30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover

Screenshots For Everyone

Given that I use Opera more than any other browser, I realized that I needed to look at how other browsers do this. I had never paid attention before this, which is sort of the point: with Opera’s previous behavior I never had to think about it.

So here they are, in all their glory, screenshots from Internet Explorer (not IE for Mac) to Firefox to Camino to OmniWeb to Safari... and of course Opera 8.5 and 9.

Note: It may be helpful to simply scroll down the page to get a sense of how all of the dialog boxes look, and then come back here to read more.

Password dialog in Internet Explorer 6

Weighing in at 34 words and the second smallest dialog (only Firefox on Windows is smaller). It is simple enough, assuming you can read it. It defaults to “No” and has an option not to save any more passwords.

Simplicity, however, loses you some of the options which will become clearer as we go on. But don’t worry, there’s a new, hip, stylish version of Internet Explorer coming for Windows (XP and higher only) which is super updated for the new millenium. For you, Constant Reader, I downloaded and installed this browser which is currently in beta, to give you a sneak peak at what Microsoft has been working on for the past 6 years:

Password dialog in Internet Explorer 7 (beta)

Wow. But IE7 does have tabs. So, you know... welcome to 2001. This dialog window has an additional 10 words — because if we’ve learned anything in the past 6 years it’s that people on the Internet really like to read instructions closely before clicking stuff.

Still they are sticking with the Yes/No answers, and No is the default. Their options, although limited, are crystal clear...as long as you don’t want to decide later. What happens if you press “No”? Will it ask again later? The checkbox will disable passwords entirely.

There’s also no option for “Save this password for the entire site” which you’ll probably miss. But if you are still using Internet Explorer you’re giving up so much else that it’s hardly worth bothering trying to explain it to you.

Firefox

Password dialog in Firefox (Win)

Password dialog in Firefox (Mac)

These two screengrabs show two three four several important things:

• Mac OS X prompts are much larger (well, except for Opera, which we’ll get to in a minute)
• The OS X prompts are much nicer looking (well, except for Opera). They use the application icon for each, which is a nice touch.
• The layout of the buttons is different. Windows puts the equivalent of “No” is on the right edge, Mac OS X puts “Yes” on the right edge
• Windows gives you quick keyboard shortcuts for their options. Anyone who has used Windows for more than a few minutes knows that the underlined characters can be used with the alt key to choose that option without requring the mouse. Mac users are stuck using their mouse or tabbing around until they get the right tab selected.
• The default (Not Now) is the same for Windows and Mac OS X
• The order is different. “Never for This Site” is in the middle if you use Windows and on the left if you use Mac. I imagine this would be confusing if you frequently switch between Firefox on Windows and Mac.

Camino

Camino (my second favorite browser on OS X) is based on Firefox but designed specifically for OS X. Note the changes in the way that it prompts the user:

Password dialog in Camino

That’s a whopping 54 words (compared to 16 for Firefox) but really the important part comes in the bolded words at the top. The key work “Remember” is used in the title and in all 3 choices. “Remember Password” is the default (note this is the only current browser which defaults to save passwords).

The words in that middle paragraph do a quite excellent job of describing what will happen, how to fix it if you save a password you don’t mean to, and why you might choose “Never”

But the really nice touch (and what I think all browsers should do) is that when I hit esc, Camino assumed I meant “Don’t Remember” aka “Skip it this time, ask me again.”

“Never Remember” is nicely consistent but it doesn’t make it quite clear whether you are saying “Never” for the site or just that particular page. I suppose someone might even think that “Never Remember” could mean “Never Remember Passwords on Any Page on Any Site” which it doesn’t but wouldn’t be an outrageous assumption.

Safari

Let’s see how Apple designed their password dialog in Safari:

Password dialog in Safari

An ecnonomical 30 words (by the way, I am counting the words in the buttons as well as the title bar, if any) but the real problem is that both “Never for this Website” and “Yes” appear to be highlighted.

What happens if you press esc? Nothing. You can an error beep, Mac’s way of saying “No you can’t do that” which seems like very bad user interface design. esc is one of those keys which should always work, and in this context it should definitely be assumed to mean “Not Now”

That said, Safari’s simple “Yes” is somehow very appealing, visually. It’s the simplicity again, I believe.

OmniWeb

The latest OmniWeb, based on WebKit (Web Kit?) which makes it similar to Safari (excuse the gross simplification, but for my purposes here it’s close enough) and the dialog here is indeed similar:

Password dialog in OmniWeb

The fine folks at OmniGroup went with the more common “Save” and “Don’t Save” which users are no doubt familiar with from most other apps. The problem is that “Don’t Save” sounds like a permanent decision, but it is not.

