Opera is still boring from a web designer's perspective and it will be until 10.2. Sure it has lots of support for standards though what I'm really waiting for is Vega [my.opera.com] which we'll finally get to test out in Opera 10.2. CSS3 properties will be easier for them to start adding and are what we need most right now to minimize (X)HTML clutter and sticking strictly to XHTML and CSS the only real difference between IE and Opera (besides the bugs (Opera still has a few itself)) is that Opera supports CSS3 selectors and IE won't until IE9. We'll see properties such as border-radius, border-image, box-shadow though we won't see multiple background-image support with this release.

Opera 10.2 is what I'm really looking forward to and the specs for Presto 2.3 can be found here...
[opera.com...]

- John

I am a big fan of Opera, mainly because it is so fast (compared to more mainstream browsers). I am looking forward to the new version(s).

I upgraded Opera on an Windows XP machine and it worked the first time I loaded it. Now it seems to crash at a welcome screen. The screen flashes and closes to fast for me to read anything else. I'm seeing reports of this elsewhere too. Not a good start.

Opera is awesome for testing, it is the most compliant, is quick, has an option to show how your site looks on mobile devices, and with Unite I have been able shared very large files internationally.

Opera is not the most compliant browser. It lags behind Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, though it's certainly more compliant than IE.

I like opera unite

OK, I'm thinking this is very, very interesting. Very.

From Cnet's Seth Rosenblat:

Unite is basically a cloud-based, customizable server that includes multiple services, but its open API allows you to write and share your own services.

The initial offering includes the default Unite Home, which is
• the Opera Unite Web page that is given to each user,
• a media player for creating your own publicly available music stream,
• the "fridge" for a Facebook-style message wall,
• an instant messenger with a public/private toggle,
• a photo sharing app, and
• file serving and
• Web hosting capabilities.
[news.cnet.com...]

Wow, I could... Well, I could...
What? Compete with iTunes?

I dunno. But, I'm thinking if I had some clients who "needed" an intranet of some kind, this might work as an inexpensive (i.e., free, except what they would pay me to set it up) alternative.

For example, the instant messenger function could be used at a ....

I'm sorry. It looks like something is here. There probably is. I just don't see it, myself. (Note: I feel much the same way about Google Wave.)

I upgraded Opera on an Windows XP machine and it worked the first time I loaded it. Now it seems to crash at a welcome screen. The screen flashes and closes to fast for me to read anything else. I'm seeing reports of this elsewhere too. Not a good start.

I can't even get it to run when I re-load it now. I'm sure this is not unique to my set up. Bye bye Opera for now.

> I upgraded Opera on an Windows XP machine...

Upgraded from what version?

Did you try a clean install with a new profile?

I haven't tried the new version yet (because of your warning, actually) but these are the same questions to ask when someone has a problem upgrading *any* browser.

Jim

I've upgraded from 10.01 on XP, Vista and 7 machines. I haven't experienced any crashing reports at all.

Opera is not the most compliant browser. It lags behind Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, though it's certainly more compliant than IE.

Compliant in terms of what exactly? Opera passes the Acid 3 tests, but I don't think that's true of FF.

weeks.

I don't really see it as cloud applications but more of applications that help ordinary people do things that they normally depend on "servers" for.

now normal people can share photos by just sending a link to their unite and take it down or change it anytime they wish. I see unite as more "anti cloud" and i like the easy of use they give for none tech people, and O currently has more market share then Chrome.

>>Upgraded from what version?

Jim -

I upgraded from 9.64. I tried to reload (repair) 10.10 - no good, same problem. (Basically, I get a "Welcome" window that flashes on the screen, then closes. It happens so fast, I can't read anything more.) Next I uninstalled Opera 10.10 and reinstalled 10.10 - making sure to delete all files left behind by the uninstaller. No good, same problem.

Finally, I uninstalled 10.10, deleted all uninstalled files and folders and installed 9.64 - it works.

I didn't look today, but I saw someone else reporting the same problem on Opera's forum yesterday. I suspect as more users upgrade, the problem will be more "mainstream."

Sounds like you've done the right things, then.

I upgraded from 10.01 on XP, but encountered no difficulties. However, I looked into this a little bit, and the only things I could come up with are that you might check to see if you have any Opera start-up behaviors enabled that could be triggering problems. Examples are "Check to see if Opera is the default browser" in the Preferences-Advanced-Programs dialog, "Enable start-up sounds" in the Preferences-Advanced-Notifications dialog, and the "Continue from last time," and "Continue saved session" settings in the Preferences-General dialog - basically, you may want to try turning off all the fancy start-up options, the new "Turbo mode," and all other external dependencies such as proxies. Some incompatibility with these functions on your machine might be the cause of the trouble. I didn't find any mention of a start-up "Splash screen" though -- although that had been my prime suspect.

To be clear, I mean turn all these options off in 9.64 before trying to upgrade or re-install.

I also assume that you deleted your old profile ( default paths C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Opera\Opera and C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera ) as part of the "left-over" files you deleted. If not, then you might want back-up those directories and then delete the originals; Some 'small corruption' in one of the inherited profile files --something which didn't bother 9.64-- may be causing 10.10 to crash.

I understand that you might not want to bother with all of this now, but if no solution is forthcoming from Opera, it would be a shame if you were "cut off" from all future upgrades.

