Those who are interested in the features that Opera 11 has to offer can read on to find out. The most dominant addition to Opera 11 are extensions which we have already reviewed in earlier development snapshots of the browser. Extensions work a lot like they do in the Chrome browser, as they can be installed and uninstalled without browser restart.

Companies and users have already ported several popular extensions, like the Last Pass password manager, to Opera and it is likely that the pace will increase with the final release of Opera 11.

But extensions are not everything. Four additional new features in Opera 11 are the following:

• Tab stacking, which can be used to stack tabs on top of each other to group them and save space at the same time. There is more to tabs than meets the eye. Opera comes with native support for protecting tabs for instance or saving sets of tabs.
• Improved address field, which now displays additional information on first glance.
• Visual mouse gestures, allowing the user to control some features of the browser, like moving back and forward in the history, with the mouse at any position in the browser.
• Mail Panel. Opera comes with an email client built-into the browser, and the new mail panel offers better ordering of items for instance.

Not to mention that the browser is one of the fastest web browsers available these days.

Opera Software has released a video to celebrate the release of Opera 11.

Interested users can take a look at the features page over at Opera for in depths information about the web browser’s features.

Not all Opera users may want to disable the status bar but those who do save some screen estate by doing so. Why would some Opera users like to keep the status bar? Because it displays more than just the link target addresses.

The standard status bar in Opera displays quick links to panels, Opera Link, Unite, Turbo and View options to zoom in or out or make other view related changes.

Opera users who want to install and try Popup Statusbar find the extension available for installation at the Opera Addons website.

A click on the Install button installs the extension in Opera. Every open tab needs to be reloaded before the extension becomes active there, new tabs are automatically processed.

The screenshot above visualize the link popup of the extension and the standard status bar of the Opera browser. It obviously makes sense to only keep one of the two displays.

The fastest way to disable the Opera statusbar is to press Shift-F12, switch to the Toolbars tab in the opening Appearance window and unselect Status Bar from the options.

The developer of the Opera extension plans to add custom colored links in future updates which should be an interesting addition.

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).

The release notes of the new Opera version list several changes since Opera 10.60, among them three security fixes that prevent the execution of arbitrary code, programs and the automatic subscription to news feeds in the preview feed view.

opera 10.61

Several additional fixes have been introduced to the display and scripting functionality of the browser. This includes Google Calendar compatibility, something that many Opera users have been waiting for. Other fixes in this category include fixing disk cache not working properly in turbo mode, proper handling of binary files (which have been handled as plain text files), widget changes so that they will all run and have network access after restarts, and blocking Opera Unite from listening on UDP port 1900 if UPnP service discovery has been set to off.

Finally, changes have been introduced to the Opera user interface as well, most notably a fix to prevent high CPU usage when loading animated png images in the browser, preventing Opera Windows from overwriting saved search preferences during installation and changing the default cookie behavior to accept all cookies.

User interface

Changed

* “Fraud Protection” renamed to “Fraud and Malware Protection”

Fixed

* Relative paths not working in the Filename setting for Speed Dial background
* Premature shutdown when using vBulletin’s WYSIWYG editor
* Loading an animated png causes high CPU usage with no response from the browser
* yahoo.cn mailproviders SMTP entry not using a submission port
* Changing the default cookie preference to “Accept all cookies”
* Installing Opera 10.60 windows overwrites saved search preferences

Display and Scripting

Fixed

* Google Calendar compatibility
* Unite listening on UDP 1900 even if UPnP service discovery is off
* Several cases where widgets will not run
* Premature shutdown when loading qq.com
* Setting the onload property of XMLHttpRequest blocks document memory from being garbage collected
* Opera treating binary files as plain text (opening it in the browser instead of showing a download dialog)
* Premature shutdown when loading the Canvas demo
* Printing from print preview results in either a freeze or corrupted page
* Widgets not having access to a network after restart
* “Accept cookies” and “only from the site I visit” settings being incorrect in Preferences dialog
* Premature shutdown occurring on startup of Opera under Windows 98
* Disk cache not working correctly in turbo mode

Security

Fixes

* Fixed an issue where heap buffer overflow in HTML5 canvas could be used to execute arbitrary code, as reported by Kuzzcc; see our advisory.
* Fixed an issue where unexpected changes in tab focus could be used to run programs from the Internet, as reported by Jakob Balle and Sven Krewitt of Secunia; see our advisory.
* Fixed an issue where news feed preview could subscribe to feeds without interaction, as reported by Alexios Fakos; see our advisory.

