Opera Releases Its First Chromium-Based Browser

hypnosec writes "Opera has released its first Chromium-based, completely re-engineered browser as a preview for Windows and Mac systems (download). The new browser has been given quite a makeover and comes with a refresh of Opera's 'Speed Dial' bookmarking feature. Users can now not only organize their shortcuts into folders, but also group them into folders automatically by simply dragging one bookmark over another. Opera has also included a faster bookmarking tool dubbed 'Stash,' allowing users to return to the links quickly. The new version has combined its search and address bars, allowing users to make searches directly via Amazon, Bing, Google and Wikipedia."

Comments

faster bookmarks

[vux984]

"Opera has also included a faster bookmarking tool dubbed 'Stash,' allowing users to return to the links quickly."

Was anyone complaining that bookmarks were too slow?

Re:faster bookmarks

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Beat me.

Someone forgot to sign the version too, playing havoc on my Mac with saved passwords in keychain, dialogue popup for every saved password, I have hundreds of them. A known Chrome bug that's now in Opera Next.

Re:faster bookmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it was the lack of mu that wrecked your joke.

Re:faster bookmarks

[spacefight]

A known Chrome bug that's now in Opera Next.
A known Chrome bug that's now in Opera. Next.

Fixed the punctuation for you...

Re:faster bookmarks

[mwvdlee]

I wonder what your accent sounds like .

Re:faster bookmarks

[hairyfeet]

Here is the thing that always got to me about that and I have yet to receive any kind of logical answer for it...why? Why would you WANT 500+ tabs open at the same damned time anyway? I mean I can see a half a dozen, hell maybe even a dozen if you are researching something, but 500? Why would you even do that?

I mean with anything else we would point out that this behavior is dumb and any problems were from them being a dumbass, to use the car analogy if someone said "I drive my car on the freeway in second gear and it overheats" everyone would say "Well take it out of second gear dumbass" but when someone posts they have a problem while having 500+ pages open people treat it as a legitimate problem...why? we don't treat anything else on the PC when its used so far out of bounds of its normal usage as anything but stupidity,nobody would say its a legitimate problem if the guy who takes a 3GHz CPU and doubles the clock has overheating issues or the guy that tries to run a dozen games at a time on his GPU suffers a meltdown, so why is it that browsers are supposed to work perfectly when they are pushed so far beyond what is a typical use case its not even funny?

Re:faster bookmarks

[hairyfeet]

That is the same thing my users that I've talked to has said, they will hang onto Opera while they try other browsers and see what fits best and then get the hell away from Opera, they are NOT happy about this crap.

BTW if that sounds like you I'd suggest some of the less famous browsers, plenty of smaller browsers that have nice features like Kmeleon and Kmeleon CCF-ME (ultra low system reqs, it'll even run on win98), QTWeb (based on Webkit and QT and cross platform if that interests you) SWIron and Comodo Dragon (my current browser) which are also based on Chromium with different feature sets, Comodo IceDragon and Pale Moon (my current backup) both based on gecko, there are a ton of browsers out there if you don't mind trying a few to see what fits you best.

Opera was once the best web brower

[Arker]

Back at version 3.62 it really was the best in a lot of ways. You could fit the entire binary on a 3.5" floppy disk, and it was fast even on the slowest machines. You could kill scripts and formatting and image loading (or enable them) on a window by window basis with a single click. If it had been Free Software it would have changed the world. Instead, it has only bloated with age. Knowing that the new version is based on Chrome I doubt I will even bother to try it.

Re:Opera was once the best web brower

[Nimey]

Absolutely. Opera 3.6 was outstandingly good in its day, fast, small, and did a pretty good job rendering most sites; it was ridiculously better than Nutscrape 4 and Intestinal Expander 4. I was disappointed that v4 concentrated on developing a mail client instead of further improving the browser and v5 on internationalization.

What exactly is their business plan?

[nashv]

The 'Opera' button is a clone of the Firefoxish and Tab Layout is Chromesque. It seems that Opera Next is a Frankenchild of the two best. And now that it is Chrome based, and thus inheriting all the new-fangled speed advantages, it seems to be go the go to browser for power users and newbies alike.

I guess what Opera is lacking is the 2 reasons why people choose browsers these days : the eco-system of Google and fervent open-sourciness of Firefox. It seems that browsers have gotten to the point where in browser performance is essentially meaningless for user-choice because both of the popular browsers are so good already. And that used to be Opera's USP back in the day. Too bad for them..

