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

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.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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...