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Opera Chromium Software

Opera Releases Its First Chromium-Based Browser 191

Posted by timothy from the google-it dept.
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."
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Opera Releases Its First Chromium-Based Browser More

Opera Releases Its First Chromium-Based Browser

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  • faster bookmarks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:37AM (#43841151)

    "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?

    • Re:faster bookmarks (Score:5, Informative)

      by SimonTheSoundMan ( 1012395 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:46AM (#43841263)

      Beat me.

      Someone forgot to sign the version too, playing havoc on my Mac with saved passwords in keychain, dialogue popup for every saved password, I have hundreds of them. A known Chrome bug that's now in Opera Next.

    • I really can't find Turbo mode, the only feature I liked in Opera while using MiFi to save bandwidth and when out in the middle of nowhere with poor reception.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "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?

      You obviously haven't been around here when someone starts bitching about how Chrome or Firefox "mysteriously" eats through RAM when 500+ tabs are open at once (yes, these people openly admit to having literally over 500 tabs open at once as if they weren't just a bit loony-in-the-bad-sense) and were forced to justify this behavior to save face. Find one of those conversations, and I'll assure you you'll find a lot of... well, okay, you'll find very FEW people complaining that bookmarks are too slow for th

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @12:00PM (#43841455)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • "Opera has also included a faster bookmarking tool dubbed 'Stash,' allowing users to return to the links quickly."

      That's fine, as long as the rest of you stays away from my stash.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      I'm posting from Opera Next now. Stash appears to be a better-looking version of Safari's "Reading List" feature. I actually like it. In fact, I like the browser in general. It has had a nice facelift, with Speed Dial getting new features, and Discover actually seems quite nice. Unfortunately, it also has some annoyances. It doesn't play nicely with some custom Windows color schemes; my black window chrome makes the New Tab button invisible and blends in with inactive tabs too much. It also seems like they'

    • So... I just downloaded the thing, installed it, clicked on its shortcut... nothing.
      Looking at Task manager, I see Opera.exe, then opera_crashreporter.exe, then opera_autoupdate.exe popping up. opera_autoupdate.exe stays in the list for a while, then it goes away.
      That's ALL that happens.

      Wow. This browser might be nice... if it only worked.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I can say that I will be clinging on to the old Opera until I absolutely have to let go. There are too many features that I use on a daily basis missing in the new version.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fjandr ( 66656 )

          Unless they re-add features such as per-website preferences and the ability to customize the UI in as many ways as Opera pre-Next, I won't be switching until the old Opera no longer works with new web tech.

          Next is completely crippled compared to the previous version.

    • Actually, kind of.

      The problem with bookmarks is that they don't work as well as the physical thing they're named after. Browser bookmarks are like tagging a bunch of books in a library that you want to read. If you want to bookmark a specific page, it's easy to add one, and you can go and delete older ones, but *updating* a bookmark is a bit hard.

      Take webcomics, for instance. I usually keep a bookmark to the site so I can read the newest one every day. But if I'm reading through the archives, bookmarking wh

  • The problem with the "old" Opera was JS (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The problem with the "old" Opera was only the bad JavaScript support. Taking that out and you would get a nice browser. I fear that the WebKit Opera would be just another WebKit browser instead of the ole good Opera we all know. Is there a way to somewhat merge the good features of the Opera and taking only the performance of Chromium there?

    • I fear that the WebKit Opera would be just another WebKit browser instead of the ole good Opera we all know.

      You don't have to fear that because Opera won't be using WebKit at all.

      • I believe this initial release is still Webkit, and that they will move to Blink in future releases. Or so TFA says (could be wrong, of course).

        • They will be probably tracking the changes. I believe that Chromium/Chrome has been using WebKir in such an unusual way that a complete rewrite, if not guaranteed to happen, is highly desirable at least. (I.e., Chrome has its own multi-process architecture, its own security-by-isolation model, its own Javascript engine, its own notion of how the browser engine will be used to do the whole UI of the browser (Shadow DOM, HTML components etc.), virtually everything going against the grain of how WebKit was sup

    • V8(the Chrome/Chromium javascript engine) is BSD, so there wouldn't have been a license issue with continuing to use Presto; but swapping out Carakan for V8.

      That sort of thing probably isn't minor surgery, though, so you'd really want some kind of cool feature in Presto to go to all the trouble instead of just going more-or-less-stock-Chromium with UI tweaks...

