Opera used to be a fantastic web browser, with a custom high-performance Presto rendering engine and features like tabbed windows that didn't show up in competing browsers until years later. However, the modern Opera browser is a shadow of its former self, reliant on chasing trends and meme advertising to
  • StorageB@lemmy.oneEnglish
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    5 months ago

    The feature I absolutely love on Opera mobile is it will dynamicly wrap text and adjust the page layout to a single column when you zoom in/out. So for pages with small text, you can zoom in to see enlarged text and just scroll down to read - where on all other browsers you have to scroll horizontally back and forth to read the enlarged text.

    Opera has been doing this brilliantly for at least 10 years, and I have yet to see this on any other mobile browsers I’ve tried.

    • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
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      5 months ago

      Firefox also has a reading mode, firefox’s reading mode hides all the unnecessary element instead of zooming in though, but it does such a great job that I don’t care

  • s_s@lemmy.oneEnglish
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    5 months ago

    Opera has always been do-do and always had a do-do engine. Now it’s spyware.

  • hark@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    5 months ago

    I don’t want to touch any Chromium-based browser. Firefox all the way.

  • Retrowizard@piefed.social
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    5 months ago

    I tried Opera years before, but the UI wasn’t my cup of tea at the time. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t for me; but, when, I tried it ones again a year or two ago it was much more, like it was honestly and objectively bad.

    Which is sad because regarding of my tastes and needs it was a good browser

  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    5 months ago

    Is this a shitpost or is that idiot actually telling me not to use Opera because of alleged investor fraud in 2020?

    I don’t give a fuck about that, mate, when the other option is a Monopoly that literally removed the “Don’t be Evil” clause from their code of conduct. If you want me to stop using Opera then you’ll have to give me a reason about the specifications of the program, not about the company’s petty crimes due to Chinese regulatory failures.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      5 months ago

      I’m just tired as the next person about posts that provide a million half-assed reasons to not use anything but Firefox. But honestly If we don’t stop these places from building dossiers on us and locking us out of websites that are unsanctioned by them, It will a erode our opportunities in years to come.

      Right now, it doesn’t feel like it matters. Lexis-Nexis knows every nickel you ever spend and every creditor that ever ran a check on you, Google knows what type of porn you like to watch, tik tok and opera are storing everything that you’ve ever been into in a place that can be retrieved by other governments.

      At some point we’re going to have to take our privacy more seriously. Preferably before 1984 actually becomes real.

      • skeezix@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        5 months ago

        If you’ve done nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to fear. If you’ve got something to hide then you shouldn’t even be here.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          5 months ago

          20 years later you’re denied a house loan because your internet records show you went to a fascist website. Or an anti-fascist website, whatever floats your boat.

          Things that were acceptable or slightly garish 20 years ago are now grounds for dismissal at a job, you know.

      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        5 months ago

        If you could just provide some citations about Opera intrusively tracking and building profiles then I’d happily switch. The thing is, though, it’s still leagues better than Chromium in that regard.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          5 months ago

          For what it’s worth their privacy policy does say they gather telemetry and they did pay how many billions for the company?

          Almost everybody else is gathering telemetry as well obviously. The actual root of the concern is that the companies are based in China, you know the great firewall of China, China. The Chinese government holds a stranglehold on the companies that operate within them. For example if you have a US company and you want to do some business in China you have to find a Chinese partner company to sponsor you. Everything you store there everything you touch runs through the Chinese government. If they want any of the data, that required to be given access.

          If you remember when Google went to open a data center in China there was a pretty big kerfuffle. It was because the Chinese government was going to be handed keys to the kingdom for anything that was stored in China. For better or for worse it’s just how they operate.

          You may not feel the same way but I’m sure you at least get the concern there.

          Personally I try not to use Google integrated Chrome or Microsoft integrated chromium. I still use brave when I need a Chrome browser and that’s not the best either. They’d sell me up the river if they decided they needed a buck.

          I honestly wish we had more Firefox competition. And unified plug-in languages. The stuff that Opera and brave are providing aren’t difficult to mimic. And I really like there being developers fighting YouTube ad blocking and website pop-ups and pay wall bypasses.

          I’m not saying oh my God they’re going to rape you over the coals right now but do consider that the people that are making these crazy ass posts aren’t delusional or entirely wrong, and do use who’s getting your data on your consideration.

  • MagneticFusion@lemm.eeEnglish
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    5 months ago

    Vivaldi, the best alternative to Opera from the same old people who originally created Opera. I use it as a backup browser to Firefox and it’s been great

    • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
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      5 months ago

      Firefox has so many issues. I do hear people say that if you use the nightly build it gets better, but e.g. the app store version on a mobile has a lot of stuff turned off.

