Author: Matthew Eilar

Just a dude with a stereo, a computer, and a brain.

Browser Autopsy #1: Opera

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Opera: Same Song, Different Tune

That title doesn’t actually have anything to do with what I think about the Opera Web browser. I just wanted to use a bad pun.

I initially intended to use a different web browser every week until I had tried all of the major browsers. That plan went away quickly for two reasons:

  1. There’s actually not many high performance browsers out there. The list basically stands like this: Firefox (which I already use), Safari (which I use as my… private browser [and I hate]), Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer (which is not available for OSX).
  2. I got tired of Opera really quickly.

Opera is not a bad browser. The reason that it frustrated me is that it encourages a very specific pattern of internet usage and user behavior. I’m not going to fully cover every feature of of the browser, or even every way that it is different from Firefox. What I will list are the major problems with using Opera as a heavy internet user.

Compatability Issues

One of my favorite web related services out there is XMarks, the bookmark sync service. It makes browsing on different machines, migrating between browsers, and accessing your bookmarks from the web extremely easy. It currently doesn’t support Opera. This is a minor annoyance, but it’s not the only service that doesn’t support the browser. Many of the Google beta programs also do not support the browser.

Other Technical Issues

Opera is widely touted and promoted for being fast. That’s true (to a point; Chrome is as fast or faster). At the same time, on more than one occasion, websites with many elements (columns of text, embedded media) displayed as a scramble with overlapping text.

User Behavior

Little design element also suggest that Opera wants its users to browse in a different way than I (and I would guess most power users) do. There is no bookmark toolbar, and it seems like the Opera developers have banked on people liking it’s complex sidebar (the sidebar also has  filesharing, history, IM and app tabs). The sidebar and the bar at the top of the page are not that wide, but they feel clunky. There is a lot of wasted space in between tabs at the top of the page, and it doesn’t seem to encourage many open tabs.

These are all features that you can add with an extension in Firefox, and that points to the problem with Opera.

El Cordero Pascual

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“El Cordero Pascual” from La Pasión según San Marcos by Osvaldo Golijov

Some background on the music:

In 2000, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death, the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart commissioned four composers from different countries (Germany, Russia, China and Argentina) to write four Passions in the tradition, but not necessarily the style, of Bach. One of these was La Pasión según San Marcos (The Passion of St. Mark).

Passions evolved from the tradition of singing through the text of the four gospels during Holy Week before Easter. By the time of Bach, a Passion was an oratorio depicting Jesus’ life using the gospels for text. An oratorio is a piece for orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists that musically tells a story. In the case of the passions, the chorus might serve as the crowd, or reinforce the story told by the narrator. The vocal soloists might narrate, and also represent individual characters in the story as is needed to represent key dramatic moments. Bach wrote passions for all the gospels, but only two survive: St. Matthew’s Passion and St. John’s Passion.

Osvoldo Golijov is an Argentine composer (who now lives in Massachusetts) with Eastern European Jewish heritage. In La Pasión según San Marcos, he uses musical elements from the African culture in Latin America, mostly Cuban and Brazilian rhythms, as well as Middle Eastern and Arabic elements, and tells the story of Jesus through a constantly shifting web of characters and narrators. Sometimes soloists represent characters, sometimes the entire chorus speaks for Jesus, or Judas. The words are mostly in an Africanized Spanish, but at least one section is in Arabic.

It’s really an amazing piece of music, and in addition to all of the elements I mentioned above, there is a dance component to a full performance, and also many avant-garde musical techniques in the work. Golijov’s website has lots of information about the piece and its conception, and there is a commercial recording available, as well as another one to be released this year.

Also, if anybody is in the greater LA region in late April, the LA Philharmonic will be hosting two performances of La Pasión performed by the group that rehearsed and premiered the work under the oversight of the composer. That will be April 24 and 25, and there is information here.

"Dr. Linus"

Matthew Eilar1 Comment


This is what I wrote before the episode aired:

This is the make it or break it (use it or lose it?) moment for the show. It’s frustrating to me that I am so firmly in the show’s pocket that even if every single remaining episode is really bad. At the same time, I’m really hoping that this is the episode that hooks me for the rest of the season.

Now? Hmm.
Continue reading “"Dr. Linus"” →

"Dr. Linus"

Matthew Eilar1 Comment


This is what I wrote before the episode aired:

This is the make it or break it (use it or lose it?) moment for the show. It’s frustrating to me that I am so firmly in the show’s pocket that even if every single remaining episode is really bad. At the same time, I’m really hoping that this is the episode that hooks me for the rest of the season.

Now? Hmm.
Continue reading “"Dr. Linus"” →

“Dr. Linus”

Matthew Eilar1 Comment

This is what I wrote before the episode aired:

This is the make it or break it (use it or lose it?) moment for the show. It’s frustrating to me that I am so firmly in the show’s pocket that even if every single remaining episode is really bad. At the same time, I’m really hoping that this is the episode that hooks me for the rest of the season.

Now? Hmm.

Continue reading ““Dr. Linus”” →