Lots of news about the Opera browser!

[chessnerd]

Just today from the Opera development team: Opera 11 will have Extensions and Hardware Acceleration, Opera Mobile will be made for Android, and more!

It was announced today that Opera Extensions have been confirmed for Opera 11. (Opera 11 will have Extensions (http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/10/14/opera-11-will-have-extensions))

It was also announced that Opera Mobile for Android will have a public beta (with pinch to zoom) within a month. (Opera Mobile for Android (http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/10/14/opera-mobile-for-android-coming-soon))

For both Opera on the desktop and Opera Mobile, hardware acceleration is finally on the way. (Opera aims for Android, hardware acceleration (http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20019574-264.html)) While Opera is already a very fast browser, it has lacked this feature, which Chrome and Firefox have been toting for a while. It will likely be seen as early as Opera 11 according to Opera's VP of core technology.
"We definitely aim to have hardware acceleration in Opera 11," Lars Erik Bolstad, Opera's vice president of core technology, said in an interview.

Also, Opera 10.63 was released on Tuesday (Opera 10.63 released (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/10/12/opera-10-63-released)) and the Opera team added support for Web Sockets to 10.70 on Monday (Web Sockets enter the Opera House (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/10/11/websockets))

Sadly, Opera 10.70 will not ship a final build (Opera 11 (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/10/14/opera-11-and-extensions)), but that simply means that Opera 11 is closer to being a reality. I can't wait! :D

[pricetech]

Been using Opera since version 3 something. Always liked it. Pretty much been my favorite browser over all.

[FuturePilot]

It was announced today that Opera Extensions have been confirmed for Opera 11. (Opera 11 will have Extensions (http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/10/14/opera-11-will-have-extensions))


Ah, the shoe is on the other foot now.

[JustinR]

According to this:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/10/opera-11-to-have-extensions/

It will be able to port extensions from other browsers.

[Frogs Hair]

I looking forward to having add block on Opera that doesn't require manually placing a block list into a file and updating it the same way. Good news !

[lovinglinux]

I don't use Opera, but is nice to see them going the extension route.

[chessnerd]

According to this:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/10/opera-11-to-have-extensions/

It will be able to port extensions from other browsers.
That's excellent, and it's a smart move by the development team. The quicker Firefox and Chrome extensions can be ported to Opera, the more extensions there will be right off the bat. After Opera 11, then they can start making the extension API unique to Opera.

However, I don't really like the tone of that particular article. It makes it sound like Opera has been "lacking" extensions and that the developers have somehow been lazy in not implementing them. Opera is great now even without extensions.

Extensions are not the meat of the sandwich, nor are they the bread, or even the toppings; extensions are the condiments. Sure, everyone likes some mustard on a turkey club, but that doesn't mean a turkey club without mustard is bad.

That analogy made me hungry. :)


I looking forward to having add block on Opera that doesn't require manually placing a block list into a file and updating it the same way. Good news !
What I'm looking forward to is having people stop saying the old "Opera doesn't have Ad-Block." I actually like the urlfilter.ini system and will probably keep using it. It isn't hard, takes just as long as updating an extension, and I have complete control over what my ad-blocker does. But to each his own...

[aladinonl]

Not just that, Opera also opens Opera Link API a couple of days ago, but somehow doesn't get much attention. This means that more, in fact anything, can be sync, interactively with other services and browsers, with Opera Link.

[3rdalbum]

I'll try the new version on my phone, but I hope it fixes the "links just reload the current page" problem I'd been having that's caused me to switch to Chrome on phone and desktop.

[Lazarus500]

Yo. Great news. Opera is my #1 browser. A little more speed, and reduce a few of the bugs, and it will blow the competition out of the H2O.

[chessnerd]

Yo. Great news. Opera is my #1 browser. A little more speed, and reduce a few of the bugs, and it will blow the competition out of the H2O.

Then the future will involve competition being blown out of the water. ;) The most recent build from the desktop team fixed font issues and improved speed on Linux. Opera 11 is going to be awesome.

Changelog

Desktop
*DSK-315664 (Unite works only on local computer)

Linux/FreeBSD
*Speed up startup of Opera on Linux and FreeBSD
*Get font properties from the native environment: Countless small fixes that were difficult and time consuming!
*Add a preference for setting Opera to prefer fontconfig over UI toolkit settings

Core
*CORE-31343 (Crash found during automated testing)

From - Font fixes for *nix/The last 10.70 build (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/10/15/font-fixes-for-nix-the-last-10-70-build)

[beew]

Opera 10.63 has a serious bug. Apparantly you cannot get to launchpad via Opera.
For example
https://launchpad.net/~n-muench/+archive/vlc
Put the link in the Opera address box and click you get a blank page. If you do a google search and click a link that leads to lauchpad nothing happens.

It is not that the server is down. I could get to the site from Firefox with no problem.

It is not a Ubuntu problem, I tried Opera in Windows, same thing.

[A_T]

That link works fine for me with 10.63 on Maverick.

[beew]

That link works fine for me with 10.63 on Maverick.

