung up on skinning everything, it’s bad… BAD I tell you, Horribly bad even. I want to browse the web without the kiddie fun shaped buttons and flashy graphics all over. Phoenix is excellent in that sense, aswell is IE, but Opera and Mozilla (with the XUL theming and Operas QT which in itself looks terrible enough) has got it all wrong…
Skins are NOT practical, they’re just in the way, it’s bad…
I’ll buy 7.0 Final for Linux surely IF it still is this fast (or dare I dream, faster?) AND if I somehow can get around their skinning and just have a plain UI like the rest of my desktop programs.
Wonderful re-write, yet still remains Opera. Speed is incredible, MS needs to take time to learn from Opera. I keep hearing people insist that the browser wars are back on between Netscape and MSIE, but it should actually be a new browswer war between MSIE and Opera…with Opera the eventual winner.
Some ecmascript DHTML that didn’t work before on a site I wrote now works. Browser doesn’t appear to have an popup blocking or banner ad blocking. (not that I use those… er… blimey… is that the time already?)
You’d think that after so many rewrites and reorganizations that Opera would try harder to get things done properly. I love that the browser exists and all, but they’re simply not doing useability testing and finding out what they need to do to create a solid package. The 3D icons are a great example. While I don’t think they’re ugly (though I’d personally prefer something different), the fact that they’re monochromatic (along with everything else in the beta) is a mistake on many different levels. Useability is definitely a big one when you can’t easily distinguish one icon over another simply by skimming for colors. Aesthetically, a monochromatic palette is tiring too. HOW many different icons sets has Opera gone through already? GEESH!
Opera has had pop-up blocking since version 6, but with Version 7, you can block unrequested popups.
dont like the new table borders much, but my god its fast
When will Opera add NTLM auth support? Too many of the internal web sites at my job won’t work with text based authentication.
One of the most powerful new features in O7 must be the new e-mail client, M2. It too was rewritten from scratch and offers some amazing features.
The most noteworthy, and also the core feature of M2, are the “access points”. These accesspoints are like searches into your e-mail database: they show all the e-mail which meet certain criteria. For more info about the accesspoints, you can read the tutorial at http://www.opera.com/support/helpfiles/m2tutorial.html .
Another great thing is the threaded view of mailinglists. You will never want differently!
All in all, I think the browser has come a long way. It’s still a beta though and there’s a lot to improve before a final release.
It really is that good…
Rendering is faster that IE even on my 56K dialup, traditionally IE’s territory. Opera 6 was faster _overall_, Opera 7 IMHO feels (is?) faster in _absolute_ terms.
Granted, the UI needs some minor tweaks, like smaller buttons, shorter tabs, etc. but that will come with the final version, when all toolbars would be customisable as they are in Opera 6.
Impressive piece of code, waiting for the Linux version!
Andrea.
Crashes every few minutes, DOM support is vastly improved though. Currently testing various scenarios.
Another great thing is the threaded view of mailinglists. You will never want differently!
I’ve been jealous of my friend’s MUTT email client for a while now because of that, and now graphical email clients have it too… woot! =)
Am I right in saying that the status bar has gone? (I know they had that popup one in previous versions to show loading progress but now it seems the status showing where hyperlinks might go has been removed in favour of tooltips)
I really really hate the new interface, but I’m hoping that the real deal will allow one to use something like the “classic” interface. In the beta changing the nav-buttons to “text only” doesn’t work (animated buttons?! Yuck!), and you can’t seem to get rid of that horrible blue theme.
Since I paid for 6.0 (via upgrade from 4.x) I’m assuming I’ll get a free 7.x key. If not, I think I’m going to switch to phoenix or mozilla instead. If I’m going to have to get used to a new interface I might as well do it on free software.
I really love Opera and I’ve been using it since the early 3.x-series, but now they seem to be working hard to remove the very reasons why I chose it in the first place.
I want more developer oriented features, like a debug window showing what is sent and recieved in the HTTP-session (ascii and hexa-view). I want some way to get at the raw email message (for spam reporting. There was a way to copy the header in the 6.x series, but it wasn’t really documented and I’m not sure it’s there anymore). I want better user-CSS support; the hotlist should include configuration information such as css-file, the status of javascript, plugins, etc — for per-site configuration. It should be possible to turn HTML-emails _off_ (I’m not sure if the 7.0 series allows this?).
