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Opera 11 Beta Released, With Extensions Support
An anonymous reader writes "Opera 11 Beta has just been released and now includes support for extensions. Also new in this release Tab Stacking, Visual Mouse Gestures, performance improvements, new installer, and much more. Even with its many new features, Opera 11 is 30% smaller than Opera 10.60. That means that Opera downloads more quickly and installs in fewer steps. There are over 130 extensions and climbing including NoScript and AdBlock! Extensions can be found here."
I'm mostly a fan of opera though for their opera turbo function since it saves quite a bit of bandwidth when I'm running off my usb 3G modem on the road, making pages load up much quicker. It's good to see extensions added though to help against the tons of annoying ads and such. Cheers to the opera team for their hard work.
Opera had adblocking built in for a long time, it just needed a list - yes, somewhat more basic (much more basic script blocking also there); but even with rare updates of the list I don't remember having to use GUI website element blocker.
One that hath name thou can not otter
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
This is what I have used, it works fine.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
>about fucking time
Say what?
How bloody hard is it to copy a file? A text one at that? How hard is it to literally grab and drag a file from "Download" to where your local .opera directory is, or to directly save the file to .opera?
So now it's got a GUI wrapper? BFD. It actually makes it *more* complicated.
I swear that every complaint that "Hurr, durr, Opera had no adblock" is an intelligence shibboleth. Those that said it are stupid, without reservation.
Two best browsers on the 'net - Chrome and Opera. Hands down. The others aren't even close. Not Webkit nor Gecko based browsers. And IE is just a special case all to itself - a reminder of a bygone era when standards didn't matter.
--
BMO
I'm a long time Opera user since when they used to sell licences. I was always a happy Opera user because the browser suited my browsing style much more than any of the competitors.
Then came Chrome, after trying it for a little while I was blown away by the browser and its capabilities.
It was fast and robust and I really liked it, but it didn't get me to convert from Opera.
It wasn't until the "cool" guys at work started using it I decided to give it a proper try, so that's what I've been doing the last year. Evaluating Chrome. I have really been enjoying the experience, though noticed that it is not quite as robust and stable as I thought it would be + there is the compatibility issues because everyone build web sites for Internet Explorer explicitly.
With this release of Opera I'm probably going to go back using Opera again and leaving Chrome as my default browser. Even though I've enjoyed the time I've had with Chrome I've always felt that something was missing, small simple thing I took for granted when using Opera.
I tried Opera 11 beta for a day already and it feels like just right, better in all ways. It suits my browsing needs better. I feel safer as well.
But even though I'm reverting to Opera I'm still going to continue advocating Chrome for family and friends because I believe that it will give them a better browsing experience due to the fact it has superior user interface, browsing experience still similar.
I think Opera has lots to learn and could most definitively do something to their user interface.
Keep up the good work Opera I'm coming back, and as with Chrome I will fall back to IE for the sites that require that.
simple is always better. simply having to copy a file when ever there's an update means quite a bit more work than once click "add addon", and never have to care about anything anymore. and yes, copying a file to some special location is not a simple one click operation, it's quite a lot of clicks actually. and having to do it more often than just once is stupid, too. so i'm glad that opera got the extension. it's a big difference. i still stay with chrome, though.
Isn't Chrome a WebKit browser?
Chrome is Webkit based.
But I agree.
I can't find noscript available. There's noTscript, which claims to be the same thing, but where's the real thing that I've been using for years?
You mean according to standards?
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
It seem to render my web page* just fine! ;D
(* not very recent but not _THAT_ old ;), still: Renders perfectly!)
No, comparing the HOSTS style block in Opera to ABP is like comparing a biplane to a jet fighter. Sure they'll both get off the ground but one is about 1000% nicer and more feature rich. for example: How do you block ONLY certain elements by wildcard? Domain? Subdomain? By extensions? with ABP if you can think it you can create a custom rule for it with "clicky clicky" ease. While I think Opera is a nice tool, especially for those on low bandwidth lines or low resource machines (although I prefer Kmeleon for low resource myself) it really doesn't compare to ABP.
