Opera’s UI and customization interview: Submit your questions
Published September 10th, 2007 5:42 PM EDT By Daniel GoldmanA hotly debated topic within the Opera community is how many and which options/settings should be enabled by default in order to keep the desktop browser simple and usable. Opera, of course, provides a boatload of customization options for both casual and heavy tweakers.
Rijk van Geijtenbeek works on the Opera Desktop team; he is one of the top customization experts of the Opera browser. Rijk is one of the people behind many of the changes with the user interface (UI) and user experience of the Opera desktop browser. Rijk is also the author of the popular list ‘The 150 popular Firefox extensions in Opera’.
With the first alpha of Opera 9.5 you’ve already seen some of these changes. For example, we’ve removed single keyboard shortcuts, modified some keyboard shortcuts to be more aligned with the other major browsers, disabled the Start bar by default, etc.
I’ve asked Rijk to answer any questions you may have regarding Opera’s UI, customizing Opera, and the issue of maintaining the proper balance between providing lots of options and keeping the program simple and usable.
Submit your questions for Rijk in the comments to this post. Please try to keep the questions on topic. I’ll post the interview with Rijk’s answers in the coming weeks.
Note: This is an interview, not a wish list for the Opera browser. 
using
What was the logic for why the double-click text context menu (http://operawatch.com/news/2007/07/opera-tip-how-to-disable-the-context-menu-when-double-clicking-on-text.html) was left enabled by default? I thought the consensus was pretty much that this was a power user feature, and should be disabled by default, like single keyboard shortcuts.
using
This one is for advanced tweakers, about Opera drag and drop custom buttons which starts with opera:/button/
I love Opera Custom buttons. And I’m working on some social bookmarking buttons at the moment. But I’ve ran into some trouble with buttons. What’s the proper syntax, what am I supposed to put inbetween each comma and which substitute codes for characters like %20 should I use and what’s their meaning?
using
Some comments from me…
- why completely remove things that are used by people? The view bar is a typical example, but the same is holds for the very informative little status pane at the bottom of the mail panel. Not that there hasn’t been the same problem with the start bar before….
I can also see how one-key shortcuts are bad for noobs - but why completely revamp everything without a way back? If opera already supports multiple keyboard shortcuts, why not ship it with the old layout, too, such that we “veterans” just have to go to the prefs and select our beloved old keyboard shortcuts…
- The sync icon is animated and going off way too often, drawing attention to it every minute or so. I found it good, but had to turn it off eventually because it became annoying
- is anyone actually using the rewind and fast forward buttons? My super representative survey among two opera users shows that they shouldn’t be in a default setup because their usefulness is not really clear…
- I find it incredibly unintuitive that clicking the X in a panel closes the whole panel bar and not only that particular panel. And why the >> was removed from the defaults is also not entirely clear to me…
- Suggestion: on an empty page, clicking the “empty page” symbol on the left side of the address bar could open the bookmarks dialog.
- when typing to the address bar, the items that pop up are so different from anything that I’ve ever see pop up from an address bar that at the moment I don’t see their benefit. Some entries have, as far as I can see, no connection whatsoever with what I’m typing to the address bar.
- status notification, receiving emails and such: I have yet to find the new notifiers. I believe I have once seen something pop up for a millisecond in the panel, but I’m not sure.
- why the heck are dialogs in Opera modal? This is very annoying when helping people on #opera … sometimes you want to explain how something in the prefs dialog is supposed to look like, but you can’t write to the chat or anything while the prefs are open
- prefs could use some revamping. Nice icons (c;= I like Opera’s default skin, though
As you see, overall I’m pretty happy and satisfied!
using
The Qt4 under Linux is a nice step forward as we will get KDE4 soon and hence will see a complete Qt4 based desktop.
One thing I noticed is that the tabs are buttons with the native skin and such not only confuse but also make it look less integrated. Any particular design descision behind this?
The other important issue regarding the Qt4 version is, that it should be dynamically linked so one can actually use more skins than the few in Qt4.
An other question: How do you evaluate all the new changes especially the keyboard layout?
It will atleast annoy loyal old users of Opera and I wonder how deep those “unifications” will actually impact “switchers”.
WildEntes proposal to supply “classic” layouts is a nice idea as old users will have an easy way to switch. Maybe even ask on fist startup when upgrading from an older Opera version?!
