Barely five days since the launch of Opera 9.5, the new release has already seen 4.7 million downloads. On average, that’s nearly a million downloads each day.
New usage figures are out as well, and they look just as good, with more than 20 million users running the desktop browser, and 12 million running Opera Mini. That’s twice the number of users they had when Opera 9.0 appeared two years ago.
To put these numbers in perspective:
- Nearly one-fourth of Opera users downloaded the new release within the first five days.
- Opera Mini has more than half as many users as Opera Desktop.
- More people use Opera Desktop each month than live in the state of New York (2006 population estimate).
- More people use Opera Mini each month than live in Greece (2002 population estimates).
using
It’s great that Opera 9.5 came out, but it was so rushed that they’re likely to give a very poor impression to new users. I’ve never experienced such a bug-ridden release of Opera, and I’ve been using it for quite some time. I honestly can’t recommend this one to anyone until they get the myriad of problems being reported fixed. I’ve been running dual with Firefox half the time lately just to keep browsing.
using
Opera is the best designed browser of this freaking world. Powerfull, safe, customizable, blazing fast, lean and mean ( not bloated ),standards compliant, yet so simple. I congratulate its creators for following their vision and practical approach, the Scandinavian way at its best.
OK guys party is over, 10 is a beautifull number.
using
using
Agreed with Disgruntle.
New users will probably experience a lot of bugs and won’t ever come back to Opera. As someone said: with this release you dug your own grave.
using
What a load of nonsense! Dug own grave and comments about bugs.
Bugs exist in all products on release and trying to turn this into such a melodramatic something that it *isn’t* is just ridiculous.
using
heh, i use quite a few of opera’s features, mail included and i’ve experienced no bugs so far. clean installation, clean migration of settings and clean PC and i truly believe there should be no really serious bugs.
i’m using opera from opera 7 days and this release has given really big speed and page rendering improvements. very nice default skin as well, much better than the old one or default skin of any browser other than opera that i know.
thanks to opera for working really hard on improving the best browser out there.
using
I could’nt say better than “jose m lopez”, – second post above.
Since years, Opera’s always been the framework of our entire surfing experience.
And none of us is ignorant about other browsers.
We are somewhere proud to have made, one day, the objective choice of Opera among all other web browsers.
What can we do but thank Op Team.
using
Updating my post: @Disgruntled and @FavBrowsers:
How do you manage to get so much bugs you pretend?
Would’n't the bugs be you?
How do you manage in computering to fall in such a non-sense?
Opera “dugs its own grave” you say…
Remember hopefully for you ridiculous doesn’t kill.
using
@Disgruntled Opera User
Most comments about 9.5 aroud the web are actually positive. Opera got its first 5 star review at download.com too.
@FavBrowser
That’s what they say every time Opera releases a new version. And yet just about all comments on Slashdot, Digg, etc. are positive, and Opera has doubled its number of users since 9.0 (when Opera also dug its own grave according to people like you). LOL.
The only ones digging a grave are the hyperbolic whiners who are out of touch with the rest of the world.
using
Thats great news. Congrats to the guys at Opera.
I did have a few bugs at the beginning and the whole thing seemed rushed. But all is working fine for me now. I’ve not experienced any bugs or problems since the beginning (excpe thte odd poorly made website of course)
using
@Disgruntled and @FavBrowsers: Opera 9.5 wasn’t rushed; it’s been 2 years since version 9.0 was released. As for the bugs, can you name a few? I haven’t experienced any.
using
Opera 9.5 only crashes for me when I try to use Google Analytics (does it every time for some reason); otherwise, not a single problem. Happy with 9.5.
Data I’d be interested in is rate of adoption and acceleration of rate of adoption. Anyone knows?
A friend of mine created a new Opera user yesterday. That’s one more; I’m sure she’ll love it.
using
***New users will probably experience a lot of bugs and won’t ever come back to Opera. As someone said: with this release you dug your own grave.***.
Say what ?…..are you back to the vodka cabinet again?
using
Congratulations to Opera Team to achieve this feat. I wish them all the best and godspeed that you deliver version 10 with even more features than I can dream of!! Cheers and keep rocking the party guys!
using
@Daniel Goldman
Just a few examples of actual bugs:
The largest bug to me is the fact that it wants to suddenly freeze up just from typing certain urls sometimes. It will crash repeatedly on the same urls, and then suddenly later, it’ll be fine. Yesterday it was ebay.com (yet right now I can go there fine). Just entering it in the address bar and hitting enter almost immediately sent it into a freeze. Later in the day it was the Opera forums doing it. The last version rarely crashed on me, and when it did, it almost always seemed to be related to plugins. That’s apparently not the case anymore.
