Opera Goes To 11, With Extensions and Tab Stacks

surveyork writes "Opera Software released Opera browser 11 for desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). The main features are support for extensions similar to Chrome and Tab Stacks, Opera's version of tab management. The extension catalog is still small, with roughly 200 extensions, but steadily growing. The browser is very fast — Chrome-fast — and lightweight, with a new installer which is 30% smaller than the one in the previous version. Other enhancements include visual mouse gestures and better address field. There's no hardware acceleration yet, but it could be coming in a further dot release and benefit XP users as well as Mac, Linux and Windows 7/Vista users."

Middle-click still buggy...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Firefox is my primary browser, but I do have Opera installed and keep it updated. One annoying bug that's been around for a while is that middle-clicking on a link does not set the Referrer header. This causes a number of *ahem* "image-hosting" websites to throw their hotlink prevention message at you.

I keep trying

[farnsworth]

I keep trying Opera and I keep being disappointed. I guess it's just not for me. The text rendering is worse, the chrome takes up more room, the form elements are not native looking, the url input seems more rudimentary than others, its image rendering doesn't seem to be color-space-aware, and its rendering quirks are somehow louder than other browsers' quirks.

It may very well be numerically faster than other browsers, but it doesn't feel faster. I don't really care if a gmail inbox takes 5 seconds to render -- I can always switch away and read twitter or whatever in the meantime. Opera does have many UI innovations, but they always seem to lack polish to my eye.

I just want a browser that is "fast enough", gets out of my way, and is thoughtfully designed for human interaction. It is my impression that Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are all better in this regard.

I don't mean this to be a dig against Opera or the people who make it. I realize that it takes an extraordinary amount of effort and magic to produce Opera. I'm just curious why people like it, and if it will ever make it beyond a niche product on the desktop.

Devs better have fixed the UAC problem

[vlueboy]

Starting Opera 10 as a normal user triggers UAC randomly. Eventually I started to skip that by pressing ESC since it will still run the program normally. Hard to believe the devs caused that since Opera doesn't know how to seamlessly automatically update itself or inform you why UAC is needed and why you need to cooperate. Lots of Opera forum users sadly type their PW everytime Opera asks, many fellow forumers have no idea what's going on, so they're are just told to DISABLE UAC! Disable UAC because of malware --the exact reason UAC was created!

The devs screwed up royally [google.com] and I've so far not found any workaround on their forums or elsewhere.

Re:Why use a closed-source browser?

[lyinhart]

And I don't understand why any sensible user would discriminate between browsers solely based on the license. Unless of course, you're of the same frame of mind as Richard Stallman. The truth is, the major web browsers have differences that have little to nothing to do with the availability of their source code. Want guaranteed compatibility? Use IE (closed source). Want a large library of extensions? Use Firefox (open source). Want a simple, no frills, fast browser? Use Chromium (open source). Want a little bit of everything? Use Opera.

Oh yeah, and don't mention about an open source browser being more secure. The closed source Opera has a consistently low number of vulnerabilities according to Secunia. Mind you, I don't actually use Opera these days. The thing easily goes over 100 MB in memory usage just after two tabs and it doesn't seem as stable as it used to be.