Snapshot 1.0.418.3 - Focusing on individual requirements, not statistics
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I was going to leave this comment but I really feel I need to reply. To be honest I think that is a little unfair in how it portrays me. I never said anything remotely close to what you have placed in quotation marks (though I realise you did not intend them to come off as a true quote). Nor did I intentionally try to "talk down" individual opinions. Rather I suggested that it was unlikely we would implement certain requests given Opera's direction. This was true, so I really believe I was just being honest (rather than raising false hope). If you feel I could have phrased things better than I am genuinely sorry for any hurt feelings. It can certainly be tricky to find the right words when you have to involve the politics of the companies change in direction. I strive to remain professional at all times.
To give you a bit of background on me. I would also like to point out, that I was one of the few who was not laid off from Opera when the Oslo desktop team closed. I actually quit Opera of my own choosing and then later was lucky enough to take a position at Vivaldi. In fact I had been considering leaving Opera for some time, prior to the Oslo team shut down ever being announced.
You might wonder why I did not quit before. When Opera made the change to a Chromium-based browser I did hope/believe that we would be able to bring back at least some of the "old magic" (though I was not naive enough to think it would be the same) and to a small extent, in certain minor features we did (e.g. customisable shortcuts). In addition, no company like Vivaldi existed in Norway at the time. I could not see a better work option for me than Opera (despite all the changes). Not least because of all the friends I had working there with me (including some managers with different views to my own). Thus it made sense to stay and "make the most of it". I also never let up on my internal struggle to bring back the Linux platform, which eventually did return when we got two "new" (actually they had both worked for Opera before) devs assigned to work on it. I felt a lot of pride when that happened and was the happiest I had been in Opera for quite some time. Those two were supposed to be joining me in the Mac team, which I was leading at the time. I was involved in negotiating for them to work on Linux "full time", despite this not being the best option for "my" Mac team. After the return of Linux I was eventually allowed to switch back to Linux myself and carrying on making what was, at that stage (pre-Vivaldi), the best of the Chromium based browsers in my personal opinion.
Of course when Vivaldi released the first pre-release I was jealous. It was very rough around the edges but the potential was clear. This was the beginning of me starting to once again question if Opera was still right for me. Eventually this culminated in me deciding to quit, which roughly aligned (by chance) with Opera shutting down the desktop team. When the lay offs were announced, I had expected to be "let go" as well and was quite surprised when they offered me a couple of different internal positions. I stuck to my guns and quit anyway. Not long after, I was lucky enough to find myself with a job at Vivaldi and the rest, as they say, is history.
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You're the man, Ruari!
You did the move of your life to join Jon's project.
Also, thank you for "On Linux we fixed the problems with middle click pasting text selections in the URL field" - my life is complete now.
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Don't you think the two companies are different? Have different visions and Ruari has more freedom?
It's like finding a Microsoft dev working on an open-source project and calling him out working for MS before Besides, hopping between jobs is not easy, sometimes you just have to do whatever is being forced down from the upper-level management.
Ruari is doing a favour for humanity for working for this wonderful project.
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I haven't been participating in their blog as of late, but does it let users add custom filters to it?
edit: I went and asked. Seems like they'll make it happen in the next one. Right now, Vivaldi + uBlock still works wonders for me.
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Does somebody know where the "Save open tabs as session" is saved? And if it is possible to migrate them to another Viv?
A bit like a manual sync for used tabs between two browsers? ^^ -
Oh, :idea: Thanks for the tip!
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May it be a workaround that you enter the IP-adress instead of "myserver" ?
Of course this is annoying the frist time but vivaldi should remember that and when you type it the next time after one or two numbers there should be a suggestion for your destination.
(This works for me accessing my router - because typing "fritzbox" results in the same misunderstanding as you described it, so I have to enter IP-adress)Yes, that could be a solution but my intranet server is multihosted. Some domain name resolve to the same IP address, so, at least for me is not a solution.
This is curious because Opera used to solve this issue pretty well. It learnt that some words must be hostname… I miss old Opera... -
May it be a workaround that you enter the IP-adress instead of "myserver" ?
Of course this is annoying the frist time but vivaldi should remember that and when you type it the next time after one or two numbers there should be a suggestion for your destination.
(This works for me accessing my router - because typing "fritzbox" results in the same misunderstanding as you described it, so I have to enter IP-adress)Yes, that could be a solution but my intranet server is multihosted. Some domain name resolve to the same IP address, so, at least for me is not a solution.
This is curious because Opera used to solve this issue pretty well. It learnt that some words must be hostname… I miss old Opera... -
Mmh seems indeed like your only options are to type http:// in front or to make it a speed-dial or bookmark (wasn't there an option to "always prefer bookmarks" ?)
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Finally middle click issue fixed: pasting/creating bookmark in bookmark panel and address bar. It was very painfull on Linux. Thanks Vivaldi team.
Switching back from Firefox to Vivaldi. -
Vivaldi is now my default browser. Is it possible to build a translation function, as in Google Chrome? If the effectiveness of the browser very increase.
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Is anyone else having trouble with embedded video on Twitter? This is on MacOSX. It used to be a general malaise with most embedded video, but that's mostly gone away in all cases I see - except Twitter and Twitter alone.
