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Is Opera fairly popular in other countries? I have a feeling this won't go over well with a large portion of the U.S.-based power-users that use it...

by lytedev 10y ago

toomanythings4 10y ago
It's very popular in countries and continents like India, Asia and Africa. Specifically on small, cheap phones.
- KayL 10y ago
  Mainly the Opera Mini I think.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  Do these phones typically run Android? Or older OSes that have a mobile JVM?
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    Mostly Android nowadays, far as I'm aware.
    - toomanythings4 10y ago
      So are you going with them, Geoffrey?
jonknee 10y ago
Surely there aren't enough US based "power users" for it to matter.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  I use Opera regularly, but I think many of the 'power users' preferred Opera 12 to the WebKit/Blink versions, as there was a feature cull during this transition. Vivaldi is the spiritual successor to Presto-based Opera. https://vivaldi.com/?lang=en https://vivaldi.com/?lang=en
  - stinkytaco 10y ago
    Spiritual successor in the sense that it is highly customizable with lots of shortcuts? From a technological perspective, it seems quite different. One of Opera's great strengths was how "native" it felt on every platform, plus a full suite of Internet tools. This doesn't seem to do chat, email, bittorrent, etc.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      > "Spiritual successor in the sense that it is highly customizable with lots of shortcuts?" Spiritual successor in the sense it's targeted at power users, has aims to revive some of the classic Opera functionality, and because it's developed by ex-Opera personnel. I'd recommend taking a look at the Vivaldi Wikipedia page for some of the background into how it came to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)
    - lucideer 10y ago
      It does email at least, and maybe bittorrent and chat. The native feel seems largely to have been Opera 12's downfall; they just didn't have the resources/manpower to maintain their own (very brilliant) internals/rendering engine/etc. on top of the power-user UI + featureset. Vivaldi looks to be attempting to recreate the latter (poweruser UI+features) and dropping the former (by relying on Chromium/ReactJS for internals), so it's very much a large compromise if you like Opera 12. Overall, the main criticism I would have is not opensourcing it. This is an old tired argument, but in this specific case it's painfully relevant given the huge resources that went into creating Opera 12's internals which then couldn't be community-forked.
      - Mithaldu 10y ago
        > The native feel seems largely to have been Opera 12's downfall; they just didn't have the resources/manpower to maintain their own Nope. What happened is that they started getting more and more into the ad business as a way to make real income, and they got very successful in the mobile area with that, to the point that they didn't need the browser anymore. All it took after that was a bunch of MBAs to have the smart idea to convert the browser to a token marketing effort, edge out the founders' ideas, and pivot towards the ad business full force.
Mithaldu 10y ago
What power users? Any power users that used Opera for that aspect are still using v12, which is unaffected by this, entirely; and no power user would use the chromium fork they put out with v15 and upwards, because all it offers is a dearth of features.
- nisa 10y ago
  I became a huge fan of Opera Mobile in the last few months. It's the only browser that feels fast on my Android device and I'm actually a fan of the proxy as well as the possibility to block ads and omit images. It is a godsend for the notoriously small german data packages. I'm not checking my mail with it but it's great for a fast Google search here and there.

Is Opera fairly popular in other countries? I have a feeling this won't go over well with a large portion of the U.S.-based power-users that use it...

by lytedev 10y ago

Is Opera fairly popular in other countries? I have a feeling this won't go over well with a large portion of the U.S.-based power-users that use it...

toomanythings4 10y ago

It's very popular in countries and continents like India, Asia and Africa. Specifically on small, cheap phones.

KayL 10y ago
Mainly the Opera Mini I think.
justinlardinois 10y ago
Do these phones typically run Android? Or older OSes that have a mobile JVM?
- gsnedders 10y ago
  Mostly Android nowadays, far as I'm aware.
  - toomanythings4 10y ago
    So are you going with them, Geoffrey?

jonknee 10y ago

Surely there aren't enough US based "power users" for it to matter.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
I use Opera regularly, but I think many of the 'power users' preferred Opera 12 to the WebKit/Blink versions, as there was a feature cull during this transition. Vivaldi is the spiritual successor to Presto-based Opera. https://vivaldi.com/?lang=en https://vivaldi.com/?lang=en
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  Spiritual successor in the sense that it is highly customizable with lots of shortcuts? From a technological perspective, it seems quite different. One of Opera's great strengths was how "native" it felt on every platform, plus a full suite of Internet tools. This doesn't seem to do chat, email, bittorrent, etc.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "Spiritual successor in the sense that it is highly customizable with lots of shortcuts?" Spiritual successor in the sense it's targeted at power users, has aims to revive some of the classic Opera functionality, and because it's developed by ex-Opera personnel. I'd recommend taking a look at the Vivaldi Wikipedia page for some of the background into how it came to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)
  - lucideer 10y ago
    It does email at least, and maybe bittorrent and chat. The native feel seems largely to have been Opera 12's downfall; they just didn't have the resources/manpower to maintain their own (very brilliant) internals/rendering engine/etc. on top of the power-user UI + featureset. Vivaldi looks to be attempting to recreate the latter (poweruser UI+features) and dropping the former (by relying on Chromium/ReactJS for internals), so it's very much a large compromise if you like Opera 12. Overall, the main criticism I would have is not opensourcing it. This is an old tired argument, but in this specific case it's painfully relevant given the huge resources that went into creating Opera 12's internals which then couldn't be community-forked.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      > The native feel seems largely to have been Opera 12's downfall; they just didn't have the resources/manpower to maintain their own Nope. What happened is that they started getting more and more into the ad business as a way to make real income, and they got very successful in the mobile area with that, to the point that they didn't need the browser anymore. All it took after that was a bunch of MBAs to have the smart idea to convert the browser to a token marketing effort, edge out the founders' ideas, and pivot towards the ad business full force.

Mithaldu 10y ago

What power users? Any power users that used Opera for that aspect are still using v12, which is unaffected by this, entirely; and no power user would use the chromium fork they put out with v15 and upwards, because all it offers is a dearth of features.

nisa 10y ago
I became a huge fan of Opera Mobile in the last few months. It's the only browser that feels fast on my Android device and I'm actually a fan of the proxy as well as the possibility to block ads and omit images. It is a godsend for the notoriously small german data packages. I'm not checking my mail with it but it's great for a fast Google search here and there.