back to article Opera 11 goes beta with extensions, stacked tabs

Opera has released a beta version of Opera 11, its latest desktop browser, that offers Firefox-like extensions and a new interface meant to better organize tabs. The Norwegian browser maker released an alpha version of Opera 11 in late October, and according to the company, testers have already download more than 500,000 …

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  1. Steven Knox
    Happy

    Why they're my favorite.

    "And despite its many new tools, Opera 11 is 30 per cent smaller than the existing Opera 10.63."

    Unlike certain other browser developers, Opera continues to recognize that size does matter.

    Oh, and the nod to Spinal Tap on the beta download page doesn't hurt, either.

  2. Tim 8

    never mind features, bring back stability

    I've used Opera almost exclusively since version 4 or 5, about 10 years or more. I even paid for it at the time, since the alternative was banner ads in a toolbar.

    But I haven't used it for 4 months or so, or whenever it was they pushed out the 10.5 update. That release blew up the memory footprint enormously, and the browser routinely starting locking up or crashing. I went back and tried the 10.5x releases and saw no improvement.

    If 11 brings back speed and stability, and not just pointless options I don't want, I'll go right back. I really dislike firefox, but at least it will stay up for more than a day without crashing.

    1. Steven Knox

      10.5

      I skipped the 10.5 releases and went straight to 10.6x, and never had a problem.

      As I recall, 10.5 came out "just in time" for the Windows Browser Choice Screen bodge, and I think it was a little rushed for that reason. I seem to remember some articles on some tech site referencing that, but I'm too lazy to research.

    2. Richard North

      Stability...

      I'd love to know where you were going to break the current version Tim, because it's been absolutely rock-solid for me... even when venturing into 'bandit country'.

      I'm looking forward to playing with the new version though - anything that keeps the footprint down is good. :-)

    3. peter 5 Silver badge

      10.5x

      Yeah, 10.5 was a shocking release, but the 10.6x series has been a lot better. I can't recall having a single crash in 10.63, and performance is certainly better than 10.5

      1. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        Shocking?

        That's odd. I didn't have any problems with 10.5.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Me Neither

          No problems with 10.5 here either. I've found Opera to be more stable than any other browser for years.

      2. John Gaunt

        Opera 10.5x, 10.6x

        Ditto. Those are my sentiments using Opera 10.5x and 10.6x on Windows XP and Vista.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      10.63 and 11.00 Beta rock solid here

      No crashes at all, EVER, and it's been my main browser for weeks. Its stability for a Alpha/Beta is stunning. It's more stable than RELEASED Firefox builds (but then that's not too hard).

      I'm guessing anyone not using Opera right now is running out of excuses real quick, now Opera has extensions too....

      It's a shame none of the other Opera 11 features were mentioned here, like the Tab Pin work (Pin used to lock the tab to stop it being deleted, now it also pins it to the side in a compressed tab).

      The work on the mail side is most welcome too, with some tidying up of the UI. I'm also loving how content blocker rules are sync'd automatically via OperaLink now.

      The king of browsers just got even better, and it's lighter too....

  3. Bear Features
    Thumb Down

    and?

    Can they whinge to the EU about something to get more free publicity for itself? .... again?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Whinging

      What free publicity? You are giving them free publicity by constantly whinging about them.

      The question is: Why are you only whinging about Opera, and not Mozilla, Google and Microsoft?

      Is it hypocrisy or just sheer ignorance?

      Remember, Google and Mozilla both joined the EU antitrust complaint!

      Also, Google has filed antitrust suits against Microsoft, and Microsoft has filed against Google.

      So again, why are you only whinging about Opera?

      Use your brain instead of whining all the time, kid.

  4. Bronek Kozicki

    yes, but what about email?

    Is it useable in Opera yet? With IMAP support?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Working fine...

      No problems with IMAP here. It works perfectly.

    2. ScissorHands
      Troll

      Must not feed....

      Aarrgh! Must not feed...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      ???? Epic Fail.

      What is it with some people here?

      I have been using Opera and IMAP for 7 years and never had ANY problems whatsoever (Courier and more recently Dovecot). If you have problems, you might want to look closer to home....

