Journal #5135
Posted 16 years ago2008-06-12 22:28:35 UTC
I've been using the Opera Internet browsers for a long time now: since version 6 or 7. I've been a pretty dedicated user and anyone who knows me will know I'm pretty vocal about Opera's superiority over competing browsers.
Opera 9.5 was released yesterday and for the first time ever, it feels like they've taken a step in the wrong direction. The new skin that it starts with is, frankly, crap: it's messy, the icons are unclear and it generally feels uncomfortable. I found the original Opera skin and applied it, but even then I had to fiddle with the layout in order to get it as close as I could to the original version. Honestly, if you're going to make such an abrupt change, why would you completely ditch the previous layout and skin? Some people LIKED it.
The Mail and RSS are somewhat updated as well, with a better database system in order to make it faster to import and read. While I have noticed some speed boosts, the changes made to the GUI make it rather annoying and they didn't fix issues that should've been fixed ages ago. For starters, spam email still shows up in the Received folder: if it's marked as spam, why the hell isn't it seperate from the normal mail? RSS feeds are now more closely related to the Mail client. Everytime a new RSS feed comes in, Opera automatically opens the 'Feeds' section in the mail bar and doesn't close it. I access my feeds through the 'Feeds' menu in the top bar and not through the mail client, so all this does is make a mess of the mail bar.
See the Trash icon there? In Opera 9.2, the trash is shared by all mail accounts and the RSS feeds. If you emptied the trash from any account, it will empty all the trash. Now they've decided that's not good enough: you have to manually switch the mail account (using the thing under the 'Compose' button) and empty the trash for each account, including the RSS feeds.
Overall, Opera doesn't quite feel like Opera anymore. Perhaps I'm not used to it yet, but it seems to lack the stability that Opera 9.2 had. Not that crashes or anything, but it just feels...flimsy. I'm disappointed that they've changed stuff in Opera and not for the better. I only hope that other users feel the same way I do and barrack for changes in a future update.
Opera 9.5 was released yesterday and for the first time ever, it feels like they've taken a step in the wrong direction. The new skin that it starts with is, frankly, crap: it's messy, the icons are unclear and it generally feels uncomfortable. I found the original Opera skin and applied it, but even then I had to fiddle with the layout in order to get it as close as I could to the original version. Honestly, if you're going to make such an abrupt change, why would you completely ditch the previous layout and skin? Some people LIKED it.
The Mail and RSS are somewhat updated as well, with a better database system in order to make it faster to import and read. While I have noticed some speed boosts, the changes made to the GUI make it rather annoying and they didn't fix issues that should've been fixed ages ago. For starters, spam email still shows up in the Received folder: if it's marked as spam, why the hell isn't it seperate from the normal mail? RSS feeds are now more closely related to the Mail client. Everytime a new RSS feed comes in, Opera automatically opens the 'Feeds' section in the mail bar and doesn't close it. I access my feeds through the 'Feeds' menu in the top bar and not through the mail client, so all this does is make a mess of the mail bar.
Overall, Opera doesn't quite feel like Opera anymore. Perhaps I'm not used to it yet, but it seems to lack the stability that Opera 9.2 had. Not that crashes or anything, but it just feels...flimsy. I'm disappointed that they've changed stuff in Opera and not for the better. I only hope that other users feel the same way I do and barrack for changes in a future update.
10 Comments
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To be fair though, I barely use RSS feeds and I don't use Mail at all.
....with firefox.
I didn't like 9.25.
Some of the new features are really rather nice and it is definately faster, and lighter on system resources.