back to article Opera 10.50 goes from pre-alpha to final in 10 weeks

A day after Microsoft rolled out its Windows browser ballot screen to EU netizens, Opera officially released the Windows incarnation of its latest and greatest desktop browser. With an eye on Redmond's ballot screen roll-out, the Norwegian browser maker took Opera 10.50 for Windows from pre-Alpha to final version in about 10 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    What a surprise!

    The menu bar text rendering is still screwed in the *final* version! I guess Opera don't care what their browser looks like. Oh and to the supercilious twat that responded last time, the web pages still don't render right either. Up yours!

    1. Relgoshan
      IT Angle

      Lacking Evidence is Lacking

      I've got it running in Windows 98! What's not to love? If there are *real* issues, please use the bug wizard AFTER confirming with a *clean* install. Anything less is purely criminal.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    VERY Impressive

    As everyone knows, no software is without faults, however Opera 10.50 is fast (VERY fast), stable and looks great. There are a couple of minor niggles, but nothing that don't appear on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE.. It's 99% polished, and certainly a upgrade from the already very good Opera 10.10.

    It totally kills everything else in benchmarks..

    http://clients.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/results.action?key=33Fw

    Sure they could have perhaps spent a couple more weeks polishing further, but what was the point? It's better than it's predecessor, it's stable and fast. Catchup the few remaing bugs ones it's out to the wider world with a 10.51 in a week or two...

    And before the Firefox fanbois jump in about AdBlock+ and NoScript. They are both built in.

    1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
      FAIL

      Jumping in

      As usual, the Opera users have no idea what AdBlock and NoScript actually *do*. They're not built in.

  3. MarkOne
    Thumb Up

    About.com 2010 Browser - Readers Choice....

    http://browsers.about.com/od/allaboutwebbrowsers/ss/2010-readers-choice-awards-web-browsers-winners_2.htm

    Opera 10.x - 51% (13,234 votes)

    Firefox 3.5/3.6 - 41% (10,710 votes)

    Chrome - 4% (1,266 votes)

    Internet Explorer 8 - 1% (447 votes)

    Safari 4.x - 0% (234 votes)

  4. Richard 45
    Thumb Down

    Colour

    Still no support for colour profiles, unlike Firefox 3, so still unusable for my needs.

    1. Ben Cockburn

      A bit harsh...

      Colour profiling? One of the most obscure features of Firefox 3, enabled only by a config change.

      Fair enough it's not going to suit you but it's a bit harsh to give Opera 10.5 the thumbs down for something that a vanishingly small section of the population is ever going to use.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Get real

      I always know when someone has no real experience with printing when they claim that colour profiles are vitally important to their "work".

      1. Richard 45

        Colour profiles not important?

        I'd dread to think what your output looks like without any regard to colour profiles. I'm compiling a photographic book, and yes, it's vitally important for me to view images' colours accurately before I contact the photographer to ask if they'd like to contribute the image. See http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

  5. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    Pint

    Q & A

    "The question, of course, is whether 10 weeks is enough to smooth out the rough edges."

    No, not quite it seems but still an impressive release. Personally not a JS-site junkie so the new engine improvements are of less interest to me than the better native implementations on non-Windows platforms and the usual attention to detail make this worthwhile enough. Cheers

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Marketing and strategy

    I'm not happy about it being a rushed release and think more work would have been done to it, had circumstances been different. But I'm happy to see Opera actually thinking about this from a business point of view and doing whatever it takes to get the latest version into the Windows ballot box.

    That box will give a first impression to many users trying different browsers, so you really don't want to have an old version available when a new one is so close to being ready. It's rare that Opera act in this way. Perhaps it's a reflection on the recent managerial changes?

    I expect for a while all browsers will release newer versions more frequently, albeit containing fewer changes, just to ensure casual users trying their product via the new ballot box will get the best experience possible.

    Expect Opera 10.51 out within a week! Or perhaps they'll hide an awful lot of bug fixes behind a forthcoming 10.6 release promoted as making the new version available for Macs and Unix too.

    But the Windows ballot box doesn't affect me, so I'll be waiting for 10.52 or 10.6, whichever comes first. I'm happy with 10.1 and have no problems.

  7. CC
    Thumb Down

    J U N K !

