Opera House: Opera Desktop Team

As they say - less than a year. Practice has shown that developers turned out to be the busiest people at Opera Software - so delayed with the answers that some of the questions simply became irrelevant! A suspicion creeps in that my English was not good enough and the letter with questions looked like a program to action. That, in general, is also not bad: it is great when the desires of developers and users coincide.

So let me remind you that today the most important people in the Opera Desktop Team answer questions:

Olafur Arnason - the leader of the development team of the desktop version of Opera;
')

Huib Kleinhout is the lead manager for the desktop browser development team.

On this foreplay is over and go to the actual answers.

1. How active are you working on html5 support? What is new to expect in the near future?
So, should we expect the next “big” version of the browser? Do you plan any interesting features?
And also: will you add rss synchronization in Opera link? I'm not talking about full synchronization, but at least just the feed sources themselves? In general, I would like to be able to export a profile with one button, in order to restore it after reinstalling. ( Lunatik42 )

Huib: We are constantly working on improving support for HTML5 and other standards, and participating in the work of the W3C, and implementing it in the browser. Therefore, in each new stable version of Opera you can see more and more complete support for modern web standards. The next expected release of Opera 11 will support work with websockets, as well as a lot of smaller functions described in the specifications of modern web standards.

In terms of interface improvements, all our inventions and experiments have three main goals: to make networking faster, as simple as possible, and even more convenient. Opera 11 will include some number of next improvements, but in fact we are already actively working on what will happen in the versions following Opera 11 release.

2. Synchronization of themes, settings and most importantly - user script and user css ( KLUBS )

Huib: It is clear that synchronization is one of the most important functions of the browser, especially now that people have more and more different devices with a browser installed. Therefore, we focused on creating a very dynamic and extensible architecture, which makes it relatively easy to add new types of data to the list of synchronized data. We recently opened the Opera Link API specifications, and also added synchronization of the list of blocked content in Opera 11. Adding other features in the implementation process, so wait for the news!

3. Maybe something is known about extensions. ( KLUBS )

Olli: Yes;)

4. For developers, something new will be? ( KLUBS )

Ollie: Extensions.

Huib: We are also actively improving Opera DragonFly (built-in developer tools), adding new debugging features and improving the interface.

5. Perhaps, it would not hurt to even synchronize sessions (sessions). Why is it still not there? ( GooRoo )

Ollie: There is something to think hard about in terms of a competent interface. Let's see what the future will show.

6. Recently, Opera users are increasingly complaining that the bugs found earlier are not fixed very quickly in new builds. Is it planned to change something in this direction, i.e. Will developers pay more attention to testing and fixing bugs? ( xn__p2a )

Olli: We recently completely changed the development process, making it more flexible and fast, so we hope ( Huib: we don’t hope, but we are sure) that this will allow the quality to return to the previous level and avoid its decline between the final releases, as happened in the past.

We added a lot of new testing tools, improved automated quality check tools, and also increased the number of employees in the Desktop Team. You should have already felt the improvement in quality even in our test and alpha versions - they have become much more stable.

7. Will the built-in PDF reader appear in Opera? Not a third-party plugin, namely its own built-in feature. ( xn__p2a )

Huib: We are more focused on creating web technologies, and now we see that, for example, extending CSS capabilities to webfonts reduces the need for PDF, as in the format of documents. Now the network publishes less and less documents in this format, and we expect that over time, the need for a built-in PDF viewer will disappear altogether.

8. When will you decide to change the User-Agent from Opera / 9.80 to the current version of Opera? ( xn__p2a )

Ollie: No such plans yet.

9. When will the bugtracking system finally appear, accessible to absolutely all Opera users? ( xn__p2a )

Ollie: In the near future will not appear.

10. When in opera: config the descriptions to all parameters finally appear. Already that build there sticks out everywhere "No information could be found for this item.". ( xn__p2a )

Ollie: It's still in preparation. For now you can use this information:
www.opera.com/support/usingopera/operaini

11. Regressions, regressions, regressions! (I like Steve Ballmer about the developers)
What to do if in the very first alpha of the updated engine you find a serious regression in the layout, report about it after 4 days, ask to trace the best friend of any Russian Opera, Mr. Shpankov, and the developers of the Opera still include it in the release?
What did you have to do, who should complain, where are they knocking?
Example of a bug: DSK-301040. ( homm )

Olli: The browser is a very complex program, so there will never be 0 errors in it. We try to correct as many errors for each release as possible, but, naturally, we do it selectively according to the importance of this or that error.