I’m also curious why you removed the “View Bar” as power users will likely miss it and if it is disabled by default it will also not be that confusing for the average user as it is “hidden” in the customization panel - and those who like to play around will IMHO not be more “confused” when they have yet another option to make Opera the way they like it…
Anyway keep up the great work! Thanks for this great browser!
using
I was just going through this on a previous post, but it would be nice to control the click “gesture” of the mouse. That way I could change the “open in background tab” behavior to match Firefox and Internet Explorer, and I might also be able to make single-clicking on the blank area of the tab bar open a new tab (instead of double-clicking).
using
Why has Opera decided not to or not got around to adding UI elements for things such as;
Adding serperators in custom searches.
Positioning custom searches.
Enabling/disabling specific UserJS.
Creating custom buttons.
using
Why did you use QT for the Linux version instead of GTK?
using
It’s great to know that Opera changed View Source shortcut into Ctrl+U instead of previous Ctrl+F3. Since Ctrl+F3 already used to change between workspace (virtual desktop) on my Linux desktop.
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Is Opera considering to collect anonymus usage statistics? Microsoft (at least the Office team) seems to have made good experiences with that. How were the decisions for the UI changes in 9.5 made?
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How many people does Opera employ for desktop UE/UX?
How does the Desktop team make decisions about how and which features they expose?
- A
using
Here are my questions:
1. Will you consider adding “Home” button and Back/Forward/Reload buttons with little drop down arrows?
2. Do you think opera UI needs to utilize the space in the “Menu” bar ? May be incorporating already existing menu button with drop down full menu in the address bar and therefore eliminating menu bar completely?
3. Will you add a “color chooser” for opera skin like other programs (for example) windows media player?
4. Would you please add more opera help links in the “Help” menu item and add hyperlinks in Help>about page to each content ?
5. Does opera has any plan in changing interface such that drop down enu items like bookmark becomes right click editable like major browser such as IE ?
6. Do you really think think changing the keyboard shortcut in 9.5alpha make real sense especially when it made user to press more keys ? for example “paste and go” feature ?
Hope you guys kindly consider my queries.
using
Has any thought been given to ‘Applets’ that can reside in toolbar space?
Obviously I’m not talking about Java Applets, but instead little XML and JavaScript applets (sort of like widgets) that sit in a toolbar, and could do things like display weather, report how many e-mails you have, etc.
using
Has there been talk of making available more help and/or tutorials on the advanced UI features that Opera has to offer? Would it help to put more documentation (or maybe I’m just bad at searching) on the web? For example, I like to tinker with the keyboard shortcuts, yet there is no exhaustive documentation/reference on the many keyboard actions.
using
Do you think it would be possible to integrate all of the options in Preferences into one space, sort of like what was pre-Opera 8? I know it was kind of clunky back then, but now options are scattered all over and hard to find. I believe I saw a post in the forums somewhere about with a mockup of how to fix the dialog. Have you and the interface team started to develop any changes to it yet? (Most likely to show up in Opera 10 I bet…)
Related to the preferences dialog, and with Appearance as well, why don’t you have the size of the dialogs fixed? It can be very startling sometimes to see them large at a certain time, then minuscule at the very next.
Also, I have noticed how difficult it is to add a toolbar wherever I want it to go on the screen. Do you think it would be possible to allow a user to drag it wherever they want, sort of like a button? It is not enough to know how to make the toolbars look like they switched places, but to actually have them switch places. This seems like one of the most intuitive things Opera could add to its interface (and possibly make the IE7, Firefox, etc. users happy).
using
BTW, I’m different from the Ryan who posted here earlier.
using
ok, I just saw the notification for the first time. 3 rather wide boxes, one on top of the other, blocking the application I was just working on, the notifications unclickable, just hanging there in space, doing nothing but to inform me that I couldn’t continue doing what I was doing at that moment.
using
Why has Opera weakened the power of choice and completely removed the ‘View Bar’? I have not tried 9.5 Alpha and am now tentative about testing. I use the ‘View Bar’ often but do not have it shown while browsing (Could be why Opera thinks not much use it). The toggle button allows that to be done easily. I use it as a developer toolbar and extended address bar.