    What I said....J U N K.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      in a specialist IT journal

      would it be too much to ask for a little more specific detail on why you 'think' it's junk? Can you manage that? How does a post as idiotic as yours pass moderation? What does it add?

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Moderation?

        "How does a post as idiotic as yours pass moderation?"

        I think if it isn't libellous or unconscionably sexist (*), Sarah passes just about anything. If you got rid of the idiots, there'd only be you and me left.

        (* Merely offensive seems to be OK, as long as it isn't her time of the month.)

    2. Pete 6

      MLYP

      MLYP

  8. Alastair 7

    Re: About.com 2010 Browser - Readers Choice....

    That proves nothing except that Opera fans are more vocal with their support of their browser. And we all knew that anyway.

    The marketplace is so competitive that no-one has any reason to not be incredibly satisfied with their browser choice, except for ignorance.

    1. SynnerCal
      Coat

      Browser choice

      Alastair 7 said "The marketplace is so competitive that no-one has any reason to not be incredibly satisfied with their browser choice, except for ignorance."

      Not sure I totally agree with that sentiment - after all initially you had Mozilla, then IE and Netscape came along, then Opera, then Safari and finally Chrome. In which case browser choice would naturally change as the choice widened.

      Where I do agree is in that if you find a browser that you're comfortable with then stick with it - to you it's the "best" irrespective of anything anyone else says. As an article I read said, it's all about "SPF" - Stability, Performance, Features. So unstable/slow/restricted browsers don't tend to do all that well. I've tried all of the list I've given in the previous paragraph, and at present (on Windows at least) switch between Firefox and IE. On Linux, it's Firefox (again) and Opera. I tried Safari and Chrome, but removed them - Safari because it didn't run that well, and Chrome because my firewall s/w kept flagging alerts about mysterious Google-related activity which vanished when Chrome was deinstalled.

      Personally, I wish the Opera folks well and I'll be looking forward to trying the new version on my Linux systems when it comes out. The current version (10.10) is pretty fast and stable, and I'd use it in preference if it wasn't for the fact that it fails with a couple of the websites/apps I use - VMware Server2 console being the most prevalent.

  9. Steve 72

    Not ready for prime time

    Loaded up and installed the classic skin, went to the config page for toolbars, no text fields visible!!

    "Ooops"

    Not there yet, sticking with 10.10

    1. Relgoshan
      Heart

      So?

      Your favorite skin hasn't been updated for the final? Cry me a river and come back when you find something wrong.

      1. Steve 72

        And

        I've been doing IT long enough to know that it something that simple is f@cked up, then there's more. Wager how long it takes for 10.51 to come out?

        A mere five minutes worth of searching revealed other issues that I don't need, glad you're as thorough.

  10. Bambaaclaaaat
    FAIL

    Horrible experience. Snotty support forum.

    I like opera and except for the fact that the Times website doesn't work in it, it's the one I use most. This may change.

    I was stupid and installed 10.5. Great, except my bookmarks disappeared and the skin I used disappeared. It took 20 minutes to reinstall 10.1.

    When I went to the opera forums lots of others were having problems, including problems with bookmarks. But nobody with any knowledge was particularly willing to help.

    Typical were the kind of remarks in this thread, "Complaints about 10.50" -

    http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=433401

    "Its really very simple, if you don't want any changes then don't upgrade. Opera has changed with every new version, and will continue to evolve. Some changes I like, some I don't. It is impossible to please everyone. Instead of complaining, look for solutions."

    "How much did you pay for the upgrade? How much effort did you put into testing the alphas and betas?"

    The hell with them. There are other internet browsers, apparently. I imagine they all have unpleasant fan boys offering "support" though.

    1. Relgoshan
      Alert

      Fair enough

      Now YOU have a valid problem...one which others HAVE reported. I suspect this new build was primarily intended for new users, I personally did not switch from 9.64 until 10.01 came out. Then the move to 10.10 went smoothly. Everything in the forums indicated that upgrade installs were not reliable enough yet for 10.50

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      Opera forum

      I agree about the support forum. Constructive criticism, or even a simple question, is often met with hostility or rudeness.

    3. Steve 72

      Well put !

      "Objective" anything seems to have gone out the window lately. That wonderful line "gimme sumthin' I can use" is particularly appropriate here.

