Opera 15 Released

[Anubis]

so ive been using Opera since 2002 as my primary browser (version 6 IIRC)
i played with 15 for maybe 10 minutes before i uninstalled it. its crap if i wanted chrome id use it but i don't cause its crap

guess im sticking to 12.x until they get all the features into the new one or ill just move to FF at some point

Ugh... where's the toolbar? where's custom bookmarks bar? It looks and feels too much like IE10/chrome yuck. Heck, where are the normal bookmarks!!!?!

At least when you install O15, O12 remains and you can still use it instead.

all of this!

 

[zokudu]

New Blog post up. They're prioritizing native bookmarking since so many users requested it.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2013/07/10/ctrl-z-of-ctrl-d

I don't really use bookmarks but I'm glad Opera is listening to it's users, reassures that they want to do this right.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Good to here, but they've got a LONG way to go.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Glad to hear they are adding bookmarks, thanks!

Also does anyone know if you can manually check if there is a new version available?

how do updates work in this version? I haven't seen where you can check the version it is.

 

[taq8ojh]

New Blog post up. They're prioritizing native bookmarking since so many users requested it.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2013/07/10/ctrl-z-of-ctrl-d

I don't really use bookmarks but I'm glad Opera is listening to it's users, reassures that they want to do this right.

But they will still be in the idiotic speed dial page, no?

 

[alexruiz]

As another die hard Opera fan, I took 15 for a spin.

Opera always had personality, but 15 feels insipid. In addition of the lack of toolbars, for the life of me I coudn't find the feature I always thought was Opera's finest: The WAND. 15 feels like a browser in development. Will be sticking to 12.16

ps. How on earth Opera 12.16, fully featured is a 13MB download; yet minimalistic 15 is a 30MB download?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I'm guessing the new engine/codebase has something to do with the larger download.

I am surprised at the lack of ways to do basic things such as checking for updates!


EDIT -
Just noticed my shortcut was gone! Apparently it automatically updated itself but removed the shortcut for some reason. bizarre!
also when looking for it, I noticed that there is a folder for the previous version still there. I wonder if it keeps all previous versions??!

 

[taq8ojh]

Makes you wonder what were they thinking to release that shit as stable.

 

[bruceb]

I got the notice about the update to V12.16 about 2 days ago. It wanted to update itself and I did not see the full download for V12.16 on the Opera web site. I was able to get it from Filehippo ... I always like to have the full installers, just in case I need them for a clean install. Same for Java & Flash.

Note: I can not find any old versions of Opera on the Opera site or on their FTP Server. Most companies have enough sense to let you access them somehow.

 

[zokudu]

I got the notice about the update to V12.16 about 2 days ago. It wanted to update itself and I did not see the full download for V12.16 on the Opera web site. I was able to get it from Filehippo ... I always like to have the full installers, just in case I need them for a clean install. Same for Java & Flash.

Note: I can not find any old versions of Opera on the Opera site or on their FTP Server. Most companies have enough sense to let you access them somehow.

Opera 12.16 is a little bit lower down on their "computer" page. Near the bottom below See it in Action. http://www.opera.com/computer

Also versions 10-12.16 are available on their FTP site.
http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/

 

[bruceb]

Those are sure well hidden and hard to find.

 

[lxskllr]

Because Opera has changed significantly. It has matured, perhaps. Maybe - just maybe - the interests of investors and shareholders are considered more important than they used to be? Now, I'm trying to not automatically imply that this is A Bad Thing. Investors have given Opera millions of their own money, enabled much of what we have achieved. Shareholders believe in us and bet on Opera's growth with just as significant amounts of money. It's important stuff - and I think the "new Opera" is going to deliver dividends and growth and such things. Heck, I own some shares myself and I have no immediate plans of selling them. And obviously, the technical magic at Opera was supported by some financial and legal magic which I was blisfully unaware of.

And yet.. I'm used to working in an idea-driven context. When Opera Unite was dropped, I made a comment to a colleague and thought he was joking when he replied "well, if you figure out a way to earn money on having Unite, I'm sure they will keep it". I was laughing. He couldn't really be serious: were we supposed to ship only features that earned us money from now on? Not develop anything for the excitement? How funny!