A strange but possibly related bug to the above is when I go on cnn.com and click a link for one of the stories which is a video. They have the little camera icon next to them, mind you. But immediately upon clicking the link, that tab will stop responding to any input. Yet I can still close the tab, and the rest of the browser still functions.
In a different incident, I randomly found one time that my browser still functioned, but the display would no longer update. I could use keyboard shortcuts to switch between tabs, and see my downloads still running due to the title bar changing, but the browser was visually unusable. I had to wait until my download was finished to restart it and be able to use it again, and it crashed upon closing as well.
Sometimes I even get a crash dialog when I close the browser, even if it otherwise seemed fine during use.
If you have an image loaded in a tab, and try to use ctrl-S to save it, it won’t save the file extension. If you right-click the image and save from there, it works fine. This has been reported on the forum more than once, and submitted as a bug. At least this one can be worked around, but it’s annoying when you forget, and end up with files with no extensions.
When I first installed 9.5, it redownloaded all my newsfeeds from the earliest ones, and did so in reverse item order, strangely enough.
Activating Opera Link doubled my bookmarks, and I had to go through and delete all the duplicates.
Examples of irritating changes/behaviors:
The tray icon now changes to say you have new email even if you only have new newsfeeds. I’ve seen no way to turn this off.
The Windows Native skin is no longer appealing to use like it was in 9.27. Particularly since none of the tabs ever appear as being active, where as before the active tab was in a different color text. So it was either download the old default skin, or stick with this new one. I, like many other people apparently, aren’t a big fan of the new one, but after a while maybe it’ll grow on me.
The email icon was missing from the sidebar by default.
The sidebar was completely disabled by default.
The sidebar has small icons now, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s no apparent way to make them the larger versions again.
I may be forgetting bugs and nuisances, but these alone are annoying enough.
For many people it’s a simple matter of downgrading, but unfortunately I’m not a “casual browser”, if you can call it that, and have my email and everything tied into Opera, which in particular was upgraded to a newer format when I installed. For all I know, using more of Opera’s features than the average Joe may in fact be contributing to some of the problems, who knows. But being so reliant on it is why waiting for a fix for these problems is extremely frustrating. Normally I never would trust one piece of software so much, but this is the first time Opera has let me down to this degree.
And by the way, anyone who feels the need to casually dismiss any of these problems in blinded loyalty should just take a look at the forum. Almost all of the things I mentioned are being reported there by other people.
using
Been using since ‘99, but we’re still number 4 dead last, among the big browsers. Just makes me sad.
http://wakoopa.com/
using
Atleast we could add some Positive Reviews to the Opera page at Wakoopa, or bring up its stats by tracking with Wakoopa.
http://wakoopa.com/software/opera
using
I’m not sure where they naysayers get their information, but I have definitely seen and heard more complaints of bugs and issues with Opera 9.5 than I usually ever see with prior releases. I’ve had some problems myself. As already suggested here, a brief look at the Opera forums will show many people with serious issues. It really did seem rushed there towards the end. Especially with throwing on a brand new theme just practically days before the final release.
Kudos to Opera of course for releasing 9.5, but until 9.51, I’ll be in Firefox unfortunately.
using
Opera 9.5 for me has been the most stable release for ages. I have not had a single crash, freeze or even slow down since I downloaded it. Memory usage has also stayed low without any leaks. This may be related to the fact I am on OS X rather than Windows now admittedly, but even so it is a drastic improvement even over 9.27.
using
Just read the last two entries from the Opera Desktop Blog, if u want to see “some” bugs.
Search keywords with »Paste&Go« and a previously copied word still doesn’t work; since the first build.
using
Oh well.
It’s not the first time I’m disapointed by a new Opera release (upgrading Opera has been a trade-off between new features, new bugs and less usability since 8.x) but this one has gone too far.
using
exactly as Mike – best release in ages, and the new Mac skin looks great too
using
Jake is a bit confused:
“I have definitely seen and heard more complaints of bugs and issues with Opera 9.5 than I usually ever see with prior releases.”
Jake hasn’t been around for long, then
He doesn’t know that it’s this way every single release.
“As already suggested here, a brief look at the Opera forums will show many people with serious issues.”
Yes, because a forum dedicated to getting help with problems is a great way to measure a product objectively!
Let’s instead look at the first ever 5 star review for Opera at download.com or all the positive comments at digg.com and other sites that are not all about talking about problems in Opera.
using
In response to wat, I don’t think a brief trial by someone at download.com really counts for much. Chances are, they use Firefox anyway, and didn’t get into the nitty gritty of this new Opera to see any of its problems.