Just as the script tool in Opera really doesn't compare to Noscript. everyone points out you can disable scripts, but with Opera it is all or nothing PERIOD. With NoScript I can run One, Some, A Few, Or All. I can tell a video to play while NOT allowing anything else. And considering how much "JavaScript malware o' the day" we see having that power is VERY important to me.
So while I wish Opera nothing but luck and hope the extension framework works well they really don't compare. In a way I'd say they are like a Mac and PC, in that one you pretty much take it as the designers intended it, the other can be "tweaked" quite easily with nice GUI clicky clicky add-ons. It really is a personal taste thing, but I just can't give up my extensions which I doubt most will even have an Opera equivalent. Oh and in case anyone asks the extensions I have is ABP/NS, IMGZoom, ForecastFox,Downloadhelper,downloadstatusbar, iMacros,Firefox Sync, cookieculler and FEBE.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's not about hosts, and could give you at least most of what you want. JS can be whitelisted and disabled by domains, that's a bit more than all or nothing.
As for you list (at least when it comes to those with descriptive names) - page zooming and fit-to-width works in Opera also for images, there was some weather widget and also way to put forecasts in the Speed Dial IIRC, downloader has a bit more features than is typical (maybe list of files on a given page and filtering, by chance? Similar with cookies) and sync is built-in - shared across different versions of Opera (Desktop, Mobile, Mini)
One that hath name thou can not otter
By Adblock you mean Adblock Plus right?
It's the automatic list of things to block that you like, isn't it?
Opera has had a somewhat simple content blocker for a while now but you had to either ad things yourself or find a list online and add it to Epera.
Yes, the same can be said from iCab (which invented ad filtering more than 10 years before FF!) -its interface to this feature does exists, but is very poor... and that counts...
Herve S.
It's perfectly fine with some (face it) niche ones. It gets old really, really quickly with majority of whiners, listing functionalities present in Opera for a long time... (or even pioneered by them)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Is it according to standards that Opera often loads the wrong images when all other browsers seem to get it right?
I'm glad that there is such a thing as Opera. It is the only modern browser light enough to run on the ancient Win2K box I'm forced to use at work but rendering oddities and doing everything "the Opera way" can be frustrating at times.
Ignorance is bliss. Opera's content blocker has been around for many years.
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/does-your-browser-behave.html
^only about js, but it's quite characteristic and from a fabulous source.
Standards compliance of course might be a problem here and there, in places still not far from "best viewed in IE" - some pages unfortunately settled on "best in IE and FF" instead of targeting standards, not much of an improvement - but it's getting better. Especially where there's strong third or even fourth major player, as in most of CIS / ex Warsaw Pact (where BTW Opera is often actually at or near the top)
In fact, one funny thing: I keep an old version of Opera (9.27, a solid "classic" release) on an old dual PII 266 that I keep around and still boot sometimes. Lately many pages tend to work much better in it (despite obviously not targeting such old release, probably not even Opera generally) - I suspect due to dropping focus on IE6.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Chrome is WebKit based.
Longtime Opera user here, continues to suit my needs, but the beta still needs a fair bit of work:
- The new Tab Stacks feature is almost what I've wanted for some time, needs some more depth to it (labelling, pinning, and loading sessions as stacks in particular), and to undo the wonkiness introduced to the tab bar behavior in general
- Nice to see Opera join the Extensions party, but slim pickings so far, need to see what gets developed for it to measure its worth.
- While the Mouse Gestures overhaul/visual feedback is a nice idea, it currently forces a much more rigid input of the gestures than what anyone seems to be used to.
I don't know, I don't think that Opera is ever going to be anything better than that "Weird browser which few people use" - not on desktops anyway.
Addons are Firefox's deal - they are pretty locked down in that aspect (making FF an 'addon-platform' more than anything else) - I don't think its going to compare with FF's popularity.
I'm pretty sure Opera users will be happy with their nice addons now - but I don't see this drawing anyone away from anything else - if you want speed - you go Chrome, if you want addons - you go Firefox. If you want to be special - you go Safari - if you've been living under a rock - you go IE6.
I'm a bit sorry for Opera - they made a good piece of work by all respects.
page zooming and fit-to-width works in Opera also for images
images, flash content and probably everithng else.
