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by V-2 3732 days ago
Yeah, they really stripped it down... at least it put an end to all the fanboy gangs who used to jump into any browser-related discussion, trying to convince everyone how Opera invented everything including tabs (it didn't invent tabs), and how other browsers are nothing but knock-offs that don't even have a torrent client built-in ; )

(No offense to Opera supporters - I used it on PC for a while and it worked very well esp. on slower machines, and I use it on Android to this day - but this was annoying like hell)
1 comments
Aoyagi 3732 days ago
Well they were the first ones to implement it natively, by default and made it an integral part of their browser, and were successful with it. Of course they didn't invent it though. They didn't "invent" things like Dragonfly, Unite features, Turbo, etc., but I strongly believe the implementation is bloody good :P

But I don't count among those who call other browsers rubbish because they don't have some features. Personal preference and all that. However, I hate Opera Mini. It has little to no control. Not Mobile though! (if it still exists)

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V-2 3732 days ago
They were early adopters of tabbed browsing, I do give them that, but the first browser to have it was NetCaptor.

The whole idea of a browser as a swiss-knife internet suite (with an email client, torrent client, web server etc. all built-in) which was hailed as Opera's main strength back in the day, proved to be an evolutionary dead end - noone really followed that path, Mozilla had an enormous following, especially among geeks/superusers, and yet its SeaMonkey never gained traction, that does tell you something

I feel Opera hurted themselves by believing that this was what made their browser attractive. Probably overestimated that factor. As a user, I cared much more about whether eg. "Look into" on Amazon worked correctly (Opera - a few years ago when I used it - was the only major browser where it didn't).

Yes internet browsing still owes Opera much credit, they popularized a great many useful solutions such as mouse gestures, the product was very solid and ergonomical, I'm not questioning that. Plus it performed well on older PCs and slower bandwidths, which probably explains why it enjoyed tremendous popularity in Central and Eastern Europe (where I'm from)

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