Topic: Millions grab ad-free Opera

[Clive]

October 7, 2005
Quentin Reade
Web User

More than three million new users have downloaded the Opera browser in the past two weeks.

Opera recently made its browser ad-free, and the number of people downloading Opera has since quadrupled.

Opera claims to have the strongest security track record of any browser.

Features include: built-in search bars, a password manager, notes and saved sessions.

http://www.opera.com

[Simon]

Well, it's about time they offered a free, ad-free, version.  I don't understand why they ever expected anyone to pay for a web browser, when practically every other browser is available free.

[chorleydave]

Opera has been my main browser for the past six years and I have always been 100% happy with it - that is until I got the latest "free" version.  

One of the great things about Opera is that it doesn't write anything to the Windows registry, everything is held in .dat files so it can be as customisable as you want it to be.  However, the latest version has some "features" that are totally unnecessary, and are unable to be disabled in Preferences, meaning that even more editing of .dat files is needed to get it working in the way I am used to it.  For example, previous versions have a setting in Preferences that allows you to "turn off the commands in the Bookmarks menu" (commands such as "Add Bookmark Here").  In the newest version this has gone, meaning having to open the menu.dat file in Wordpad and having to first locate the unwanted line and then put a semi-colon in from of it to turn it off.  Perhaps the worst change is that the option to open new pages within the existing window has now gone, so you have a choice of opening a completely new window every time you click on a link (thereby cluttering up the Windows Taskbar) or using tabs which I very definitely dont like as having too many toolbars open does nothing but reduce the available area to view web pages.  In short, the simplest and easiest browser to use has become "advanced", which is OK for someone like myself who has used it for years and knows how to change it, but could easily put off any new user who doesn't like the default installation and is looking for the options to change things - options that are either hidden in .dat files or don't even exist.

I will not be moving away from Opera.  It is what I am used to and what I feel comfortable with.  However, I will be reverting to the 7.x series next time I format and reinstall everything.

[Simon]

Just out of curiosity, I have just tried it, and it doesn't seem half as 'new user friendly' as Firefox or Mozilla.  The cookie handling isn't as good as FF or Moz, in that there doesn't seem to be a way to save certain cookies, while deleting the rest, therefore, I would have to re-log in to Pals each time I visited, which wouldn't be that much of a hardship, but an unnecessary annoyance none the less.  I also tried visiting my online bank, and for some reason, it kept telling me my log in details were incorrect, but I am 100% certain they were right, and tried it three times.  I then went back to Moz, and logged in successfully, with exactly the same log in details as I was using with Opera.

I also tried out the Mail client, but found it over cluttered and too complicated for a 'first timer'.  I wanted to get it to import my mail accounts from Moz Mail, and after 15 minutes, I had still only managed to import one account, including mail, which I then had trouble finding.  I have to admit, I lost patience with it at that point, so maybe I could have customised it to my preferences, but quite frankly, I couldn't be arsed, when there doesn't seem to be any benefits of using Opera over Mozilla or Firefox.