Opera has made the Speed Dial page more dynamic. The web page previews have been improved quality wise, and they can now show live contents for websites next to static contents.

Speed Dial fits the browser window dynamically now to make use of all the free space. Add to that the removal of the hard limit of Speed Dial entries and you got a dynamic listing of all your favorite sites on the new tab page.

Take a look at the video below to see the new Speed Dial in action.

But Speed Dial is just one of the improved features of Opera 11.10. Support for web standards has been improved.

The developers have for instance added support for linear CSS3 gradients and multiple columns, as well as the WebP image format that promises smaller file sizes than jpg images while retaining a similar quality level (A test study by Google of 900k images saw an average size reduction of about 40%)

Opera Software started to make changes to the user interface by switching to the new format YAML which promises to get rid of some of the current user interface limitations. Check out one of the snapshot posts over at the Opera Desktop blog for additional information on that subject.

A final change is the added option to install browser plug-ins seamlessly and automatically. Only Adobe’s Flash Plugin is supported for now, with the likelihood that additional plugins will follow in later releases.

Opera displays a notification at the top of the page that informs you about the missing plugin. It reads: “Plug-in missing: You need to install Adobe Flash Player to view this page”. Options available are to discard the notification, install the plug-in or select never for this plug-in to stop notifications for that plugin to appear in the browser.

A click on Install Plug-in launches the Adobe Flash Player installer which downloads and installs the plugin automatically.

Some quick benchmark results

• Opera 11.10 scores a 100/100 score on the Acid 3 test.
• The browser completed the sunspider JavaScript benchmark in 223.4ms, Google Chrome 11 dev was slightly slower 231.8ms.
• Opera 11.10 scored a 244 and 7 Bonus points out of 400 total points at the HTML5 Test, Google Chrome 11 dev scored 293 and 13 bonus points.

Closing Words

Opera 11.10 shows great promise. You should however remember that it is a beta release and as such not suited for productive environments. Interested users can download the Opera 11.10 Beta from Opera Next.

Opera 11 will be the next iteration of the web browser. Probably the most interesting feature addition in Opera 11 is the extension engine which brings extensions to Opera. Extensions work pretty much like they do in the Chrome browser, with extension installations requiring no restart of the browser.

But extensions are just one of the new features of Opera 11. The desktop team has improved the performance and speed of the browser further, making it one of the fastest on the planet. And while we have vowed to look at other values from now on, speed is still an important trait of every web browser. And Opera delivers.

Opera 11 Beta comes with a brand new feature that the developers call tab stacking. It basically allows the user to stack tabs on top of each other.

It basically allows to drag and drop tabs on top of each other. This is then indicated with a small arrow on the right side of the parent tab. Hovering the mouse over the tab displays thumbnails of all tabs of the group.

The main problem for me personally is that it is not possible to see which tabs are stacked together, besides from the parent tab. This means that users need to move the mouse over the tab to see the other tabs stacked there.

The Opera team suggests several uses for tab stacking, including stacking tabs for later usage, for different tasks and for more space on the tabbar.

Oh, and if you close the parent tab the next tab in line will automatically be promoted to parent tab.

Interested users can download Opera 11 Beta directly from the Opera website (via).

Opera 10.5 Beta 2 for Windows (Opera for Linux and Mac are in different development stages right now) adds many new features and improvements over the first beta that has been released a while ago. The highlights of the new beta release include many crash, menu and widget fixes, improved overlay authentication dialogs, improved opera:config page and styling changes.

The full changelog of this new Opera release is available at the desktop team blog post about the release. It lists more than a hundred bug fixes and improvements.

This release is mostly fixing bugs and issues that have been detected in previous releases of Opera 10.5. It therefor matches the performance of those web browser releases making it one of the fastest browsers around for now.

Opera 10.5 Beta 2 for Windows can be downloaded from the official Opera website.

Opera 10.5 comes with many new features and improvements over previous Opera releases including

• Better integration with the Windows operating system (Aero Glass, Aero Peek, Jumplists)
• Opera Carakan JavaScript engine for reduced memory usage and superior performance
• Opera Presto 2.5 rendering engine that supports new CCS2.1, CSS3, HTML5 elements
• Opera Vega graphics library
• Opera Widgets for Desktop which allows widgets to be run even if the web browser is closed.
• Private browsing
• Web Storage
• Web SQL Database

The Opera 10.5 Windows changelog lists all the improvements and changes in detail.

Opera 10.5 passes the Acid 3 test with a score of 100/100 just like the latest version of the Google Chrome 5 browser. It also beats the latest Google Chrome 5 development release in the JavaScript Sunspider benchmark by 353ms to 369ms on our test system.

The new geolocation feature is not enabled in this beta release of Opera 10.5 as the developer’s need to “iron out the last details” before it will be integrated.

Opera 10.5 Beta for Windows can be downloaded from the official Opera website.

The Opera Unite version that is integrated in the Opera 10.10 beta comes with several pre-installed applications including phoot sharing, messenger, file sharing, web server, media player capabilities and note posting with additional applications available from the official Opera Unite website at the Opera website.

Here are a few examples of what Opera users can do with Opera Unite:

• Create photo galleries and make them available without uploading them to a photo hosting website.
• File sharing without uploading the files to a file host
• Accessing the media collection from anywhere with the Media Player application
• Document Upload to your home computer from anywhere
• Creating chat rooms on a computer running Opera Unite.
• Hosting web sites with the web server application

The inclusion of Opera Unite in the beta release could be what developers have been waiting for to start developing applications for Opera Unite. About a dozen additional applications are already available at the Opera Unite website with everything set to take off now.