    4. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      yep

      E-mail, particularly IMAP, work great on Opera. In fact that may be my main reason for using it. Note, I don't do much server-side work as Opera automatically recognises mailing lists and other useful things. The new mail panel is fantastic for heavy mail users. The only thing missing that I occasionally need to go into Thunderbird for is PGP support.

      Particularly encouraging to see the number of extensions out there. I'm not a heavy user of them myself but a script blocker that goes beyond Opera's built-in content blocker is nice to have.

      1. Grease Monkey Silver badge

        IMAP

        IMAP not only works fine in Opera, but it's not implemented in the vast majority of other browsers so where's the beef? Complaining that IMAP doesn't work properly in Opera might carry some sort of weight if IMAP worked at all in any other browser.

        The only time you'll ever have bother with IMAP in Opera is if you use Google mail and that's not Opera's fault. It's well documented that Google have come up with their own non-standard implementation of IMAP.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Neat!..

    Now if the same paradigm could just be applied to virtual desktops, and then the computer monitor physically becomes a desktop then we would be in computing nirvana. :-) I would probably end up with piles of paper all over mine tho...

  6. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Troll

    I was interested . . .

    . . . but then I envisioned the onrushing torrent of viscous Opera fanboy love-spatter sure to engulf this comment section, and I suddenly became nauseated.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      So which browser are you using?

      If you don't like fanboys, then you can't use Firefox or Chrome either.

      So what are you using?

      Even IE has fanboys.

      Let's see you defend your amazing hypocrisy...

      1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
        Grenade

        It's not hypocritical

        No fanboys of other browsers have yet (as of the time of this posting) wandered into this thread and proclaimed their choice of browser to be far superior, as Opera fanboys are prone to do in threads regarding other browsers.

        1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

          Re: It's not hypocritical

          Do you think there's a reason for that, perhaps?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          Fanboy warning

          "No fanboys of other browsers have yet (as of the time of this posting) wandered into this thread and proclaimed their choice of browser to be far superior, as Opera fanboys are prone to do in threads regarding other browsers."

          Wrong.

          Opera stories are being flooded by fanboys of other browsers.

          LIKE YOU, FOR EXAMPLE.

          LOL, talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

          1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
            FAIL

            ORLY?

            What other browser did I mention? I specifically made mention of the behavior of *people*, not technology.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Pint

      Each to his own

      NFT

  7. Neal 5

    First impressions.

    Unlike Chrome,Mozilla, IE or Safari, this beta hasn't sent my CPU into a 100% cycle or blitzed my RAM to the extent that my pagefile keeps saying system memory status is low. That's impressive on this 12 year old machine.(celeron 512mb, linux sucks it dry in about 30 nanoseconds.)

    I'm sure if I banged it onto my i7, or any of my slightly less new chipped boxes it would perform like a dream.

    1. Rafael L

      Hm...

      The memory and processor usage is just working as great as aways here...

      I even use Opera on slower PCs than yours and it's the best browser imo.

  8. Jason 54

    Fix Google Reader bug

    I just wish Opera would fix the bug where the item count doesn't show up in Google Reader!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Browser sniffing

      That's because of Google's browser sniffing. Tell them to stop blocking Opera.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        To fix

        F11, Site Preferences, Masqerade As Firefox.

        Also proves the problem is totally Googles end, as Masqerading does not change how Opera interprets code, just what servers send it./

  9. Darryl

    Yippee

    More stuff to make the actual browser window even smaller

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Are you drunk?

      How will this make the browser window smaller, exactly?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    Well somebody has to say it.

    I love iRider! Its better than anything! Certainly better than any recent Opera experience on my home PC. Shame it's only compatible with ie7.5 and below... (yes, below)

    Anyone else got an obsolete browser they prefer?

  11. JDX Gold badge
    Grenade

    Makes no sense

    Everyone knows Opera has been 100% HTML5 compatible since 1995 and already has every single feature every other browser has or is working on.

    So how are they still making new versions... Opera fans tell me it's already perfect.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Are you drunk?

      Opera fans tell you no such thing. What they do tell you is that you need to stop spewing crap.

      1. JDX Gold badge
        FAIL

        re:Are you drunk?