12. Why do not you follow @desktopteam? ( homm )

Huib: Coming soon.

13. When will the development of Opera Link continue (I want to synchronize everything / everything like Chrome and Firefox Sink)? ( nihi_l_ist )

Ollie: Change is coming soon! ;)

14. Will bookmark manager improve? ( nihi_l_ist )

Huib: We are already experimenting with pretty cool features, but for the time being I can't reveal all the cards.

15. Will it be possible to synchronize Notes in encrypted and not in clear form? ( nihi_l_ist )

Huib: All Opera Link data, including Notes, is securely synchronized using TLS connection. Theoretically, you can add additional encryption on top of TLS on the client side, but then you will not be able to access your data via the web interface on link.opera.com (which is convenient when working not from your computer).

16. Do you have plans to implement a breakdown of tabs into processes like that of a GC? ( nihi_l_ist )

Olli: It is very likely that yes.

17. Will there be support for SOCKS proxy? ( zhovner )

Huib: Yes! ;)

18. Radishes, return a double-spot from the empty spot of the speddial to go to the home page. ( sleepwalker )

Huib: Often users complained that when there were incorrect clicks on the Express panel, the home page was opened, and this interfered with them. Given that there are many other ways to open the home page, we decided to donate this small feature for the sake of a general improvement in browser usability.

19. And what genius of usability had the idea to convert the first menu item for the selected text from Copy to Search? ( sleepwalker )

Ollie: That option looks more natural. We noticed that users more often select text on a page, copy and paste into the search field. We decided to shorten this procedure by a few clicks.

20. When will WebSocket be? ( Krovosos )

Huib: Opera 11

Olli: my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/10/11/websockets

21. How long will Opera remain marginal?
All complex web applications are developed either by IE or under Firefox + Chrome + Safari.
In both cases, Opera is overboard.
Examples:
gomockingbird.com
wave.google.com
pipes.yahoo.com ( lolmaus )

Olli: We are constantly working to improve compatibility with popular services, such tasks have the highest priority. Several people work exclusively to correct errors that interfere with the work of web services, and we also have dedicated staff whose task is to discuss with the developers of web services how to fix problems if errors are on their side. Several blogs are dedicated to this topic:
my.opera.com/core/blog/show.dml/3130540
my.opera.com/ODIN/blog

22. Why doesn’t your bugtracker send notifications to at least the same works for me? ( thevery )

Huib: First of all, I want to thank you for reporting bugs and helping to make Opera better! We decided not to do automatic mailing when the status of the message changes, because at the same time, you will still receive a minimum of information (you will not know when and how it will be corrected, in which version, etc.). It seemed to us a better solution to publish detailed lists of changes to each version in our blog at my.opera.com/desktopteam .

23. Is it planned to optimize the “bloated” context menus and / or the visual editor of these? Is the selected text editor “Translated”? ( SailorMax )

Huib: There are no specific plans on this topic yet.

24. When will the opera finally learn to correctly distinguish between file formats and save them, rather than trying to open them? :) ( kupnet )

Huib: We are working on this problem.

25. When will Opera Dragonfly finally stop sucking and turn into a normal debugging tool? ( private_face )

Ollie: Opera Dragonfly is in constant development, at the moment the Dragonfly interface is undergoing a tangible reconstruction:
labs.opera.com/news/2010/09/29

26. I'm talking about the development cycle. Recently, it has such a form that versions go under certain events. And these versions are not entirely completed. More precisely completed, but with a large number of errors. Bugs that everyone trumpets, but the developers still miss them in the release. Maybe somehow it is necessary to revise the policy? ( Merser )

Ollie: We changed the development process about a year ago and are already starting to see a positive effect on the quality of Opera. We hope to further improve the quality thanks to a more flexible system, which I have already mentioned above.

27. By the way, do these guys know that Russia is the number one country in the number of Opera users?
Maybe they should learn Russian? ;) ( xn__p2a )

Olli: We have several employees from Russia, their input is very valuable. And they perform a huge amount of work related to the correction of errors specific to the Russian-speaking audience.