WOW!! They have really improved the speed of Opera (which is saying quite a lot) I have a friend that is an obsessive photographer. His blog often consists of pages with 500+ thumbnails on them, Opera used to take ~20-30 seconds to render them (IE often coudnt handle them, and mozilla crawled on them), now its doing it in < 1 second.
OK, Im amazed.
Yeah, the new UI needs a few cleanup in the widget look area, but other than that this is awesome.
The problem with all the blue, is that it can conflict with the site you are viewing. I am sure eugenia will agree because I am viewing this site eith 7 beta. The green of the OSNews site really conflicts with all the blue in the 7 beta.
It is fast though. Wow. I think I may well purchase it.
Is it me or is it very AOL?!
It still hasnt crashed on me though – I’m impressed for an early beta. Have noticed one bug though – try writing a load of text in a text area on a page then ctrl+tab through the pages, then try scrolling that text in the text area….you’ll see what I mean (I hope! unless its just some quirk on this install)
As far as changing the ‘blue’ – View > Colour scheme will let you change it to a nasty yellow and green, or the ‘system colour scheme’ will give you a colour nothing like your system colours….!!
Well smack me in the face with a mallet, is that UGLY or what?
They really do need to sort themselves out with regard to their look and feel. It’s been a major sticking point for me not using Opera as my main browser.
I think this factor alone is why Opera does not have more of a market share, compared to IE/Mozilla it’s not as easy to use.
Don’t get me wrong – the speed, resource usage, download size etc. are a good example of how software SHOULD be, but come on Opera, sort out the UI.
The system colors thing is really terrible right now. System colors for me looks nothing like what I would call the system colors. Thanks for pointing it out though.
Jungle is a gaudy green.
I agree with a someones posts earlier. The buttons need to be more easily identified. Everything being a shade of blue just doesn’t work.
Yes, I know that they had a pop-up blocker in 6.0, but it was ruthless. It blocked everything with javascript:open. This one has the option of only blocking “select” pop-ups. From my testing, it seems that it blocks ones that load with the page, and allow clicking on links that activate them. Smart idea. I like it.
is test UI design. They spend millions of dollars developing the GUI in a way that is easy to use and easy on the eyes. Opera has neither. Now the product I must say is better (than IE), the user experience is not. Thus, regretfully – I’ll stick to IE
Here’s something I thought was kind of fun…
Right above the page are the security, load images, print, and Author/User mode toggles for the page. If you click on the down arrow onthe Author/User mode button, you can see a list of different options for User mode.
My favorite is “Emulate Text Browser”. It makes (at least on this page) the background blue, and the text a white, monospaced font. Reminds me of Lynx…
You can also turn on “Show structural elements” for some structural fun. (Well, I suppose it could have a real purpose, but I can’t see what that is…)
Why, complain about UI and colours? There’s already have the skin option in the perference, which you can create the better one. One thing that I wish Opera creates option select for classic and new one. I just happen to like classic tab better, but don’t know if it’s possible to change by skin options.
that skins suck. Did anyone ever want to skin Word? – … Photoshop? … IE? No! (Probably yes, but that’s not my point
). If the interface is well designed and user-fiendly nobody cares about skins. But if you are too lazy just make your app skinable and if somebody complains just tell him, that he should try another skin…
However Opera 7 is faster than ever, finally a better implementation of the standards and smallscreen-rendering looks very promising, too.
It is set to identify iteself as IE6 by default. Please change this if you are not using IE6. I mean in general turn this off so we get more accurate browser stats in the future.
When you click a link in AIM, it no longer opens in Opera, even with it set to the default browser. Grumble grumble…
And regarding the skins, I like them, but only because the default UI is shitty. Personaly, I use the Orbit skin. They definitely should de-skin, but only when they have a decent default.
–quoted by Andrew–
It is set to identify iteself as IE6 by default. Please change this if you are not using IE6. I mean in general turn this off so we get more accurate browser stats in the future.
–/quoted by Andrew–
Yeah, I agree. One problem is that many website will tell you that you aren’t using the correct browser and disable few features or not allow you visit. Like, Hotmail will disable the attach feature even thought Opera 5/6 will work fine if you modify the identify as MSIE.
You people keep the button bar enabled in Opera? I can understand the need for this in the beta but otherwise the button bar is rendered completely useless by gestures.
