IVAN SOTO

Today I was reading the comments on the article "Opera: Apple, Ubuntu should include browser ballout screen too" and like always, everyone was commenting about how unsuccessful Opera is, hence the article. It really is and anyone that works on web development will know how good Opera is, but at the same time knows why it's not their main browser.

I don't want to find _the_ cause why Opera fails to get a piece of market share, I just want to give my personal opinion on why Opera and any other software that doesn't use native controls fails to impress me.

The lack of native controls

Let's take Opera for Windows and Mac and we will see what I'm talking about:

We can see that both the Windows and Mac version are not using native controls, interface or even colors. This is my main problem with Opera software and I know a lot of users have similar problems. Ok, maybe the Mac version looks a little better than the previous versions but it still doesn't feel right. If we go further and take the Android browser that Opera built called Opera Mini you will find that it's completely different from the rest of the applications on your device. I know it's a port but I also know that they can do better that this. It just doesn't feel correct (and I'm not even talking about how you interact with it)

And I could continue on Opera but its not the only application that has this problem, Seesmic and Tweetie are both Twitter clients for Mac, but Tweetie feels nicer, faster and native. Seesmic feels like what it is, a flash application built for Desktop. That's something Adobe needs to change about Adobe AIR if they want to succeed with that.

So, apps using a different UI or controls will fail?

In my opinion, Yes. You can take Safari for example, it's a joy to use it on a Mac, it's nice, fast, looks great and feels native. The Windows version is another story, it's slow, ugly and feels like an emulated version. It even renders text like Macs on a Windows PC! That's what I call inconsistency. Leave the Mac font rendering for Mac, most Windows users like the way Windows render the text. Now let's see another example: Why is Google Chrome being well received by the users? Well, it's fast! But it also looks good, simple, native, clean. They are doing an excellent job on adapting Chrome to OS X and Windows. It has tabs that don't look so native but they don't look bad on any OS. On Windows XP it renders the top part completely blue but on Vista and 7 it's transparent and looks really nice.

Mac version

Windows 7 version

The solution

Use native controls and interfaces when you can, even if it's harder to achieve. Your users will be more comfortable using your application and it will be easier, and try not to mimic other applications/OSes. As an Android user I hate when I download an app just to see that they made it look like an iPhone. It's not an iPhone! We have a menu button, don't put the menu on the screen. Although, there are exceptions, but in my opinion it's more that we are used to it than we like it. Photoshop for Windows looks like the Mac version, Filezilla for Mac feels completely wrong even when the Windows version is so nice, etc.