Re:What exactly is their business plan?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

FF also seems to still have the edge in plugins. Google has been pushing their 'apps' hard; but those still seem to mostly focus on 'here's a neat thing that you can implement in HTML/CSS/JS' rather than 'here's something that changes the browser's behavior in useful and powerful ways'.

Re:What exactly is their business plan?

[SJHillman]

Some people would say the Firefox button is Opera-ish (as the Big O had it first) and Chrome's tabs are Operaish (as the Big O had tabs first). They may have inherited some of the refinements the other browsers made, but it's only fair to point out that those browsers copied the features from Opera to begin with.

Re:What exactly is their business plan?

[gweilo8888]

Codswallop. Chrome supports Greasemonkey scripts natively, and you'll find a vast selection of browser behavior-altering extensions here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions
http://www.chromeextensions.org/

Basically anything I used to do with Firefox, I do today with Chrome -- and more. And for an added bonus, it doesn't collapse to its knees if I go without a reboot or closing my browser for a few days, let alone having a few dozen windows and tabs open.

Re:What exactly is their business plan?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And if you use the Onetab extension, it all becomes a web paradise. :-)

What is "Opera Next?"

[geminidomino]

Is this a different product than the mainline Opera browser, or are they going to be basing future versions on Chromium, and just decided to stop using the clear and understandable "beta?" It's not all that clear to me, but if the latter, at least it's one fewer browser I have to keep installed for testing.

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Most importantly for us slashdot users....

[I-am-a-Banana]

the URL /. no longer works...

R.I.P.

[jazman_777]

Just a flimsy skin on WebKit now. Starting from scratch they have a long long way to go to get to current Opera feature state. And the new Android version is a dead shadow of its former self. I'm now trying to get used to Firefox.

Whiners

[eric_brissette]

I find it funny that when you look at the comments on the Blink articles, there are tons of people upset about Google creating yet another rendering engine, and they're worried about standards compliance issues and having another target to design for.

And then you read the comments in the Opera-switching-to-Blink articles, and everyone is upset about losing diversity in the web ecosystem.

Are these two different groups of people commenting, or is it just one big group of whiners?

Re:Whiners

[shutdown -p now]

It's because when Opera has originally announced the switch to WebKit (and later Blink), they said that they're just switching the engine, and will keep their UI. Now, the main reason why anyone was using Opera in the first place in the last few years was their UI - it was extremely customizable without plugins, toolbars and shortcuts and mouse gestures all. Historically they also held the performance crown, but that wasn't true ever since all other browsers added JIT-compiling JS engines and hardware acceleration (and Opera lagged on both).

Now, they release the preview version, and it turns out that they didn't just switch the engine - they literally made a reskin of Chromium. All their customizability, gone. All their unique UI features, gone. Heck, they've even stripped features from Chromium - they don't have bookmarks! (there is a purported "smart" replacement, which does not support e.g. nested folders...).

like google chrome but...better?

[Cyko_01]

Awesome! Now opera is just like chrome, but without that annoying....uhhhh -- it just like chrome, but with way better....uhhh....hmmmmm. Ok, I guess opera is dead then.

missing features

[locopuyo]

It is missing a ton of features from regular Opera which is the reason I use Opera over Chrome. Even the features they have right now are buggy and incomplete. For example mouse gestures do not work right and aren't customizable through the interface. There isn't even an option to import bookmarks or other settings.
The chrome development tools are also inferior to Opera Dragonfly, which is another reason I use Opera. Hopefully they make them more Opera Dragonfly like before they are finished.

I'll be waiting for a more complete version before I switch over.

Re:Looking forward to downloading the WebKit versi

[shutdown -p now]

I''ve become quite used to its UI, I hope they don't change that.

They didn't just change it, they rewrote it from scratch, ditching most of the features. The result looks mostly like Chrome. According to their community representatives, this is by design.

. The UI with Bookmarks sidepanel/RSS/Integrated Downloads manager (with torrents)/SpeedDial/ was what sold Opera over the rest.

This is all gone. Bookmarks, in particular, are gone entirely, replaced by "Stash", which is basically castrated bookmarks with no ability to nest folders. Speed Dial is the only thing remaining here.

Another feature was the password manager

Gone.