Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#1

Post by tnorthcutt » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 12:57 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#2

Post by Khao » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:09 PM UTC

I don't use Opera and I never test it because the user base is not big enough to matter. My experience with Opera has always resulted in broken websites because of their poor rendering engine (in my opinion). I still can't believe the Opera browser has existed from the beginning of browsers and still exists today and their market share hasn't really gone up significantly.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#3

Post by iwwr » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:15 PM UTC

Khao wrote: post #2

I don't use Opera and I never test it because the user base is not big enough to matter. My experience with Opera has always resulted in broken websites because of their poor rendering engine (in my opinion). I still can't believe the Opera browser has existed from the beginning of browsers and still exists today and their market share hasn't really gone up significantly.

In places like Russia or the CSI countries, Opera is the leading browser, with between 24% to 40% market share. It's not a browser you want to ignore if you want to appeal to those markets.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#4

Post by TobbenTM » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:17 PM UTC

Use it only for desktop and mobile (of course). The desktop version is somewhat "heavy" so I tend to use Chrome on lapotops etc. But in a way I feel that Opera is a more complete browser. The speedial is genius, and with the ability to make extensions for it, it has alot more potensial. The other thing I really like, which I have been unable to find in other browser (that is equally good) is mousegestures. After just a bit of use, it gets in your muscles and creating and closing tabs, moving back and forth between pages has never been easier. My 5 cents.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#5

Post by robin_reala » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:19 PM UTC

I used to use it on Symbian, but since moving to an iPhone it’s not an option. Well, there’s Opera Mini but that’s really not a great experience on iOS.

Regarding the desktop browser, I prefer to use open-source browsers, and (imho) Dragonfly isn’t as good as Firebug.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#6

Post by oceanician » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:22 PM UTC

Yeah, though I do find having Firefox as well helps occasionally (mostly fb if I'm honest)

Main browser across Windows and Ubunutu (and OSX when I used that)

Having DragonFly - native DOM inspector, built in rather than external like FF is really very good. (In my experience some plugins seem to kill the perf of FF)

Continually recommend it to replace people's bundled mobile phone brower - well Opera Mobile.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#7

Post by dfxm12 » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:24 PM UTC

I used to use it on my Blackberry Storm, but I have no need for it now that I have a different phone.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#8

Post by mkuhn » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:24 PM UTC

This poll will have a huge bias because Opera Users are going to be more likely to respond to it.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#9

Post by Khao » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:25 PM UTC

iwwr wrote: post #3

Khao wrote: post #2

I don't use Opera and I never test it because the user base is not big enough to matter. My experience with Opera has always resulted in broken websites because of their poor rendering engine (in my opinion). I still can't believe the Opera browser has existed from the beginning of browsers and still exists today and their market share hasn't really gone up significantly.

In places like Russia or the CSI countries, Opera is the leading browser, with between 24% to 40% market share. It's not a browser you want to ignore if you want to appeal to those markets.

Oh well, I never really targeted those countries. Where I worked previously we simply looked at our browser statistics and Opera was below 1% so we ditched it pretty quickly, unless one feature was really broken to the point where the vital tasks cannot be done (1% of a really huge user base still counts a little). We would often have an "if Opera" and replace our pages with a stripped-down version that worked on Opera. For every other minor bug and rendering differences, Opera was completely ignored.

Re: Poll: Do you use Opera (the browser)?

#10

Post by mrspandex » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:25 PM UTC

Subjectively, Opera manages a large number of tabs much better for me than FF, and has a much nicer UI than Chrome. They seem to do a lot of innovation in browser UI and features, which the other browsers eventually copy (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I really wish it had more marketshare so it would be better supported, but 95% of websites and features work without issue.