And then we suddenly dropped Presto/Carakan/Quick, and I admit this feels like a major and miserable failure. Now, I never worked on the Presto source code - I know some developers find Chromium code easier to work with. I myself had long been envious of Chrome's quality, standards support and above all the stunning QA and development processes that enabled Google's unstoppable and apparently regression-free stream of improvements. Having less site compat work to do recently even enabled me to contribute significant improvements to the XMLHttpRequest standard's test suite - as an example of what we might achieve when engine maintenance and support becomes less demanding. And the first time I fired up a Chromium-based Opera Mobile build and saw GMail and Google Docs load beautifully was bittersweet. Surrender and victory at once.

http://my.opera.com/hallvors/blog/goodbye

 

[zokudu]

http://my.opera.com/hallvors/blog/goodbye

Sad to read but to be honest I don't hate them for it. They nuked the browser as it was. It was their choice, either start from scratch or plug in the new engine. They went with scratch and hopefully they can bring it to a place that I'm happy with. I don't think they will end up any worse off in 5 years than if they stayed with Presto, as the web evolves they were getting left behind.

 

[lxskllr]

Sad to read but to be honest I don't hate them for it. They nuked the browser as it was. It was their choice, either start from scratch or plug in the new engine. They went with scratch and hopefully they can bring it to a place that I'm happy with. I don't think they will end up any worse off in 5 years than if they stayed with Presto, as the web evolves they were getting left behind.

Yea, I don't have an informed opinion one way or the other. I just thought it was an interesting post. I'm disappointed in them dropping the in house technologies, but if they can distinguish themselves with webkit(not ape Chrome), it could all work out. Maybe using more mainstream technologies will get them more market share :shrugs:

 

[taq8ojh]

So the switch can only mean their own engine was buggy and outdated as hell. Couldn't they just fix the damn thing which they were familiar with code-wise, rather than taking different browser and try to make it look a little bit like Opera?

It's not even Opera anymore anyway.

 

[zokudu]

Wanted to put this somewhere but I don't think it deserved its own thread. Opera just released their Development branch which currently contains Opera 17. Significant because this is the first branch with any feature additions since the initial release of Opera 15. As of right now bookmarks backend is in but it's not enabled yet.

Also search engine manager has returned along with pinned tabs (and promise of future tab enhancements).

It looks like they're getting back on track to me and are at least listening and more importantly implementing requested changes.

http://my (dot) opera (dot) com/desktopteam/blog/2013/08/08/opera-17-first-developer-stream-preview

(url is blocked?)

 

[nemesismk2]

thanks for the info about opera 15

 

[OGOC]

Just tried it for a bit. Opera 17 already has a little bit of Opera character going on. Has a ways to go to get more features added, but hopefully it will turn out like first hoped: basically Opera 12 with a different engine underneath.

If it had 2-3 more Opera 12 features I use a lot, I might even keep using it right now. Maybe in Opera 18.

I saw a mention somewhere about Opera 15+ can use Opera 12 skins. I'm using old Opera skins with 12 (from back before "skins" meant just changing the background color on top). But, no, doesn't work.

 

[OGOC]

For those who don't know:

"Thanks to this extension you will be able to download and install extensions from Google Chrome Web Store directly in your Opera browser."
https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/download-chrome-extension-9/?display=en

Doesn't work on everything, but maybe it will work on things you use.

 

[carlito77]

Just tried it for a bit. Opera 17 already has a little bit of Opera character going on. Has a ways to go to get more features added, but hopefully it will turn out like first hoped: basically Opera 12 with a different engine underneath.

If it had 2-3 more Opera 12 features I use a lot, I might even keep using it right now. Maybe in Opera 18.

I saw a mention somewhere about Opera 15+ can use Opera 12 skins. I'm using old Opera skins with 12 (from back before "skins" meant just changing the background color on top). But, no, doesn't work.

Opera 17? It's out already? No way.

 

[taq8ojh]

It's not even beta, calm down I would say it will take a few months until it gets released as stable (and FF will be v50 by then).