five things i want in opera
Doing the rounds at the moment is a Five Things I Want In Opera tag-meme. Chaals tagged the world of connected people so that's good enough for me. Besides, I don't really want to wait for this meme to work its way out of Europe ;)
Here are five things I want in Opera (no particular order):
- An auto-update feature so people are less likely to let their version lag. This feature alone determined whether I recommended Opera or Firefox to my mother-in-law.
- Web developer tools similar to Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar. There are some add-ons which are pretty good but I'd really push for Opera to integrate more of them into the base install.
- Slicker handling of Opera mods like user js - they sound too techy so the average user won't try them. I'd also like a neater way to add Bookmarkets to a toolbar, even if the only change was being able to set the favicon permanently.
- Let me synch my Opera preferences with my account at my.opera.
- Default toolbars which are more consistent with competitors. Out of the box, the buttons in Opera don't look like other browsers. I have long since thought this was a reason many users "don't get" Opera, leading them to ditch it in that all-important "just trying it out" phase.
Who am I tagging? Anyone who wants to join in - comment with the URL of your post.
You know I will admit I'm not a fan of opera mainly for lack of tools, the updating and a simple thing like the buttons, I just can't get it instantly. If I don't understand an application within 10 seconds, I just move on. I have no patience with somewhat out of kilter interfaces.
Until you stated the fact about the interface with Opera I just thought I didn't get it. But looking closely. Its all there, just not what I was expecting.
@Gary: I think the buttons are a key issue against adoption for Opera, as you say if you don't get it in 10 seconds you're on to the next thing. The first thing I do with a new install of Opera is customise the buttons!
In a sense Opera suffers from having been the leader, when other browsers do a more commonly recognised implementation - they either end up out of step, or uninformed FF trolls claim they're copying :) But Opera is hanging on to the earlier interface, which only a vocal minority really want to keep. They should move forwards and leave the old style as an option.
Re: dev tools/addons, a lot of really useful stuff is already available in/for Opera, they're just not neatly packaged - you have to go to different menus etc, it's just not quick enough.
Accessing Developer Tools in OP9.5a
Tools > Advanced > Developer Tools.
Then Drag the option you want to any place in the UI. The DOM snapshot is a godsent for trying to debug an HTML/CSS issue caused by a JS script.
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