Firefox gets five star reviews all the time, and yet I could pick it apart for its countless problems and shortcomings. Doesn’t mean it’s an overall bad product, neither is the case for Opera 9.5, but some stars at a download site don’t equate a perfect product.
using
As an Opera fanboy i only have two words to say:
Opera 4ever
using
What happened to the new mail popup? A nice feature seemingly eliminated in favour of that useless Panel icon thingy!?
using
Opera 9.5 got 4 million downloads in about a week! Amazing. So amazing.
I’d like to congratulate Opera on doing half of what Firefox did and taking 5 times longer to do it. That’s not bad considering Opera’s got only 4 times as many employees as Mozilla.
Really amazing, guys. Good job. If you can keep up the momentum, Opera might break into whole digits of market share and become more than 1/30th as popular as Firefox.
Keep up the good work Team Opera!
http://tinyurl.com/5mzcqp
using
That’s pretty good considering the market share. Firefox has about 26x the market share of Opera and in the first day after being available they got almost 8.25 million downloads (well over 10 million downloads if you add the few hours since day 1, though) — and that’s considering the fact that Firefox 2 didn’t prompt any upgrade to Firefox 3.
using
So we have users who love the 9.5 release, others who hate it, drama queens, usual trolls too. Same old song…you gotta love the internet.
using
Congrats. Ofcourse the numbers are very less when compared to FF3, but for a browser that very few people have heard of , its a great achievement. I hope more and more people use this browser. Ive been trying all the weeklies and downloaded 9.5 on the first day. I havent experienced any crashes or bugs so far, although some of my bookmarks are duplicated when i sync them, but its a minor issue.
Ive been amazed at the kind of hype Firefox 3 is getting. All of those features that FF3 is being touted for are present in Opera since a long time. Kinda sad that Firefox steals the thunder when Opera is the real innovator. I wish Opera all the best and hope it gets a good market share with this release.
using
jackjack – good response: exactly what I was going to reply to asdf8g. If we kept things in proportion (market share wise), it would mean about 21 million downloads for Opera 9.5 in the first 24 hours
using
I miss the old windows native look. Was much more ergonomic.
using
Again, thank you, oTeam, for the wonderful release.
After I have upgraded to 9.5 I did experience some Vista-specific issues, but they were easily fixed, and, probably, not related to Opera, but, rather, to Windows Vista itself.
People say 9.5 shipped with bugs. Well, every software has bugs, right? Even Firefox 3 shipped with security vulnerability (http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=103003JUYU2M). Why is there so much negative bias toward Opera and positive bias toward Firefox? Fanboy-ism or intelligence?
using
>more than 20 million users running the desktop browser>More people use Opera Desktop each month than live in the state of New York
Am I to take from that you mean that Opera has 20 million monthly users? If so, is Opera using the same basic formula in calculating Monthly users as Mozilla (3x active daily users)? If not, what are the daily usage numbers for Opera?
Firefox is at ~63 million active daily users (about 190 million monthly users.)
The reason I ask, is that I think i’d be interesting to compare users to usage with a sample of more than 1 (Firefox). If we had monthly user numbers that we counted similarly and then we compared against a common web usage measure, we could figure out whether Opera and Firefox users are similarly active online.
I think Mozilla and Opera should do more of this kind of collaboration on figuring out how people use the Web. Something as simple as total users and usage could be a first step that doesn’t have a lot of privacy concerns and having a sample of two different browsers would lend some credibility to the information we discover.
using
Everyone: Don’t feed Asa Dotzler.
@Jake
That’s awesome, dude. Obviously, anyone who disagrees with you didn’t test Opera properly. They are just playing around while you are srs bsnss!
@asdf8g
Opera didn’t encourage people to download it as many times as possible to set a record. The people who downloaded it did so because they wanted to use it, not just to set a record. That’s about 5 million in 5 days, by the way.
Opera might have 4 times as many employees as Mozilla, but then again they are on a lot more types of devices. Firefox doesn’t even come close to being delivered on the wide range of devices Opera is available for.
But keep comparing apples and oranges, and displaying your willfull ignorance of Opera’s situation.
using
Regarding bugs:
Most or all of the bugs mentioned here:
http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-95-release-candidate-rc-released/
1. Last tab is hard to click when many are opened
2, Receiving old news from rss reader,
3, When transfer is finished and I close Opera, it shows transfers like: http://news.cnet.com/2038-12_3-7953-1.xml?tag=st.topic with unknown file types
4, Also something is wrong with cookies, in some sites when I enter login details, it says logged in and redirects to login screen again. Have to refresh that page to see that I am logged in. Aggressive caching maybe?
5. When writing in a visual mode (Wordpress 2.3), I can’t type anything in that form, same in few sites.
6. Tried to delete visited pages history but not all were deleted.
Those were in Opera 9.5 Final
using
Also, after download is finished and I open Opera again, it doesn’t show me my transfers, just something like
from: feed url
to: C:\Documents and Settings\,\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\cache4\opr00J30
3-4 kb files
Even if I haven’t deleted finished transfers.
