Earlier this week, I posted a somewhat dyspeptic grumble about some
issues I've been having with recent versions of the Opera browser. The thing is, I really love
Opera; in many respects is my favorite browser, and it's definitely the
one I use most. What ropes me in is the speed combined with little
touches like the infinite zoom popup menu on the lower right bottom
margin of the browser window - very convenient at times for my
59-year-old eyes.
However, since about Opera 10.5, I've been having some issues with
both the Intel builds for OS X
10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow
Leopard, as well as the PowerPC build for OS X 10.4 Tiger, which I am still
using on my two Pismo
PowerBooks. Rather than re-plowing recently turned round, here's a link to the article.
After my latest Opera update report was posted on Tuesday, I
received a very friendly and polite response from Opera Software's
Desktop Product Tester Daniel Aleksandersen, offering to help and
asking me to describe the issues I've been experiencing in greater
detail, which I did.
I'm happy to report that his promptly returned advice has entirely
solved the issue I had been having with recent Intel builds of Opera
quitting on startup.
The news regarding the PowerPC version of Opera is considerably less
encouraging, but I'm grateful to Aleksandersen for explaining the
problem.
Good News: Opera for Intel Macs
First the good news.
In a nutshell, the issue I was having with recent builds of Opera in
OS X 10.5 and 10.6 had to do with accumulated junk from (many) previous
versions I've installed over the years created at various places in my
User Library folder. As I mentioned in my article, I had tried removing
all the Opera-related files from my user preferences folder, but it
turns out there is other stuff Opera scatters around the User Library,
and evidently accretions of old support files were in some way causing
a conflict and preventing more recent versions of Opera from starting
up.
Aleksandersen noted that it definitely sounded like preference
corruption (at the very least) and that utilities like AppZapper and
AppCleaner do not find all of Opera's resources, so you have to delete
them manually. The files are:
- ~/Library/Application Support/Opera/
- ~/Library/Caches/Opera/
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.operasoftware.Opera.plist
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.operasoftware.OperaWidgets.plist
- ~/Library/Preferences/Opera Preferences/
I had already tried deleting the preferences files from my User
Library, but I hadn't been aware of the others. I'm not sure which one
it was, but eliminating them all proved the charm, and Opera 10.62 now
starts up just fine and has been running fast and stable on my Unibody MacBook, which I
expect it will to continue to do, given my experience of Opera's
general solidity.
The lesson here is to not let those old support files build up.
Bad News: Opera for PowerPC Macs
Now for the not so good news, at least for those of us still using
older Macs. Aleksandersen says that since Opera 10.52, they have
started using newer APIs that do not function on older OSes. Opera has
put some workarounds in place, but, as he puts it, "these are not
optimal for performance, causing issues like the slow typing on these
systems."
He says that Opera plans on supporting Mac OS X 10.4 for a while
longer, but the company recently decided to drop PowerPC support after
the 10.6x releases. In a blog entry, The End of an
Architecture, he elaborates that starting with the next version,
Opera will be discontinuing support for the PowerPC architecture on Mac
and Linux. While this is unfortunate, with third party vendor support
dwindling away, Opera can no longer keep developing the browser for
this architecture, and after ending support for PowerPC, Opera will be
able to focus more on making sure its browser meets the needs of the
modern browser user on more popular architectures.
Consequently, I don't expect we will see much improvement in Opera
10.6x for PowerPC from the level of performance and stability that
currently obtains in version 10.62. As I noted in my previous article
on this topic, 10.62 is usable on my old Pismo PowerBooks, although one
has to type slowly and carefully in text fields and navigate
deliberately in order to avoid triggering intervals of spinning beach
ball inactivity.
PowerPC/Tiger Options
The writing on the wall is getting more vivid and distinct.
PowerPC/OS X 10.4 users like me will still have a variety of older
browsers - and presumably iCab (the
latest version, 4.8a, supports PowerPC Macs and OS X 10.3.9, and
iCab continues to develop it) - for some time.
The current versions of Camino and SeaMonkey still have full
PowerPC and Tiger support, as does Firefox up to version 3.6, but
that's the end of the road for support of those platforms in Firefox,
and I deduce that when Camino and SeaMonkey upgrade to the
state-of-the-art version of Mozilla's Gecko browser engine used in
Firefox 4 and beyond, they will be unable to continue supporting
OS X 10.4. This is, of course, inevitable, but it will be a sad
day when no more contemporary browsers are available for the Tiger.
Anyway, thanks to Daniel Aleksandersen for solving/explaining the
issues I've been having, and I'm once again a very happy camper in this
speedy and conveniently-featured browser - at least on Intel.
