Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

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Indeed, you CAN get to the common behavior by clicking an item further down on the context menu... or by pressing some unholy keyboard combination.

But to be frank, it's clunky and I'm simply not going to bother so long as Opera is being actively developed. If Opera did stop, or turned into Chinese malware or something, then I would probably just jump over to Firefox and use plugins for the most Opera-like experience possible. Because sync is a must-have (including desktop and mobile)... and we'll just have disagree on whether 99.8% of the browser market has made "incorrect" UX choices on how to open a link.

This reaction IS what I was talking about, and does seem at odds with Vivaldi's branding and marketing. The website slogans include, "It's your web. Surf it the way you want!", " A million ways to customize everything!", etc. But suggest letting users customize Vivaldi so that common new tab behavior is the default, and ancient Opera behavior is the one requiring extra clicks... and suddenly customization is bad, and the way people want to surf the web is objectively wrong.

Come ON. Figure out what the purpose of Vivaldi is, and proceed accordingly. If the purpose is to re-implement Opera 12 out of spite toward a former employer, then that's fine... but don't have the marketing revolve around customization. If the purpose really IS customization, then don't be so hostile or dismissive when users request customization options that depart from Opera 12.

All disagreements aside, I would really like understand why you feel "open in new tab" should not focus the new tab (apart from habit). In my experience Chrome users click "open in new tab" and then click the newly opened tab anyway, which is one extra mouse click and more mouse movement than in Vivaldi/Opera12 where you only have to click 'open in new tab' (fewer clicks and less mouse movement overall, it's obviously more efficient). I'm pretty sure you don't intend to argue that non-power users will employ the ctrl+shift+click shortcut. And if you don't want to focus the tab then you can simply use the middle mouse button (same results on all browsers), or you can go 15 pixels lower and click 'open in background tab'.

Funny that I also came up with the 15 pixels value in my answer to steveperkins, though I second guessed myself and replaced it by "few" pixels.

Is it 15 pixels really a valid approximation ?

This is how teachers spot cheaters on tests. And no, 30 pixels is a better approximation.

Probably just a coincidence (in my case it might be related to how 14 used to be a common font size in my documents). On my current monitor (2560x1600) the value is more like 25-30 pixels.

If I want to shift focus to a different page immediately, then I simply click the link. Then use the "back" button when I want to return.

If I'm right-clicking to open in a new tab, then it's usually because I want to open multiple links on a page while scrolling through it. So I want those loaded up in the background, and I want to remain on the original page until I've finished reading the material there.

Yes, you CAN do these things in Vivaldi... by using three-finger keyboard shortcuts, scrolling further down in a context menu, or using a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use.

I'm a bit perplexed by the response, though. This is Hacker News. We nod in approval as people reject text editors over the most obscure and trivial of UX preferences. We anticipate that when a blog link is posted, half of the discussion will revolve around its font kerning rather than its content. Etc.

So here you have a web browser, the application that most of us spend the overwhelming majority of our computer-time using. It's primary marketing pitch is extensive support for customization. It has some UX quirks that are out of step with the other major browsers, and it's baffled that anyone might want to customize that.

Hey, implement the suggestion or not, that's their call. But dismissing a customization out-of-hand as "incorrect" sure does cut against its own marketing. I think that's a bigger deal than my 15 pixels. It's an indication that the real goal is creating the perfect successor for Opera 12 die-hards. Which is awesome for that tiny group of individuals, but I don't think it's going to lead to any serious traction beyond them.

> a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use.

I've read through your other comments in this thread, and while most of them contain some form of generalization or another, to me this is the most baffling.

As I read his replies, I was immediately thinking "why not just use middle click"?

Then I saw that line and was just confused. Maybe he has a mouse with a really terrible scroll wheel and has assumed that all scroll wheels are terrible and that no one ever middle clicks?

> Yes, you CAN do these things in Vivaldi... by using three-finger keyboard shortcuts, scrolling further down in a context menu, or using a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use.

Ummm, the middle mouse button is the way to open links in a background tab (the right button is for opening up a context menu, with links as with anything else on the computer). AFAIK, every modern mouse comes with a middle mouse button, disguised as the scroll wheel.

What perplexes me is why anyone would want anything else.

> If I want to shift focus to a different page immediately, then I simply click the link. Then use the "back" button when I want to return.

There are lots of cases where you want to keep your original tab and the new tab, e.g. reading an article which contains references to other articles, going through a list of tickets in a bug tracker (the list pattern can be applied to anything - games, amazon items, whatever). I also keep the original tab because I might not be finished reading it or because I want to use it for a later reference, and opening a new page in the same tab might make me forget that I was reading another page to begin with.

> It has some UX quirks that are out of step with the other major browsers, and it's baffled that anyone might want to customize that.

I'm not against customization, just saying that for most people the Vivaldi/Opera way might make more sense. I can see why you in particular would dislike this work flow, and it makes sense there should be a checkbox allowing you to maintain your way of using the browser.

> It's an indication that the real goal is creating the perfect successor for Opera 12 die-hards.

