As I have to study, I’m successfully procrastinating, so I installed Opera Next. If you too have done so, you might understand my shock when I did. It was so big and upleasant I decided to write a short text about it.

After install, the first thought was „did I install Chrome“? Nope, I didn’t. I kept calmly and with resignation discovering how little of functions was left from original Opera and I felt kind of a surge of rage coming.

The moment, though, I realized that Opera Next doesn’t even have usual tab stacking, for the sake of my sanity I started to believe it’s really an alpha build without the functions the final version will have. For if I didn’t believe that, I’d have to start banging my head against the wall for one thing and then start thinking whether I’ll keep my Opera 12.15 or I’ll convert to Chrome or what.

Btw for those who are too lazy to install Opera Next but know Opera, I’m attaching brief list of functions I didn’t find in Opera Next version 15.0.1147.24:

• Previews of tabs
• Cycling between tabs by last used order
• Session management
• Tab stacking
• Tab pinning
• Usual settings for Speed dial (BG image, size of previews…)
• Form settings (for autofill of name, e-mail, address…)
• Virtually everything from Preferences → Advanced

There is one thing I found better – Downloads page. I can also say I feel that Opera Next renders pages a triffle faster than Opera, but not much. What’s important but obvious is that it no longer screws up rendering of google docs (generally pages optimized for Chrome), since it has Chrome engine.

So, my dear and long beloved Opera, I certainly hope that current Opera Next is a troll. If yes, then it’s very good one and I’m really looking forward to see the reasons behind it (aka. real new version). If not and you continue going this way, you’ll lose a lot of people (and won’t gain Chrome-lovers, because there will be no reason to pick you over Chrome). Choose your next step carefully.