Opera ASA, the Norwegian company that publishes various forms of Opera Browser for just about every platform out there, has apparently decided that its real growth market is among computer users with the intelligence of a rotten cabbage and attention spans that make mere nanoseconds seem like years.
Example: suppose one were to want to import one’s bookmarks from a previous version of the Opera browser to the current Chrome knockoff Opera browser. The Opera “help” (and I use the term derisively) file says,
“To import your bookmarks:
“From the main menu, select More tools > Bookmark Importer.
“Click the Select Bookmarks button.
“From the list, select which bookmarks you wish to convert to Speed Dial.”
Well, first off, that’s a flat out lie. “Bookmark Importer” has sporadically appeared and disappeared from the Chrome knockoff Opera since its inception. Not there in ver. 24.0.1543.0.
Secondly, “From the list, select which bookmarks you wish to convert to Speed Dial,” pretty explicitly says, “Choose a few bookmarks. We’ll let you sort of ‘import’ those few. You lose the rest AND your folder structure. Tough noogies. We only want users with the attention spans and intelligence necessary to make gnats seem like Steven Hawking in comparison.”
100s of bookmarks nestled in a folder structure that allows clear navigation and categorization with a bookmark management functionality that allows quick and easy searches to delve quickly into that complex tree structure and pluck just exactly the gem one wants? Gone, bubba.
So, then Opera ASA touts its “synchronize” function. . . which does no such thing at all. All it does is export bookmarks in an html file that COMPLETELY DESTROYS ALL ORGANIZATION INCLUDING ALPHABETIZING OF BOOKMARKS, making the thing almost completely worthless. . . especially since it also RANDOMLY LOSES BOOKMARKS.
Now, that’s just ONE of the many, many ways Opera ASA has screwed up a once exceptionally useful tool. *sigh*
I am trying Avant Browser and I find it to have a few useful, built in features even Opera 12.x doesn’t (the old Opera browser that’s still at least an order of magnitude better than the “new” Chrome knockoff Opera), but it, too, does not import Opera bookmarks (though it offers to and appears to attempt to do so), and in all other ways, excepting a few nice lil features, is about as capable as Opera 11.x.
*sigh*
It’s almost enough to make a guy give up on the web.
Sounds like good “quality” software. For certain rather unusual interpretations of the word “good” and the word “quality”. Are you sure this wasn’t developed by the “Dynamics” team at Microsoft?
M$? If only. Win8, as originally issued, made more sense than Opera’s new approach to a web browser. *sigh*
For 18 years or so, the Opera browser was my “goto” for slick web navigation/use. For several years, I even used it as my email client, because it’s built-in capabilities in that regard were all I needed. Now that Opera ASA has decided to make Opera 15 and following nothing but a skinned Chrome Clone, I simply cannot find anything as useful as Opera 12.x to replace that now aging browser. *sigh* The Avant browser, as I said, comes close in functionality (and has a few semi-useful lil tricks of its own to offer in compensation for its shortcomings–one’s choice of three different rendering engines is sort of nice, for example), but is seriously lacking in a few (decent bookmarking management, for one–a BIG DEAL for me) and has some irritating “features” of its own to deal with.
Note to Avant developers: the Granddaddy of all “mouse gesture” browsers (Opera) has been training users like me for THIRTEEN YEARS. Changing what mouse gestures do is. . . irritating.