[nly]

This is more interesting for what it means for Opera than for what it means to Fastmail. First they abandon their browser engine, now a top-notch webmail offering. What do Opera even offer these days that you can't get elsewhere? What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of?

[benologist]

Unless Opera are building themselves their own little Firefox OS kind of thing they're pretty much fucked moving forward. On the desktop their move to webkit successfully destroyed every reason to use Opera and doesn't measure up against rivals, and they've been netscaped out of mobile.

[jarcoal]

I don't think many people used Opera because of it's rendering engine; they used it because of the GUI and high-level features.

Moving to webkit just let them focus on what actually made them unique to their customers.

[mih]

The Myopera forums are rife with users complaining about missing features in the Opera 15+. Any unique features which distinguished Opera have been axed and most solutions seem to point towards using browser addons to accomplish what was previously in-built. They might have gained a few users, but it appears the majority of the current userbase will be sticking with Opera 12 for the time being.

[morkbot]

Yes, but from what I understand their plan is to bring back most of the features in the future (I remember them mentioning specifically bookmarks, opera link and tab thumbnails), until then: Opera 12.

On the other side Chrome based Opera is also starting to look pretty good in it's own rights: it's fast and snappy, mouse gestures are there if I'm not mistaken, page stack (or whatever the name is) is cool. If I would to choose between Chrome and Opera 16 now I would go with the latter (also because Chrome really pushes too much Google on the user).

[tripzilch]

I heard that they ditched the fit-to-width feature (ctrl-F11), do you know if this is true?

It's one of those features other browsers simply do not have (Opera has a couple more but this one's pretty unique) that I really do use several times a day, and I'm not "upgrading" until I know they won't take that away.

Not that it matters too much, features or not, I'm thinking to switch to Firefox because these are times no longer to be using closed-source software.

[gsnedders]

Fit-to-width did all kinds of magic at a layout engine level — it's not that simple to just reimplement on top of a new engine. And then there's the question as to whether Google would let an implementation would ever get upstreamed to Blink.

[sp332]

Why would Google not want such a cool feature?

[yareally]

I think you're generally correct about users not caring about the rendering engine for the most part. I wouldn't care at all that they ditched Presto if it meant they retained all the previous features and user interface they had before transitioning. However, I am worried that is unlikely to happen.

Looking at the course Blink based Opera has taken thus far, it doesn't look like they're focusing on keeping current users happy (any new user base is going to be an uphill climb). It's still new, but as a consistent Opera user for almost a decade, I'm very skeptical of them keeping all the previous customization as well as avoiding "Chromisms" in the UI.

[Osiris]

I still use Opera 12 because of the lack of features in the new version. My biggest pet peevs: Ctrl+Tab behavior (Opera default was 'previous tab' now it's 'next tab') and no thumbnails tabs on the left, and they removed the email client.

[Freaky]

While it's lacking the menu, there is at least opera://flags/#activation-order-tab-cycling now.

[yareally]

Yeah, I dislike both of those changes as well. I have a pretty long list of things Opera needs to add to versions beyond 12 before I will update to their Blink version. Until then, I'm still using 12 as well.

[apa-sl]

I'm also sticking to Opera 12, missing quite a lot of features in the Blink version...

[dgesang]

http://operabrowser.wikispaces.com/Features

[nly]

> and they removed the email client.

And the IRC client and BitTorrent client?

[benologist]

I agree the rendering engine isn't important, but when they threw out Presto they also threw out most of the features and innovations they created and turned Opera into a sort of half-assed Chrome.

[Aldo_MX]

Porting features usually mean to redesign them to match the new codebase/paradigm. It's not as simple as copy/pasting code...

[Dylan16807]

Nobody said it was simple. The problem is that they shouldn't have tossed out the old code if they weren't going to be able to replace it.

[Aldo_MX]

So you are suggesting them to maintain two different codebases during the transition rather than focus all their efforts to the new version to make the transition as short as possible?

IMHO they did the correct choice, every new version Opera will difference itself more and more of Chromium. You can continue to use Opera 12.16 until they take the decision to pull the trigger to completely kill 12.16 auto-updating it...

Remember the transition from Firefox 3.6 to the current Firefox, they didn't kill 3.6 until they reached version 12.

[mcovey]

They didn't just switch to webkit, they killed the product and made a chromium fork, and called it "Opera."

[_sabe_]

I used to use Opera because of it's privacy features. Being able to have different configuration of javascript, cookies, referals, content blocking and so on. Now with Opera 16 all these features are gone.