Opera 10.61 is already available for download at the Opera website. Opera 10.60 users can click on Menu > Help > Check for Updates to download and install the new version from within the web browser. Both downloads throw an error message currently. It is likely that this is only a temporary situation.

Today Opera Software announced the approval of Opera Mini for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The Opera Mini application is available for download in Apple’s App Store.

One of the main advantages of the Opera Mini browser is a feature called Opera Turbo which compresses the data before it is send to the mobile device. This not only speeds up the web browsing experience (especially on slower networks) but reduces the bandwidth costs of the user significantly.

Iphone and iPod users can download Opera Mini directly from their mobile devices or by opening the Appstore in iTunes to download it instead.

Opera Software today announced in a press release that the desktop version of the Opera browser has surpassed the 50 million unique user mark in March 2010 and that an additional 50 million where using a mobile version of the browser.

That’s an increase of over 30% from last year”s desktop user share which can be partly attributed to the browser ballot screen but also to the improvements made in that time.

The Opera developers released one of the fastest web browsers in March 2010 with Opera 10.50 which has not only been improved speed and performance wise but also functionality wise with new or improved feature additions like Opera Turbo and Opera Unite.

How is that figure comparing to the market share of other web browsers? Firefox 3.6 for instance has been downloaded more than 390 million times since its introduction. Downloads on the other hand do not equate active users. Still that figure alone shows that Firefox is currently playing in another league.

It might be easier to compare that figure with the Google chrome browser. Google Chrome had, back in November of 2009, a user base of 30 million, based on an article over at Techcrunch, a figure that likely increased quite a bit in the last six months. Some websites refuted those stats back then and claimed that the user base was larger or unreliable.

The most interesting figure is the 30% increase in a 12 month period which should give Opera enough momentum to continue to extend their browser market share. Congratulations Opera from the ghacks team.

There are two things that are keeping me personally from switching to Opera. I would like to outline those two below with the hope that these features get added eventually to the web browser:

1. Password Manager

Like every web browser Opera has a build in password manager. What it does not have is support for the excellent Last Pass service that has been ported to many web browsers. Last Pass is a password management service that makes it much easier to create and maintain accounts. Some of its features are a password generator, form profiles, online access to passwords and auto-login to websites.

Last Pass is currently supporting various web browsers including Firefox and Google Chrome. The only option to use it in Opera is the Last Pass bookmarklet which provides limited functionality as it only provides login or form filling support but not other features like generating passwords.

The developer’s of Last Pass state that they would love to create a version of their service for the Opera web browser. The nature of the web browser, in particular the missing or limited browser SDK, makes it impossible at this point.

The build in password managers are no alternative at this point and the bookmarklet is not either. Opera Link provides data syncing but it is limited to Opera only. The benefit of Last Pass is that the stored passwords can be used with any web browser that is supported by Last Pass.

NoScript like functionality

The second feature that I do not want to miss anymore is provided by the NoScript Firefox add-on which turns of all scripts on any website by default. That’s a security precaution as scripts are usually used to attack computers.

Opera has a feature to disable some scripts globally and per website. The problem here is that this would require lots of manual work. The only viable option would be to disable scripts globally and enable them on a per site basis.

NoScript on the other hand offers a finer handling. Opera’s per site settings enable JavaScript, plugins, Flash or Java for the whole site and all scripts of that type that are executed on the website. NoScript can be used to enable a specific script (e.g. JavaScript) but block all other JavaScripts on a website.

Conclusion

I’d really like to switch. I’d might be able to either get used to the bookmarklet (with additional help of tools to generate secure passwords) or switch to Opera’s build in password manager. It would be possible to sync the passwords across all Opera browsers but other web browsers would not be able to use those passwords then.

NoScript on the other hand is the real culprit. It does not look as if there will be an option in the near future that comes close to the functionality of NoScript.

I’m currently trading speed and reliability for support of these two extensions.

Are you thinking of switching to Opera as well? Or have you already switched? What’s keeping you or why did you make the move?