  • Opera was once the best web brower (Score:5, Informative)

    by Arker ( 91948 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:48AM (#43841287) Homepage
    Back at version 3.62 it really was the best in a lot of ways. You could fit the entire binary on a 3.5" floppy disk, and it was fast even on the slowest machines. You could kill scripts and formatting and image loading (or enable them) on a window by window basis with a single click. If it had been Free Software it would have changed the world. Instead, it has only bloated with age. Knowing that the new version is based on Chrome I doubt I will even bother to try it.
    • Will we be forced into Opera "next"? Opera.com article wasn't clear about it. I'd prefer a fork, i.e. choice. For one, to let the bugs shake out of the next great thing(tm).

      • You can always choose not to upgrade your browser. Saying that you're "forced" into a new version is like saying Windows 7 users are "forced" to get Windows 8. It ain't true, and the current version of Opera likely won't be obsolete for at least a few years as long as you just need a web browser.

        • New features isn't the only reason you stay on an active project...especially important for web browsers due to their ubiquity, you need continuing bug fixes.

          I clung on to Firefox 3.6 for awhile, but eventually you have to give up and continue forward or you're exposing yourself to security holes.

    • Re:Opera was once the best web brower (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @01:14PM (#43842353) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • 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.

        Where are mod points when you need 'em?! That was pretty damn funny.

  • What exactly is their business plan? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nashv ( 1479253 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:50AM (#43841307) Homepage

    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)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:58AM (#43841419) Journal

      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'.

      • Codswallop. Chrome supports Greasemonkey scripts natively, and you'll find a vast selection of browser behavior-altering extensions here:

        https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions [google.com]
        http://www.chromeextensions.org/ [chromeextensions.org]

        Basically anything I used to do with Firefox, I do today with Chrome -- and more. And for an added bonus, it doesn't collapse to its knees if I go without a reboot or closing my browser for a few days, let alone having a few dozen windows and tabs open.
        • And if you use the Onetab extension, it all becomes a web paradise. :-)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by devent ( 1627873 )

          > it doesn't collapse to its knees if I go without a reboot or closing my browser for a few days, let alone having a few dozen windows and tabs open.

          I think that's a Windows issue. My laptop is now running for 12 days (with hibernate and suspend) and I never close Firefox. I have open 5 tabs minimum and sometimes more then 50.

        • Chrome supports Greasemonkey scripts natively

          this is what makes the majority of chrome addons piss me off. Most of them could be a user script, which would (as you say) work fine in Chrome. Instead, people often implement fixes for stupid website behavior (especially stupid Google website behavior) as a chrome extension and then I don't get to use it on firefox.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nashv ( 1479253 )

            That's more of an issue with how developers choose to distribute their code. And that's more of a comparision with distribution systems. The Chrome Web Store is a lot more visible, convinient and trustworthy, compared to userscripts.org, unfortunately.
            Everytime I install a userscript in Chrome, it shows up in the Extensions as 'wierd non-descriptive number.js'. I have to use Tampermonkey anyway to manage these decently.
            Hell, userscripts.org doesn't even look proper on a 1920x1080 resolution screen. Wierd fo

    • Re:What exactly is their business plan? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SJHillman ( 1966756 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @12:24PM (#43841713)

      Some people would say the Firefox button is Opera-ish (as the Big O had it first) and Chrome's tabs are Operaish (as the Big O had tabs first). They may have inherited some of the refinements the other browsers made, but it's only fair to point out that those browsers copied the features from Opera to begin with.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RR ( 64484 )

        Some people would say the Firefox button is Opera-ish (as the Big O had it first) and Chrome's tabs are Operaish (as the Big O had tabs first).

        And yet Opera has always gone out of their way to violate Fitts' Law. [wikipedia.org] It doesn't matter on Macs, where the top of the screen is reserved for the menu bar, but on Windows they keep putting space between the tab and the top of the screen.

        Originally, the tab bar went under the menu bar, first in Opera and then Firefox and others. Then Google showed the world the menubar at the top, and Mozilla and Opera copied it. But while Google and Mozilla put the tab bar at the very top of the screen, Opera put a minuscule

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      You are right in that Opera should focus on its strengths, but that's not speed anymore. Opera's main selling point today is the costumizability and the mountain of extra features built into the browser. Sure, you can have most of them using an extension on Firefox or Chrome, but extensions tend to be badly written. They are slow, bloated and unsecure. Trying to replicate the complete Opera experience in Firefox or Chrome with extension would eat up all memory, slow down the browser and make it crash every

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      The Opera button was in place before firefox cloned it (available in a a weekly build).

