I’m going to need one fuck of a good reason to use Opera again in any capacity. I wrote a review of an Opera 8 for Macintosh beta six months ago and to this fucking day a week doesn’t go by in which I am not reminded of the viciousness of Opera fanboys, who called me a serial liar and otherwise impugned my knowledge of browsers and Macs. (I’ve been using both since they came out.)
It seemed particularly difficult to get across the idea that Opera’s localizations for Windows and Linux windowing schemes do not work on Macs, that tabs are what tabs are called even if Opera started calling them windows first, that closing a tab should take me to the next one and not the one I already saw, and that I fucking know what I’m talking about when it comes to Macintosh browsers and you fucking do not.
Face it, fanboys: You are tinkerer-geeks who use Windows or Linux because you love it when shit goes wrong. That lets you get all ninja on your commodity chopshop Wintel box’s arse and fix it.
Whereas we who are a higher form of life use Macs to actually get our work done in a pleasant and reliable manner. We’ve got taste and you don’t.
I want standards-compliant browsers of all stripes to succeed. I want to like Opera. However: If, every time I dare to question Operatic orthodoxy, I get a fusillade of name-calling and character defamation from borderline Aspergerians who wouldn’t know a salad fork from a browser tab, then I’m just not gonna talk about Opera.
You want my help anyway? You come to me, we’ll keep it private, and nobody’ll get hurt.