I've used Opera almost exclusively since version 4 - I don't know for how many years, perhaps 12? Opera once was an incredibly efficient, innovative, powerful browser that worked great even on weak machines. However, a while ago they basically ... completely lost it. I don't know what happened up there in Norway, but suddenly the updates became more and more bug-ridden, added useless feature creep while breaking important previous functionality, and worst of it all was their attitude when asked for assistance.

Posts that I made in their support forum (and in which I merely described in which way Opera 11 wasn't working and asked for assistance) simply got deleted, a moderator told me very sternly to not do this again, without even specifying what the problem was, and she never replied to the questions I sent her. In another post, where I described how Firefox implemented a certain feature and suggested that Opera use a similar solution, the paragraph about Firefox was simply edited out of the post, without notifying me or without indicating it in the post in any way. Again, no moderator or support agent was bale to tell me why. Other users got banned for stating that they'd drop Opera if it continued to get worse, and switch to Chrome or Firefox.

I stuck to Opera for a while longer (you don't simply drop a browser that you've used for more than a decade), but finally dropped it in disgust and switched to Firefox. After adding a few plugins, my browser is now more powerful than Opera ever was, it actually _works_, and when I ask for assistance, I do _get_ assistance instead of abuse. I'm very happy I made the switch, and I'm currently my friends (who I've introduced to Opera over the years) to Firefox as well.

Opera was good while it lasted, but they've shown consistently now that they are unwilling and unable to provide the tool that I want. With "Opera Next", they now seem to have given up.