Opera Developers, Do You Need Help?

I am the type of person that likes the well-deserving underdog. In my youth, I had Fords that put the hurt to quite a few Chevys on the street and the track. I rooted for Beta to make it big over VHS, and always thought it would, as it was better. So now I root for Opera to grow in proportion to its greatness.

It has been a great browser since I started using it, back when it became free. The 8.x up to 9.2x betas always were solid, with very few, if any, problems, and quickly went to ‘gold’ status with each revision.

Now…these people are really trying my patience!

The first beta I tried that was designated 9.5x beta was smokin’ fast, and looked like it was going to blow the competition into the weeds when generally available - and it was adding features. Sure it had some problems that caused crashing (something new with my experience with Opera!), but the promise of all that speed was so invigorating.

That was a while ago - the road to Kestrel has been long and hard. And I’m really getting to the point where I must ask - ‘Are these people on drugs?’ With each new beta some things previously working fine are broken, and things not part of the upgraded code (according to the notes) are broken, too. Also, certain things keep cropping back up, as though these people don’t seem to know how to use a revision tracking program. Parts of the code that are golden need to be removed, and archived, so that when doing a new build, the corrected revisions are put together.

Today I downloaded the latest beta on Betanews, and immediately after install the program was refusing to look the way I wanted. Toolbars that I usually hide were showing, and there was no way to hide them - the checkboxes were either gone or greyed out. What the hell is up with that? It seems to me the job of the programmer is like that of a doctor, and they should follow the same tenet ‘FIRST, DO NO HARM!’ The opened browser, before any browsing is done, should always display correctly.

Guys, as I said, I am the unabashed supporter of the deserving underdog - but the operative word there is deserving. You are losing your audience with each botched beta! (Remember, we users have been spoiled by your previous efforts…the betas were usually very good, and never broke anything previously setup. Now, the last three betas have broken my setup so that I had to delete all user settings in order for the browser to come up - not very exciting, not much fun)

remember when this program could leap tall buildings with a single bound? Hopefully, it will come again.

So it is time to get the act together, or forget about increasing market share.

-

Tags:   opera, kestrel, beta cycle, betanews, market share, acid test, adherence to standards