I love, when I can zoom some little flash game to the fullscreen...
>about fucking time
Say what?
How bloody hard is it to copy a file? A text one at that? How hard is it to literally grab and drag a file from "Download" to where your local .opera directory is, or to directly save the file to .opera?
So now it's got a GUI wrapper? BFD. It actually makes it *more* complicated.
I swear that every complaint that "Hurr, durr, Opera had no adblock" is an intelligence shibboleth. Those that said it are stupid, without reservation.
Two best browsers on the 'net - Chrome and Opera. Hands down. The others aren't even close. Not Webkit nor Gecko based browsers. And IE is just a special case all to itself - a reminder of a bygone era when standards didn't matter.
-- BMO
Your mentally challenged or just plain ignorant by mocking WebKit and praising Chrome. Chrome is WebKit with Google crap bolted on. Thanks to WebKit we have Chrome, Chromium, Epiphany, Safari, and other WebKit based browsers.
By the way, Opera 11 beta still blows chunks for HTML5 support. Wake me up when it's HTML5 Algorithm is complete and HTML5 Tokenizer, HTML5 Tree Building, SVG in text/html and MathML in text/html for HTML5 is supported. Their HTML5 Element support is garbage and their user interaction [Drag and drop, Undo History, Session History, Text Selection] at the rate they are going will take another 12 months to be covered.
For feature like tab stacking I have long dreamed. I always end up with loads of tabs open during the day.
As for extensions, it's not something I really have missed, but a lot of my friends criticized Opera for not having extensions like FireFox does. They open a whole new dimension of possibilities for the browser.
Congratulations on the new wonderful release!
To summarize sznupi's link:
Opera 10.50: 78 failures,
Safari 4: 159 failures,
Chrome 4: 218 failures,
Firefox 3.6: 259 failures and
Internet Explorer 8: 463 failures.
"His name was James Damore."
It's not as if people have not been craving for smart card support (pkcs#11) for ages... But Opera just keeps ignoring the issue.
I love Opera. I use it on my dektop, my laptop and my phone. I love the way it all integrates together. I love the look and feel. I love the way it has so many useful features built in as standard (things like clone tab and view tabs side by side). I love the speed dial page that doesn't try to outguess you (looking at you Chrome). I love the option to enable server side compression very useful if you are on a slow network connection or subject to a download cap.
I love all of these things but Opera is the buggiest browser I have ever used. Version 10 was particularly bad in this respect with a number of serious bugs making it through beta and into live (incompatibility with many web forms for example). At this stage in 10's life most of the bugs have been addressed but I am worried it will start all over again with 11.
The average "global usage share" of browsers gives Opera as being a bit less than 2%.
I agree, its still a hell of a lot of computers. This is similar to the whole "Oh, linux users account only for 1%" argument. You're right, its a large number - and I'm sure many individuals will be effected (50 million or so in fact) - but given the 30% and 12% FF and Chrome have, its not too much.
That's not Opera's fault. The web-developer looks at the browser code, sees "Opera", assumes it's a non-compliant browser, and then feeds it trash. Trash-in / Trash-out. It's the developer's fault.
It's also why Opera features "mask as firefox or IE" to trick the web-developer to feed proper code. Then it renders perfectly. I've found several pages that failed to render or gave me an "Opera not supported" feedback, but never found a page that refused to render properly after I used the "mask" option.
Opera passes all the ACID tests, which is more than Firefox 3.6 or IE8 could claim.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>Any browser that doesn't support Adblock is quite useless.
I don't use adblock. I think if I'm blocking the ads then I'm doing the equivalent of stealing service from the Website Sysop. I'd rather see the ads, and help the owner pay his bills.
By the way SeaMonkey has a lot of the same problems as Opera. There are many addons available in Firefox, but not available in SeaMonkey, even though they both use the same base (Mozilla Gecko 5). Developers aim for the largest targets (windows and Firefox) while ignoring the lesser-used programs.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Your mentally challenged
Really? You're making this too easy.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Everyone always forgets the best feature of Opera; typing /. into the link bar is a shortcut to Slashdot!
