[tpmx]

Opera is beyond rescue. As someone who spent a decade working there it saddens me to say so, but please don't use it.

Actual, executive day-to-day control over the browser tech has progressed sort of like this:

1995: Oslo, Norway

2008: Linköping, Sweden

2014: Wrocław, Poland

2020: Beijing, PRC (the sale happened in 2016, but they were hands-off for quite some time; I think they were being busy with shady fintech stuff in Africa enabled by the Opera Mini work we did mostly in Sweden a decade earlier: https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predato...)

[imiric]

Opera in the late 90s / early 00s was such a great browser though. It was one of the first to adopt tabs, had a very responsive and slick UI compared to the competition, and the rendering engine was fast and fluid, though sadly not well supported or compatible. Even the built-in email client was decent, and much better than the one in Netscape Communicator from what I remember. Being share/adware was always a problem, but it was my main browser for a couple of years back then. Opera Mini was also excellent on pre-iPhone devices.

Nowadays I wouldn't come near it, mostly because it's proprietary software owned by a company with shady business practices.

Still, this is great news and should be applauded FWIW.

[forgotmypw17]

Opera 3.62 and 12.14-12.16 are still great browsers and I still use them sometimes.

[uncoder0]

Maybe I'm being naive but why would you use such an old browser? There seem to be many vulnerabilities.

https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2012-6470/

[forgotmypw17]

I would use them because they are nice and a pleasure to use.

I don't care about the vulns when I'm only browsing my own or trusted websites or localhost.

[f15h]

CVE-2012-6470 should have been patched (in some of the last Presto builds) if I remember correctly.

[cbarrick]

Any specific reasons to not use Opera?

I actually just switched this week, being fed up with Firefox. So far so good. I very much like the UI/UX.

I hope this isn't just another case of "China bad".

Edit: Ah, I see the link you added. So the new owners seem shady.

[tpmx]

I dunno, if Google was sold to a Chinese company (so, essentially controlled by the CCP), would that in your mind be grounds to avoid using their services, or just another case of "China bad"?

I'm guessing you're perhaps conflating criticism of China/CCP with recent idiotic attacks on random asian people in the US?

[verandaguy]

I agree with you in principle, but I also disagree with your example.

No doubt, China uses this kind of opportunity to spy on users, which I think is plenty good a reason to stop using Opera. OTOH, Google's also spying on its users for profit (at the very least).

Please consider using Firefox. They're currently a very competent browser, and their principles are still rock-solid.

If you still prefer Chrome but want to support what Firefox stands for, think about donating to the Mozilla Foundation: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-CA/?source=donate_redirect. They do some very good work in the online privacy and digital rights space, and even though they're not the top dog in the browser space, they've got plenty of weight to throw around.

[TeeMassive]

Mozilla has openly gone pro deplatforming recently: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d...

> Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms.

> Additional precise and specific actions must also be taken:

> Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.

> Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.

>Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.

> Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.

The basis they use to justify their stance is irrelevant. Good crises have always been used as a way to legitimize future abuse. I want a browser, not a tool meant to manipulate what I'm allowed to say and to see while posing themselves as arbiter of truth.

If you want to donate your hard earned money, the EFF are really the most effective, ethical and sane organization that I know so far. GNU is alright but are way too deep into ideology over practicality to my taste.

[opheliate]

> Mozilla has openly gone pro deplatforming recently

The article you've linked does not specifically advocate deplatforming as I read it.

It begins by questioning when platforms should make the decision to deplatform, and who should have the power to do so:

> When should platforms make these decisions? Is that decision-making power theirs alone?

It implies that deplatforming is ineffectual, as there's no single voice which could be silenced to prevent hate:

> [...] the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality

And it suggests solutions, which you have included in your post, which do not involve deplatforming, they involve transparency. It says, "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal", which I suppose you could read as advocating deplatforming as well as their proposals if you approach the article with the intent to find that view, but given the context of the rest of the article suggesting that deplatforming doesn't work, it seems more like the author is suggesting that deplatforming be replaced.

