After just over a month of public testing, Opera 15 has gone stable. This is the first stable release based on Google’s Chromium code, and the transition has many Opera die-hards up in arms. What’s got them so worked up? Missing features.
Opera 15 can’t do everything that Opera 12 could, and the functionality that’s been lost was leaned on heavily by power users. Opera Link synchronization support hasn’t been coded in yet. The Opera Mail client has been uprooted and is now offered as a separate download.
Perhaps the biggest change is that Opera 15 is nowhere near as customizable as it used to be. The tab strip can’t be moved to other sides of the browser window and you can’t widen the bar to show page thumbnails. There’s no way to personalize toolbar buttons. And themes? Forget it.
You can’t install Chrome themes from the Web Store because Opera 15 isn’t recognized as a supported browser. You also can’t go to a third’party site and apply a theme: Opera 15 blocks the installation of these packages and will tell you that the ‘extension type is not supported.’ Opera.config, the laundry list of tweaking options, has also died with the switch to Chromium. Entering it in the address bar now will just get you the Chromium settings screens.
These are the unfortunate growing pains that Opera feels it has to endure in order to continue competing in the browser marketplace. Switching to an entirely new code base isn’t an easy thing, and there’s bound to be fallout when your software has millions of users. Opera owes much of its popularity to its extremely vocal and dedicated fans, but you’ve got to wonder how long their enthusiasm will last.
Today, Opera 15 is a mere shadow of its former self. The current stable release is little more than a less-functional version of Google Chrome. If Opera can’t deliver much needed improvements to its users quickly enough, you can bet there will be plenty who switch to Chrome.
Now read: Opera Mail becomes an independent application
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