Opera 15 final has been released.
For those who've used Opera before, this is what Opera 15 is: a skinned Chromium clone with maybe some small features ported over from previous Opera versions. From what I understand, Opera Software no longer was able to compete with the others and have fired a substantial of their development team.
Switching from an in-house developed browsers to a 'themed Chromium' clone will definitely make it cheaper to release new versions, but without being able to port over the features that made Opera distinctive from the other browsers, there will be no real good reason for users to switch to Opera versions of 15 and above.
For me, this means: R.I.P. Opera browser.
Can't say people didn't see this coming, as Opera Software at least for the past 10 years seemed to be hell-bend on introducing random new features into their browser in order to unlock some 'magic potential[' that would make people mass-migrate to Opera from Firefox/IE/Chrome. Instead, what happened was that they alienated their current user-base by not fixing existing features that broke during new releases and not focussing enough on stability and website compatibility (compared to other browsers). They got better with compatibility only very late into the game, and stability is hit-or-miss depending on the version used.
I'll keep using Opera 12.x until they stop releasing security updates, which is when I'll need to have a very good look at what alternatives there are, and which pose the least downgrade from my current browsing habits.
For those who've used Opera before, this is what Opera 15 is: a skinned Chromium clone with maybe some small features ported over from previous Opera versions. From what I understand, Opera Software no longer was able to compete with the others and have fired a substantial of their development team.
Switching from an in-house developed browsers to a 'themed Chromium' clone will definitely make it cheaper to release new versions, but without being able to port over the features that made Opera distinctive from the other browsers, there will be no real good reason for users to switch to Opera versions of 15 and above.
For me, this means: R.I.P. Opera browser.
Can't say people didn't see this coming, as Opera Software at least for the past 10 years seemed to be hell-bend on introducing random new features into their browser in order to unlock some 'magic potential[' that would make people mass-migrate to Opera from Firefox/IE/Chrome. Instead, what happened was that they alienated their current user-base by not fixing existing features that broke during new releases and not focussing enough on stability and website compatibility (compared to other browsers). They got better with compatibility only very late into the game, and stability is hit-or-miss depending on the version used.
I'll keep using Opera 12.x until they stop releasing security updates, which is when I'll need to have a very good look at what alternatives there are, and which pose the least downgrade from my current browsing habits.