      The current version seems to be just the basics of getting webkit working in a browser - there aren't a lot of the features Opera is known for, but even this stripped down version could be useful for someone looking for a lightweight browser

  • What is "Opera Next?" (Score:3)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:51AM (#43841321) Journal

    Is this a different product than the mainline Opera browser, or are they going to be basing future versions on Chromium, and just decided to stop using the clear and understandable "beta?" It's not all that clear to me, but if the latter, at least it's one fewer browser I have to keep installed for testing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      'Next' is the development/testing branch.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Spudley ( 171066 )

      Is this a different product than the mainline Opera browser, or are they going to be basing future versions on Chromium, and just decided to stop using the clear and understandable "beta?" It's not all that clear to me, but if the latter, at least it's one fewer browser I have to keep installed for testing.

      Basically what happened is that everyone else decided that "Next" was a cool new way of saying "the version that's currently in development". So we have HTML.next and so on.

      Opera decided that the only way forward was to copy everyone else and do the same thing.

      Kinda like this whole "webkit, uh, blink" thing.

      • "Next" just makes me think it's a newfangled cola. "Opera Next, now with real sugar and zero calories!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      The "Next" is just to distinguish it from the mainline. Versions of Opera Next include weeklies, alphas, betas, and RC builds, but they all install separately from a stable Opera installation.

      It's basically a way for people to test a new version without breaking their current installation.

  • Most importantly for us slashdot users.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by I-am-a-Banana ( 940550 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @12:05PM (#43841501)
    the URL /. no longer works...
  • As a long time opera user who works in web development I am mostly going to miss the dragonfly development tools. They were much cleaner and easier to use than firebug and the development tools built into chrome. Not really sure Opera serves any purpose at all other than being another option any more. Long gone are the times they would implement new features and other browsers would copy them months later. Can't even figure out how to use mouse gestures now.

  • R.I.P. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jazman_777 ( 44742 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @01:01PM (#43842205) Homepage
    Just a flimsy skin on WebKit now. Starting from scratch they have a long long way to go to get to current Opera feature state. And the new Android version is a dead shadow of its former self. I'm now trying to get used to Firefox.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nashv ( 1479253 )

      A sincere question out of curiosity : Why not Chrome?

      • When I tried Chrome, I just didn't like it. I hated the bookmarks management. I like the customizability of the interface of Opera, so Chrome (and FF as it imitates Chrome) really chapped my butt. I had been a sorta-Firefox user (for sites that Opera choked on) and the rest of the family was using Firefox. But then FF went spasdic with its updates and breaking addons, and I just moved everyone to Opera, mostly. But I might take a look at Chrome again.
      • Trying Chrome. It's OK, as good as Firefox at least for me. I'll stick with it for a while to see if I can deal with it long term.

    • Just a flimsy skin on WebKit now. Starting from scratch they have a long long way to go to get to current Opera feature state.

      It's not just that. There has been a long-winded discussion in the comments section of the Russian equivalent of Slashdot (seeing how Eastern European, and particularly ex-USSR countries have always formed the bulk of Opera user base), which involved their official community representative. When people started asking questions like "When are bookmarks going to be implemented?" and "When will UI customization be brought back to the original level?" and "When will we be able to dock the tab bar vertically aga

      • the answer to all of those was that they do not even intend to implement any of that - Opera is officially all about "UI simplification" now

        Oh, that's a damn shame. I bet a lot of people really liked Opera for its customization preferences.

        I guess you'd use Opera instead of Chrome, if you don't trust Google.

  • Whiners (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eric_brissette ( 778634 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @01:02PM (#43842211)

    I find it funny that when you look at the comments on the Blink articles, there are tons of people upset about Google creating yet another rendering engine, and they're worried about standards compliance issues and having another target to design for.

    And then you read the comments in the Opera-switching-to-Blink articles, and everyone is upset about losing diversity in the web ecosystem.

    Are these two different groups of people commenting, or is it just one big group of whiners?