What was the reason for its removal (besides the belief that it wasn’t used alot or had bars already that can replace it)?
using
WildEnte,
Opera doesn’t want to have to ship a “beginner’s version” and an “advanced version” because it doubles the number of packages they have to compile and publish. It’s already confusing enough when there are 10 different linux packages that Opera has to push out for every release. People use the features, but Opera didn’t make it impossible to go back to using the advanced features. Opera probably decided the view bar was unnecessary because its features can be found elsewhere in the interface (under the View menu) and in the lower right hand corner. You can also put individual items on toolbars to make your own viewbar again. Opera probably just removed a redundant toolbar. For everything else, you can re-check a box to enable the power user features. No worries. With the new sync feature, it’s likely going to be even easier when installing another copy of Opera to not have to “customize it from the ground up”
using
For me is useful unchek “Reuse current tab” by default!
using
Quak! Quak! Quak!
WildEnte is right! “Hear” him, please. Especially the “modal preferenceies window”. I don’t know, may be it is important….
If it would not be modal, users could probably do more bad things than answer problems in IRC…
Werwolf
using
I like the Alpha1, but I’m not sure which things are by design and which are bugs (the mail notifications are no longer clickable, yet they don’t show when Opera is minimised). I salute the new download dialog (which opens a buggy save dialog), widgets getting focus on start, wand’s “save” dialog appearing after the form is submitted, Session > Save only active window.
Can you tell us how much workflow testing have you invested in the history-search from the address bar (it needs a timeout, I know what I want to type 90% of the time) and the sync status (TOO visible and intrusive).
The people I teach Opera too now have some of my own ways of doing things.. Explaining to my little sister that the double-click to reach dictionary will now take enabling in a preference dialog is *not* what I want to do.
Will you support syncing of preferences, setups, dialogs, shortcuts, etc ? I.e. users making public complete Opera profiles.
using
1. Why default action in Opera (on Linux) for middle mouse click is “Paste text from clipboard”? This is quite confusing, doesn’t exist in Firefox and in Konqueror there is a special alert.
2. Why there isn’t any nice user-friendly way of installing UserJS which is so powrefull a feature?
3. When we will see updater version of Info panel: http://my.opera.com/nafmo/blog/2006/11/30/updating-the-info-panel ?
using
1) Why has “Save Target as …” been renamed to “Save Link as …”? The new name is wrong and confusing (saving a link affects a pointer to the file, saving a target affects the file itself)
2) Default shotcuts: are really bad/confusing atm (like ctrl+n for a new window instead of new page. ctrl+shift+n should open a new window and ctrl+n should stay the way it was or some other things … will have to upload my settings sometimes soon) Luckily you can customize the shortcuts
3) as Zajec posted: Simple way to install UserJS? please, please, please!
4) uhm … ah: Preferences Dialogue: Really confusing atm - esp. as nearly every feature you want to change is in the advanced tab in some subcategory. Will this be better sorted in the future?
using
Hello Rijk,
When there is a blog post about Opera somewhere, you can always read things such as “I tried Opera, but is there an AdBlock/NoScript/GM/DownThemAll/whatever equivalent? I can’t live without that.”
Let’s face it - there is a lot of hidden and practically invisible, but EXTREMELY useful functionality in Opera. Do you plan on addressing that, and if so, how?
using
IceAdor,
I’m not talking about a different version. I am talking about a second keyboard setup, selectable in prefs-advanced-shortcuts or at least downloadable in a prominent place on my.opera.com
Concerning the view bar: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=203759&t=1189509980&page=2#comment2236098
using
nitpick: Is the *best* UI for customizing mouse gestures really typing “GestureLeft, GestureRight, GestureLeft” -Can’t we do: “L,R,L” or something?
using
How about adding an option to select either ’simple’ or ‘advanced’ GUI, where Opera defaults to ’simple’ mode? I think the simple option is a great selling point for users converting from their familiar IE and FF, or find too many options confusing. Power users know the ins and outs of Opera and will know where to switch this on. Besides, upgrades should automatically select the current GUI mode to avoid burning any extra calories locating the tick box
I’d like to see the rewind and fast forward buttons go (disabled), the magic wand button and perhaps a home button added by default. It’s very rare that I actually use them and would be happy to sacrifice them to gain less clutter. Off course I could press F11, but I do like to see the tabs and the addressbar.
My two pennies…
using
Q: Is anyone to blame for the new CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+H?. Name of the Opera employee responsible for it is needed. :p
First, it doesn’t paste text from clipboard, it pastes the selection buffer which is a different beast. Second, how come is it confusing?. Middleclick pasting is standard in Unix applications — if I middleclick in the terminal, it pastes the buffer content, same happens in Opera: a new page opens with the content of the selection buffer as an address; that’s the expected result.
using
Vincent: in Firefox I had to click on address bar to paste text ─ and this is fine IMO. For Opera it doesn’t matter where I click. That’s what I don’t like.
using
WildEnte: A agree with you except a few thing…
“I find it incredibly unintuitive that clicking the X in a panel closes the whole panel bar and not only that particular panel.”