Strange that doesn't work for me in both Maverick (and Lucid on the same computer) and Windows XP on two different computers with totally different specs

In fact none of the Launchpad url works.

[chessnerd]

The link worked fine for me. I'm running Opera 10.63 on Ubuntu 10.04.

Screeny:

[beew]

Now it appears to be working. But I swear this morning it didn't work for Opera but worked for Firefox. It is strange.

[Dustin2128]

Awesome! Hopefully the extension library will have a decent user agent switcher; I HATE those sites that block me from visiting with opera.

[lovinglinux]

Is out!

http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

I'm going to give it a try, now that it has extensions. They are like Chrome extensions and Firefox Jetpacks, but at least they exist now.

[user1397]

I don't understand how opera is still alive...i mean it seems as if almost no one uses it, and yet it is always the most standards-compliant and on the bleeding edge with regards to new browser features. Who funds them?

[chessnerd]

Is out!

http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

I'm going to give it a try, now that it has extensions. They are like Chrome extensions and Firefox Jetpacks, but at least they exist now.

Awesome! I'm trying it right now. So far, only 17 extensions, but it's only been available for a few hours so I expect hundreds will be available within a week or two.


I don't understand how opera is still alive...i mean it seems as if almost no one uses it, and yet it is always the most standards-compliant and on the bleeding edge with regards to new browser features. Who funds them?

They fund themselves.

Opera includes bookmarks and speed dials by default that are paid for by companies, like Amazon and Kayak, to be included. Opera Mini is a very popular mobile browser, if not the most popular, and is included by default on a lot of phones. The Wii and Nintendo DS use a customized version of Opera for their web browsers. Opera technologies have been licensed for use in Adobe CS and other applications.

They have plenty of money to work with, and with the number of people on the Internet today, a 2% market-share is nothing to sneeze at.

[user1397]

They fund themselves.

Opera includes bookmarks and speed dials by default that are paid for by companies, like Amazon and Kayak, to be included. Opera Mini is a very popular mobile browser, if not the most popular, and is included by default on a lot of phones. The Wii and Nintendo DS use a customized version of Opera for their web browsers. Opera technologies have been licensed for use in Adobe CS and other applications.

They have plenty of money to work with, and with the number of people on the Internet today, a 2% market-share is nothing to sneeze at.
Ah, well that makes more sense now :popcorn:

[lovinglinux]

Awesome! I'm trying it right now. So far, only 17 extensions, but it's only been available for a few hours so I expect hundreds will be available within a week or two.

Let's not exaggerate :)

So far I'm linking it, although something that really bothers me is the amount of menu options and configuration dialogs. In Firefox I can use Menu Editor, so the menus only include what I need. Is there something similar in Opera?

Perhaps if I use it for a few weeks then I could get used to it.

[chessnerd]

Let's not exaggerate :)
I'm not so sure if I am. To reach a level of "hundreds" only requires 200 extensions. I think that 200+ extensions in a week or two is very realistic for the Opera Community.


So far I'm linking it, although something that really bothers me is the amount of menu options and configuration dialogs. In Firefox I can use Menu Editor, so the menus only include what I need. Is there something similar in Opera?
Well, Menu Editor is a Firefox Extension. You could always write an extension for Opera that does the same thing: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/getting-started-with-opera-extensions/

Who knows, in a couple of weeks, there may be an Opera Menu Editor... ;)

[Phrea]

They did a very nice IAmA (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dtbcz/hey_reddit_join_the_opera_browser_team_for_an/) on Reddit the other day.

[Quadunit404]

I installed it. I've been using Opera since 2008 (or 2006 if you count the Wii browser) and haven't looked back at Firefox since. This is very nice and renders the argument "Opera doesn't have extensions derpityderp" invalid \\:D/

Now, as for porting over extensions from Firefox, I HOPE that they don't choose the thousands of crapware/spyware/bloatware extensions in MoCo's repository; those are what drove me away from Firefox in the first place #-o

[lovinglinux]

I'm not so sure if I am. To reach a level of "hundreds" only requires 200 extensions. I think that 200+ extensions in a week or two is very realistic for the Opera Community.

Well, I don't know the Opera Community, but I think 200 extensions is a lot of extensions. Anyway, I hope you are right.


Well, Menu Editor is a Firefox Extension. You could always write an extension for Opera that does the same thing: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/getting-started-with-opera-extensions/

Who knows, in a couple of weeks, there may be an Opera Menu Editor... ;)

If it was that simple :)

Anyways, thanks for the link. I'm going to try to port my AskUbuntu extension, which I believe is a good candidate, considering most of my other extensions make heavy use of XUL.

BTW, I'm really exploring Opera for the first time. I like these things so far:


the tab bar on the right (for Firefox I use Tree Style Tabs extension)
the quick dial (for Firefox I use Speed Dial or Fast Dial, but they are not dynamic)
mail reader (there was a Simple Mail extension for Firefox, but is defunct)
rss reader (the one I like is not compatible with Firefox 4)
built in support for stylish scripts (easier to manage in my opinion)
Site Preferences (really nice)
theme installer


Things I don't like so far:


too many menu options
no support for OPML import


The main issue is that it crashed and now doesn't want to start.

