Hakon Wium Lie must feel a special kinship with the “Band of Brothers” soliloquy that Shakespeare reserves for Henry V.
“We few we, happy few, we band of brothers…” the king proclaims before his men head into battle. With all of Microsoft’s riches and power behind it, Internet Explorer has dominated the Web browser market since Netscape’s defeat in the late 1990s. But as CTO of Opera Software, Wium Lie’s job is to figure out how to incorporate the best technology possible in his company’s software – and in this he’s stolen a beat on Opera’s much bigger rival.
Opera looks ugly but is very fast on the desktop. Being a Camino user I did try the latest version of Opera on Mac and was surprised by the speed – usability wasn’t there but speed was.
On the mobile front – I have a treo and that doesn’t cut anything web related, but a friend did run opera on his Sony Ericsson mobile and it was quite speedy.
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http://perso.hirlimann.net/~ludo/blog/
You kidding me? Ease of use not there? Have you even tried mouse gestures? Opera’s stacked with all the good stuff without needing to muck around with the settings – it’s a very easy browser to use once you know like four or so gestures, right click drag right > forward, right click drag left > back, right click drag down > new tab and right click drag down and to the right > close the tab.
I believe the OP was referring more to the look and feel of Opera on OS X. While I like Opera as much as the next guy, it doesn’t feel at all native on OS X; it’s not just the theme, it’s the way the buttons work, the lack of integration with system services, and the like.
To be fair, Firefox doesn’t fare any better, but with the Mozilla Gecko-based Camino available, it doesn’t have to do so.
You exactly got my point.
Opera hasn’t really impressed me with their browser which, as has already been stated, defies the rest of the desktop despite not having a bad rendering engine. But with their bottom line under pressure after giving the desktop browser away, while the mobile manufacturers continually look to roll their own browser, I wonder if Opera will themselves have to get smaller to perform better as a publicly listed company.
I used to hate it.
Then I really sat down and used it, and I realized the “awkward” interface was a god-send, just too different for most at first glance.
I realized it was faster, more configurable, better rendering (yes, better than FF) than either FF or IE.. 3 & 7 respectively.
Now I can’t go anywhere without my opera 9 on a flash disk.
That is the key to Opera. IMHO, you have to be willing to leave your assumptions at the door and take a new look at how efficient surfing can be with Opera.
And I can see how Mac users wouldn’t like that it lacks all the OS X integration since it isn’t an Apple application. That would be like someone complaining that Open Office didn’t have all the cool Windows features that MS Office had.
Edited 2006-10-10 20:02
And I can see how Mac users wouldn’t like that it lacks all the OS X integration since it isn’t an Apple application. That would be like someone complaining that Open Office didn’t have all the cool Windows features that MS Office had.
I’d say it is something different; it is more like complaining that Openoffice for Mac doesn’t have the OSX integration that Office:Mac has. Really, if you want to port a program to another platform, solid integration is mandatory. In that regard Microsoft has proven to be an examplary software developer for OSX.
Edited 2006-10-11 13:07
My comments about Opera is that it is the best browser in the market. The only thing which is not there in Opera is that it don’t fully support some of the sites bcoz majority of the sites are developed having IE in there minds.
Otherwise it the coolest browser. I love its performance and also it is has small foot print.
Opera is dead slow when compared to FF on my old 800mhz 256mb ram laptop running xubuntu, but for me it’s better being slow than being annoying to use.
Firefox drives me nuts by not having all the functions Opera has, still after fixing most of it with extensions it’s not the same.
opera’s tech has never been in question (at least since 8.0 when they rebuilt the renderer to be non-static). what opera needs to figure out is how to convey that advantage to the users. for some of us, opera is necessary (hello fujip P1120 800mhz crusoe laptop). but for most people, the technical advantages dont make a difference.
opera can deal with absolutely colossal numbers of windows/tabs far better than anything else. (opera was the first mainstream app i’ve ever used with tabs) unfortunately, while the tech is there, operas done jack-all to let users access this capability. opera was one of the first one’s to save session state, yet since the introduction of the technical feature, opera has done zilch to refine the user control over it; it is still just “save the entire session” “load entire session”.
there comes a point where you have too many web pages open at once. usability breaks down. opera let users grow this stack as big as they dream, but has done nothing to provide the users tool for manipulating the information workspace monster they create, nothing to reduce or control the stack. all you can do now is close tabs, but not all non-pertinent information should be discarded like this.
there’s an easy band aid, but opera evidently feels like f–king their customers over instead.
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=161741
11 readers at time of this post. and i am at least two of them. really makes me feel like opera is on the ball with their user experience.
apps are about INFORMATION SPACES. opera is failing, in spite of godlike tech.
The fascinating thing about Opera is that different people use it completely differently, some people love mouse gestures, some love the keyboard, some like it the MS/FF way and so on. It really is quite versatile. I love the way Opera handles newsfeeds, much smarter than FF imo. And so much more functionality in ~4MB!
Firefox basically mimics IE in look and functionality, albeit with some original aspects. Opera is a paradigm shift, but once you get it, the usability of all the other browsers is just infuriatingly poor in comparison.
I cant wait for the persistence of Opera settings, i think they are on to an absolute winner. Being able to boot both into Windows and Linux and have all my settings follow me is a very exciting concept and will save some hassle indeed!
Edited 2006-10-11 00:59
Camino uses native looking form controls in pages which is a bit annoying. Opera has a few glitches on OSX, but it’s good enough.
The killer feature of opera for me has always been the sessions and the way it restores all of the open windows. You can get the same with an FF extension, and the same sort of tab features, but they are a bit slow and leaden compared to opera’s.
FF2 is supposed to have the sessions feature without an extension. *finally*