Regardng caching
Erik on June 13th, 2008 1:47 pm wrote:
An example is this page. After posting I find my name, email address and notify check box all filled in.
using
Since can’t edit post…
I’d like to note that some of those bugs are now fixed in Pre-Opera 9.51 (weekly).
using
From http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-95-final-released/
I have to kill opera after 1h of usage or so cause it just shows nothing, no buttons, no tabs, all grey.
Looks like that grey “video” problem is somehow related with transfers, happens after transfering a lot.
Kildor on June 12th, 2008 11:34 am wrote
Yes, Opera 9.5 has huge GDI-leak, at open-close page — +4 leaked objects. In transfer-page — leak is even fast.
Please someone approve my 1st comment and merge all to one, thanks
using
I’ve been using 9.5 on two different computers (one with XP, the other with XP Pro) with no problems. I definitely like the way the address bar works, even on my underpowered home computer.
using
I am a developer of a user script called SuperOgame. I must say the script works better in 9.50 than 9.27. However, there are some bugs that are still present, and this is a fact. Firefox 3 is also released with some bugs and known problems.
9.51 snapshot has some bugs sorted up and it is less memory consuming, however, it introcuded a bug (or it is a new feature?!?!) which ruined some of the functionality of the script I am developing. The problem is in XPath, so if anyone is experiencing problems with it please post here.
Anyway, great job Opera team!
using
PDF’s do not work inside Opera 9.50 with disk cache disabled. Enabling disk cache solves the problem, but that’s not how I want it and how it was working in 9.27.
using
I have always enjoyed using Opera and there are certain improvements with version 9.5 that I am very happy with, but aside that I can’t help but say that I absolutely hate it.
I will be installing version 9.27 again very shortly, just to get rid of the bugs; especially the awful bug concerning the whole application locking up and becoming useless once I download anything with a duration of more than 60 minutes! Someone else has already mentioned this bug above so I am simply confirming it.
As I said, great features, but please fix the bugs!
using
OK, when are we gonna pettition for Opera to include a ‘backup/export’ feature that lets us select which skins, toolbar settings, mail settings mail bookmarks and notes and widgets we want to backup.. ie. a feature that allows us to choose to save whichevr of the mods me made or widgets we downloaded etc.
something very comprehensive. So comprehensive that after installing Opera on a PC for the first time we just export what we want from the archive all we need to exactly duplicate the browsing experience we currently enjoy.
i had to uninstall opera 9.5 remove all traces of opera from my system and reinstall it to get all the new menu features and for things like removing the startmenu search box to stick. previously it would come back after each time i close and open the application
so to avoid the long rebilding of my opera experience a good archive like the one i want would go a long way in making me happy.
anybody else?
using
@k3m15a
Stay on topic please. This is not the place to post feature requests.
using
a.m.d,
Transfer leak was fixed in latest weekly
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/06/20/towards-9-51
using
@random characters
Why not?
Many are commenting on where Opera 9.5 still falls short, and i am offering a suggestion to favoid having to rebuild my opera setup (finding the custom buttons, and other changes to my setup) when a new version is introduced.
Not having the “synchronize now” in the file menu as well as other odd behaviour are bugs, and while its great that so many people have downloaded and installed it, there still are many problems to overcome.
After all there are many here who feel that it was rushed. and that these annoyances might hurt market share when so many people download it to discover these new bugs.
using
I’d like to note that some of those bugs are now fixed in Pre-Opera 9.51 (weekly).
using
I think this might be going up to 20 million and one soon. I am dissappointed that FF still have terrible memory management issues. In fact FF3 is worse. I can only have 2 tabs open before it pretty much grinds to a halt. I will miss my FF plugins, but actually being able to browse comes first.
using
Wow, that’s 20 million people who now can’t use Google Spreadsheets. Sort it out Opera. I’m sick of being pushed towards Firefox.
I can understand that smaller websites occasionally have compatibility issues, but this is GOOGLE DOCS!!! This is one of the greatest challengers to ms office and your dropping the ball. I will not recommend Opera to people until this is fixed. As much as it pains me, I currently tell people to use Firefox.
using
I tried version 9.5 but I had to “downgrade” to 9.27. The new version is not only buggy but extremely slow precessing W3C standard technologies as DOM elements manipulation and CSS, I had not tried a slower version ever. Something I do not understand is why the IE proprietary code is logged. This makes the new version the lest standard ever.
using
Pffft. If I have to use an online word-processing app, I use Zoho.
Opera 9.51 is great, by the way.