[lovinglinux]

Is there a way to make the search bar open on a new tab?

[lovinglinux]

I'm not so sure if I am. To reach a level of "hundreds" only requires 200 extensions. I think that 200+ extensions in a week or two is very realistic for the Opera Community.

There are 10 more extensions today. That was fast.

[Quadunit404]

Personally I like Opera's implementation of extensions better than MoCo's. With MoCo's implementation you get complete control over the browser; it's almost like trying to steer a car by pulling at its wheels rather than using the steering wheel and if there's a security issue or the browser (or in severe cases, the OS itself) gets corrupted it's due to poor coding in the extension. With Opera the browser is still in control and all what the extension does it add a button to the toolbar or run in the background (a la Chrome)

Now, where's the extension WOT promised us? It's day two of Opera 11's public availability and the WOT extension the Web of Trust said would be among the first extensions is still unavailable.

[lovinglinux]

Personally I like Opera's implementation of extensions better than MoCo's. With MoCo's implementation you get complete control over the browser; it's almost like trying to steer a car by pulling at its wheels rather than using the steering wheel and if there's a security issue or the browser (or in severe cases, the OS itself) gets corrupted it's due to poor coding in the extension. With Opera the browser is still in control and all what the extension does it add a button to the toolbar or run in the background (a la Chrome)

Now, where's the extension WOT promised us? It's day two of Opera 11's public availability and the WOT extension the Web of Trust said would be among the first extensions is still unavailable.

The Opera's implementation of extensions is indeed like Chrome extensions. It is also like Mozilla's Jetpacks (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/tag/jetpack). This type of implementation is not better for me, because I can do a lot more with Firefox XUL extensions. They have advantages tho. For instance, there is no need for restarting the browser after installing/uninstalling and enabling/disabling the extension. They also prevent the compatibility hell after a new version of the browser is released. The issues with bad code are indeed a reality and XUL extensions also slow down the browser startup and ui performance, which does not happens with Chrome, Opera and Jetpack's add-ons.

[chessnerd]

Well, I don't know the Opera Community, but I think 200 extensions is a lot of extensions. Anyway, I hope you are right.

Ah, sadly I wasn't. There are only 91 extensions (https://addons.labs.opera.com/addons/extensions/) after about 2 weeks. :(

That's still pretty good considering this is a pre-alpha build of Opera 11, but I was hoping for more. There are still some extensions, such as the Web of Trust extension, that websites and companies have promised to make. Some of these organizations are probably waiting for the more stable beta builds before they start work on their Opera extensions.

Work continues on Opera 11. A new build came out on the 6th (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/11/06/snapshot) (yesterday or today depending on your time zone) with a lot of core, extensions, and *nix fixes.

However, it only has 32-bit for BSD, which concerns me. After Opera dropped support for Solaris during the creation of Opera 10.5, I've been worried that they may drop BSD support while working on Opera 11. Leading up to the death of PPC support, there were several snapshots without PPC builds. If there are multiple non-BSD builds in the next few weeks, I'm probably going to assume the worst.

We'll see... :|

[lovinglinux]

Ah, sadly I wasn't. There are only 91 extensions (https://addons.labs.opera.com/addons/extensions/) after about 2 weeks. :(

That's still pretty good considering this is a pre-alpha build of Opera 11, but I was hoping for more. There are still some extensions, such as the Web of Trust extension, that websites and companies have promised to make. Some of these organizations are probably waiting for the more stable beta builds before they start work on their Opera extensions.

Indeed that is pretty good for an alpha, specially considering the extension framework bugs and lack of features. For instance, my AskUbuntu (https://addons.labs.opera.com/addons/extensions/details/askubuntu-add-on/) extension does not have alerts like the Firefox or Chrome versions, because there isn't any API for that yet.

I have been following the extension development forum and also the extension gallery rss feed. There are already some pretty good extensions. My favorite is "NotSrcipts (https://addons.labs.opera.com/addons/extensions/details/notscripts/1.0.3/?display=en)", which is more intuitive and a lot easier to use than the Firefox NoScript. To be honest, on the latest couple of months I have been turning NoScript on and off several times because of bugs and to avoid breaking some sites. I was looking for an alternative that would be simpler to use without compromising security. I finally got what I wanted with NotScripts and Opera.

BTW, I have been using Opera as my primary browser since the day of release. I'm loving it.

The extension framework is limited, even more than Chrome, but I think this will improve pretty soon. The main advantage is that a lot of things I would achieve with Firefox extensions are built-in, so even with the extensions limitations I can do most of the things I do in Firefox. However, I still need to run Firefox as secondary browser, since I can't port some of my extensions and other third-party that I use daily, but I'm using Firefox mostly for development and not for browsing.

[Pogeymanz]

I also discovered NotScripts and it's fantastic!

The only thing is that I can't get Opera to change fonts, so some web pages look terrible. Oh well, it's just an alpha.

I love the built-in speed dial. Because it is built-in, it loads instantly in a new tab, unlike the Firefox speed dial add-on.