Forget Opera

(Update: This is a really old post, and they have long since fixed the problem. I still use Opera for most browsing.)

For the longest time I really liked the Opera web browser. It is quicker to load than any other full functioning browser, and processes JScript faster than anything else. It’s got a very good collection of presets for popular email services in the mail client. There are plenty of other fine features too numerous to list.

It has one great failing: shortcuts. I go to the trouble to turn off mouse gestures in everything, because I’m too clumsy to benefit. It’s bad enough FireFox still occasionally reacts, but Opera ignores every effort to change that and keystroke shortcuts. Earlier today I was posting on a website and accidentally hit the wrong keys. My natural clumsiness plagues my writing with typos, but I can deal with the task of editing most things. Not with Opera. It interprets some of the strangest key combinations. I have no idea what I hit, because that’s a part of clumsiness, but the browser closed the page and lost all my work.

Understand something: My clumsiness is an actual learning disability. I am physically wired in such a way I cannot possibly become graceful and precise in typing on a computer keyboard. I do better with laptops because the movements are much smaller, but with just a small incremental increase in the distance my fingers have to travel, and the necessity of moving my wrist at all, and the errors skyrocket. If I could simply turn off certain keystroke shortcuts, that would be fine. However, Opera does not honor such efforts.

Worse, it’s been this way since I can remember. Filing bug reports and such have changed nothing. Today’s error was just too much. Opera, your browser is junk in my book.