Opera Releases Its First Chromium-Based Browser 191
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."
faster bookmarks (Score:4, Insightful)
"Opera has also included a faster bookmarking tool dubbed 'Stash,' allowing users to return to the links quickly."
Was anyone complaining that bookmarks were too slow?
What exactly is their business plan? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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'.
Most importantly for us slashdot users.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opera was once the best web brower (Score:5, Insightful)
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.