    • It's because when Opera has originally announced the switch to WebKit (and later Blink), they said that they're just switching the engine, and will keep their UI. Now, the main reason why anyone was using Opera in the first place in the last few years was their UI - it was extremely customizable without plugins, toolbars and shortcuts and mouse gestures all. Historically they also held the performance crown, but that wasn't true ever since all other browsers added JIT-compiling JS engines and hardware acce

  • like google chrome but...better? (Score:3)

    by Cyko_01 ( 1092499 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @01:08PM (#43842285) Homepage
    Awesome! Now opera is just like chrome, but without that annoying....uhhhh -- it just like chrome, but with way better....uhhh....hmmmmm. Ok, I guess opera is dead then.

    • despite all of opera's hype about a claimed 100+ million users, the real stats from any huge website will tell a different tale: IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari dominate the hits, while opera is something like 0.5% That's still impressive, to be there at all, but it's kind of like a Linux desktop. small pressence in the world of webdom

      • despite all of opera's hype about a claimed 100+ million users, the real stats from any huge website will tell a different tale: IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari dominate the hits, while opera is something like 0.5% That's still impressive, to be there at all, but it's kind of like a Linux desktop. small pressence in the world of webdom

        Usage share of operating systems [wikipedia.org]

        Heavens only knows how accurate that is, but that tells me that Opera isn't even close to the same level of penetration as Linux in the desktop market. There are more Vista users out there than bloody Opera.

        Opera users are like Amiga fans, there's only a handful of them, but they're very very loud.

        • despite all of opera's hype about a claimed 100+ million users, the real stats from any huge website will tell a different tale: IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari dominate the hits, while opera is something like 0.5% That's still impressive, to be there at all, but it's kind of like a Linux desktop. small pressence in the world of webdom

          Usage share of operating systems [wikipedia.org]

          Heavens only knows how accurate that is, but that tells me that Opera isn't even close to the same level of penetration as Linux in the desktop market. There are more Vista users out there than bloody Opera.

          Opera users are like Amiga fans, there's only a handful of them, but they're very very loud.

          However, this page [wikipedia.org] says that the Opera market share is much higher than 0.5, putting it firmly in the desktop Linux range.... and still only a fraction of Vista.

          Not exactly a great selling point "My product is even less popular than Windows Vista"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        Based on what? User agent strings, which an Opera user may have set to "mask as IE" so they can navigate web sites created by brain dead developers who insist on checking user agent strings?

      • Opera did indeed have many millions users (though probably not 100M, unless you count their embedded versions), but they were mostly geographically concentrated in Eastern Europe, especially Russia. It used to top the Russian browser market share at 40% at its peak, and that alone is something like 20 million people.

    • Opera is now Chrome without bookmarks. I'm serious, go read their feature list.

  • The previous version of Opera supported the new getUserMedia tag to support cameras and microphones. I had hoped with the move to chromium they'd piggyback off the efforts Google has put in to also add peer connections but instead it appears they've dropped support completely.
  • i wont switch OSs for a browser

  • Why should you install a Chromium-based browser when you already have Chromium? (Or Google Chrome, as the case may be.)

    (Not even going into the issue of why developers would take an engine that already natively runs on Linux and then not make it run on Linux.)

  • The new version has combined its search and address bars, allowing users to make searches directly via Amazon, Bing, Google and Wikipedia.

    A few times lately I've found myself using Firefox, and have been gobsmacked that you still have to type searches into a separate box instead of the usual URL bar. How many years has it been since Chrome added their one box for everything?

    • In original Opera, this was implemented as it should - the address bar also works as a search bar if you use it that way, but the separate search bar lets you e.g. paste-and-search things with various search engines more conveniently. And, of course, you could always hide the dedicated search field with its UI customization capabilities.

  • missing features (Score:3)

    by locopuyo ( 1433631 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @07:58PM (#43845743) Homepage
    It is missing a ton of features from regular Opera which is the reason I use Opera over Chrome. Even the features they have right now are buggy and incomplete. For example mouse gestures do not work right and aren't customizable through the interface. There isn't even an option to import bookmarks or other settings.
    The chrome development tools are also inferior to Opera Dragonfly, which is another reason I use Opera. Hopefully they make them more Opera Dragonfly like before they are finished.

    I'll be waiting for a more complete version before I switch over.

  • can someone recommend me a web-browser that isnt firechrome, operachrome, IEchrome or just plain chrome

    I hate that everytime firechrome updates I have to go digging to see what door they hid even more shit behind and yet there is no real improvements

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