How do you increase you're competitive abilities by removing everything that made you unique when you're already the underdog? :S

[tripzilch]

You forget to mention that they are "per site" preferences.

But wtf they removed this too?? What is wrong with those people?

[mcovey]

Per-site preferences will be returning to Opera in a future version, so don't lose hope.

[tagawa]

An increasing proportion of Opera's (growing) revenue comes from advertising (they bought a few agencies recently) and their share price continues to climb. I don't think they have many problems moving forward, it's just less visible than their traditional consumer-facing domain.

Still a shame they dropped Presto, though.

[muyuu]

Doesn't make much sense to ditch webmail anyway. There are many ways in which webmail can help and promote their other products.

[benologist]

Is that separate from their browser stuff?

[mrweasel]

More or less I think, they bought AdMarvel.

[frabcus]

Interesting - perhaps it has the same market as Opera's browsers used to (e.g. carriers)?

As a geek, I often forget that a shared market can indicate why a company is doing something new, as well as a shared product.

[vijucat]

> and they've been netscaped out of mobile.

Not sure what you mean. Just FYI : at least on Android phones, among FF, Chrome, Opera (and the default browser), Opera's text flow is the best by far. You can zoom in and read any article on any site, and it does just the right thing. There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing: it's absolutely unpredictable what it will do when you zoom in. I can sympathize with the developers since the re-layout of a page, figuring out whether the user wants to zoom in on the text or the image, etc; may be quite difficult. Opera Mobile has seemingly perfected this over years and years.

[iSnow]

>There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing

I don't know what you mean. No Android browser matches mobile Safari for the slickness of zooming into pages, but FF mobile just works fine.

[Dylan16807]

Does your mobile firefox give different sizes to every comment on HN because it thinks longer sentences need bigger fonts? Mine does.

[vijucat]

Yes, this is just one example. To OP, if he has bothered to check this deep into replies, does Safari do text reflow upon zooming in? Should I attach screenshots to explain?

[thaumaturgy]

I hope not. I've just switched (long-term, I hope) to Opera out of complete disgust with Google and a lingering disgust with Firefox. It's nice to have choices.

[sudomal]

Developing an in-house browser engine is rather expensive. It's a moving target with constant pressure to better rivals. There's a need to patch an infinite number of websites, which don't care that you exist.

I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features.

[tripzilch]

> I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features.

But they didn't. They just dropped the browser engine.

[manojlds]

The recently released Coast for iPad is interesting - coastbyopera.com/

I am thinking Opera want to be acquired?

[nly]

> I am thinking Opera want to be acquired?

Possibly. They were uncannily quick in adopting Blink. The series of events seemed to be Opera->WebKit, Google->Blink, Opera->Blink... so perhaps they want to get cosy with Google? Although, I can't see what G would want with them.

I think it's also known that, sometime around IE7, Microsoft tried to acquire them. Microsoft have long since made their bed though... unless they want a better mobile browser.

Either way, it'd make total sense for Opera to ditch their email operation if they were looking to be acquired by a business with an established email product already. Especially when many Fastmail customers are there because of their particular niche in service.

Perhaps it's the new Blackberry group? Dark horse! :P

[Indyan]

Two clarifications: - Opera never switched to Webkit. Opera had switched to Chromium, which initially used Webkit. So, it's no surprise that Opera adopted Blink.

- Opera has publicly commented it was aware of Google's plans for Blink, and that information was a factor in the decision to switch to the Chromium engine.

[kijin]

There were rumors last year that Facebook might acquire Opera. They didn't. But maybe someone else will.

As a FastMail user I was very concerned with last year's rumors. Now I don't care because FastMail doesn't have anything to do with Opera anymore.

[nej]

I can't speak for Opera but if you take a look at their latest browser in iOS (only available for the iPad) it will give you some hope in the direction Opera is going. The browser, "Coast" as they call it is a pretty nifty, well crafted and thought out browser.

My guess is they're trying going for a niche product and are focusing on what's important to them rather than try to get their feet wet in every market.

[a3n]

> What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of?

To spend more time with their family?

[mverwijs]

I remember reading that one of the big money makers is Opera Mini. All the content viewed by that browser comes through proxies run by Opera. This means a HUGE amount of data that Opera can monetize on.

[antocv]

Monetize that data like selling it to clients or selling their customers data about their data to them? Will opera run some analysis and sell that?