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You know that over the years, Ruari (decades?) your path and mine only intersected occasionally. You're a Linux dude and my daily platform is Windows (though I have two Linux machines which I only turn on occasionally, to keep them updated). But I REALLY thought hard about responding to the OP on this, and then got busy with my actual job. I, for one, NEVER got the impression that you were ever anything but as helpful as possible, and scrupulously honest. I know how much tension must have been generated by the conflict between being loyal to a company with such a rich and positive history as Opera had, and wanting to contribute to an unquestionably good product. You are lucky Vivaldi came along, as are we.
Not for nothing, but I worked for a single dude/firm for 16 years and 7 months, and was loyal to him completely. Over time, he became sufficiently unbalanced and paranoid, and his operating procedures became so confining and rigid (up to and including finally asking me to lie about my findings on a certain job) that I finally had no choice but to leave. I found a new position before abandoning the old one, and I have earned more and been able to respect my own integrity more, ever since. So I feel like I know something about how it must have been for you, your last two years at Opera. And I hold you in the highest regard. Thanks for caring about the users.
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0. Are you using a standalone install?
1. Yes. On Windows, it always adds a startpage at startup, but otherwise works. Because of the extra page, I don't use it. I use startup with last session.
2. Yes, I use the homepage icon. I have it set to chrome://dummystartpage. It works fine.
3. Links on startpage work fine.
4. Vivaldi installed normally. I see from other comments here there is a problem with standalone. That is important data, missing from OP's initial comment.
5. Windows. What OS is OP on? Do you know? When people have an atypical install, they need to mention this when complaining of problems.
6. No. Just a user who tries to help when possible. -
First of all sorry, I never intended to make it sound as rude as it might came out. My apologies. And thank you for taking your time for that long and detailed explanation. I must admit that it wouldn't be fair to make you responsible for everything that went, in my opinion as an outsider, wrong with Opera.
The reason why I had you on my mind when thinking about Opera Desktop team probably was the fact that it was mostly you who represented the team in their blog in the last few months before you left. That's of course positive. It was you who posted most of the snapshots and you who did respond to a lot of comments including mine.And of course it isn't an easy decision to leave the company that you did work for for such a long time. Even I hoped that Opera Blink would get much better over time. It reminded me of Opera 11 (or was it 11.5?) when a lot was new or has changed and was rather buggy for a while. I thought that Opera Blink would get sorted out just like Opera 11.6x and 12 did.
For me Opera ASA was always the perfect example of how a company that builds a product for their customers should be like. Whenever I criticized others I said "just look how the Desktop team at Opera does it. You could learn a lot from them"
As a user I always felt that I was, just like every other user, part of the team. That was something unique, something that made Opera special and the browser of my choice for a long time. At that time a job at Opera ASA would have been the best I could imagine.Anyway, I'm glad that there is Vivaldi now. And that we have people like you still around.
Sorry once again for being a little to rude. Partly cause English is, as you can clearly see, not my native language.
And thank you very much for explaining yourself when you didn't have to -
Not sure what to think about that adblocker. Guess I should at least give it a try before I can truly judge that move by Opera.
For now it looks a bit suspicious to me.
Opera's main business isn't their browser but mainly their adserving business. Mostly Opera Mediaways in particular. How could we as users believe that their interest is to block ads and cannibalize their own profits?Makes me wonder if the user is really in full control about which ads to block and which not.
The worst case would be that they try to do something similar to the whitelist that Adblock Plus uses. Opera Mediaways could offer premium placements for ads that can bypass their own adblicking tool.Another question would be if a browser developer should take control of what their users might or might not get to see (netneutrality anyone?)
But as I said, it isn't fair to judge their efforts without trying that adblocker at least one.
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2 YEARS LATER:
- still no ability to have per-site customization similar to what Opera 12 had
- still no fast and reliable local RSS aggregator
- still no option to put any buttons you like ANYWHERE
- still no advanced cookie handling mechanism? Oh, did I say advanced? I mean ANCIENT one, back from 2005 from old Opera.
Few years passed and yet NOT A SINGLE BROWSER EVEN MANAGED TO GET CLOSE TO THE FUNCTIONALITY OLD OPERA HAD.
This is just sad.
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I want adblocking that is very convenient and makes the web much faster. As great adblocking as possible. I especially love it when it blocks YouTube ads, and just overall makes the browser much less annoying to navigate.
As for the features, sure, I mean, Vivaldi has been going really fast in adding the features they currently have now. I know mail and sync are the biggest, and I'm guessing once those are done, they can focus more energy on other stuff, and it'll be at least faster in those areas now that they don't have too much focus on mail and sync. But if it were possible to add all those cool features that O12 had, like advanced bookmarks panel, O12's amazing tab cycling, better font rendering, etc. Okay, maybe not ALL of O12's features, but a majority of them would be awesome.
Didn't it take 20 years to develop a browser mature enough to have all those modern features? I'm sure it would take much faster doing it a second time than the first time, but we'll see.
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Hold it there. They just built a browser from scratch, excluding the engine. They're a small company, but they will get to the point of expansion. Just hold on, I'm sure they'll eventually get all the features O12 had, whether that'll be in version 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever.
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Wow dude, you should totally create a thread in the forums on what you just wrote.