      I still use it, both on mobile and desktop, but its main appeal for me right now is that it is “not Chrome”. The 5% breakage of Firefox is nowhere close to the 50% enshittification of Chrome:-(.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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      5 months ago

      😅Love the optimism here! And Firefox fanboyism here! I’m a FF user too, but if you think FF is immune to going down shitty paths in the future like almost all well-intentioned tech products eventually do, there is antifreeze in your kool-aid, and I’m afraid you’ve gone blind.

    • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.mlEnglish
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      5 months ago

      Mozilla has bad resource management, that’s a fact.

      However turning into a loan shark app business? I really don’t think so. Unless another browser enters the market and takes off (which is extremely difficult given the tons of features browsers are built to support for all sorts of websites) Mozilla never has to worry that much about money since Google is their top funder; and Google’s main reason to fund them is to not deal with all sorts of legal issues and fines they’ll recieve for creating a monopoly.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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        5 months ago

        Oh come now. Who would have predicted Opera would have ended up like this? Even with hindsight this dark path is hard to predict bit the overall trend is not.

        Mozilla has created something of value and it has amassed a growing audience. If you are willing to invest in your confidence, I would happily short you in 10years or less, it’s nearly ripe for corruption and not at all immune from something similar to what has become of Opera. Trusting that Google will doing anything consistent is another lesson in ignoring trends.

  • FrankTheHealer@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    5 months ago

    Vivaldi has been a better option for those who love the feel of Opera. But Firefox is an overall better package imo

      • randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
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        5 months ago

        I’ve been trying out Floorp for a few days now. It’s a great browser but honestly I don’t see that much of a difference compared to regular Firefox. If I had to pick, my favorite feature from Floorp would be the fact that it packages changes that would normally reuuire fiddling with userChrome.css into simple toggles in about:preferences. I especially like how it makes hiding the horizontal tab bar so easy when I use Tree Style Tabs. That being said, I have fully switched over anyways.

        • Alex@feddit.roEnglish
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          5 months ago

          There isn’t on “killer feature”. It’s all of the little nice things that make me want to use it

  • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
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    5 months ago

    Opera was effectively the first software I bought, back when they had a trial version in 2001. They had tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, a solid DECADE before they came to any other browser. Lightyears ahead of the competition and worth every penny. I think in 2003 they made it free, and I wasn’t even mad.

    I was forced to switch to Firefox at some point when a website I had to use for work was incompatible due to some Java applet that wouldn’t load properly, and then slowly migrated over.

    Shame to see what happened to this amazing piece of tech.

    • erwan@lemmy.mlEnglish
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      5 months ago

      To be fair, Opera in the 2000’s was craming every single feature they could think about in their browser.

      So sure, they got some interesting features before the others but they also had hundreds of useless features cluttering the UI.

    • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
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      5 months ago

      It’s really tough to run a business when your competitors are all free as in freedom (Firefox) or free as in funded by monopolistic megacorps (Google, Apple, Microsoft).

  • lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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    5 months ago

    I knew not to use Opera GX as soon as they started sponsoring youtubers. I swear, youtube sponsorships are like anti-ads. 9 times out of 10 they’re doing something sketchy.

    • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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      5 months ago

      When I see a product I already use being promoted by YouTubers in sponsored segments, I immediately question if I should be using it, even if I’d have happily continued had I never seen that sponsorship.

      • Neshura@bookwormstory.socialEnglish
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        5 months ago

        Absolutely true. I remember every YouTuber and their mother shilling out for LastPass a few years back. Now that their reputstion is kind of in the dumps after several “noncritical” hacks I see those same YouTubers shilling out for Dashlane.

        It just gets worse if you try to think of any serious sponsorship program by companies that are, to date, trustworthy. There are none because they don’t need them. Word of mouth is good enough for them because the customers they have will stay being customers for a long time. Long enough that they bring in more people just by being happy about the service.

    • AnAngryAlpaca@feddit.deEnglish
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      5 months ago

      Lol, now that I think of it I had never seen a YouTube ad or sponsor where I would say “this is an ethical and fairly priced product without a catch that I would like to buy”…

      • lad@programming.devEnglish
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        5 months ago

        I only saw a decent product once, it was Henson razor. Not sure if it’s ethical and fairly priced (those are somewhat hard to tell, imo). If I weren’t using it already, the sponsorship would have deterred from trying 😅