Opera have announced the release of Opera 10 beta. New engine, new features, but I'm more concerned about where Opera 10 fits into Opera's history, and certainly their future. Opera have never made any massive strides in marketshare and is Opera 10 really going to change any of that? Read More to find out.
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Member since:2005-10-21
Then your review should have been titled "Opera's Failure at UI Design" or "Why I Hate Opera" and not billed as a more in-depth review over your first attempt.
You have just as much a right to your own opinion as the rest of us. Lots of people buy cars just because they like the way they look and care nothing about other deficiencies. Others care more for functionality. It's where your priorities are. Think how cool it would be to have the Fedex guy come to a screeching halt in a Ferrari in front of your house with your latest order from Amazon, just a few hours after it was shipped. Sure he got there fast and in style, but now he has to go back to the Fedex distribution center to get another package. Having a truck to carry more packages takes priority over speed and appearance.
If the browser appearance matters to you, fine. But don't criticize the functionality just to validate your opinion of the appearance. And I agree you can't win in the comments on your review, your review sealed that outcome. Put out a balanced review on multiple platforms and people will be more accepting of constructive criticisms.
Edited 2009-06-05 15:18 UTC
Member since:2005-11-10
I didn’t unduly criticise the functionality. Read the review, I was very fair in the functionality section. I wasn’t thorough to the last, but then I would only be repeating what everybody already knows here. The functionality is a bit much, but fine. The UI I thought was a barrier to adopting that functionality.
Member since:2008-10-23
I believe there is no winner and no looser. Your opinion is perfectly acceptable to most people. They just have another opinion and you have to accept that, too. So long as your opinion is not that Opera should include a virus to destroy everything that you don't like it is perfectly OK.
Edited 2009-06-05 15:19 UTC
Member since:2005-11-16
No, that's your opinion, not a fact. Other people are under no obligation to agree with your personal taste, any more than you are under an obligation to like Opera's look.
Many people here care more about function than form and are obviously going to see your complaints as vapid, especially when most issues with the look are easily changed.
I think if you'd posted a similar review of Ubuntu, dismissing it because the default theme is too brown, while glossing over any new and interesting features in the software, you'd get a similar response from Ubuntu fans. People simply expect more when an article is touted as a review.
Maybe you should have made that more obvious? I don't think you'd have received as much criticism if you'd made it clear that you were just posting an opinion piece on the new Opera skin, rather than an actual review of the application. You could have left out the shallow glance at it's functionality completely and purely concentrated on the default aesthetics.
Member since:2005-11-10
Yes, sorry I went too far defending that. A little too angry. I’m tired at being berated for focusing on what matters to me, the skin. I simply can’t live with software that doesn’t look right. The customisation doesn’t count—I don’t need to customise the layout, I need it to be designed better. I can only hope that Jon Hicks improves drastically on the beta.
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Member since:
2005-11-10
It’s already clear that I can’t win, whatever I do; the community is however right. In all fairness I should be far more fair. I don’t give any software a free ride—you will never see a positive review from me unless that software convinces me to switch to it permanently on the basis of few day’s use (Such software does exist, Firefox 0.93 convinced me to switch from IE almost instantly).
The layout of buttons is not a problem, I don’t need to customise them. The default skin is simply a barrier to me using the app regularly, and even beyond the toolbar, the dialogues are badly designed, and I can’t rearrange them.
I looked at Opera hard and I gave my reason for not liking it. That’s a valid reason. Just because other people would rather I chose a different 'valid' reason because they don’t agree with the reason I chose, it doesn’t make my choice invalid.
People either want me to love Opera, or dislike it on a basis that they can agree upon. I can’t win with that. The default out-of-the-box design on Firefox is simply better than Opera’s and nobody seems willing to accept that. it *must* be about functionality instead of looks or somehow it’s not a valid complaint. Looks matter. A lot. If looks didn’t matter then companies simply wouldn’t even bother wasting their time spending the money they do on ads.
Opera’s history of Netscape-like skins is no longer good enough I think. That’s what the article was about.