kaled - 5:29 pm on Feb 17, 2010 (gmt 0)

Gustomaximus,

Having won the battle to make Opera selectable when Windows is installed, the most important thing is to not blow it. If you plan to have 10.5 ready then you don't have time to make any big changes but...

In the default setup
1) Use the drop-history versions of the forward and back buttons.
2) Place the closed-tabs button with the forward and back buttons.
3) Include the menu bar. If users don't want it, they can hide it. Also ensure that the font is displayed correctly (it isn't on my computer running XP).

Also,
1) Ensure that Ctrl-click on a link opens the link in a new tab.
2) If easy, provide the option to hide the tab-bar when only one page is open.
3) Adjust the skin for the tab-bar.
4) Reduce the height of the tab bar and navigation bar - they look ugly.
5) If easy, move popup bars such as the search bar to the bottom (and reduce its height).
6) Ensure that it's easy to change dictionary - I couldn't figure out how to switch to UK English (but maybe I missed something obvious).

If you have time,
Add a manager for user-javascript extensions and offer to install one or two common ones such as flashblock automatically.

When going after new users, you must provide all the features that they are used to in a package that looks and feels familiar. If you can't bring yourselves to do that, you may as well give up and go home. Clearly, this message has not been delivered to the development team so I suggest that you make sure it is delivered, understood and followed.

Kaled.