The last version of Opera is toolkit-agnostic, and it integrates with both gtk and qt visuals, afaik
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Which is also why it works on such a wide range of Linux distros, from F14 to RH9.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
It still scores terrible on the HTML5 tests. Considering it's a bleeding edge new version you would think it would support the latest HTML features.
With that said Opera Mobile is awesome for low-end devices like my S60 phone. Other than that I don't see Opera offering much.
Waiting for LastPass then migration will occur.
Harder than having the computer do it for you. Humans shouldn't have to do what the computer can automate.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
GUI wrapper is a BFD to almost everybody, if you don't care, don't act like it isn't a big deal to others.
My complaint with Opera. It's different, and not in a good way. Firefox improved over IE. Chrome improved over Firefox. Opera may have improved over IE as well, but it sure doesn't improve over Chrome in my opinion. If I had gone the other route I may like it, but it's too late.
Two best browsers on the 'net - Chrome and Opera. Hands down. The others aren't even close. Not Webkit nor Gecko based browsers. And IE is just a special case all to itself - a reminder of a bygone era when standards didn't matter.
You know that Chrome is based on Webkit, don't you?
I switched to Chromium because my PIII laptop doesn't choke on it.
I can Ctrl+Click [to open link in a background tab] in any other browser BUT Opera.
There is no easy way to make this handy feature work without a hack because you cannot re-map ctrl left_click.
So you never ctrl+clicking or none of you ever actually use Opera at all?
And doing my own tests on Firefox 4 and Opera 11:
Opera 11.00 Alpha: 74 failures
Firefox 4.0b8 Pre: 178 failures
Big improvement for Firefox's new javascript engine, minor improvement for Opera's.
"His name was James Damore."
"I personally get by with Opera the 'Enable Plug-Ins' checkbox placed on the status bar and turned off by default. This stops any flash ads. This works for me as I follow the 'Ad blocking hurts the websites you love' approach, and its the flash ads that are the really annoying ones - YMMV." - by rishistar (662278) on Wednesday November 24, @05:51AM (#34329196) Homepage
One nice thing is, that IF you need to use FLASH (or any other addon, or javascript, etc./et al)? You can set what you have GLOBALLY for all websites, and yet you can also MAKE EXCEPTIONS too, so you have sites where you can use various addons or javascript etc.!
Additionally, it's VERY SIMPLE/EASY to do!
You do this simply by right-clicking on the webpage involved, and choosing the popup menu item "Edit Site Properties" where you can set an "exception" and allow whatever you WISH to allow, albeit for that site only (or others you choose to do this too). This aids security, especially in today's FLASH, Bogus Addons, & maliciously javascripted website ridden world today online...
APK
Has anyone seen FF4? It looks exactly like Opera. Opera in the 10.x series added a Menu button at the top left to replace all other options. Sort of like it's own start button. Makes the interface cleaner and smaller at the top.
:(
Guess what? FF4 now has the identical thing!
Opera has always had the URL attached to each "Tab". Meaning there is a tab and under the tab is the URL, which is unique to each tab. As opposed to other browsers where there is just one URL above the tabs and then as you click tabs the URL just changes. FF users use to bash Opera for this.
Guess what!? That is how FF4 now works!
If you bring up FF4 and Opera at the same time, FF4 looks identical to Opera now. Other than the name.
If I was a FF4 user I would be embarrassed at the lack of uniqueness and ingenuity that has over taken FF.
"if you want speed - you go Chrome" - by Haedrian (1676506) on Wednesday November 24, @05:13AM (#34329018)
Oh, really? See this below (CHROME LOST TO OPERA VERY RECENTLY ON THAT ACCOUNT, FIRST URL BELOW IN FACT, in javascript processing (where Chrome does well, but not well enough) & in HTML work? Opera's been WIDELY KNOWN as "the fastest webbrowser there is" for nearly a decade now... & the data below proves it in numerous tests no less - read on):
Opera is also apparently lately AGAIN (as per usual mind you) the OVERALL FASTEST Browser there is per this test & article on /. recently, here:
---
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/11/12/037241/Firefox-4-Regains-Speed-Mojo-With-No-2-Placing
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/cnetuk/crave/software/0,39029471,49302491,00.htm
---
Additionally, this speed superiority is not only in HTML related work, where it gained its reputation as "the fastest webbrowser in the world" long ago, but also in javascript related work as well (see the top test in fact on that note & this older result as well on that note -> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/06/23/html5-native-third-ie9-platform-preview-available-for-developers.aspx ).