        Let me help you: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasm

        Your sense of humour IS completely appropriate for an Opera fanboy though.

  12. nemenator
    FAIL

    Still no

    Alt-tooltips :(

    1. Rasczak
      Boffin

      ALT ?

      Why would a browser show tool-tips for the ALT tag ? That tag is for ALTernative text that displays when the image is not shown, If the image is displayed, why would you need the information from the ALT tag ?

      Of course if the page author wants to provide information about an image even when it is displayed, then they would use the TITLE tag for that. Opera displays TITLE tag information correctly. If you are not getting tool-tips on images, then the page is written not to show further information when the image is displayed.

      If the page is written not to show specific information, the correct behaviour is for the browser not to show it, any browser that does show it is therefore broken.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      FFS

      nemenator - bet you're a web designer, you certainly fail like one.

      (I apologise to any web designers out there who DO know how to write good, standards compliant, maybe even Strict markup - you are few and far between. The rest of you, please, go back to Quark and leave the www alone.)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    Yeah but it's Opera...

    ...so who cares?

    1. nemenator
      Flame

      The fanbois care...

      Almost as much as the warmists.

    2. Bilgepipe
      Troll

      @Andy Towler

      "...so who cares?"

      Well you cared enough to come in here and comment.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      YOU care!

      Obviously you care enough to comment. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      I care

      as I pick my browser on quality, performance and features, rather than whats pushed at me by big corporations like Microsoft, Google and Apple.

      To actually think marketshare and product quality have any correlation means you get my EPIC FAIL OF THE WEEK AWARD.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But Opera already does all this!!!!!!

    Oh wait, hold on........

  15. Bill Gould
    FAIL

    Now if they'd

    Just offer a browser only I might give it a try again. Just a browser. None of this email client and toaster oven and whatever other bullshit they're trying to integrate into it. Just a browser.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Whine, whine, whine

      It IS just a browser by default. And a far smaller download than the so-called "just browsers" too!

      The e-mail client isn't even enabled by default and you won't even notice that it's there.

      Stop whining about things that don't matter.

      It IS just a browser, until you decide to activate additional features.

  16. mikah

    Pity about the Trolls

    Used Opera for years, upgrading from 10.1 was very painful until i did a clean install & its been good since then.

    I use the built in email imap & it works great for me. If you don't want to use it whats the problem it doesn't get in the way or slow you down & you can hardly call Opera bloated with only a 7 Mb download its smaller than the other browsers while having far more features.

    I love the smooth scrolling & zooming in Opera its a huge improvement over more primitive browsers like Firefox & Chrome.

    If anyone wants to try Opera the installer has an option to install as a portable.

    options change the install folder to another folder on your hard drive & install for standalone USB.

  17. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Waiting for a full release

    Waiting for a full release - because I don't want > 100 web pages that I look at occasionally to be reloaded more often than necessary!

    My everyday machine is slow low on memory by today's standards (Samsung Q1 that meets certain disability needs) and Opera does take a long time to claim its due allowance of RAM and/or swap, which I suppose it gives up when Windows is on standby - the disk light is 100% on - and I don't say that it never simply vanishes and has to be reloaded. But otherwise no great complaints, and I don't remember versions 10.5x being particularly difficult, but I don't remember how long that was the current issue.

    Oh - I don't think my e-mail at Excite Mail works. And I'm not sure about Yahoo! Mail.

  18. JDX Gold badge

    re: I Care

    "as I pick my browser on quality, performance and features, rather than whats pushed at me by big corporations like Microsoft, Google and Apple.

    To actually think marketshare and product quality have any correlation means you get my EPIC FAIL OF THE WEEK AWARD."

    That's the funniest joke I've heard here for ages. Damn those big companies making products people like. If Opera was so damn great, it would have gained share just like any other popular free application.

  19. Bronek Kozicki
    Happy

    uh oh

    I'm not a troll; just looking for a good commercial alternative for Thunderbird. I don't care as much about web browsing as I do about IMAP. Opera is also being advertised as an email client, but last time I checked email support in Opera it just looked wrong. It was around version 8; I will definitely give a go to version 11.

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