You can give the Opera 10.10 Beta with Opera Unite included a try by downloading it from the Opera website. Additional applications are available at the Opera Unite site.

Opera 10 Release Candidate 2 includes a variety of fixes. The most noteworthy are stability, icon and native skin fixes as well as import of widgets when upgrading from Opera 9.64. The full changelog is available on the blog post of the Opera desktop team that is announcing the new release candidate.

The stability fixes are largely fixes that prevent browser crashes in various usage situations. Opera 10 Release Candidate 2 is available for all supported operating systems (Linux, Mac, Windows). Download links and changelogs are available at the Opera website.

Other changes have been made to the visual tabs which can now be displayed on the right or left side of the web browser window. Some improvements have also been made to the tabs in the Opera web browser which now feature a better attention state design. The Opera skin has received further facelifts

Several problems in previous versions have been fixed in this new beta version including problems when trying to open pdf files, saving sessions and viewing pages using webfonts in Windows 98. Interested users can download the new beta version of the Opera web browser from the Opera website. Direct links are available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Many users in the Opera forum are reporting problems with the new beta release. The developers are actually warning users stating that it “may have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations”. That’s not very encouraging and it is therefor suggested to try the web browser in a test environment and not in a productive environment to ensure that it is working without problems.

Opera 10 Beta 2 can be downloaded directly from the Opera homepage for all supported operating systems. The changelogs are available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Probably the most important changes (besides the interface changes) are a fix for the high memory use of the web browser related to the disk cache on huge torrents, improved anti-spoof checking, fixes for several scripts and services at Facebook, Wikipedia and Yahoo, enabled torrent downloading with Opera Turbo enabled and fixing the problem that sessions where not saved correctly on some systems when closing the web browser.

The changelog lists many improvements and additions that have been implemented into Opera 10 including a new auto update mechanism that allows Opera to automatically update itself. This feature has to be enabled in the opera configuration. Easiest way to do is to enter opera:config#snapshots into the browser’s address bar and hit enter. The parameter needs to be enabled for the automatic update mechanism to kick in.

Opera 10 comes with a new user interface and several enhancements and customizability options. This includes Speed Dial customizations including the addition of background images, different speed dial layouts or hiding speed dial completely.

Other additions include:

• HTML 5 Support
• Opera Tab Bar thumbnails (displays website thumbnails when hovering over the site’s tab)
• Opera inline spelling checker
• Opera crashlogging tool

It is probably best to check the changelog mentioned above to get a full overview with descriptions of the changes.

The face gestures feature can be enabled in the web browser by pressing F8. Opera will automatically calibrate the passive facial expressions of the user sitting in front of the webcam. It is important to stay calm and passive during that phase so that the calibration will be successfully.

A set of facial gestures stand at the user’s proposal after the calibration phase. It is possible to go back and forward in the browsing history, zoom in and out of pages, reload, open the homepage or speed dial page, open tabs and bookmark pages using nothing but facial expressions. The Opera team created a video that is showcasing the feature in detail

The release announcement contains a section at the bottom that is addressing known problems with the facial gesture feature. This includes beard and hairstyle problems as well as adult and financial site related ones. The latest Opera 10 Alpha snapshot containing Facial Gestures can be downloaded from the Opera website.

Update: It should be clear by now that this has been an April Fool’s joke by Opera. Opera will not offer Face Gestures as described in this review. The webcam requirements make it an impractical implementation, considering that many users do not have a webcam and that it would not make sense to add features to Opera that only a minority of users would use.

Opera Turbo has been designed for computer systems with limited bandwith. Users with fast connections will see no huge differences in the speed that the websites are displayed but will notice a traffic reduction thanks to the compression. Users with limited bandwidth on the other hand will notice both a website loading improvement and traffic reductions.

The layouts of websites that are accessed with Opera Turbo will look exactly like they did before. The major difference is that image resolutions may appear lower which can be attributed to the compression. Please note that text and other elements are also compressed.

Encrypted traffic will not be routed through the Opera compression servers. This means that accessing your bank’s website, PayPal or any other website that is using the SSL protocol will make use of direct connections.

Please note that Opera 10 with Turbo is still in alpha stage. Opera Turbo will display an icon in the Opera status bar that is giving the user indications whether it is enabled or disabled. It will also display the average compression ratio as an icon and the saved Megabytes when hovering over the Opera Turbo status bar icon.

The Opera team speaks of a 30% speed increase over the previous version of the rendering engine. A test of the JavaScript performance of Opera 10 revealed astonishing results. Opera 10 completed the
Web Browser Javascript Benchmark in 188ms which is very fast compared to Firefox 3.0.4 which needed 349ms, Safari 3.1.2 with 344ms or Opera 9.52 with 420ms. It’s obviously not fair to compare a development release with web browsers who have already been released but it should give anyone an understanding about the performance increase in this new Opera version.

What else is new in Opera 10? Opera 10 adds a long requested inline spellchecker and an interesting auto-update function which can update Opera automatically whenever a new version has been released.

Web developers will like the support of web fonts, SVG and opacity through RGBA and HSLA. The current release schedule aims for a beta in early 2009 and a final release of Opera 10 later that year.

Interested users can download the Opera 10 alpha release for Windows, Linux or Mac.

There have been numerous stability and bug fixes as well as additions to the browser itself. It´s free, why don´t you get it.