It's a pretty wishy-washy article overall, and I think its suggestions are a bit hollow without more specific steps to take, but it appears to go to great lengths to not specifically endorse deplatforming. Reading what they have said as a call for such action, rather than advocating alternative solutions to the issues faced by social media comes off as disingenuous IMO.

[TeeMassive]

The article explicitly calls fore more, implying in addition of. Mozilla's only reason of existing is Firefox and therefore their only way to enforce this kind of measures.

[verandaguy]

I didn't know about that, thanks for the link! I do agree with some of their points though: transparency in advertising and how algorithms pick content for users, as well as facilitating disinformation/misinformation research would be (in my mind) a pretty big win these days. Deplatforming's more dangerous in general, though.

I'll second EFF here though, they're fantastic.

[cbarrick]

Merely being owned by a Chinese investment group is not enough for me to distrust a company.

The allegations of predatory lending are cause for concern.

Still, the browser has been solid in my 7 days of use so far.

[apis_nearctica]

What are you afraid of a Chinese company doing with your data? Giving it to government agencies? Google already does that. If I had to choose personally I would much rather the CCP have my data than US three letter agencies. If you live in the US then the US government can do a lot more to you than China can.

[bayindirh]

My stance with any computer system I access which I didn't install from bottom-up is simple: "It's just someone else's computer".

When expectations are adjusted, country names doesn't make any difference. I don't trust any system I didn't install beyond a certain point.

[livre]

If you miss the old Opera UI/UX then Otter may be a decent replacement. If you want what would have been the actual continuation of the old Opera then go for Vivaldi (made by some of the old Opera team members).

[Osiris]

Vivaldi is made by an original Opera cofounder and looks and feels very much like Opera 12 including a built in mail client.

[livre]

I didn't know they had a built in email client, they didn't have it last time I tried Vivaldi and that's why I eventually stopped using it. Thanks for that info.

[Sox4]

On Linux, there is a white line on top of all fullscreen pages (YouTube) [1], Downloads page doesn't work, video glitches out and the entire browser is unusably slow when you have many entries in your browsing history.

[1] https://forums.opera.com/topic/38628/why-is-there-a-white-st...

[nly]

It was dead to me the moment they switched to chromium

[tpmx]

I still think that was a necessary decision. Jon Von Tetzchner (one of the two Opera founders, and a previous long time CEO) strongly disagreed, then from the outside, but later did the exact same thing with Vivaldi. (Jon is a fantastic mensch, btw. One of the best CEOs I've ever had.)

Google had very purposely raised the bar by putting like 5x-8x more competent engineers than the Opera core (non-platform/UI-specific stuff) team had, working on inventing and implementing random new web standards that they then promptly started using on google.com properties. Think e.g. 500-800 engineers compared to 100. We simply couldn't do the same. Then this ratio started growing until it was obvious that it would eventually become an existential threat.

They used their financial success in one business area (search ads) to become dominant in another area (browsers) in a clever and perhaps not entirely legal way.

[nonbirithm]

The irony was how ages ago everyone was waiting for a browser to come along and unseat IE, which was not a good browser.

Now Chrome works well enough as a browser and has so much market share that it exerts too much control over its users and the Web, and it's unlikely that anything will be capable of obsoleting it in the near future.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think the trick might be to make a browser that supports a reasonable subset of html/css/js + some killer feature. (Much easier said than done, though: but some kind of mobile app platform like WeChat might be a good way to get a foothold)

Or just fork webkit/blink and aggressively refactor.

[6510]

The killer feature could be a file type named after the kinds of websites people make. Say .blog or .forum or .store or .social perhaps even .aggregator or .hn (lol) each would work like a straight jacket or like a website on a platform (.blog like blogger, .store like shopify etc) it could be distributed and insanely fast. Every other link just opens in the normal browser.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

It's interesting to think about this sort of thing: interactive forms generated from OpenAPI specs? Some way to plug-in handlers for specific mime-types? etc.

[lmz]

Surely IE6 already had a "reasonable subset" and devs hated it for holding back progress...