It is set to identify iteself as IE6 by default. Please change this if you are not using IE6. I mean in general turn this off so we get more accurate browser stats in the future.
They do this for a reason. Ever tried viewing a site developed with ASP.NET in Opera when it’s set to identify as Opera? You get this lovely error message:
Server Error in ‘/Portal’ Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Microsoft has a history of intentionally making their programs incompatible with third party software which they’re trying to compete with. The only way to make MS software play nice is if the MS software thinks it’s also talking to MS software.
I set my Opera to ID as Netscape 4.6
Most if not all sites work.. but it denies MSIE the publicity!
I have no idea how people could every possibly complain about skins.
1) If you don’t like choice, use the default. Pretend that somebody else is deciding how your desktop looks and be happy about it.
2) If you don’t like the default, go find a skin you do like. Be happy that the developers considered you a “big boy/girl” and let you make your own decisions.
3) Skins aren’t slower. It’s all just bitmaps anyway, being able to choose *which* bitmaps they are doesn’t make things any slower.
They should still enable Opera as default. I think everybody is agreed that it’s a good this MSIE is in there, but it shouldn’t be used for general surfing. I think all of us Opera-users would love the Internet so much more if webmasters saw significant Opera numbers. It’s okay to turn on when you need it, but otherwise you should be proud of surfing with Opera.
In response to Rayiner (just a discussion, and my point of view on it) :
1) Default is often really bad when the application is skinnable, look at Mozilla, BUT if Mozillas wasn’t skinnable the default would have to be given more attention, I mean c’mon black outlined symbols are better, it’s not a matter of taste, IE looks good, Voyager (QNX) looks good, NetPositive (BeOS) looks good, why? They keep it simple and are NOT skinnable…
2) I don’t want skins thus I don’t want to have to dig around a pile of user made skins that clearly are created by ps filters abused to the extreme, if I see one more filter bevel effect I’ll explode.
3) On todays computers skins aren’t slower, but they make the application less dynamic then just having a nice plain canvas which you can resize to infinite, whilst it’s quite a complicated task to do nice backgrounds that tile nicely, and that’s just the tip of the (skinnable) iceberg…
My two cents… (never got that expression btw, I’m not from the U.S)
Skinnable apps are usually slower, might not have to do with the skin itself, but its overhead regardless.
Skinnable apps dont integrate well enough. Is it wrong to just want a unified desktop UI?
Skinning has to be system wide, per application is added overhead and bloat.
Opera skinning isnt that bad, since it had only been buttons + backdrop of window, which you could turn off and just use buttons and the normal windows colours.
Winamp/trillian/etc skinning has forced the application to not look like or react like most windows applications.
Did Opera Software think their major market is Windows which already got IE as default browser? It look like they give priority to Windows version and just treat other OS version as seconds!!!
I think, they can get more market on other OS than Windows such as Linux which still lack of good and fast browser. Competing MS on their ground if very hard but it look line many still didn’t wake up.
they want to make money, linux users I dont think understand this.
Can have all the marketshare in the world and be bankrupt.
1) It IS slower, the API is circumvented.
2) It destroys what a good UI of an OS stands for: an universal interface (with returning widgets for the user to recognize) for all the programs.
3) It is plain ugly to have different programs open with different skins.
This Opera is clearly still a beta- but it is amazingly good! Definitly faster then any other browser. The new mail program, while it crashes a bit right now, is exactly what I was looking for. Finally a way to view email to AND from a certain person, without having to manually drag them into a seperate folder. BTW I like skins, and I think everybody who bashes skinable programs is screwed up, but I do agree that every program should at least have an option to use the standard API skins (partly so that windowblinds can skin them to match the rest of my desktop)
Opera Software have a very different business model which they can still making money on their free version. And one more thing is that not all Linux user didn’t pay for everything they use.
You better check more details on Opera business model to know how the are making money from their free version.
1) It IS slower, the API is circumvented.
>>>>>>>>>>
Do you have any clue why that would be slower? Skinning support basically means that instead of the widget set specifying the bitmaps to ship off to the graphics engine, the app itself specifies those bitmaps. Well implemented, that’s not necessarily any slower, unless the standard UI is being hardware accelerated (aside from bit-blits) which it usually isn’t these days thanks to gradients and whatnot.
2) It destroys what a good UI of an OS stands for: an universal interface (with returning widgets for the user to recognize) for all the programs.
