Opera Will Perish on Its Righteousness
Opera 10 is a great browser, certainly world class, and perhaps the world's best.
And there's the rub.
Because this browser may one day perish on its own righteousness - a concern for being pure in the browser world that will deny it 100.000s of users.
While trying to adhere to the standards Opera has put it beyond properly showing pages that are deficient. Unfortunately not all web sites meet the standards, but those of us in the real world still need to see those pages. Each time we have to go to memory hog Firefox, or one of the other browsers to see such pages, it makes it less convenient to use Opera.
Opera also, not realizing the surge in cloud oriented applications such as Evernote, or the prevalence of web clippers such as Evernote and that great Aussie contender Surfulater, doesn't let these products be used with Opera. That's ruddy madness.
Well, there go another 100,000 users at least.
I use Evernote and Surfulater every day. As a writer, researcher, consultant I maintain a data base of many thousands of web clips. I'd love to do all my clipping in Opera because it is more stable and faster than the memory hog FF and the others. But I can't, because the boffins at Opera figure they can go it alone.
And lastly, it is the go it alone, my way or the highway approach of their forum strong man Haavard that has turned off many people who aren't as geeky or swift as he and his followers are, or who just don't always agree with his decisions. If the Seinfeld show could have the Soup Nazi in New York, then Haavard is the Forum Nazi in Oslo.
We need to see a more open and friendly approach on Opera's face, and Opera needs to start making significant market gains or, as I say, one day its righteousness - or is it pride - will lead to a great fall.
And that'd be a pity.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
