Comments on: 9 Coolest Opera Widgets

By: rkm

rkm — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:23:53 +0000

@Dava and cousin333: If you're using Windows you can use this widget tab replacement. It works quite similar to the Heads Up Display for Yahoo! Widgets.

By: ia

ia — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 06:13:33 +0000

I see “orakel” has commented here and on my blog post. -_-;

By: cousin333

cousin333 — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:24:14 +0000

Dava: guess what: Opera Widgets have worked in the very same manner, you descibed with the Konspose example :). That design was in the preview builds, before Opera 9 final. There was a centered button on the top of the screen. If you’ve clicked on it, background darkened, and there came the widgets :). I don’t really now, why they changed this behaviour to the one you see now. At least an option should have been left to change between the former and the present solution.

Sorry for my poor English…

By: orakel

orakel — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:25:24 +0000

Sigh (also: re: why Opera will not have an adblocker), this is very tiring. How is this ‘cool’? Its not. A serious/professional/corporate user wouldn’t run these toys. Me neither, I don’t want all these bells and whistles. If I want such features I run a standalone application for that. What I want is a browser which is simple and effective at one thing: browsing (HTTP protocol). So what would be a ‘cool’ (as in useful) thing to have would be widgets or addons which enhance that experience. For example an adblocker (like e.g. Firefox Adblocker) or a javascript/flash/shockwave blocker (like e.g. Firefox NoScript extension). I’ve found something which resembles an Adblocker although it doesn’t have an update function at all. I’m still searching for a NoScript equiv (manually enabling and disabling globally is not user-friendly so don’t bring that up, thanks). And no, “using Firefox” is not an option or solution either.

For those who whine that such means you lose income: whine, whine. Your advertisements are bothering me. I never buy due to an advertisement in my browser I buy from worth-of-mouth (e.g. from knowledgeable peers) [or: word-of-mouth]. By forcing me to view your ads, you are getting money for advertisements which are ineffective as I will not buy due to your advertisements anyway. You’re also wasting my time and browser experience while -I assume- you have something interesting to say. The former is dishonest to both the advertisement corporation as well as the people who are trying to advertise (read: spam) on your website. Get a job and accept that by having and hosting a website you have some (small) expenses. They’re not *that* high. If they are, get a better hosting corp. Also, the small percentage of people who block advertisements is negligable. Thanks for your understanding.

I’m not saying Opera should have an adblocker btw. Firefox doesn’t either. However he option to have this feature in Opera could be more user-friendly and major Opera websites could discuss it more. Same for NoScript-like feature.

Now, to end with something positive: the way Opera (and even IE) handle cookies is far better than the way Firefox does (although this can be enhanced in Firefox with an extension).

By: Dava

Dava — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:17:57 +0000

The killer feature in Konfabulator (Yahoo! Widgets) is the Konspose (Heads-up Display) feature - this alone makes widgets useful in a desktop environment. Opera’s widgets doesn’t have anything like this (that I know of and I have asked around the forums).

Until Opera Widgets become more user friendly they are going to derided across the Opera community. IMO, retrospectively they have been a poorly implemented feature.

Dava

By: Daniel Goldman

Daniel Goldman — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:37:42 +0000

Romain, it took me a while to figure out that I could open Widgets on startup using sessions. I, too, wish for a startup option built in the widget itself.

By: Romain

Romain — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:30:15 +0000

Ah! So, using sessions was the key for making widgets open with Opera…

I think it would be easier with an option in the contextual menu of each menu, saying for instance « Open on Opera startup », since, until now, I didn’t know how to do…

By: Genjinaro

Genjinaro — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:32:29 +0000

You know, I never paid too much attention to the widget generator. I never knew you could make one for youtube vids either. Usually I’m tabbing back and forth between clips. I’ll have to try this generator on the weekend.

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:18:47 +0000

I tried widgets on Linux and windows and I still think Opera’s widgets are uncool:
- no fancy shadow nor transparency (just try for few minutes the yahoo widgets to see what I mean)
- no OS integration: no possible connection to OS info and neither other software. For instance no way to have a widget with cpu usage or the outlook tasks
- poor linux desktop integration: the widgets are not even sticky on gnome, so they disappear when you switch workspace