Slashdot Mirror
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
>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?
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
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
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.
>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.
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."
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.
#1 browser in Ukraine, exchanging #1 spot with FF in Russian Federation, nearing 50% and far above other browsers in Belarus; generally a very notable share in most of ex Warsaw Pact. Some worldwide stats appear to be underreporting, by focusing on pages most likely to be visited by specific demographics / rarely visited by some others. How Opera is the #1 mobile web browser worldwide by website stats (despite most of its users being in places with expensive data access, certainly frugal about number of pages visited) might help one day, when those people shift to desktops.
Opera addons are at least based on W3C widget specs...
(if you really want speed you'd better not ignore Opera BTW - especially in cases when it really matters (slow machine, slow connection; this contributes to CIS popularity))
Anyway - they have healthy, rising profitability as is (also during the last 3 years)
One that hath name thou can not otter
>>>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.
And yet everyone keeps copying ideas from Opera:
- tabbed browsing.
- "paste and go" in the address bar
- Opera Link (bookmarks stored online)
- Opera Turbo (speeds-up phone connections)
- Live Bookmarks
- Speed Dial (copied by Chrome)
- and on and on.
Opera is the innovator that everyone else copies.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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
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)
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 don't know about Opera but almost all browsers support the "middle click" to open a link as a background tab. Try it..
You can also close any tab by middle clicking it. It's great.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
LastPass Extension For Opera Released
Never control-clicking. Middle-click... otherwise I have to use two hands.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Those are not "the HTML5 tests." Those are a bunch of tests that aren't even HTML5, and it doesn't even test all of HTML5. Basing your opinion on Opera's HTML5 compliance on that page is just stupid. And as for "Opera offering much", clearly the other browsers think it does since they keep ripping it off.
Clever signature text goes here.