>>>>>
If a good UI to you just means that apps look the same, you’ve got some seriously low standards. I agree it’s important to have a “native” skin (which Mozilla has, and I think Opera does too) but offering the choice isn’t a bad thing. On many cases (when the application is important enough, like a web browser, or something like Truespace or Bryce) it makes the application a little more fun to use.
3) It is plain ugly to have different programs open with different skins.
>>>>>>>>>>
Not necessarily if they match. You must be one of those people whose bed-sheets match their draps which matches their chair covers. Now that’s bad taste…
–quoted by Meesa–
1) It IS slower, the API is circumvented.
–/quoted by Meesa–
Have you actually try Opera 6 and 7? I highly doubt it. To run Opera at the first or later, it’s VERY fast to open it. It’s like click and it just open quickly, unlike Mozilla and MSIE, you have to wait for few seconds. It is not slow when you know how to code it correct.
i am very very very impressed with opera 7 speed
i’m one of those folk who use an old fashion 56k dialin and opera is very fast.
nice job opera!
if this is a beta, when will the final release be available?
I just laughed my ass off when someone thought that web ads are a justifiable business model.
…especially when the ad I’m currently viewing is one for “Opera Comics.”
Of course, that’s an opinion…
Choice is good, yes it is. There’s obviously a niche for the likes of Opera.
Still, Mozilla is constantly evolving and improving, right before one’s eyes, on a daily basis.
I love being able to grab a new build every evening to play with new features, fixes, improvements and yes, the inevitable bugs.
Undeniably, OpenSource at its finest, is Mozilla.
So, I’ll stick with the Lizard, thanks. :}
– Scarrow
Its a decent alternative browser, but doesn’t really have anything over Phoenix. In fact in page loading I find Phoenix the slightest bit faster.
Overall like someone else said choices are nice, but I can’t see why anyone would pay for this when Phoenix/Mozilla is available.
Get over it .. end of story.
Hell, the people who like skinnable apps are probably the same morons who send all their mail in HTML and insist on using those damn neon rainbow colors on top of white backgrounds in IM windows.
Things were much faster and more stable before everything got so 3D and colorful.
Oh god. Being colorful doesn’t make something slower than something that isn’t colorful. A completely black deskop background image isn’t any slower than a desktop background image in which every one of the 1.2 million pixels is a different color. A 32×32 pixmap takes the same time to blit whether its black and white line art or full-color prerendered 3D (like the new Opera buttons). You haven’t made a single technical arguement why skinable is slower, and I’ve repeatedly pointed out why that isn’t the case (and I’ll point to Phoenix on Windows as a real life example of something that’s is skinnable while being hideously fast) so just drop it.
“If you don’t like choice, use the default. Pretend that somebody else is deciding how your desktop looks and be happy about it.”
Well, let’s analyze this statement, shall we? As far as I know, most modern operating systems have theme/skin support built right in and those that don’t probably have some sort program you can download to add it. On my WinXP machine, I have a skin that I am quite happy with that looks good on all the apps I use. Actually, it’s the default Win32 ‘classic’ skin that I am quite happy with and have been since 1995. If I were not happy with it, I would either use XP’s theme support to put on another one, or else download WindowBlinds and do it that way.
So, along comes Joe Programmer who has this whacked-out idea that he knows better what I like (visually) on my computer than I do, so he puts together this ugly-ass UI, thereby circumventing the default skin that *I* chose for my OS, and thus *eliminating* my choice to use whatever skin I wanted. Now, I’ve got to do extra work to find another skin to replace his horrible 3D-animating monstrosity shit interface just to try and get back to what I was using in the first place. Having skinnable interfaces by nature assumes that people aren’t happy with the default look of their OS. And from my experience with Joe User, the default colors/backgrounds/etc are the first to get changed, even for amateur users.
So I say if you’re going to throw some psychedelic, nightmarish freakshow of a user interface in my face, then at *least* give me the option to turn it off and simply use the default OS skin.
Notice I said 3D *and* colorful .. those two aren’t mutually exclusive.
And you’re right, maybe skinnable apps (such as Mozilla) aren’t slower … perhaps they’re just badly written all the way around. Who knows?
In the last post, I meant “aren’t slower because of skinning ….”