They also managed to get the word count down to 26. My guess is that they are used to a slightly more advanced group of users (they are using a Mac-only browser with no free version, so you’re talking a few percent of the few percent) and they can get away with assuming that their users will know that “Don’t Save” means “Don’t Save This Time”

Compare That To Opera

Technically, Opera’s Wand is the most advanced of all of the password managers. It will let you easily manage multiple logins to each site (most of the others will only remember one per page).

Graphically, Opera’s Wand may be the ugliest of all of them. The Windows Wand dialog uses some colors which remind me more of Opera7 the rest of Opera9’s User Interface.

First let’s look at Opera 8.5, both on Windows and Mac. Note that Opera 8.5 had a dropdown selector for different choices. Screenshots are show for both the regular and expanded states:

Password dialog in Opera 8.5 (Windows)

Password dialog in Opera 8.5, Expanded (Windows)

Password dialog in Opera 8.5 (Mac)

Password dialog in Opera 8.5, Expanded (Mac)

Now it’s more difficult to give a word count for these, given that there is a dropdown, but just taking the default option gives us 30.

But it’s hard to ignore that dropdown selector. No one else has it, and it must have confused people because it is gone in Opera 9. However, note that Opera 8.5 (and before) defaulted to saving the password for the current page.

Password dialog in Opera 9 (Win)

Password dialog in Opera 9 (Mac)

The word count is now at 36 (counting the URL as one word) but the dropdown is gone. Unfortunately, so are the keyboard shortcuts for WinOpera. “Save” and “Never” and “Not now” do not have any underlined characters, so you can’t use a shortcut to jump to them (you can use tab to move around of course). Likewise the option to save choice only for the current page (and showing that current page) is great, but it too should have an accelerator keyboard shortcut.

Kudos for explaining how to trigger the Wand auto-fill feature in the future (using ctrl (or cmd) + enter.

Notice that both the Mac and Win dialog boxes refer to the “Wand button” but only the Windows one actually shows the icon. Mac users hopefully will be able to tell that the little icon up near the address bar is the wand button.

Mac Users note: Sadly MacOpera does not (yet?) support Keychain.

Opera’s dialog boxes are the most similar between Windows and Mac OS X (compare them to how different Firefox-Win and Firefox-Mac (above) look, and you’ll notice Opera’s uninformity. However this is probably one of the reasons why people who “like but don’t use” MacOpera dislike it — the dialog box feels like it is a Windows app ported to Mac OS X.

While I love the change which assumes people want to save the password for the entire server (there are just too many sites which give you crazy login URLs to do otherwise), I really dislike the fact that the new version defaults to “Not Now” rather than Opera 8.5 which defaulted to Save, but just for that page.

Why does this bother me? Because it is inconvenient. The previous one was inconvenient in that I had to press the down arrow and then press enter... BUT! I could easily do that by the keyboard.

In MacOpera, I have much more trouble using the keyboard for it now.

My only option in OS X is tab. The first tab takes me to the check box next to “Save choice for this page only” The second tab takes me to “Save” and then press shift...

Note: If you press enter (aka return) it will select “Not now” This took me awhile to figure out, and now I have to think about it... and I don’t want to have to think about my browser, I have plenty of other things to think about.

Who Gets It Right?

I believe Camino does the best job. When the dialog comes up, enter will save the password and esc will not. That makes the most sense, seems to be the most intuitive, and requires the least amount of effort (one key).

Conformity

I like Opera for not being like other browsers. If I liked the way other browsers worked, I would use other browsers.

I understand why Opera made this change, because it puts Opera closer in line with the other major browsers out there, and makes it less likely for people to make a mistake (albeit a mistake I feel is rather astoundingly minor).

One of the reasons I think Opera ought to default to “Save” is that Opera makes it so easy to disable Wand: Preferences → Wand and then uncheck “Let the Wand remember passwords.” Look here:

Opera already prompts the user the first time they do a mouse gesture:

What would prevent a similar dialog to be shown the first time Opera discovers that there is Wand data to be saved?

Conclusion

It seems that Opera made this change to be more like other browsers, and perhaps feel like they are being a bit safer to those users who click blindly at any dialog box which jumps in their face.

But those of us who have been waiting for improvements to the Wand see this as a step backwards. What I wanted to see was the ability to say either: 1) Set the default to save for the entire site, or 2) Don’t even prompt me! Just save all my login data! With the advent of the new opera:config (disclaimer) I sincerely hope that Opera will give its power users the power to control their Wand experience.

Footnotes:

1. MIT tells me that IE on the Macintosh does not have a preference setting to not save passwords. I don’t know if that’s true, but who am I to disagree with MIT? ↩
2. Before some of you you start (and you know who you are), yes, Opera did indeed add opera:config after Firefox had the same feature. Even a blind dog finds a bone every now & again, right ;-? ↩