[fiddlerwoaroof]

The main reason I disliked it was it wasn't standards compliant for the parts it did implement: you couldn't write code to-spec and expect it to work on both IE6 and Firefox, without testing each browser separately.

[underwater]

There's a form of regulatory capture where big companies benefit from having more stringent regulations because they are the only entities with enough resources to comply.

It certainly feels like Google is using the same playbook for web standards. They've created enough churn that no one else can ever hope to catch up in implementing those standards.

When Google products stop working on some competitors browser they can simply say "it's just web standards" and feign ignorance.

[captainmuon]

I would very much like to use a browser that didn't support all the random new web standards (like, I don't know, WebUSB) and rendered most "content" sites good enough. You could still just embed a WebKit/Blink window in order to run web apps.

I really liked old Opera and even Edge for their engines that made the web pages feel snappy and somewhat different than the WebKit monoculture.

[keanebean86]

It would be cool if Opera published presto's source code. Even just for historical reasons. I'm sure there's legal and financial reasons they don't.

I was a huge fan and tried to convert my friends from 2004-2012. It was tough watching them slowly convert to firefox or stay on IE.

It really didn't help that Opera handled transparency so poorly. That made myspace pretty much unusable.

[duskwuff]

The Presto source code was leaked around 2017, FWIW. There's a handful of mirrors around, including:

https://git.teknik.io/Zero3K/presto

[Shorel]

But sadly, not legal to fork and use =(

[keanebean86]

This is awesome, thanks!

[sergiotapia]

I also miss Presto and Dragonfly

[Shorel]

I share your pain. I also used to work for Opera.

Please people, don't use Opera any more.

[zepearl]

I like a lot Opera on my phone & tablet. (but not on my notebooks & PCs - using there Firefox & Chrome)

[johtso]

Same, it's the only mobile browser I've found that has decent dark mode..

[Galanwe]

I don't quite understand your point.

You are basically implying that opera is beyond rescue because the governance moved from a country you value to countries you value less?

[unicornporn]

Shouldn't a company in a country with these[1] practices rightfully be met with distrust in these contexts? Spoiler alert: I'm not a culture (or politics) relativist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China

[kelnos]

It seems a little weird that you'd trust a web browser developed by a company that resides in a country famous for massive, systemic internet censorship, as well as habitual government interference in and control over domestic companies' operations.

That doesn't mean that today's Opera is definitely an untrustworthy piece of software, but it does raise the probability quite a bit.

[tpmx]

I'm saying that the Opera browser is beyond rescue because it's now day-to-day controlled from Beijing.

[88840-8855]

I can only assume that he is implying that any involvement of/by Chinese people is a very bad thing per se.

[3np]

Not by Chinese people, by the CCP. Which it becomes as effect of being controlled by a legal entity in PRC. This has nothing to do with ethnicity or culture and everything to do with the current political situation in China.

[gsnedders]

> 2008: Linköping, Sweden

looks incredibly skeptical at this

My memory of 2009–13 was very much the decisions about Presto being made by people in Oslo.

[tpmx]

Presto, sure. And yes, it was a little cheeky, hence the "sort of".

[interestica]

Did anything come of this? All links I've found are from January 2020, and it seems that OPay is still available in the Google Play store.

[xxxxxxx12]

You realize Vivaldi is essentially the modern replacement for Opera.

[artursapek]

Are you saying it's beyond rescue because it's controlled by China?

[takeda]

Opera died to me after version 12 (the moment it essentially became Chrome with a different skin).

I was their user since version 5 or 6 (this was before everyone started the crazy version system, back them they released a major version about once a year).

The biggest things that I loved about the browser you couldn't get by extension, they could do many things because they could directly update the engine.

Now learning that they are owned by PRC there's even less reasons for me to use it.

Opera could have done a lot of good if they would open sourced their old browser (kind of line what Netscape did). Someone leaked the original source code, but because it was leaked and not officially published, no one wants to touch it. Anyway now it's too late, because it's way behind the current browsers.

[tpmx]

Yes.