Opera may be famous for innovation, but the biggest feature introduced in Opera 11—extension support—actually followed other browsers, the version still added a few unique tricks, most notably tab stacking and visual mouse gestures. The latest update, Opera 11.10 (Free), doesn't add big new features for end-users, but further turbocharges Turbo, which speeds up slow connections, makes the Speed Dial new tab page more flexible, and adds more HTML5 support. Will these new extras finally lead to Opera adoption? It's hard to say, but what is certain is that Opera is a darned good browser, and worth its quick download and install. Just because only two to four percent of surfers use Opera as their browser, it doesn't mean it's not a feature-packed, fast, and sleekly designed piece of software. And don't forget that three percent of the entire internet translates to tens of millions of users. In fact, the people of entire countries, Belarus and Kazakhstan, have made the Nordic browser their top choice. And you can't blame them: Opera introduced such browser basics as built-in search, pop-up blocking, and tabs, but more recently it's innovated with things like Unite, which turns the browser into a server, and Turbo, which speeds up the Web on slow connections through caching.
Setup and Interface
Speed has been the main attraction of the biggest up-and-comer among browsers—Google Chrome 10 (Free, 4.5 stars). Speed starts with installation, however, and Opera's rebuilt installer can now match Chrome's fast, simple, setup process. The installer is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. The compact 7MB download was up and running in a jiffy on my middle-of-the-road 2.6GHz dual core laptop with 3GB RAM. Opera claims that the new browser code is actually 30 percent smaller despite adding new features—bravo!
Opera 11.10's basic interface looks the same as that of Opera 11, with the red Menu button all the way at the top left window border. The new version dons the trimmed-down look of the latest crop of browsers, using a single menu button in the form of a red "O." In addition to now doubling as a search bar, the address bar has been tweaked to highlight security information about the site you're visiting. Like Firefox 4 (Free, 4 stars) (but unlike Chrome and IE 9(Free, 4 stars)) Opera s maintains a separate search bar at the top right that lets you simply switch among search engines, though you can't do this as easily when searching from the address bar as you can in IE9.
Opera was the first browser to include a helpful new-tab page featuring a grid of site you want frequent access to, Speed Dial, which was copied in Chrome and Safari. New for version 11.10 is a more flexible implementation that doesn't restrict you to a preset number of rows and columns as previous versions did. You can zoom the tiles, or let Opera automatically choose a size that works best with your screen dimensions. The new implementation also allows site developers to choose what appears in users' Speed Dial entries for their sites.
For most sites, you'll see a Web globe icon. Clicking on the icon drops down a small panel showing whether the site has a clean security record. A link lets you drill down into more security report information on the site and report it as fraud or malware. For secure sites, you see a prominent green area in the address bar saying Trusted. A security/search feature added with version 11.10 is search hijacking protection—preventing one of the most common—and annoying—malware tactics.
To use the tab-stacking feature, you drag and drop one tab onto another to create a stack. Hovering the mouse over this expands the stack, and clicking on an arrow expands out the tabs. I found the dropping a bit touchy; as you drop a tab, another one tries to get out of the way of your mouse cursor. You sort of have to ignore this and just let go. When you do, you'll see a new outer tab with a small arrow at the right. Clicking this expands all the dropped tabs out, and another arrow to the right of them all lets you re-collapse them. But you don't have to expand the combined tab to get a large thumbnail preview of them all at once—just hover the mouse over it. This tab combination should prove a useful organizational tool for heavy-duty Web sessions.
Do It with a Gesture
Mouse gestures let users navigate, open new windows, and more with clicks, drags, and mouse wheel spinning instead of having to press buttons or choose menu options. The mouse gestures can really speed up your browsing, and they remind me a bit of the gestures available on Mac track pads. But they do require behavior modification on your part, a barrier to widespread adaptation. One thing that helps overcome this in version 11.10 is the large black circle that appears when the program detects that you've started a mouse gesture, explaining how to use it. Simply holding down the right mouse button brings up the visual gesture helper.