THAT'S 5 TESTS THAT SHOW OPERA CONSISTENTLY OUTPACING ALL OTHER COMPETITORS IN WEBBROWSERS SPEED, AND FOR YEARS NOW... CONSISTENTLY!
---
Opera's also wildly successful on mobile phones as well (widely known).
As far as SECURITY as well & not having unpatched vulnerabilities? Opera has had the least amount remaining unpatched of the "Big 4" webbrowsers over time:
---
Opera security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/26745/
FireFox security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/28698/
GOOGLE CHROME 7 security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/32718/
IE 8 security advisories @ SECUNIA (29% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/21625/
---
Opera also passed the "ACID2" test, for standards compliance (it is not alone here, but is over IE & FF, & it was the 6th browser to do so):
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/12/1416222.shtml
APK
P.S.=> Top all that off with the fact Opera's FREE, plus it has addons (along with widgets also mind you), and now has "tab stacking" also? Hey... beat ALL that, with a stick! apk
For the record: IE9 public Beta: 80 failures. Puts it back in league with the others, although one would need to test against other beta browsers for a fair comparison.
Also, a lot of the failures looked like the kind of thing that the dead code optimizer might be removing. Not sure about that, though. Will be interesting to see when the RC comes out, or even the current platform preview (which I don't have).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
From what I've heard, the problem with recent Opera releases (basically from 10 onward) is that they tend to overemphasize running the tests correctly over real world issues. To clarify, I don't mean non-standards-conformant websites rendering incorrectly, but rather actual bugs in Opera renderer and JS engine.
Personally, I used to be an avid Opera user, but have dropped it recently due to the quality of releases significantly declining in the last two years. It used to be that stable versions were actually stable; now, Chrome development releases crash less often for me than Opera stable ones.
My one reason for not using Opera is that I cannot copy and paste from Opera to anywhere other than the Opera browser screens themselves. I cannot copy and paste to an email or a pdf document at all. If I could do that then I would be using Opera all the time.
HOSTS files eat A LOT LESS CPU cycles than browser addons do no less
Browser:Oh look, I have this request to adserve.ng, I shall make a request for the IP! /go.php?disp=346t235y2&refer=cheapwowgold.tk!
DNS:Looks like a request.... Just hold a sec while I parse this large ASCII text file.... Ahha! an entry in the HOSTS, I shall just use that!
Browser:Oh how lovely, adserve.ng is 127.0.0.1, I shall make a request for
Browser: request!
Browser: derp!
Browser: seven!
Browser: Well, it timed out. 127.0.0.1 must not be running a web serve,. but I only wasted 30 seconds on it! Better luck next time I guess!
Seems they were caught a bit off-guard with sudden focus on JS, rushed changes too much between 9.5x and most of 10.x. Luckily, 10.6x releases seem to finally return to that nice feel of 9.2x.
But just to be more weird - for me the problems were never about crashing (though how I mostly disable plugins might help)
One that hath name thou can not otter
With respect to Opera version 10.61 Many people are right-handed ( the ones who uses right hand more often than left ) ---- going from one tab to another ( CTRL+Tab left hand ) (as CTRL +PgDn or CTRL+PgUp is not working ) ---- What is more cookies can't be deleted in one go ---- Backup of RSS Feed ( remember Data ) can't be done. --- While Browsing Firefox - Chrome - Opera - IE only IE and opera gives *.mht ( single archive file based saving ) ---- Opera is the only browser which has in built download manager ----- Notes is another utility
Left India? Not according to their site. Troll fail, eh?
Clever signature text goes here.
Of course, those "global stats" focus almost exclusively on North America. And fail to detect Opera properly.
And Opera actually has more than 140 million users, which translates to a market share of about 7%.
Clever signature text goes here.
Listing counter examples is trolling? Opera fan boys have mod points today.