The Guardian also has a “how to complain page” at http://www.guardian.co.uk/information/guardianunlimited/story/0,,824307,00.html

To me tabbed browsing without normal window controls (like in Opera) feels like an extremely limited implementation of MDI, useful in text editors, but not in browsers, but that’s just a personal opinion. Either way, Firefox and IE open their popups in a separate window, kind of seems to defeat the MDI interface to me.

@ hog

>> Tabbed browsing is a subset of MDI.
>
> I’m afraid you are wrong. Many MDI applications
> don’t have tabs.

I’m afraid you are wrong. TDI is a subset of MDI. All tabbed applications are MDI. All MDI applications are not tabbed aplications.

Anyway, Cassidy, I am sure your arguments are really convincing him to write about Opera… Great one.

Quit the patronizing shite. I’m not trying to convice him, just pointing out the ilogical reasoning. Convince a journalist to do his job right?. Not my business.

Anyway, Cassidy, I am sure your arguments are really convincing him to write about Opera… Great one.

I don’t know whether or not this was supposed to be sarcastic but just in case: Cassidy was actually right. There’s no reason not to talk about Opera in the article, especially when the author explicitly mentions features first implemented by Opera.

The author’s comment in this blog was vague at best — he didn’t actually explain why Opera was left out and a bizarre experiment like uBrowser was mentioned instead — so it looks like the article was rather biased. He had the opportunity to clarify his point but he avoided a clear explanation…not sure why you think Cassidy’s comment was wrong…

I think the philosophy to let the user decide what it wants is good for the power user…

…isn’t that the philosophy behind extensions? I thought Opera *was* trying to decide what is best for the user by including bittorrent, mail client, chat, etc. Your issue is that Opera provides more than one way to get access to a feature? Look, I do usability work for a living- I know about overloading the user with options, creating a simple UI to get the job done. But there *are* power users out there. They want an interface that does what they want. Apple has failed miserably in adapting iTunes to manage podcasts by only allowing one “streamlined” way to download and sync podcasts, thereby treating every single podcast in the same manner, completely ignoring the many different types, frequencies and user choice for managing them.

Personally, I don’t find the Opera interface bloated- in fact, I find it pretty much invisible. I do everything with mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts. Slowly, over the years of using Opera my toolbars are getting slimmer and less cluttered, I think less and less about the interface.

Is there a steep learning curve? I guess I would agree with that if you say that to use Opera “powerfully” (like I do) then yeah- it does. But isn’t it like that with any tool? I find it much more of a learning curve to research extensions and find out what would work best for me that I should install in order to get firefox to have the same capabilities that make it feel like the UI is invisible. With firefox I have to seek out the feature and then learn out to use and configure it. With Opera, it’s already there, I just have to figure out how to use it.

But out of the box? It’s just as easy to use for the novice as any other browser I would think. Finding a compelling reason to switch… that *is* interesting to explore….well, that’s a problem for Opera’s marketing department isn’t it? From an IE user perspective, what’s the difference between an out of the box firefox install and Opera? Speed, security, tabs, community,… it’s all there.

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
GT4-kla-
This market share stuff cracks me up. We now have (presumably) open source advocate/supporters who used to foster choice, innovation, anti-vendor lock-in, a level playing field, etc… now essentially defining “the market” as two browsers. You’re only willing to now look at the “marketshare slider” now that FF has a significant share. Now you want to use it to diminish other browsers. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I thought the whole point of Firefox was to have a safe, fast, different experience? I thought it was “hey, we can do this better than the product that is out there?” - now that you have that, we’re back to looking at market share again just like IE supporters did in the past to minimize the competition? So whenever another browser tries to do something different, innovative, competitive…something that breaks away from the (in your mind) two major browsers, we’re just going to turn a blind eye and say “who cares, they don’t have any marketshare.” How do you feel about someone who sets the “major browser/marketshare slider” to the >50 percent? Do you really want two or three browsers deciding what works best as a client/interface to the web?

How about we all just focus on open standards and let proprietary companies, open source companies, some girl hacking away in her basement, etc, build their vision of a user interface and client browser and not force it everyone’s face that not everyone in the world is using the exact same product.

The tailors on savile row in London aren’t exactly the major marketshare of suit makers, but I’d much rather have them provide me with a suit then the Men’s Warehouse. *Regardless* of the quality of the MW suit, I’d rather have something that (seems) designed especially for me and fits me best.

I’d say Opera is a “Major Browser” if anything just based on the history of the company and the innovation and contribution they provide to the industry. Discounting that with marketshare numbers is foolish and irresponsible.

* There are three ways to search in a page: ‘Ctrl + f’ for a regular search, ‘.’ for inline search and ‘search in page’ in the search field, all with different interfaces.

* There are three ways to see your bookmarks: In the bookmark menu, the bookmark panel and the bookmark window, with different interfaces.

* Standard keyboard shortcuts are often incompatible with major browsers.

I think the philosophy to let the user decide what it wants is good for the power user, but as long as Opera is engaged to this philosophy, power users are the only users that Opera will get. I think Opera should learn a bit from Apple and Steve Jobs, who seem to know what is best for the user without trying to fulfill everyone’s whishes.

I’m afraid you are wrong. Many MDI applications don’t have tabs. If TDI would be a subset of MDI, all MDI applications would have tabs.

But despite having only 1 per cent market share in the US and only 5-10 per cent in Europe and Asia, Opera can be considered “major” because there is actually a lot of recognition out there. Even years ago, Opera was taken into consideration by sites when designing. Not as much as IE and Firefox today, but it was still the case.

Anyway, Cassidy, I am sure your arguments are really convincing him to write about Opera… Great one.