Opera is still not getting some basic features right and that is costing them users.
I remember asking for a feature in forums in days of Opera 11.00. The feature was something that every browser has: "Remembering contents of a text field." For example, when I enter my email address once in a website and then come back another day and write first letter of my email id, it is displayed in a dropdown. But Opera outright refused to even consider.
Now, they lack a good full screen mode and drag and drop support in GMail, two real deal breakers for me. I tried Opera 12 for less than 12 min and sent it back to dark corners of my HD!
FWIW we have the "wand" feature which will fill in, and submit, a form for you with previously used values (it's the key icon on the toolbar or ctrl+enter).
I know this is not quite the same implementation that other browsers have.
Your "wand" feature also adds a terrifically ugly yellow border to remembered inputs which developers have no way to prevent (like you can with WebKit by using outline: 0). I'm all for a constant UI to create a good UX but not when it can make a site look bad.
Opera has an inbuilt IMAP client... which I admittedly never use, but between that and Thunderbird, why would you even want to use webmail? Of course it should still work, even though it's silly, but you also "should" not even notice that it doesn't, is what I'm saying. Certainly if you imply your time is so precious, heh.
I absolutely love the mail client in Opera. In fact, it's the primary reason I still use Opera as my main browser. At work I use Chrome because we use our own webmail client (same one we sell to customers).
I have six email accounts setup in my Opera, all using IMAP. There's a unified INBOX so I can check all my messages, but still be able to review each INBOX separately. Email search is BLAZING fast, the fastest search I have ever used, though it lacks advanced search options like searching only in the subject.
The contacts view is also awesome. Click on a contact and it'll show all the mail to and from that person, instantly. No searching.
The best part is that I never have to "check" my email. Opera notifies me as soon as I get an email (thanks to IMAP) and I keep open the sidebar on the right so I can always see the UNREAD counter to know if I have new messages or not.
Since reading email and browsing the web are things I do all the time, it really makes a lot of sense to me to have those two activities live in the same window and use the same tab navigation system. I love it.
You're right, that would be great... also, showing the sidebar panel when moving the cursor to the edge! I'm a total Opera fanboy, but yeah, this kinda sucks :)
I remember asking for a feature in forums in days of Opera 11.00. The feature was something that every browser has: "Remembering contents of a text field." For example, when I enter my email address once in a website and then come back another day and write first letter of my email id, it is displayed in a dropdown. But Opera outright refused to even consider.
Now, they lack a good full screen mode and drag and drop support in GMail, two real deal breakers for me. I tried Opera 12 for less than 12 min and sent it back to dark corners of my HD!
Goodbye Opera 12.