Opera will answer for everything

As many may have noticed, recently Opera has been constantly surprising the well-educated public: either the Unite revolution is starting, then suddenly for no reason it will dazzle you with a tenfold (or more?) Increase in browser speed, and about all sorts of innovations in The interface or in support of future web standards can be mentioned almost every week. There are also surprises with a negative effect, after which users get tired of spinning the mouse wheel, looking at the lists of fixed bugs in the next weekly build. In general, every sane person has a reasonable question: what the hell, what is going on there in this Norway ?!

The question, of course, is interesting. But it would be much more interesting to find out the answer to it - all of a sudden it will help to save a million or two nerve cells or just make the general direction clear - where the thoughts and dreams of Opera browser developers are all the same directed. Well, this problem is solved. And this topic serves as a kind of announcement of a new undertaking - “Opera Habragost”. The idea is simple and straightforward: every month, one of the employees of Opera Software will answer questions from visitors to Habrahabr, and each virtual interview will be dedicated to a specific topic - for example, the browser interface, the new JavaScript processor named Carakan, Unite technology, Opera mobile browser Mini or even the bug fix process - why not? At the same time, people who occupy not the last place in the staff list will answer questions — up to the director of the company or even the chief finance officer. Of course, they will not tell you everything (there must be some mystery in a real company), but I’m sure that, for example, communicating with one of the co-founders of Opera Software will not be boring. However, to a greater extent, everything will depend on the quality of the questions. Therefore, some time is allocated for their preparation - suppose a week. Quite a sufficient period.

By tradition, we’ll make the first pancake lumpy (then we’ll fix it, we don’t get used to it) - for example, until I tell you when the interview will be published: according to my plans, it will be something in the region of the second week of July - still it takes time to to collect and translate the questions, and then also translate the answers (which also seem to require some time). In the future, a specific day will be selected (maybe the last Friday of each month?) For publishing another interview on Habré. As for the topic of questions - a little later I will hold a “referendum” in a separate topic to make a list of the topics that are most relevant to you and only then build a schedule taking into account the availability of the person responsible for the area of ​​interest: after all, people work (yes, it happens) , and some (such as Chaals , the person responsible for web standards) generally live on airplanes. In general, over time, I hope that it will be possible to make a completely stable and interesting dialogue in all respects between developers and users. I think it will only benefit us and you.


Let's get down to business, actually. The topic of our first interview will probably not be very “hot”: Opera Software’s acquisition of the Australian mail service FastMail.FM and, as a result, what should we all expect from this acquisition in the future. The questions will be answered by the vice president of Opera Software, the head of this new direction for us - Johan Borg, who previously led the team of managers and developers of the desktop version of Opera. Based on the position, it will be much more interesting to ask him questions of a more global nature than to go into technical details.

Questions will be accepted until June 25 inclusive, if there is an opportunity to immediately draw up a question in English, I will only welcome it. Comments to questions, of course, can be added, but it is not worthwhile to breed very extensive discussions or disputes - this will create certain difficulties in compiling a list of questions.

So, for fastening:
Opera habragost
Subject: Opera + FastMail.FM - what will happen now?
Who: Johan Borg Vice President
When: Early July
Reception of questions: until June 25