      For the record I've used Opera essentially since it arrived on the scene and this release is the only update I've rolled back.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Use Image as Background = AFU

    I noticed almost right away, It can't save image to desktop background

    Save Image as works though thank god ;o)

    (win version, ain't tested latest linux version which might not have this bug)

    1. Relgoshan
      Unhappy

      Huh

      I'll check when I get back to my other machine. That certainly would be a bad feature to have broken, after all some folks think that's the ONLY way to set a wallpaper.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    @Steve72

    Sounds like you've installed an old skin that wasn't written or updated for Opera 10.5. You can hardly blame the actual program for that.

    It's like trying to install a Windows XP theme on Windows 7 and moaning that it doesn't work.

    Try using a skin that officially supports 10.5, or wait more than just a couple of hours after its release for the creators to get around to updating them.

    But I wouldn't expect Opera themselves to continue updating obsolete skins from old versions no more than Microsoft updated the 'Windows 95' theme after XP.

    And really... whinging that an entire version is "not ready for prime time" because you tried replacing the default skin with an obsolete one and it didn't work... Come on fella.

    Actually I'm noticing this kind of behaviour more and more in comments lately. Someone will make a big announcement or release a new product and a load of moaners all start sweating small stuff or row about the semantics of some unimportant moot point, adding that the whole thing is therefore the worst thing in the world ever. It's not healthy.

    And to the user who can't cycle though tabs using their mouse wheel... perhaps you have mouse gestures disabled or need to RTFM?

    1. Steve 72

      Same

      as what I replied to Relgoshan above.

      Check the other observations here and elsewhere, glad it's working 100% for you. Five minutes research is all it takes.

  13. Dave 129

    Undecided on the new look...

    I tried the beta very briefly the other day - I didn't notice Opera 10.5 was in to RC status already. Very impressed with the Carakan engine. Certainly a lot snappier than before.

    Now I have installed 10.5 and upgraded my existing install - along with my email *gulp* (and yes I use M2, it's alright). So far it's been OK but the JS benchmarks cause 10.5 to run out of memory. I have so far tested V8 version 5 and http://dromaeo.com/ and both failed to complete fully. The beta 2 did finish V8 v5 without issue so no idea what's happened there. Could be an issue on Win 7 x64 though (last test was on XP).

    I am still undecided on the new look. I actually like my toolbars but now you can't really use them so I am taking the plunge without. It's a little bit of a pain trying to locate stuff again though. I think that there should be a little more work done to make it easier to find stuff (e.g. dev tools were kinda buried).

    Otherwise, seems to be OK. I'll reserve judgement until I've had more time to actually use it as I would usually.

  14. notaffiliatedtomicrosoft
    Thumb Up

    Opera rocks

    i think all the people who diss Opera need to remember that every piece of software ever written contains bugs and glitches, it's unavoidable. How many times did Firefox screw up my profile before they finally fixed that issue?

    Opera is fantastic, I've used it for years and in that time I've hardly had any problems with it. Long live Opera.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    oh stop whinging already... Opera is Fantastic!

    ,,, it passes the ACID2 test, so it *must* be the best browser by far!

    Also, the fabulous way they beat old microsoft to er, to that ballot screen thingie - amazing!

    Surely the most important part of a browser release is to 'sock one to the man', yes?

    Erm, no. This preoccupation with microsoft is going nowhere Opera, it's just making you look like a little moaning kid. "It's not fair!"

    Take a leaf from the Mozilla book and market your browser FFS!

    1. KenBW2

      Spot the Opera branding on the ballot screen

      Where on the ballot screen does it give Opera any more importance than FF, Chrome or even IE? Nowhere - so the ballot screen is unbiased. Please don't tell me you want that to go away.

  16. Doug 14
    WTF?

    Why rush it out anyway ??

    The whole point of this ballot screen is to give people a chance to experience a choice of browsers isn't it ? So why would you rush out a release if the only result is that new users first experience of your offering is an unhappy one.

    Surely the only sensible thing to do is role out your latest/stable release and allow updates to the browers to role out in due course. It does do a periodic check for updates right , and this is enabled by default ?

    I can't think of a better way to sink your reputation than to engage in a massive pratfall just as the spotlight you have made such a fuss over finally widens to include you on the stage.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Lesser of two evils

      The fact is that casual users will at least try software with bugs, and often put up with them.

      However, if features are missing then they won't try it at all, especially if all they base their decision on is a simplified table that lists what browsers support which features, without taking in the bigger picture and finding the one that best suits their actual needs.

