5 Steps to Fixing Opera

Somewhere between the sleek look and simple stylings of Safari and the open source can-do-anything-but-make-you-breakfast feel of Firefox, there exists another browser. Opera.

Opera is the almost forgotten brother of the browser war. Though Internet Explorer seems to be the “successful for no good reason” sibling that the others despise and direct their anger toward, Opera is the one sitting in the corner, reading a book and struggling to make friends.

But Opera’s lack of social skills is to be expected. Though the browser has done reasonably well in both the embeddable and the mobile market its desktop application has faltered, unable to gain any real momentum.

The reason is that, much like myself in high school, the browser has spent too much time hitting the books and not enough time learning how to deal with people. The Internet has moved forward and left Opera behind and, if it is going to catch up, it needs to start studying a very different book, the book of real life.

In the meantime, here are five things that, if Opera were to fix, I would seriously consider using their browser full-time.

5. Extensions

I’m not a terribly big fan of extensions in general. It seems that allowing users to install poorly-written code along side with a clean browser is a recipe for failure. However, as Firefox has shown, while the majority of extensions are a wash, there are a few that you just can’t live without.

Sure, many of my favorite extensions are already in Opera as core features, but I would miss my bookmarking and other extensions if I made the switch.

On that note, don’t try to convince anyone that Widgets are the same thing. They are not. Sure, you can do cool things with them, but you can’t do the kinds of things that Extensions do. Extensions, not widgets, get it?

4. Fix the Mail Client

Opera Mail used to be the pinnacle of mail design and form. It developed the idea of using tags instead of folders and was a huge precursor to Gmail. The problem is that it has suffered from a bad case of neglect.

Search, for example, is behind the times, account setup is a bit of a kludge and the entire email client moves slugglishly and it seems to be rather buggy. Mail downloads don’t work reliably (especially on IMAP) and it seems to not like my Gmail IMAP account.

The idea of a mail client/browser still makes sense. Though Firefox got away from that, mostly because Thunderbird is such a bloated mess on its own, if one can get the two to share resources well and keep the mail client reasonable in size and weight, it can work and it could be a big selling point over Safari and Firefox.

3. Standards Dictator

It’s all cool to be standards compliant, I get that. But Safari doesn’t break sites and Firefox stops with the standards compliance issues when it is no longer to the benefit of users. As important as standards are, they are not more important than the Web working.

Though the number of popular sites that have been borked by Opera has gone down drastically in recent versions, I still occasionally see pages that load fine on every other browser but not Opera. The fault tolerance is clearly still not up to par.

The ACID tests are great, but the more important one is how many problems I notice when surfing. A clear example of hitting the books a bit too hard.

2. Better JavaScript Performance

This used to be Opera’s bread and butter. Opera moved fast where the other struggled. But now, Opera’s JavaScript speed is languishing behind. With Firefox, Safari and Chrome all upping the ante on performance, Opera just seems clunky in this area.

The result is that Gmail feels slow to me and sites like Diigo, which are very JavaScript intense, are almost unusable. I have to keep other browsers around if for no other reason than to do the show notes for my podcast.

1. Spell Checking… For Real

Let’s go over this. Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Chrome all have spell checking and by that I means the “Check as you type” kind, not the “Check after you’re done” kind. I spend most of my day writing blog posts, answering emails in Gmail and leaving comments on blogs, not having those red lines is murder.

I have been spoiled for too long on the magic of check as you type and, when I try Opera out, I always forget to spell check when I am done. It is not second nature and it gets left behind.

It is especially shameful on the Mac version of Opera as all they have to do is hook into the spell check system that is running the entire time in the operating system, no need to code anything new. That would at least work for me, tough luck for those on Windows.

Still, there is no excuse for this and, even though it has been one of the most requested features for Opera, it remains unfulfilled.

Thanks a bunch.

Conclusions

I like Opera, I really do. It reminds me of myself when I was younger. However, there came a time where I had to come out of my shell and step into the big bad world. It’s past that time for Opera.

At version 9.62, you’d think the browser would be a little further along than it is. But when Firefox 3 and Chrome pre-version-one-beta is able to best it in critical areas, there is a problem.

I know that Opera Mini is you cash cow, but how about a little love for brower-based-buddies, we wouldn’t forget you.

Oh wait, new Beta of Firefox. Can’t talk now…