Opera Extensions
From the red O menu, the puzzle-piece icon leads to the new Extensions choice, which lets you access the extension gallery and manager. Opera has built a gallery with 14 subcategories ranging from Accessibility to Productivity to Weather. They still only total to 486 in all—not much compared with Firefox 3.6's 4,000-plus and Chrome's 9,000-plus, but it's a start. As in those the competition's galleries, each Opera extension includes a user star rating, and I could sort by most popular, newest, or highest rating.
In addition to the usual extension suspects such as ad blockers and site facilitators (submitting links to Reddit, for example), Opera extensions can change browser behavior and appearance more than Chrome's can. One I tried let me open new links in background tabs only on a "long click." Another changed the standard scroll bars to a thinner version.
When you install an extension in Opera, privacy checkboxes let you control whether you want it to interact with secure pages or work in private tabs. After successful (and very quick) installation, a notification rises at the bottom of your screen to inform you of the success. Google took a while to add this option in Chrome, so it's good to see Opera learning from the competition's experience.
Opera extensions use standard W3C Widgets and JavaScript so that programmers can use familiar tools and techniques to enhance Opera. As with Chrome Extensions, Opera extensions don't drastically alter the interface the way some Firefox extensions do, though the browser has a Skin feature offering some extreme tweaks to its looks. The first extension I tried to install, Taskboard, yielded an unfound Web page. Later I was able to install a few, and the experience is quick and smooth. As with Chrome extensions, the Opera extensions I tested added small icons to the right of the address bar (well, in Opera's case to the right of the search bar) for a minimal change to the browser's user interface.
The few extensions I tested worked decently, but didn't seem as full featured as some you'll find for Firefox and Chrome. For example, the Twitter extension let me tweet the current page and even shortened the URLs, but it didn't let me see my Twitter news feed, followers, @ messages, direct messages, and so on. A Reddit extension did little more than open the Reddit site populated with your current page's URL.
Beyond the Call—Mail, Unite, and BitTorrent
More feature improvements in the new Opera include updates to its mail client—yes, Opera is the only major browser that builds in a mail client—not to mention a BitTorrent client and server functions in the form of Opera Unite. Opera Unite turns the browser on its head, and into a Web server. This means you can directly serve up your photos, files, and even chat rooms without needing to pay (or see ads from) a Web-hosting company. None of the other browser can claim any of these features.
The final unique offering I'll discuss is widgets. These small Web-aware applets actually run outside the browser windows, using Opera's underpinnings. A well-stocked gallery of widgets offers games, music, photo, social, developer, and several more categories of widgets. There's even e-reader and drawing widgets among the hundreds available.
Security and Privacy
I've already mentioned the page security notices available from the address bar, but Opera comes with a multitude of other protections against online threats. The browser includes malware and fraud warnings and blockers similar to what you'll find in all the other major browsers. To these it adds support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) version 3, and TLS. Though not an actual security feature, the browser's relatively small market share means it isn't a prime target for malware makers, which actually results in added safety.
When it comes to privacy, Opera 11.10 offers private tabs that, when closed, delete the history, cache, and all other data related to the tab. The browser's history-clearing tool even wipes out the page you're currently browsing. But Opera has yet to implement a "Do Not Track" feature like that introduced by IE last January.
Performance
Opera is unique in offering its Turbo speed-up technology, and version 11.10 boosts this feature further. Turbo compresses cached content from popular Web sites that's stored on Opera's servers and sending it to the browser. In version 11.10, Turbo has been improved with a new image compression method, which, according to Opera tests, reduces the amount of data needed to be download for a group of typical sites by 22 percent. To enable Opera Turbo, you simply click a speedometer icon in the lower-left corner of the browser window. In my tests, the speedometer indicated that it tripled performance (the previous version only doubled it), but I found that this didn't work with all sites, particularly some that require a real-time connection, like Meebo.com.
Opera feels fast in everyday browsing, and this is no surprise—it's been among the speed leaders since version 10.5. It also started up lickety-split. The company has worked to speed it up even more with this new version. One neat performance idea implemented in Opera is having plug-ins only load when they're needed. As browser makers have noted for the past few years, plugins account for much of the lag experienced in opening new tabs and browsing performance in general. Opera avoids this by running plugins only if they're needed. Another great idea from the Opera folks.
source: toptenreviews.com
