Monday, May 2, 2011

Opera - 10 years of usage insights

I've been using Opera as my primary browser since the year 2000, so I think it gives me some insight on areas of improvement.

Improvements
1. Downloads acceleration, backend work mostly. Focus on speed should be universal.
2. Status bar like Chrome, indicating uploads percentages. keep it optional of course.
3. Add some kind of animated icon while clearing private data. The entire interface freezes and Windows reports it as not responding during the cache flush process.

Feature requests
1. IRC - Auto update to themes like skins and promoted via My Opera.
2. Auto updates for skins.
3. Auto Nightlies and Beta channel updates.
4. Publicly transparent bug tracking and feature request handling system.
5. One click profile backup for bookmarks, toolbars, keyboard shorcuts and related files.
6. Global sync: Bookmarks, Toolbars, settings, Content blocker list, Cookie whitelist, every conceivable user customizable feature.
7. Add Zoom to 'Edit site' preferences.
8. One click settings backup.

Opera ASA's behavior over the last ten years, indicates they are very slow to user feedback and only got off their laurels these days because of Firefox and Chrome. So I don't expect them to listen to this because people have been asking for this at Opera forums for years and they have never made any efforts to centrally compile these requests.

I will continue to use Opera as my primary browser and Chrome as secondary, but these days I've grown tired of all their casual attitude to user feedback. Beginning of the end for Opera, perhaps? but I sure hope not.

Edit: Opera Next, look it up

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