      A user who only found out that IE isn't the only browser because a mysterious ballot box suddenly popped up may find out that one browser supports HTML4, CSS2 and passes the Acid2 test whilst another browser is listed as supporting HTML5, CSS3 and passes Acid3. So they choose that one because they think it must be the latest model, even though it's clunkier, has far fewer or inferior 'user experience' features and none of the tag soup web pages they currently browse make any use of HTML5, CSS3 or require even Acid1 to be passed by the browser.

      It's important that your feature set will cover the widest range of check lists, even if the items in those lists make no real-world difference to the potential users compiling them.

      Savvy users may not like this approach, but if they're as savvy as they like to think then they'll be quite capable of passing over any X.00 release and waiting patiently for the X.02. And it's not as if the masses need to go out of their way to upgrade Opera. It's all automatic by default, just like other good browsers, so they'll get 10.51 as soon as it's ready.

  17. MarkOne

    @Doug 14

    Who is saying Opera 10.50 is an unhappy one?

    I'm overjoyed with it's looks, features and performance. I used Opera 10.10 before it and was very happy. 10.50 is a MASSIVE upgrade in terms of performance and looks. Opera made 100% correct choice on this. New users will be guaranteed to be impressed. There might be a couple of rough edges, but you would have to be an experienced Opera user to even notice them, for example if you were using a custom skin in 10.10 and upgraded. This is not what those new users will be seeing.

    It's worth noting, 10.50 is not on the Opera AutoUpdate servers yet, I suspect they are working on ironing out some upgrade quirks, however new users being directed to 10.50 and clean installations are fine.

  18. luxor
    Thumb Up

    No problems here

    Downloaded, installed and no issues with menu bar text. No problem with any sites. No problem with text fields being visible. So I don't understand the ones who are having these problems.

    What's the matter, Opera too complicated for you? Or just FF fan boys having a dig?

    1. Bilgepipe
      Thumb Down

      Unfair

      "What's the matter, Opera too complicated for you? Or just FF fan boys having a dig?"

      I've seen several sites where Opera doesn't render edit fields and it's also never logged into Google Mail for me. Are you saying Opera is too complicated for me too? Or that I'm expecting too much to simply go to a page and want to see all the contents appear correctly?

      It's not a case of the browser being complicated or me being stupid, it's a case of it not working correctly for some of it's users. And I'm not a FireFox fanboy - I'd use Opera if it worked properly, *which it doesn't.*

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        logs into google mail for me

        so it must be an idiosyncrasy of your setup

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: Site doesn't render properly

        Did you ever stop to consider that the sites are broken and not the browser?

  19. john444
    Thumb Up

    What's the big deal

    Surely 10 weeks is enough time for Google Chrome to leap at least 2 or 3 major versions so I can't see wha tthe fuss is about. The first alphas of Opera 10.5 were excellent.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @ luxor

    Don't worry about them, a few Firefox Fanbois spreading FUD. Their loss.... Opera 10.50 would be a great upgrade for them if they managed to move outside their little world.

  21. Whitter
    Thumb Down

    I'll wait till it stabilises.

    I got 1 hour of use out of the beta before I gave up due to numerous issues.

    I rather doubt they've had time to debug it in that time.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @Whitter

    Try the release version, the Beta is now quite old. The release verion is mostly bug-free, and nothing that's a showstopper. It's infinitely better (and more stable) than either Chrome or FireFix.

  23. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Like the minimal new look

    The new minimal toolbar look is fantastic on netbooks.

    It's like chrome but with some control on your browsing.

    One feature of the 10.xx opera. When you do a search with ^f and hit enter it searches google not your current page, you have to take your hands off to hit that little down arrow - or am I missing something?

  24. Doug 14
    Alert

    Read the feedback

    @MarkOne,12:32

    "Who is saying Opera 10.50 is an unhappy one?" , any number of people who happened to say so in the earlier feedback.

    @luxor, 13:03

    "What's the matter, Opera too complicated for you? Or just FF fan boys having a dig?

    ", No , but if you read what I was saying it wasn't a criticism of how easy/hard Opera is to use , it was based on the dubious merits of rushing out a software release for a product that is perfectly capable of responding to phased updates.