It seems odd to say so, but I hope that a few more users have trouble -- at least enough to provide sufficient information to find the problem. I've been 'among the too few' having problems with other applications, and it's definitely frustrating. I had one problem that was only resolved a year later when due to other problems I had to re-install Windows. Doing this 'magically' cured the problem I'd been having with the application -- and neither I nor the application provider had been able to pin down the cause of this problem... :(

Jim

@bill

Compliant in terms of what exactly? Opera passes the Acid 3 tests, but I don't think that's true of FF.

CSS3 Rounded Corners (border radius):
Supported: FireFox (since 3.0), Safari (since 3.1)
Partially Supported: Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

CSS3 Multiple column layout:
Supported: FireFox (since 2.0), Safari (since 3.1), Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

Flexible Box Layout Module:
Supported: FireFox (since 2.0), Safari (since 3.1), Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

CSS3 Border images:
Supported: FireFox (since 3.5), Safari (since 3.1), Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

CSS3 Box-shadow:
Supported: FireFox (since 3.5), Safari (since 3.1), Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

Client-side storing of name/value pairs (Web Storage):
Supported: Firefox (since 3.0), Safari (since 4.0), Chrome (since 3.0), IE (8)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

Audio element:
Supported: Firefox (since 3.5), Safari (since 3.2), Chrome (since 3.0)
Partially Supported: Opera (9.6, 10.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Opera (9.0)

CSS3 Multiple backgrounds:
Supported: Firefox (since 3.6), Safari (since 3.1), Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Firefox (2.0, 3.0, 3.5), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

CSS3 Transforms:
Supported: Firefox (since 3.5), Safari (since 3.2), Chrome (since 1.0)
Not Supported: IE (6, 7, 8), Firefox (2.0, 3.0), Safari (3.1), Opera (9.0, 9.6, 10.0)

More...
Drag and Drop
Video element
Text API for Canvas
Offline web applications
Independent JavaScript threading (Web Workers)
CSS3 Transitions (Firefox fails here too)
CSS3 Animation (Firefox fails here too)

Of what I consider the more standards compliant browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera), Opera seems to be just a little behind the other 3.

But I certainly give them credit for being 100% on the Acid3 test (but obviously, Acid3 does not cover everything).

also assume that you deleted your old profile ( default paths C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Opera\Opera and C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera ) as part of the "left-over" files you deleted. If not, then you might want back-up those directories and then delete the originals; Some 'small corruption' in one of the inherited profile files --something which didn't bother 9.64-- may be causing 10.10 to crash.

Don't assume - thanks for the reminder... I'll give this a try when I have a hour to spare (in case I have to install, reinstall...).

Thanks Jim - helpful as always.

The failed startup is typically caused by third party applications injecting code in a extension to the OS or similar, for not marking the injected code page as executable causing a DEP failure. One known such app is MouseImp, but there might be others.

Okay, had some time this morning.

I tried to reload 10.10 and Mitchman provided one option that didn't work out. I did as Jim suggested and deleted everything I could find in any Opera directory. So a fairly clean install didn't work. I suspect something in the registry only because 10.10 worked for about a day before it would no longer start up. A reboot seemed to cause the problem.

Next I tried ro reload 9.64 and that worked. I noticed a 10.00 version and loaded that - it worked. Next I tried 10.10 - no good. Uninstalled 10.10.

Back to reloading 10.00 - that worked again. So I tried 10.01 - no good. Same problem as 10.10. So I uninstalled 10.01 and reinstalled 10.00. That's where I am right now.

Wow, that's strange.

I went ahead and tried Opera/10.10, and had no problems at all here.

You may be right about it being a registry problem -- That must have been the problem I had with that other software I mentioned previously that refused to work until I was later forced (by other issues) to re-install Windows. After that, the problematic software was "magically cured." I hate it when that happens, because I like to know *why*...

Jim

Great update - I find Opera more and more interesting and FAST, now I use it 30% of my online time (Firefox 60%, IE 10 %).

10.10 (and 10.01) enables DEP on XP too, which previous versions didn't. Addon programs that inject code into the Opera process without marking the code page as executable WILL crash Opera in these cases. I suggest you upgrade all addon programs you might have running, such as antivirus, mouse improvement programs (MouseImp is a known offender), etc.

Mitchman solved my problem. I turned off Advanced Text Services and it worked. I used a text reader to help proof read - perhaps it was that application.

Seems that the issue is really the MS Handwiring recognition engine that comes with Office 2000 and 2003.
It only causes Opera to crash though if "Regional and Language Options", "Languages", "Details...", "Advanced", "Extend support of advanced text services to all programs" is enabled.
Chances are your text-to-speech program is not the problem.

I have used Opera 10.10 on XP for about a week now. I play an mmorpg game online developed in Flash. I don't know if it is Opera that doesn't like it, or my laptop. The game may have a memory leak in it, because playing in firefox, it has crashed firefox frequently. I have seen it use up to 168MB of RAM. It uses up a lot of virtual memory as well. My question is, how does Opera handle flash? is this strictly a memory issue with my older laptop or does Opera like Flash or vice versa?

I have also played the game with Safari and IE, they handle it a bit better.

I have the same problem as BillyS. I can run versions up to 10.00, but when I upgrade to version 10.10, same exact symptoms. I am running Windows XP, on an HP notebook. I submitted a support ticket TWICE to Opera, but no response.

@oliverrl: BillyS's problem got solved, did you test the same solution?

[edited by: tedster at 6:31 pm (utc) on Jan. 4, 2010]