It’s really not about all the blitting you talk about, skinning often involve complex .theme or .skin (or similar) files with all the specifications in, which have to be parsed, and each image have to be loaded into the interface in the right place, right dimension and whatnot, instead of just having plain functional buttons, sure they may have some similar issues, but far from all or as bad, why? Cause skins aren’t as dynamic.
Granted, after loaded, it’s not slower, it all paint and repaint as fast as a blank gray canvas probably.
The HTML mail is false though, I hate skins but through work are sadly forced to use HTML with all the rainbows colors used in, all as specified by guidelines I don’t like but have to follow if I want to keep my job (probably, never tried rebelling against it though).
No, but why did he send me here?
Parsing a skin file takes time, yes, but that’s really a trivial operation on modern computers. We’re talking about machines that can parse a dozen megabytes of XML faster than you can even notice it. A few kilobyte skin file is nothing. As for Darius, most current skinable software isn’t really written with performance in mind. It’s not so much that skinning is making the program slower, but the fact that skinning tends to be a sign of non-performance oriented design. The difference is subtle, but rather significant, especially since the article is about Opera. Opera is already very performance oriented, so we can presume, that since skinning doesn’t inherently make the UI slower, that Opera’s implementation will be quite fast.
Skinning makes applications not only look the same, but also behave differently. This has a negative consequence to the user, since the interface loses predictability, familiarity, generalizabilty and consistency.
And what about those who don’t want skins? I still cannot make Mozilla, Trillian nor Winamp look like a normal windows application. Mozilla’s classic is not good enough (I am actually working on that – but as a user, why the noodles I should modify the chrome?), Trillian’s Windows ME is close, but the menus’ text is not antialiased (yeah, call me picky). There is still no Winamp 3 skin that makes it looks like, say, WMP’s Classic skin.
If they want to use skins, fine, but the problem is when they force us to live with them due to the lack of a skin that makes the app consistent with the UI.
And yes, I am one of those who prefer e-mail without HTML, have only three icons on the desktop, and want all the apps to have the same look and feel. Why? Increases productivity. The fun should not come from the pretty interface, it should come from the app’s ability to do what it is supposed to do with less effort.
anybody noticed that osnews looks kinda bad (all the boxes are sunken) in opera7 when compared to other browsers?
I got home after downloading and installing the beta at work. I see there is no Linux version for the new beta. I was thinking at work that this is so fast I think I should buy it (I hate ads) for my system at home which runds Linux. Its a pity.
Anyway I am looking forward to KDE 3.1 and tabbed browsing in konqueror. I may have saved myself 30 bucks.
yeah they changed the table border from the old thin line, to a more ie-like design.
They seem to be retargetting for small & embedded devices. They did this before but this is the first time i’ve seen them mention it so prominently.
They’ll probably try to make their fortune there. Not that much money in desktop browsers these days.
I think most Opera users are power users and this is who they aim at. I think that power users will quickly grasp whatever shortcuts and or interface if given the chance and its not too wacky. However, I think opera have taken this just a little too far, and i really hope they will scale it back a little for the final release.
As for the icon colours, i think that isn’t an important thing, the mind is very good at processing and relating shapes, and unless for some reason you can’t see shapes but can see colours? it shouldn’t be that big of an hci issue.
Once one becomes familiar with keyboard geatures and shortcut keys the rest of the interface becomes somewhat obselete, and i would encourage everyone to try these as they are a really great usability thing. I think Opera concnetrate on these kind of usability issues rather than the actual look of the interface.
The F-12 popup menu is really useful too, it means you can use identify as Opera and then swap in a few keypresses to msie.
Now i should retreat off and finish my HCI assignment due tomorrow.
Writing this in Opera 7, heh
See http://fails.org/opera7.png (it’s pretty big) for how I have Opera configured. The button bar is rendered completely useless by gestures, which can accomplish all the functions of the button bar.
The bugs I’m noticing right now are:
You can’t turn off the page buttons or the search bar. In fact, it seems most of the code to configure the UI has been disabled at this point.
Other than that, no worries. The table/button is certainly different and I hope it doesn’t finalize exactly how it is.
And the new popup killer, “Open requested pop-up windows only”, can I say FINALLY? This was one of the few things Mozilla users could gloat about.
I’d say Opera 7 more or less brings Opera back on par with Mozilla (or will by the final version) except Opera’s UI (in all its MDI glory, I love shift+F6) is far more usable.
