I’m a long-time user of the Opera web browser, and I recently upgraded to 9.5. I wish I hadn’t. The right-click search doesn’t work. The skins seem messed up. The Speed Dial doesn’t update. And on and on. I tried some of the recommended fixes, but no luck so far. The ever-updating (spin-spin-spin) Speed Dial is one thing, but breaking the right-click search really really sucks. I use that all the time.

Is it me, or is Open Source software reaching that same point as commercial did a while ago? So bloated and bug filled that you are spending more time working-around issues than actually working. Perhaps it’s because the projects have gone far beyond the original (tiny) development teams. I was (and am) pissed off at WordPress 2.5 and the bugs it had, and the same goes for Opera 9.5 They are taking their good reputations and tossing them in the garbage can. Come on, guys! Quality Control!

(And I won’t even get to mocking the Mozilla people who hyped up their “download record” for FireFox 3 and yet couldn’t keep their own webservers up. Nice going. Just goes to show that being a good developer does not mean you’re a good engineer. Developers build features. Engineers build foundations. What’s the point of a fancy bathroom faucet when your roof leaks?)

Anyhow, if anyone out there is using Opera 9.5 and knows how to get the old color schemes back (so that I can actually TELL WHAT TAB I’M ON) and get right-click Search to work (the default search one; Google), please let me know.