Opera, all prettied up with nowhere to go

Anyone who has read a few of my posts, or even looked at my blog page will know that i am an Opera user. In general i find Opera to be a far superior browsing experience to any other browser at the moment, however, its failures are a reflection of the current market in which it is fighting. It has been a while since i have made significant comment on Opera, or the state of the web, and so i felt it was about time to throw something out there. In a way, this is an open letter to Opera Software, and a comment on the "browser wars".

While people in the open source world have been talking about browser competition for many years, it has only really been affecting the main stream for the last two or three. And while this may have been sparked by the superiority of Firefox over IE 6 in the eyes of many, what has really made the main stream realise the existence of competition is the aggressive way in which Google are trying to push Chrome. So much so, that the market share of Chrome has over shadowed that of Opera. And while Opera may be pleased that the marketing power of Google is helping enlighten many consumers, their desktop growth is not performing as well as it could. They mostly dominate the mobile market, and Opera link has encouraged many users to switch to Opera desktop, but there is still a big chunk of users that seem resistant to desktop browser change. Why? What does Chrome have that has given it 1% market share under 12 months, and Firefox almost an extra 4% in the same period?

Some strong OSS activists might attribute it to the fact that both Firefox and Chrome are open source or at least have underlying open source projects. And while i believe that to be a part of it, there is a lot more there. Both Chrome and Firefox are fast, but the average end user doesn't notice the difference. I feel that Chrome has gained market share through aggressive marketing and a technical user base jumping from Firefox to Chrome ( due to speed and the fact that tabs run in separate process threads ). And, in my opinion, Firefox is still gaining market share due to every security vulnerability found in IE. Yes, my implication is that Firefox is become the Corporate desktop browser of choice. It's a dream to manage on the network ( due to the built in updater ) and it is more secure than IE, so IT managers are more likely to recommend it. This is my general feeling on the browser market at the moment, so where does Opera factor in, and how can they take their rightful place?

Opera has a very odd relationship with the tech community. In this part of the browser conscious market ( maybe 30% of the total market? ), you get the Opera lovers and the people who prefer Firefox. While i fall into the Opera lovers, most of my friends and colleagues fall into the latter category. And being the confrontational, querying mind that i hope i am, i have dug deep ( sometimes into dangerous territory ) about why the aforementioned latter group prefer Firefox. This is what i generally got back:

"Last time i used it, it wasn't very good" or "i've never tried it" - the problem with the "Last time" is that it normally refers to pre-firefox, and although Opera was still great back then, now it is really the most forward thinking of all the browsers. Most of these users, have been impressed with what i have shown them of modern Opera, many have even changed browser. This is a market share that Opera could get if marketing was directed toward this group, but sadly, they are a minority, and marketing engines are always directed at the mainstream.

"It's not Open Source" - this group is also a minority, and while they strike up a point, Opera is not convinced it's a valid one. And i can understand why Opera would want to protect their source code, even if i would prefer them to be open source. Opera are an interesting company in this way. While they feel the need to push open standards and build a strong community, the still feel the need to protect their source, even if it isn't the community they fear. They have the makings of an amazing open source company, without the open source. Maybe there is a compromise to come? Well, at least i have a suggestion which relates to the next group:

"Plugin <x> <y> and <z> are amazing and i can't live without them" - fair enough. I can accept the killer app arguement because i live it everyday. Being a Linux user at home and at work switching between Windows and Mac, i feel the pain related to killer apps. My ideal platform would be a Linux system with KDE Desktop, Visual Studio 2008, XNA Game Studio, and XCode's analytical tools. Every time auto complete with C++ fails in XCode reminds me of the frustration faced by missing apps that you have become used to. So being able to understand the pain, suffering and depravity caused by not having your plugins, leads me to this.

Firefox is an open source project under a permissive triple license ( MPL, GPL 2, LGPL 2.1 ), so why not port their plugin architecture, or at least write a compatible plugin architecture. This way there is an available plugin API and the amount of people able and willing to try Opera could potentially double. Yes i can accept that it is a monster of a project to do this, but it is the kind of thing that can be done. This part could even be a community project by providing the community with the function callbacks and class structure available to Opera desktop. And no, Opera widgets are not currently a replacement. They are glorified, separate window web apps. Compatible plugin architectures are a progressive way forward, as can be seen by the amount of abstraction layers in a modern Linux system. Why not? Well, i can suggest a few reasons that i wouldn't want a plugin architecture like that of Firefox ( for example, plugins with that much power can mask malicious software ), but i feel that the advantages in terms of attracting a considerably larger user base would be huge.