Opera Browser Observations
Jul 9th, 2008 by Don Ray
The other day I wrote about Flock and a reader responded that he used Opera and I decided to try it. I had loaded it in the past, but I never spent much time with it. I have now tried it for several days and these are my non-technical observations.
Choosing an Internet Browser is kind of like choosing a pair of pants. You want it to be attractive in your eyes. You want it to be serviceable and do what you want. You want it to be comfortable. A lot of this is subjective to the person that is using the browser. Opera has met my needs well enough that I have made it my default browser.
Here are some of the things I like.
LOOKS: I think the default theme looks smart and is simple. I think it is an elegant design.
Flexible: It is very flexible. I was able to add my own “personal” tool bar where I added the sites I visit most often and want handy.
Speed Dial: It has something called a “Speed Dial” that I use as my default page, when the browser comes up. The Speed Dial screen gives a good sized thumbnail of up to nine web sites you normally use. Very easy to click on where you want to go, without going to book marks or even the Personal Tool Bar.
Widgets: It has a lot of desktop Widgets that I like. They are available when the browser is open, but my browser is open all the time.
It has other features, but those were the ones that were enough for me to switch.
My thanks go out to “Rick in Florida” for urging me to give it a try.
Glad you tried Opera. I am reluctant to tell most people because of selfish reasons….liked having it to myself!
I particularly like that you can add your email account to the browers by simply going to the Tools button on the top sidebar and selecting mail and chat accounts and inputing the account info. Mail then shows up on the panels sidebar. (If you select View then Panels option that is)
Also the Google translator widget is great.
Rick
Well, I definately like it. It was a good suggestion. I use Linux’s Kontact for all of my “Outlook” like functions and it also inclugesAkragator as a new reader. If it weren’t for that, I might try the email facility.
Nice to read your observations, Don. I’ve worked with Opera for a few days now, too, thanks to your earlier mention of it. I like it and find it blazingly fast. I agree with your thoughts on the interface - clean and flexible - but it’s enough different from what I’m used to that I find myself still trying to do some things incorrectly.
The main drawback for me, though, is in editing Wordpress. I work with a lot of images and have lately been trying to place them just so with respect to the text. I just can’t do it consistently in Opera. Maybe there are workarounds that I should try - probably people in the Opera community know about them. I’ll have to decide whether I want to take the time to seek out that information or just go back to Firefox, which works reliably if not so quickly.
I guess I should mention that I write my first draft and edit in in a 3rd party application called “ecto” (for Mac OS X). Most of the image work is done there. After uploading, though, I usually tweak, mostly still in Draft mode except for those things that slip by me even then. It’s this tweaking part that works so well in Firefox but poorly in every other browser I’ve tried.
Btw, thanks for the IP Neighbors link. Interesting information there.
Hi Mary. Could you send me more information, via email, on your WP problems with Opera.
I probably do things very simply, but I am basically working the same using Opera and I was using FF. Here is how I work. First I maintain all of my photos on my host in my own Photo files. I don’t upload using WP. I want control of my photos and in case the Host looses everything, I just need to restore my photo files.
I write all of my posts in Open Office Writer and include the link address of each photo on my host. I use WP backup to backup everything except photos, which I keep in a mirror directory on my PC.
When I make a post, I select the entire post in Open Office Writer and paste it into the WP editor. Then I grab each photo link and use the Image Icon in the editor to insert my photos (I have previously uploaded all photos to the appropriate library on my host). The Image icon of WP allows me to position the photo as I want it (left, right, top, center, etc). This has worked the same in Opera and Opera.
I cur all URLs and embed them in the post using the Link icon after I selected the word that will contain the link.
So farm the only thing I have had to do differently is moving the title to the title area. In FF I could highlight the title and drag it into the title area. That isn’t working and I am having to cut it and past it.
I realize that my way if posting isn’t very imaginative, but it is simple and fast. I have a copy of all posts on my PC’s hard drive in case the worst happened and I could not restore using a backup.
I am sure you may do it different, but I thought I would share how I do it. A lot of time I am a brute force kind of guy, so I know this isn’t all that elegant.