Now all Opera needs is adblock akin to OmniWeb’s and it will be the *ultimate* web browser.
I run opera in fullscreen with only the address and status bar showing. Sigh, need to upgrade to 7, another 15 bucks or so.
I thought you were a OSX guy. I didn’t see a OSX version 7?
I thought you were a OSX guy. I didn’t see a OSX version 7?
I suppose I’m just an OS enthusiast. My three desktop systems run Windows 2000, OS X, and FreeBSD.
That screen shot comes from my Windows 2000 system.
The only browser I’ll use on OS X for the forseeable future is OmniWeb.
there is adblocking, though it’s not promoted as such – switch from author mode to user mode (the little page glyph next to the images/print buttons by the address bar) and check “hide certain-sized elements”. you can also do anti-crufty things like remove images that aren’t linked to anything, and other quite cool things…
There were some idiots on this site who were saying the bloated piece of random code called IE is much faster than Opera6 althought it was not. Want to see their face after trying Opera7.
It is a great browser. Congrats to Opera team for their wonderful cross platform browser implementation.
I also did not like the default skin, but there are many other skins which can be used.
Java support also seems like perfect.
KMail has had msg threading for years now.
I think it would be great if browsers had a button that does the following. You click it, a drop down menu appears listing browsers (You can add more). You click a browser and it refreshes *just that tab* emulating whatever browser you specify. This way we can be proud and use the default, but when we need we can pretend to be IE or something else.
Does Opera7 work with the old skins? I’d still like to use the “Aqua” skin and having Opera look as I am used to. I tried O7 last night, but couldn’t get it to use any other skin but the default.
Meesa: 1) It IS slower, the API is circumvented.
Being a Qt app, to enable faster porting to Mac and Linux, there isn’t a difference. Skinning is built right into Qt, and using one that uses Windows’ widgets would be slower than using your own.
As for responsiveness (or rather “slowness”), well implemented, it can be faster than the native UI, responsiveness wise (by, for example, removing unneeding animation).
Meesa: 2) It destroys what a good UI of an OS stands for: an universal interface (with returning widgets for the user to recognize) for all the programs.
But why? Microsoft does this to Office and most Works apps. It also does this to MSN Explorer and Encarta. Monkey see, monkey do – heard of that phrase?
Meesa: 3) It is plain ugly to have different programs open with different skins.
Great point, but you could always download a theme later on that makes it look like the host OS.
Rayiner: I agree it’s important to have a “native” skin (which Mozilla has, and I think Opera does too) but offering the choice isn’t a bad thing.
Mozilla’s native skin uses Windows’ widgets in some places, but the buttons, especially, look completely ugly especially in Windows XP. Opera would offering a native looking skin as soon Qt offers one too. Until then, it would just imitate the looks in the skins).
Evan: I just laughed my ass off when someone thought that web ads are a justifiable business model.
The ads itself probably won’t put food on the table, but would annoy customers enough to buy the ad-free version, while sticking to Opera due to its features.
Scarrow: Undeniably, OpenSource at its finest, is Mozilla.
Of course, Mozilla wouldn’t be all that worst if they aren’t open source (most developers are Netscape employees).
Now all Opera needs is adblock akin to OmniWeb’s and it will be the *ultimate* web browser.
Doubt that would ever happen. It partner site, Lycos, would surely object. But if you search for it, it is named Image Block or something similar.
antiphon: KMail has had msg threading for years now.
Eudora had it for much much more earlier. Your point? I think you should compare a product on how good it is NOW, rather than how good was it back then. M2 is Opera first real try to make a real mail app, notice previously they directed their users to Eudora?
Bunji X: Does Opera7 work with the old skins?
I doubt it.
Besides, am I the only one liking this theme? Just make the icon shadows smaller, and tone down the color (or make changing them possible) to some softer tone, it would be perfect.
Its great! I love it, although the BLUE could be toned down… alot.
Hello all.
I am the one that has been working day and night in order to set up a new interface for the newest release of opera 7 beta.
It is very important to know that this is a beta release. The beta release is not a final version, and one must keep in mind that the interface must be tweaked into perfection for the final.
I see that you have lots of interesting comments about the interface. I really would like to thank you for this, and we will keep all these comments in our minds in the next weeks. I am pretty sure that the final version will please you even more.
best, pal.
it doesn’t look like IE, that’s the thing… here’s the screenshot:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dsilva/ie6-opera7beta.png
my god, what have they done to the classic elegant interface of opera 6.05???
the new one in 7 is disgusting, looks like a cheap piece of junk, even though the program itself rocks.
