dW

Fuck Opera. Let’s Get Safari and Use Cool Hacks

This past Thursday I was welcomed with great news after a criticizing post I made on the Entr’Acte thread in the “Opera For Mac” forum on My Opera. I made a new friend out of the whole ordeal, and the news put me on Cloud 9. I fell from that cloud rather quickly, though.

As you can see the Mac users got some of the news about Kestrel a day before the rest of the community, having gotten more of the information from the Desktop Team’s update. The response initially was quite optimistic, but it suddenly turned quite sour. Why? My assumption would be ungratefulness. Like I said it started out quite jolly, but it turned suddenly to an attitude that no matter what Opera tries it won’t be good enough. After that it turned even more sour that fuels the title for my post, “Fuck Opera. Let’s Get Safari and Use Cool Hacks.”¹ Their tone wasn’t that affronted, but it could be read that way. Why do people think saying they’re going to use a competing program is going to get the developers they’re criticizing to do exactly what they want when they want? I’m sure if Opera could pull a perfect, spotless, and Mac-like UI out of their asses they’d do it.

Mac users typically expect more out of their developers than usual because they’ve been spoiled by seamless software and hardware integration along with applications that are quite unique and easy to use. Most Macintosh programs are simple programs geared towards doing a single task very well while looking good doing it, of course. To be quite frank Opera is about as ugly as a server monkey’s asshole on Mac OS X. The first time I used it I was appalled at how awful the interface looked. The sad thing is that it’s the same interface that I was used to on Windows, except with a dated half-assed Mac OS X look to it. That was in 2003. It’s over 4 years since Opera 7.0 Preview was released to the public, the first version released for Mac OS X. Opera’s looks haven’t changed any on Mac OS X. A few years back I started on my skin, Entr’Acte, in a attempt to make the program usable to me on Mac OS X. It doesn’t do that great of a job, but it does use the skinning system to the extent of its capabilities to do what it can do. Opera’s been good to me for creating the skin. I’ve received features I wanted so that the Macintosh users can use my skin with native UI elements. They’ve done what they could when they could to make it easier on us. Here comes Kestrel and an announcement stating a fresh looking UI for us Mac users; all that follows is bitching.

Criticism for the new build should come after, not before the build is released to the public. None of us except the developers have a clue what Kestrel will be like. I’m not expecting perfect. I never do, but hell at least give the developers a chance to prove themselves before throwing criticisms their way or threatening to use another program.

Personally if they want to use another program I think they should just go ahead and do it. They can go whine and bitch to those developers and leave Opera alone, especially when they’re trying their hardest to please a user base on a minority operating system that appears to be belligerent toward anything they’re attempting to do before they even see the fruits of the developers’ labor.

I’ve tried to look at myself for answers to this sort of behavior. I’m used to using Opera my way. That’s what Opera is about. You browse the way you want to browse. You make Opera out to be what you want it to be using everything Opera provides for you. I’m probably so fond of Opera bordering on fanaticism that I cannot see myself using another browser even when it doesn’t offer everything I want on my platform of choice at the present time. When Opera announces yet again something I’ve been asking for 4 years for and have waited patiently for I’m hurt when my colleagues can do nothing but whine and gripe about something they have no clue as to what it’s going to be like until the day it is released.

My thoughts are that they should be lucky that the program even exists on the Mac. Opera doesn’t have to do anything. It doesn’t even have to exist, but it does. Opera can be plenty successful even if it wasn’t developed for the Macintosh. I very much doubt Opera would stop developing for the Macintosh, but Mac Opera users should start being thankful that it does exist, develop some patience, and come to the realization that Opera is bending over backwards for them and to thank the developers all they can do is bitch.

Personally, why should I even care what they think anymore?