I'm bitter-sweet about recent Opera (both browser and company strategy) - I've been using Opera for 8 years. I'm really happy to see some developments, because Opera browser always seemed somehow stalled (except for investing resources in strange technologies - e.g. widgets, unite).
I'm afraid that Opera vision is becoming a company serving ads, so the browser will be no longer best choice for power users.
The old Opera (till 12.16) just didn't have many users, but with new engine Opera could take some users from Chrome. I think this is a step for being attractive for advertisers.
Just take a look at Opera business page [1] - the "technology" part just gives historical context, whereas ads/content takes prominient place.
I think we'll see some innovations from Opera such as mentioned Stash, Discover (another way of promoting partners' content), etc. But I think in the case of web browser we really need faster horse.
What is interesting, Opera published their commits to Chromium and Blink [2] - it seams that only 8 Opera developers work with browser, at least with adopting engine.
By the way, Opera 12.16 was released, but you will not find it easily[3].
Well, that's a problem of discoverability - it seems that browsers try to hide that icon e.g. Firefox removed it and you need extension for chrome to show it.
Most elegant solution is Opera implementation [1] - a simple feed icon is displayed in the address bar if
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.example.com/rss />
is in the <head> section.
Other thing is dicoverability of that icon and learning what it does.
There is also a plan in 2014 regulations that cars can only use electric engine when in pits. However, this can be delayed because teams are reluctant to it. Besides electric only engine is quiet so it could lead to some accidents in pit-lane.
2014 regulations introduce even more downgraded engines. New ones will be 1.6 litre V6 turbo (now it is 2.4, V8, but not turbo), revs will be limited to 15k rpm (now 18k).
I don't know it this is what you need to know, but:
As far as the front wing is concerned:
- the bigger, the more complicated means more downforce thus enabling drivers to go faster in a corner but such wing leads to more dangerous situations, such as puncturing oponent's tires.
The bigger wings were introduced in 2009 when many parts of the cars were streamlined in order to improve overtaking and reduce dependency on aerodynamics.
The rear wing:
- DRS was introduced 2 years ago. It stands for Drag Reduction System - driver can "open" rear wing to reduce drag (downforce is reduced). Basically means that rear wing is split horizontally into two smaller wings. This system improves top speed so it can be only used on straight lines. The failure of this system can lead to lost of control of the car in non-straight parts of the circuit.
The usage of this system is heavily reduced by regulations.
Do you think if it is possible that Opera could do some cleanup of its product lines? There were some successful things, such as Opera Mail client. But there is a lot of unused gadgets.
It would be great if Opera had some statistics about usage of specific features. I personally don't know anyone using bittorent, widgets, unite.
(I'm from Poland, Opera is quite popular here)
I think users are not interested in widgets and unite.
The newest opera unite application was realesed in may 2011 (http://unite.opera.com/application/722/) whereas there are new extensions everyday.
Of course, API is not updated (vide: http://www.opera.com/docs/apis/extensions/windowsandtabsguid...)
In my opinion, Opera focuses too much on creating new things instead of improving support, especially of google services (eg. G+)
* it would be great to be able to submit comment,
* I use "collapse thread" quite often so it would be beneficial to do it in one tap.
Overall good design and better than other, probably abandoned clients for WP8. Keep up the good work!