I don’t think it’s unintuitive. I think, that’s the way it should work.
But I agree missing ‘>>’ which was pretty useful, and agree removing Fast forward and rewind from default layout. Tha latter ones can be really confusing for new users (”Why ‘two’ back and forward buttons?”).
Also missing View bar, why you’d have to remove it COMPLETELY? What’s more, you shouldn’t have to adapt to new users by turning keyboard shortcuts upside down, and similar to the other browsers. With each improvement on FF side, Opera loses his uniquenesses one by one. And you assist for it. Create a ’starter’ Opera interface (and buttons), and leave us the option to swich back to ‘advanced’ mode. Than everyone will be happy. Opera has the possibility for that so you should use it.
oops: Otto has beat me in this suggestion…
using
This one relates to the proxy configuration dialogue. Two things struck me here: One is that it’s not clear which of the many options (proxy settings, exclude list, automatic configuraion) takes precedence. If I’ve got the automatic proxy configuration filled, it’s preferred over my other proxy settings - but that’s not clear. The other issue involves quick toggling of the proxy settings via F12 - I’d expect that when I uncheck the proxy server option, Opera disables ALL proxy settings (which it does), but when I check it again, it reenables only the ones that were previously enabled (which it doesn’t, it enables all that have values filled in). Any chance of getting this resolved with Opera 9.5?
using
“Either select a “simple or “advanced” GUi”
I agree on that point!
The question now:
why is that it’s not possible to add as many toolbars (let’s say, I want seven of them because I have a 30″ screen and a loooot of place to use) as we want where we want?
using
You are comparing apples and oranges here
, middleclick on an open window/page pastes the selection buffer in almost all Unix apps, it doesn’t matter where you click on. For example, if you middleclick on the edge of a terminal window, the content will be pasted wherever the cursor is placed, same happens with other apps like text editors, etc. Opera does the same thing but since it’s a browser it opens a new page, pastes the buffer and then goes to it. If you want to paste the content directly into the address field, Opera won’t go to the page until you press enter — just like in FF. Just because FF doesn’t implement middleclick on page doesn’t mean Opera is doing something wrong. Besides, you can always disable the middleclick thingy under preferences (by using the panning option).
using
I would love to have the ability to change the order of the search machines used by search.ini.
Perhaps with up & down arrows, or the possibility to sort them alphabetically.
Thanx, Marcus
taken from:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=200865&t=1189542985&page=1#comment2240737
using
what is the reason why ’star in the address bar’ (and similar options that were removed instead of being turned off) was REMOVED instead of being off by default. why hardcoding took precedence in front of providing a config option? why that hardcoding approach is the sign of latest opera development?
is the new opera skin in works?
is the new opera logo in works?
if you don’t want to disclose - is the change/alteration of identity even considered?
what was the test group that recent UI changes were tested on? 100 people? 10k people? or, i fear that, 3 people that were accidentally wandering trough the nearest corridor?
why back/forward buttons with arrows arent the default ones instead of ones without arrows? [i know that operas one displays menu after holding mouseclick for a while, but NOONE WILL NEVER KNOW THAT!]. you start a war for consistency from the wrong end
and using wrong methods:
are you planning to include keyboard layouts instead of hardcoding pieces of configuration into the opera code?
will middle mouse click be EVER customizable? what is so different in this button
whats wrong in providing ‘close tab and switch to the tab to the right’ as an option? this is the prime consistency problem, not the status bar, that i personally feel a clutter
when opera is going to understand ‘middle mouse click on javascript link’?
when opera will provide always on top option for error console?
why detaching tab options are hidden so well, and why there is no easy way of attatching a tab to a window. way that works is so hard to find, that i dont think that anyone could have guessed how it works on their own.
etc etc etc but i simply feel that most answers are going to be ‘we are working on it’ :/
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I would love to be able to right-click on bookmarks to edit their properties or right-click on feeds individually to have options to update the feeds. The panels are nice but very inconvenient to use on 4:3 screens. Any plans to have a more powerful menu system in future releases, on all platforms? Are there technical problems with such an implementation?
using
Oh, that is already in 9.50 Alpha 3! Great! Sorry, my mistake ─ question canceled