UPDATE: I went to my test blog and tried moving photos and I think I understand your problem now. I tried moving by dragging and dropping and I can in FF and can’t in Opera. I rarely do that as I place it where I want it by using the command. and don’t D&D. Is that the problem?
Don,
Thanks for those great details on how you work. My way is pretty similar except after I have drafted in ecto, I just click a button to publish to the Draft section of wp. Both text and images are uploaded to their appropriate places in this way. I, too, have a mirror folder on my hard drive for images and ecto keeps the text content in its own database.
I have a copy of wp on my computer, too, for experimenting with themes, plug-ins, and so forth.
You are right in that the problems I have in Opera center around manipulating the images. It’s not just the drag and drop problem, though that certainly exists. If I decide to change the alignment of an image I have trouble there, too. Left and right alignments work okay but top, middle, bottom, and other alignments do not. I’m sure I don’t really need to tweak all this much - there’s a word for this kind of behavior - but I do, and Firefox makes it easy for me to do so.
Thanks for looking into the matter.
I guess this may be a Opera limitation. I notice I can drag and drop easier, with Opera, in the HTML side of the WP editor. In the HTML, I can highlight and area and drag it to the title area, which I can’t in the Visual side of the editor.
Your process with ecto appears to be more refined than my process.
I guess with my brute force method, I just get things to a certain level and quit. I quit being a perfectionist when I retired.
I had hoped that there was an obvious solution to your problem, but I don’t see it. You might try using the opera irc group ans see if you find an opera WordPress user. I tried yesterday, but none were on at that time.
Thanks, Don, for your thoughts. Most of my decisions, however, are based on laziness, including using ecto. In this case I think that laziness requires me to stick with Firefox because I won’t have to do any additional research or experimentation. I enjoy being dazzled by Opera’s speed, but I think I’ll stick with Firefox, at least for editing Wordpress.
Hi Mary, It is nice that we have so many choices.
Hi Don Ray,
I work for Opera and just wanted first to say thanks for trying Opera. I’m glad you wanted to stick with it. I was an Opera fan before joining the company, btw.
As far as the WordPress issue, I found a known bug on the wordpress site: http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6498. If this is the situation described, they are working on it.
You can easily open a single page in Firefox from the Opera browser. If you right click on a page, you can view it with any browser you have installed on your system. That way, if there’s a page that requires Internet Explorer or another browser you can view it with no problems.
Thanks again for trying Opera. If you have questions or want to learn more about using Opera, we’re in the process of creating some video tutorials. You can find them here: http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/
Best,
Thomas
Opera Software
Hi Thomas. Thanks for dropping in and taking the time to leave a comment. It does appear that defect may be what is causing Mary’s problem. I don’t have any problem that is serious enough for me to return to FF.
I am glad to see so much improvement with the Opera product. The last time I had spent much time with it was in 2001 or 2002 and with work forcing me to use M$ products, I wound up using Internet Exploder.
I think the new 9.5 version fills the bill for me. Thanks again for adding the information.
My thanks to Thomas, too!
His suggestion rings a faint bell and I believe I remember the ability to view a page from any browser has been a feature of Opera for a long time. Neat.
I almost hesitate to keep coming back to this comment stream, but I’m going to anyway.
Opera’s enticing enough to draw me back for more experimentation. The link Thomas provided pointed to a problem with Opera’s image uploader, as best I can tell. No help there with wordpress. Now I find that Opera rewrites my HTML code in wordpress so that I cannot point to a particular spot on one of my own pages when I provide the link. This is particularly important to me because I have a page of References and each time I cite an author, I’d like the link to point directly to that name on the page. All HTML coding with respect to this process just vanishes in Opera! I’m hoping Thomas might see this comment because I haven’t been able to find anything about it in Opera’s knowledgebase.
Thanks for opening this interesting topic.
Mary, I must not understand. I thought I had used every type if link function. Could you point me to one of your posts where you are doing what you say doesn’t work so I can understand what you need.
Don, Now I have a red face. I can’t duplicate the issue. I’ve sent you an email with details, but it’s moot at this point. Sorry for taking your time!
If it comes up again, I’ll be in touch privately rather than waste bandwidth here.
Mary
Glad I am not the only person who is red faced sometimes. I think I cause myself to get red faced more than most people.