I’m not wild about the new UI: the tabs are a little big, the blue is a little too…uh…blue, and the icons are a little too distracting.
But I’m still going to buy it. Yes Pheonix is fast and Mozilla is great blah blah blah. But I can no longer live without
1) tabbed browsing
2) nice AA fonts on Linux (Phoenix, Galeon, and Mozilla still aren’t AA for me. I know it’s hackable but I can’t do it) And I don’t like Konqueror, period.
3) mouse gestures (yes I know you can hack Mozilla)
4) full keyboard browsing. I prefer the keyboard to the mouse any day.
5) It is fast, damn fast, super fast.
6) Great pop-up blocking (yes, Moz too)
But #s 3 and 4 are the deal-clincher for me.
I think in general, Opera has raised the bar on browsers. At work the office standard is still IE and to Windows users who think the browser war ended and IE won, I think “these folks don’t know how much they’re missing.”
1) Mozilla’s buttons don’t look right, but a web browser, due to the constraints of the CSS model, has to render many of its internal widgets anyway. IE does this too, except their widgets look more like Windows ones.
2) The GUI style in Encarta 98 was very spiff. I wish I could find a whole GUI that looked like that!
i hope Opera developers go back to the classic elegance of Opera 6.05 as it looks in Windows 2000, like this:
http://www.spytrdr.com/opera1.gif
http://www.spytrdr.com/opera2.gif
http://www.spytrdr.com/opera3.gif
they have to be insane to ruin an awesome program with so much potential by putting that new teletubby interface junk on top of it.
who are you targeting? kindergarten users?
no matter how great the program is, i will definitely NOT use 7 it if that interface makes it to the final release.
i am disgusted, and very very disappointed at the new design direction Opera is taking.
UGLY!
I used Opera3.62 on BeOS. I use 6.01 now on my Mac and 6.05 for windows at work and have make some skins (yes, sometimes there is a real practical need for a personalized UI). Maybe Opera is the best browser I know (Omniweb is excellent too – in OSX), but it is true too that it never looked fine… Version 7 UI is not an exception. But this time is clear that they are triying to do better. It’s ok for a beta. And for those who hate skins (in the name of taste or of OS integration or blah, blah): you all are invited to know the Opera skins at
http://my.opera.com/customize/
Bizarre material (included mine) And sorry for my terrible english (I’m only one of the 5.3 billion people that do not speak/write eng.) Eugenia: I have just discovered OSnews. Geat job! OSnew will be now my default homepage – in Opera browser!
I’d like Opera to have an IE style interface where buttons and menu bars can be dragged around. Adjusting the bookmarks menu so it isn’t so fat and implements scrolling would be a plus.
Brette Tabke has his initial impressions of Opera 7.0 beta
up at the Opera section of his searchengineworld site.
http://www.searchengineworld.com/opera/
This is still a pretty good Opera resource altho these days he is just commenting on essential aspects of the newer versions compared to the full blown faq that used to be maintained for Opera 5.0 and 6.0.
Still one of the first places I check out when a new Opera is released.
Looks like I can add osnews to the list.
I like the new buttons. They are a huge improvement over Opera 6, IMO. However, I would really like to have a set of smaller buttons available too. The rest of the skin is a bit garnish for my taste also, so I would like to be able to turn parts of it off. An ability to turn it the buttons grey, with a Windows background colour, would be cool. I wouldn’t be surprised if they implement something like that. They did after all have that option in Opera 6.
I also don’t like the fact that Opera now skins buttons and form controls. For starters, I doesn’t do a very good job at it (for example, the buttons are friggin’ huge and very flat), and secondly, *I want standard OS buttons and form controls, damit!*
There are many UI-bugs. For example, I can open a new browser window in File > New window, but this option is not available in the link context menu. How stupid! I sure hope they’ll fix that.
Regarding DOM-support… I’ve done some tests, and I actually believe Opera 7 has better support form DOM2 than IE6! And it’s still faster than both Mozilla and IE. It amazingly fast, actually. w00t!
One of my favorite features from Opera, the ability to cycle child windows (or tabs, if you prefer to call them such) by holding down the right button and rotating the scroll wheel is broken.
