I sat down with Trond--one of the main user interface developers at Opera--the other day to talk about writing a tutorial to introduce new users to Opera. We have lots of tutorials and other documentation, but nothing that really says, "Hey, this makes Opera special and here's how to use it."
The plan is to have short, to the point "slides" like "Navigation", which describe features such as spatial navigation, mouse gestures, FastForward, and Rewind or "Contacts," which describes Contact views and using contacts in Chat. I like the concept and I think it'll turn out well.
Harder than the above is finding a way to describe the things that our users sometimes call "endearing features." How do you fit things like Opera's logarithmic-feeling anchored scrolling, starting downloads before you specify the save location, and quick toggles of images and stylesheets into a easy to read and navigate document? What about "Continue from last time" (and crash recovery) or "Reload every..."?
Unfortunately, many potential customers don't use Opera long enough to find out about these fantastic time-saving features. They find a page that doesn't render and they go running back to IE or Mozilla. I first became an Opera user during the 4.0 betas because of the MDI interface and "Continue from last time." I didn't care that not every page looked perfect when I was able to browse ten times faster. A lot of people would become customers if only they knew how Opera made their browsing (and e-mailing) so much easier.
With the new user interface changes in 7.50p1, I fear we may be putting more of Opera's power away from a new user's fingertips, making the distinction between Opera, IE, and Mozilla grayer. However, I'm not sure there's a good answer to this problem either. New users of 7.0 - 7.2x took one look at Opera and got tunnel vision; on small screens, there was barely any room for web pages. We've cleaned that up a lot in 7.50p1, but at what cost? I hope we can find a way to show users what Opera is really about before they dismiss it as another IE-clone.