28. It would be interesting to know when people will be taken to parse reports in Russian. ( Merser )

Huib: There are no specific plans, but in any case, the error will be corrected faster if the error message in English is due to the reduction of the time for translation.

29. It would be interesting to know after what / when they decided that they should continue to work on Presto and the browser in general, that they can compete with other players with it. There was some time when they thought that they definitely would not abandon product development. What was it? Number of downloads? Reports stat. systems about the number of users? Making some deals? ( Merser )

Olli: There was never a doubt.

Huib: I thought so from the very beginning! ;)

30. What innovations are planned for the 11th branch? ( skobkin )

Ollie: Extensions and a few other long-requested features.

31. What is the attitude of the company to the requests of the community to make the browser open? ( skobkin )

Huib: It's great that open source and closed-source projects can compete with various advantages and disadvantages. In our case, the centralized management of Opera source code allows us to easily and quickly port the browser to new platforms while maintaining a large set of functions and with high quality. But in general, it is much more important to have healthy competition in a market built on open standards.

32. Do you plan to improve / simplify IRC support? ( skobkin )

Huib: There are no global plans, but improvements are in progress. Also, new protocols (for example - XMPP) are becoming increasingly important.

33. Are there any web development trends (html5, for example) that developers do not like? Are there standards with which developers disagree and have an opinion on this? ( skobkin )

Ollie: Any standards are good if they are open;)

34. What are the main difficulties arising in the development and support of the engine and browser for different platforms? ( skobkin )

Ollie: The need to comply with very strange or mutually exclusive conditions.

35. How many developers work on the code? ( SKYnv )

Huib: Almost 800 employees work in Opera now. Most of them are developers.

36. How are priorities set for fixing bugs? ( SKYnv )

Ollie: We try to assess the level of impact on the user. Errors that will interfere constantly receive a higher priority than those that the user forgets five minutes after detection.

37. Do you plan to update the client's irk or replace it with, for example, xmpp? ( SKYnv )

Huib: Not a replacement, but XMPP support is planned. True - not right now.

38. What tools do you use when developing and debugging opera? ( SKYnv )

Ollie: Visual studio, xcode and gcc.

39. In high languages ​​is being developed in the company? ( Chamie )

Ollie: c ++

40. What (what) version control system is used? ( Chamie )

Ollie: git

41. In the press releases there were phrases like "now all the forces are thrown on the Windows desktop" or something like that - it turns out, a significant number of developers are generalists, to whom it is Symbian, what to write under Mac - the same? ( Chamie )

Huib: As a rule, our developers are talented and enthusiastic people, but they still prefer to work on a particular project. And if someone really likes to design user interfaces, then there are those who love to disassemble everything.

42. Does Opera use any closed commercial libraries? ( Chamie )

Huib: No We use standard development tools for each platform and our own tools.

43. Are there many functions in Opera that duplicate OS functionality on their own? ( Chamie )

Huib: Generally, if the system functions work fast enough and without obvious errors, we try to use them. But some components, such as the user interface toolkit, are also implemented in Opera to make it easier for developers to add new features.

44. Will the desktop Opera have a separate widget engine (a sort of redistributable package) for launching widgets without a browser? So that you can pack the widget in your installer, which will put everything you need. ( Chamie )

Huib: You can hack Opera's new installer to do this. ;)

45. Will tab management evolve? (Grouping tabs, selecting tabs on a tab bar, saving a group of tabs to a session, etc.) ( amr_now )

Huib: No comment.

46. ​​Is it possible to expect an improvement in the “Home” feature? (Multiple home pages). ( amr_now )

Huib: Users have long used the Express panel for such cases.

47. Is it possible to expect a regular feature "Autocomplete"? ( amr_now )

Huib: We will think about it.

48. Can we expect plumes of mouse gestures? (respectively, with the setting of the color of the loop, etc.) ( amr_now )

Huib: No comment.

Thanks for the interesting questions!

Ugh, I hope that this was the longest “habragost”. Next in line is Jon von Tachner. One of these days I will start collecting questions. In the meantime, it's time to reward the best questions. They are:
question number 13 from nihi_l_ist
question number 29 from Merser
Question # 41 from Chamie

These habrareydi receive as a gift a t-shirt and a pen from Opera Software (I am waiting for the coordinates for communication in lichku).

Congratulations to the winners and getting ready for the next interview series.