I think it actually might be their official goal, as the browsers on the market don't offer what Opera 12 used to. And it's probably the right thing to do as a business too, since it's unlikely anyone would pay attention to a Chrome/Firefox clone.

> but I don't think it's going to lead to any serious traction beyond them.

It won't, but that has nothing to do with the product's intrinsic quality. Unless Vivaldi's marketing budget matches Google's I don't see their market share getting into double digits. But you know what? That's ok. Opera 12 used to do relatively fine with 3-4%.

Sorry, this turned into a typical 90s flame war. I think you have a valid point that Vivaldi should provide options despite what you and I might think are the correct defaults.

> or using a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use

.... What?

I've always used windows, OSX and occasionally linux (have never used solaris) and I've always found middle click to open links in the background to be incredibly convenient, and I highly doubt that it's as rarely used as you're implying (especially considering that every single browser I can think of implements that behavior, I doubt they would bother if no one used it).

Middle clicking to close tabs is also incredibly convenient.

This reaction IS what I was talking about, and does seem at odds with Vivaldi's branding and marketing. The website slogans include, "It's your web. Surf it the way you want!", " A million ways to customize everything!", etc. But suggest letting users customize Vivaldi so that common new tab behavior is the default, and ancient Opera behavior is the one requiring extra clicks... and suddenly customization is bad, and the way people want to surf the web is objectively wrong.

I don't think the Vivaldi team has said anything against letting you customize that option. Probably that customization is just not implemented yet.

I wonder what you are talking about, Opera did stop and turned into a Chrome clone which brought vivaldi and otter into existence to close the gap it left.

I don't get Where the extra click you are talking about is, either click on open in new tab or open in background tab, same number of click.

I'm not sure what kind of customization you are asking for, you want to remove the choice of opening in background tab ?

What is this common / default behavior you are talking about ? AFAIK the common, default, standard behavior of right clicking has always been to bring up the contextual menu. Where is it not like that ?

I am not aware of vivaldi users requesting a change of the expected behavior to be more chrome like, AFAIK it is the other way around: keep the old opera goodness and keep catering to power users and provide choice.

> I don't get Where the extra click you are talking about is, either click on open in new tab or open in background tab, same number of click.

Vivaldi: right click -> "Open in new tab" = two clicks

Chrome: right click -> "Open in new tab" -> click the newly opened tab = three clicks

If you're only opening a single link, then sure.

But if you're only opening a single link, then why use a new tab to begin with? Just click the link ("one click!"), and go back to the previous page if and when you want. If I'm opening links in new tabs, its generally because I'm reading a page, and queuing up things to read after I finish that initial page.

Some of the old-Opera diehards in this thread are acting like 99% of the browser market has made an objectively "incorrect" UX choice. That is absolute nonsense. You guys don't prefer the old-Opera new tab behavior because of some objective truth, you prefer it simply because that was the old-Opera behavior and you're used to it.

Objectively speaking, it is already the behavior of a default single-click to change focus. So if users take extra steps to open links in some different manner, then it's actually kinda weird to expect them to want the same focus-change behavior as if they hadn't taken those extra steps. Which is probably why every other browser has gone in that direction over the past decade. But I can acknowledge that preferences may vary.

Are you sure you replied to the right comment? I was correcting a misconception that three clicks equals two clicks, not stating an opinion about the issue. It takes me 30 seconds at most to readjust to a different browser's context menu, and I don't complain about it. I'm certainly not an "old-Opera diehard" as you suggested; I haven't used that browser in over a decade and the only thing I ever liked about it was the email integration, as I stated in another comment.

As an aside, what is a "power user" of a web browser? Almost everyone these days in any kind of office job makes very heavy use of the web for research and apps. People proclaiming themselves as "power users" are just trying to imagine that they have some sort of weird superiority because of their idiosyncratic UI preferences. What a strange thing to be proud of.

You obviously never used Opera 12 :) power user in a browser has the same meaning as everywhere else - someone who is more skilled at using a tool than the average user. For example a regular user will go back to the previous page by pressing the 'back' button, or 'backspace' if they're keyboard inclined. A power user would use the "hold right click - press left click" mouse gesture (or a different variant that involves holding right click down and moving the mouse), which shaves some time off from the whole operation. Same for switching tabs (hold right click + scroll mouse wheel), opening new tabs (mouse gesture), customizing tabs (e.g. on the left side if you have the screen space) and generally knowing what options and features your browser offers. This basically means that as a power user you can do whatever a regular user can do, but more efficiently.

It's not a thing to be proud of, or some sort of weird imagined superiority as you put it, it's a fact that in a browser I can do stuff much more efficiently than most of my peers. Of course, this doesn't really matter unless your job revolves around a browser, in which case you could probably shave 10 or more minutes per day (relevant when juggling with tabs a lot, for managers/P.O.s/Scrum masters and such).

Of course, the term "power user" doesn't make sense when talking about barebones browsers (like the old IE), just like it doesn't make sense in Git (where everywhere needs to be a power user, you can't just casually use it like in Hg, without spending lots of time learning it).

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