The side mouse buttons no longer seem to work either, although they are rendered obsolete by gestures.
The address bar is more customizable now, at least. The preferences pane still carries the original options to configure it, but those no longer work. You can manipulate the address bar directly now, by right clicking on individual elements to turn them off.
Unfortunately, this seems to have broken the context menu for the address entry box. You can’t right click/copy anymore.
The scroll bars on the text input boxes on forms (like the one I’m typing into right now) seem to gib occasionally. If I scroll up it only scrolls the bottom ten pixels or so. Not sure how they managed to break that… oh well.
The url posted above :
http://www.searchengineworld.com/opera/
Contains some very stupid stuff… like listing that it’s v7.0 and not v6.20 or so as a bad thing (the v7.0 version jump is to indicate that it’s a rewrite) and 90-95% of the rest is nagging on stuff that clearly are beta bugs that won’t be in Final.
I only disslike the UI, the rest of the browser I’m in love with.
I’ve figured out how to turn the skin gray, add this to “Color Scheme Menu” in “menu.ini”:
Item, “Grey” = Set skin coloring, #666666
Makes it looks far better than the changing to one of the pre-set colors, IMO. BTW, Bascule, it’s a known bug. There’s a workaround, cut and paste the following under “Addressbar Item Popup Menu” in “menu.ini”:
Item, “Undo” = Undo
——————–1
Item, “Cut” = Cut
Item, “Copy” = Copy
Item, “Paste” = Paste
Item, “Delete” = Delete
——————–2
Item, “Select all” = Select all
——————–3
Item, “Remove button” = Remove
——————–4
Submenu, “Address bar”, Addressbar Popup Menu
1. It’s ugly.
2. It’s ugly in ways that can’t be just skinned,
like the borders areound the skinnable parts.
3. It makes pages ugly
4. Speed difference is not very noticeable on
this pentium 100Hz, so I’m skeptical that it’s
even detectable on your modern machines unless
you’re actually a netscape user or something.
5. Impossible to configure the appearance to take up
as little screen space as older version with same
settings, in my case the progress bar or whatever
it is also covers the bottom slider until page is
completely finished loading, so I can’t center it.
6. Tabs are ugly, inferior to the old buttons, and
waste space horizontally as well as vertically.
I truly hate them, and they are enough to make me
not upgrade or register.
7. Button animation is not used effectively, not in
keeping with Opera’s image as the efficient browser,
and almost certainly increases the file size.
On the plus side, it will now successfully upload files to the file area of a yahoo list, so maybe it can replace my copy of netscape 4.7x which I have to keep for just that one thing.
Get it right, developers. Don’t let this become Opera’s version of netscape 6. Some of the default settings seem calculated to present it’s least agreeable options. Don’t get brought down from the inside. AND LOSE THE TABS!!!
I’ve been using Opera/Mozilla/Phoneix for quite sometime on a time sharing basis. The new Oprea beta has crashes several times on me under medium use (less than 7 tabbed windows).
I still like it better than before, it does seem faster and is mostly more acurate for rendering but the crashing bugs me.
(Parttime website designer, I’ve got Opera back to 3.63 version)
Crashes several times? It must be your system. There are very little reports of crashes on the Opera ng, and it hasn’t crashed on me yet. This beta appears rock solid, in fact. I suggest that you download Inspector IIXII to figure out if Opera is really causing the crashes and why.
I love opera for its mouse gestures and well-designed feature set, but the UI for 7beta has got to go!
It’s fast but I am on a high end system and a 3 meg line any way. I’ll stick w/ IE an Opera 6 for a now. If I can kill the ugly theme on O7 final I’ll give it a second look but it alway takes me some time to change Opera’s defaults to something I can use.
I haven’t seen Opera crash since I used the Opera 6 betas for Linux.
Perhaps you will love new ‘Emulate Text Browser’ feature.
After a day of using Opera 7 beta, I must say I’m extremely annoyed with the new interface. I sent my entire rebuke to Opera, hope they fix things.
Besides, this beta is quite unstable. Several times had the menu options in the menu bar stop working until a restart of Opera was done, several times had mouse gestures stop working (I notice most of the time I “back”ed too much… more than 10 pages back), and the personal bar links stop working.
But this beta is much better than Opera 6 Beta 1….
(*sigh* I have to pay for this upgrade).
Lindows is poor engineering. Period.