    Reputations are hard to gain and easy to lose and the world is full of people who don't give a shit about whose browser they use - just so long as it works. If their first experience of [insert browser name here] is that it doesn't then they won't come back , no matter how rabidly emotional their fanbois get about it.

    ( Actually I quite like Opera , and if it happened to render the pages that mattered to me - which it doesn't - I'd happily use it )

  25. John Gaunt
    Thumb Up

    Works Well, Different Appearance

    I upgraded from 10.10 to 10.50 a few hours ago. All of my usual sites (Google Mail, Google News, Yahoo! Mail, CNN, El Reg, etc.) work as they did before the upgrade.

    The only shock that I have received is losing what I call the main menu bar. That horizontal menu bar has been replaced by a "Big Red O" button. I have added the "Big Red O" button next to my tabs, and all is well.

    I do have two minor complaints:

    (1) I have lost the link-text that was displayed when hovering over a link, but that has apparently been replaced by a right-click option entitled "Inspect Element". This right-click option is not as convenient or as speedy as hovering, but it displays the source code containing the link.

    (2) My startup session was being superceded by my last-saved session. Odd, but I may have fixed that problem temporarily by deleting my last-saved session and re-saving my startup session.

    Beyond those two complaints, I am happy Opera 10.50.

  26. Frith
    FAIL

    I'm Switching To Firefox

    I've used Opera for about 3 years but am now installing Firefox 3.6 since everything about 10.50 is a total disaster. As many people have pointed out it has been rushed out and is very buggy. If I upgrade from 10.10 all I get is a blank window so clearly it's not handling my profile correctly, even though the beta versions worked fine when I upgraded from my 10.10 profile. There are a considerable number of people experiencing equally critical issues on the Opera forum so things really don't look good.

    The default interface is an abomination and mirrors closely the design principles of Windows 7. I cannot understand why they're trying to mimic the Windows 7 interface when Windows XP has eight times the number of users Windows 7 has. From the number of users it seems that the vast majority of the people prefer XP so it makes little sense to aim your product at the minority using Windows 7.

    Usually I don't care what they do with the interface since one of the key features of Opera is that the interface can easily be customised to your preferences. Sadly 10.50 seems to have abandoned this principle and many of the new features are forced upon you and cannot be changed back to how they were:

    - The recent search results cannot be disabled (just who is this feature aimed at? Do people really search for the same thing over and over again?)

    - The old style drop down search list with the more densely packed list and no "customise searches" is gone

    - Search and password manager can't be changed so it they appear in a window rather than in a bar

    - Side panel button can no longer be put in the tab bar (the outline appears like it should work but after you drag it there the button doesn't stay)

    I haven't used Opera 10.50 that much and would likely find more if I used it for longer. It may be that they never had time to add these customisations while rushing 10.50 out the door so I'll give the next release after 10.50 a try to see if they've fixed the bugs and improved the interface customisation. For now I'm going to switch to Firefox since Firefox 3.6 is far better than Opera 10.50 in terms of stability and usability.

    I wonder how much damage Opera has done to their brand with this botched 10.50 release. I for one have lost a lot of faith in them.

    1. Will Tisdale
      WTF?

      XP?

      People with XP either have very old hardware which can't take an upgrade or are living in the past. It's time to ditch that 9 year old, horrendous OS which I am unfortunately forced to use at work.

      The fact that Opera have made it fit in with the Windows 7 interface shows they are thinking about the present and future, not the obsolete past.

      Instead of having a temper tantrum, report the bugs if you really are an Opera user of 3 years, or are you just trolling????

      Enjoy your switch to Firefox, revel in the performance drop lol.

      Personally, I believe that this is the best Opera release ever, even though I think their development speed and dismissal of minor bugs to push out a release is unfortunate and it has been rushed.

      However, what do I know, I only tested every snapshot they pushed out...but I'm afraid Chromium nightly is still my default browser. :-)

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    the rush shows

    All that rush to release it on time shows as lots of small bugs in all the places.

    Otherwise: congratulations for the work but a 10.51 is really needed ASAP.

  28. Huey
    Alert

    No need for a bloody title ffs

    Help: -> Check for updates

    You are currently using the latest version of Opera.

    Help: -> About Opera

    Version 10.10

    Well not time to update and certainly not time to whine about something broken =)

    Currently running many many different versions of everything (including 8 different versions of 4 different browsers on various machines) but I really can't be arsed to test every upgrade the minute it comes out the door.

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