[Has anyone tried Opera 15?]

Has anyone tried Opera 15? Any thoughts?

 

Not a bad concept (using Opera as a shell over the Chrome rendering engine) but it really is an alpha--no bookmarks handled natively, and very very little customization. They should have told everyone that this was a preview release of the future of Opera, and there would have been some stifled praise, but they announced it as a release and ticked off a lot of their older users.

I'll give it a shot as a serious replacement for Firefox if they can get bookmarks and a few other UI customizations that I'm used to. Unfortunately, even Opera 16 (at least as of the current Next release) doesn't have bookmarks or a bookmarks toolbar, which is a showstopper for me.

But its definitely worth keeping an eye out for, over the long term.

 

To be fair, Opera ASA's own marketing told them that bookmarks weren't being used. I don't really miss them as I tended to use the speed dial anyway. There is the 'Stash' alternative & an extension to replace standard bookmarking anyway. It is very fast & works well with flash video, but it is really a tad experimental. You're right, it is almost like an alpha than a beta. I've enjoyed giving it a spin but I doubt it will replace Maxthon or SeaMonkey for me any time soon.

 

Hi Dave hope you and yours are well.

For some reason this site has fallen out with Opera and give a message about being sick of abuse etc... Whats that all about bud, any idea?

Regards, Ian.

 

Regardless of when the message got out, it caused such an uproar that they backtracked and decided to bring back bookmarks.

Some in their threads said that they were ok with no bookmarks; others said they had 100s, and that even the extension wasn't anywhere nearly as useful as the native bookmarks manager. I had 770-plus bookmarks that Opera imported, and I have to agree that the extension just wasn't the same.

But I "m still waiting (eagerly) for the next version (the one with bookmarks). I've long been telling myself that if a company that cultivates a support community would market the Chrome browser, I'd jump on it in a second. I've always loved how fast and stable Chrome is, but I've hated how Google will make UI changes for the sake of change, and also, how little they support their products. So I'm hoping that Opera runs with this, as this is an incredible idea. Its just not ready for prime time.

 

Right Dave had a look at it and others users woes, seems a bit glitchy to me and won't changing any time soon.

Also screenshot of the message I get when trying to log on with Opera.

 

So that's what you meant earlier.

That is strange. I've never heard of a site/forum disallowing a certain browser because of some users behaving badly.

At this point, I'd take it to the http://www.windowsbbs.com/site-comments-suggestions/

forum here and see what Arie and the other mods have to say.

 

Hello Ian, I'm fine thanks. I have no idea about the site fall out with Opera. It seems a bit weird. I have seen the screenshot file you posted. I don't use Opera much any more to be honest. I've been giving O15 a bit of a spin on my notebook but I am normally in SeaMonkey or Maxthon these days. I think a lot of Opera users have migrated to these two browsers as they give back some of the functionality that Opera had with the Presto rendering engine.

 

I don't know what plans Opera ASA have for O15 but I doubt that it will have the customisation & functionality that the Presto version had. I'm not a huge Chrome fan but it looks like it could be a good Chrome clone. It's fast & seems to play videos well but it's got a long way to go. I'd check out Maxthon if I were you, it's the nearest thing that I can find to Opera. SeaMonkey is not bad either, although may need a little 'tweaking' out of the box.

 

Yeh Dave thanks for the info I'll give them both a try, been using with Palemoon as well to get on here LOL.

Regards, Ian.

 

I used Waterfox for a while but I decided just to go back with x86 browsers on my Win 7 x64 PC. I think that when 64 bit browsers become more mainstream for Windows (they have been on Linux for a while) I may try them again. I don't really see the advantages any more. There may be some security improvements but I don't see any real speed benefits. SeaMonkey is an entire suite. If you download SeaMonkey add this extension (Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks 1.3). Ignore the caveat of it not being compatible with 2.19 in red script. It was designed specifically for SeaMonkey to compensate for Mozilla's crazy rapid release cycle with Gecko. The SeaMonkey Council dislike change & SM just hasn't changed much for years.

Maxthon has virtually everything you need 'out of the box'.

 

Ta again just trying Maxthon now, it has assignable speed dials like Opera yippee I'd miss them.

Yeh liking it's better faster handling of social media sites already!

Brilliant I'll give Seamonkey a go in a bit.

Regards, Ian.

 

I wonder if they will keep 'Stash' as well.

I've never really needed hundreds of bookmarks.

I think it could do well, but I also think that they will lose many of their original user base.

 

I use the PortableApps Maxthon quite a bit as well. I even run it on the C-drive of my notebook. I use the portable a lot at work as well. I'd check their page regularly for updates because in my experience the update checker doesn't always work. It tends to upgrade at 6 week intervals. The flash player s built in Chrome-style.

SeaMonkey has a lot of similarities to Firefox & in fact Firefox is descended from it. I believe that SeaMonkey was the old Netscape Communicator & is now open source. I've been using it for about 5 years.

Good luck.

 

I'll give that a go as well like Palemoon, it can be run on a pen drive and store it's history etc on it so as not to leave any surfing traces on the machine you are using.

Still keeping my opera mail account though, it works and has a good spam filter and it's different so people remember it.

Regards, Ian.

 

See what you mean Dave, what were they thinking? Kept a rollback setup on the hard drive just in case.

They're working on 16 Opera next is available to DL but don't even bother it's exactly the same.

Regards, Ian.

 

Well, it can only get better I suppose. Maxthon will soon be using the same Blink rendering engine that is used by Opera 15.