3 ms·

Very insightful blog post, which is very much in tune with my opinion on Opera. It's rare for someone who worked at a company to have such good perspective. It

by halo 15y ago

Very insightful blog post, which is very much in tune with my opinion on Opera. It's rare for someone who worked at a company to have such good perspective. It's definitely true that the main reason why Opera has struggled on the desktop is because of a lack of polish. The UI has always felt clunky, non-native and awkward. That is a major reason why I switched from Opera to Firefox (née Phoenix) many years ago and haven't looked back since. UI has always been their weak link, while their performance and rendering engine has always been top-notch. Having tried Opera 11.5 for the first time, it's certainly a huge leap forward. It's not perfect, but it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb like previous versions. The downside is that it's a bit too close to Firefox/Chrome to provide a compelling reason to switch, and it still has too much irrelevent crap front-and-centre coupled with its own UI quirks (e.g. why is "Show menu" in the "File" menu and not in 'View'?). Even so, a vast improvement. I think it's far too easy to blame their low marketshare on their miniscule marketing budget. Mozilla faced similar problems. Mozilla failed when they had a crap product in SeaMonkey (née Mozilla Suite) and succeded when they had a compelling product in Firefox. If Opera can create a similarly compelling product, I have no doubt that many people would happily switch. I think Opera's best approach would be to focus on Opera Mobile. Mobile is the browser growth market, I suspect it's easier to convince users to try a mobile browser than a desktop one, and they should be able to translate mobile marketshare into desktop marketshare.

gnosis 15y ago
"I think it's far too easy to blame their low marketshare on their miniscule marketing budget. Mozilla faced similar problems. Mozilla failed when they had a crap product in SeaMonkey (née Mozilla Suite) and succeded when they had a compelling product in Firefox." This is an important point, but I'm not sure that it's clear exactly why Firefox was so "compelling". I remember when Firefox first came out, it was billed as a "faster Mozilla". I gave it a try, because I'd found that the original Mozilla browser was bloated and slow, and I was hoping Firefox might live up to the hype. But, no. Firefox was just as slow and bloated as Mozilla. In fact, from an end-user's perspective, they seemed pretty identical, except for the name. Yet people jumped all over Firefox like it was the Second Coming. Now, I understand that Firefox does have one great advantage over Opera, which is that it's open source, while Opera is closed source. But the original Mozilla browser was also open source, and it didn't get a fraction of the interest Firefox got. Another advantage was that Firefox had extensions, but (if I recall correctly) the original Mozilla browser had them too. So, can Firefox's success over the original Mozilla browser be chalked up completely to the name change? Would Opera have been more successful had they simply rebranded it with a sexier name, or claimed that the "new" browser they'd released was a "faster Opera"?
- halo 15y ago
  I'd argue that the key difference in Firefox was the UI. It was slimmed down and tidied up, with all the unnecessary clutter removed. Firefox also shamelessly copied and polished up the best features from Opera (i.e. tabs and integrated search), attracting many early adopter Opera users, plus the fact it was free rather than ad-supported gave the browser a wider audience than Opera ever could. Changing the name, the theme and the unused Communicator bloat (Mail, Composer, Chatzilla) was more symbolic in distancing Mozilla from the negative associations of the mostly terrible Communicator than anything else. It's interesting to read the comments from Phoenix 0.2 on Slashdot (http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/07/1739241/Phoenix-02-Web-Browser-Lean-Mean-Mozilla http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/07/1739241/Phoeni...). Their comments system is terrible these days, though.

by halo 15y ago

gnosis 15y ago

"I think it's far too easy to blame their low marketshare on their miniscule marketing budget. Mozilla faced similar problems. Mozilla failed when they had a crap product in SeaMonkey (née Mozilla Suite) and succeded when they had a compelling product in Firefox." This is an important point, but I'm not sure that it's clear exactly why Firefox was so "compelling". I remember when Firefox first came out, it was billed as a "faster Mozilla". I gave it a try, because I'd found that the original Mozilla browser was bloated and slow, and I was hoping Firefox might live up to the hype. But, no. Firefox was just as slow and bloated as Mozilla. In fact, from an end-user's perspective, they seemed pretty identical, except for the name. Yet people jumped all over Firefox like it was the Second Coming. Now, I understand that Firefox does have one great advantage over Opera, which is that it's open source, while Opera is closed source. But the original Mozilla browser was also open source, and it didn't get a fraction of the interest Firefox got. Another advantage was that Firefox had extensions, but (if I recall correctly) the original Mozilla browser had them too. So, can Firefox's success over the original Mozilla browser be chalked up completely to the name change? Would Opera have been more successful had they simply rebranded it with a sexier name, or claimed that the "new" browser they'd released was a "faster Opera"?

halo 15y ago
I'd argue that the key difference in Firefox was the UI. It was slimmed down and tidied up, with all the unnecessary clutter removed. Firefox also shamelessly copied and polished up the best features from Opera (i.e. tabs and integrated search), attracting many early adopter Opera users, plus the fact it was free rather than ad-supported gave the browser a wider audience than Opera ever could. Changing the name, the theme and the unused Communicator bloat (Mail, Composer, Chatzilla) was more symbolic in distancing Mozilla from the negative associations of the mostly terrible Communicator than anything else. It's interesting to read the comments from Phoenix 0.2 on Slashdot (http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/07/1739241/Phoenix-02-Web-Browser-Lean-Mean-Mozilla http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/10/07/1739241/Phoeni...). Their comments system is terrible these days, though.