Opera 10.50 pre-alpha was released today and the developer’s have kept word. Included in this release is the JavaScript engine Carakan, the layout engine Presto 2.5 and a new graphics library called Vega.

Carakan speeds up JavaScript execution by a factor of 7 when compared to Opera’s latest stable release Opera 10.10. A quick run of the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark yields astonishing speed improvements (may vary depending on test computer).

Firefox 3.6 Beta 5

Google Chrome 4.0.249.25

Opera 10.10

Opera 10.50 pre-alpha

Opera 10.50 beats Google Chrome by about 100ms and Firefox 3.6 by almost 2000ms. That’s an impressive speed improvement considering that Opera 10.10 was about 300ms slower than Firefox 3.6 in the same test.

Google’s V8 Benchmark shows a slightly different picture as Google Chrome manages to land before Opera 10.50 in that test with both web browsers beating Firefox 3.6 by a large margin. Again a huge improvement in Opera 10.50 that climbed from a performance similar to that of Firefox near to that of the Google browser.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 5

Google Chrome 4.0.249.25

Opera 10.10

Opera 10.50 pre-alpha

But JavaScript performance is just one aspect that has changed. Presto 2.5 and Vega do their part in rendering pages faster. The speed improvements are visible, not only on pages that use lots of JavaScript but also on regular pages.

Other changes in Opera 10.50 pre-alpha

• Platform integration – On Windows 7/Vista, you will notice a lot of visual changes and use of APIs which allow the UI to display the Aero Glass effect. For Windows 7, we also added Aero Peek and Jump List support to easily access your Speed Dials, Tabs, etc. from the Taskbar.

  For Mac, a complete rewrite in Cocoa brings an Unified Toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multi-touch gestures (try 3-Finger Swipe Left/Right or Pinch to zoom) and a bunch of other small details. We also added Growl notification support.

• “Private tab” and “Private window” – You can open a new Private tab or Private window that forgets everything that happened on it once closed.
• Non-modal dialogs – Dialog boxes (JavaScript alerts, HTTP authentication, etc.) are now non-modal and are displayed as a page overlay. This allows you to switch tabs or windows while the dialog is still displayed. Similarly, the Password Manager dialog is now anchored at the top of the page won’t block any content as it loads a new page.
• Address field and Search field improvements – Both fields have been upgraded in looks and functionality. They can now remember searches, support removing items from history and show results in a better layout.

The pre-alpha release of Opera 10.50 shows Opera’s dedication to compete with their web browser in the browser wars. The recent speed improvements could convince more users to try out the latest version of Opera, something that they might not have considered otherwise.

Opera 10.50 pre-alpha can be downloaded from the official announcement over at the Opera blog.

It is a pretty solid walkthrough that unfortunately lacks images to go along with the article. The tips and tweaks are divided into these five subjects:

• Give tabs more space
• Prevent unwanted close
• Change tab logic
• Use hotkeys
• Show tabs in full screen mode

Most of the tips and tweaks describe Opera settings and options that can be changed to make it easier and more convenient to work with many tabs in the Opera browser. Probably the most useful tip for a “minimal user interface” type of user like me is the description of how to remove interface elements from the toolbar to provide more space for the tabs.

The article is worth a read for all users who work regularly or partially with the Opera web browser.

If you look at the source code of the web page you get two additional hints. The first is located in the metatags which reads “The Web is your browser. Discover how fast and fun the Web can be” while the second is located as a comment in the html “We start our little story with the invention of the modern day computer. Over the years, the computers grew in numbers, and the next natural step in the evolution was …”.

Taken those two hints into account it is pretty safe to say that Opera will reveal a web browser in the cloud. It is not entirely clear how users are going to access that web browser, could be by using some sort of launcher that the Opera team is providing. Could also be a hybrid web browser that is being launched locally but gets most of its data online.

I could be completely off though but the cloud image seems to hint at this direction as well. Anyone got another interpretation for what Opera is going to announce on June 16?

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.

Another possibility are the preferences in the Opera web browser which also provide access to basic editing capabilities. Search engines can be added, deleted or edited in the menu but there is for example no way of changing their order of appearance.

Opera Search Edit is a standalone Java application that can be used to edit Opera’s search engines comfortable. The tool is portable and has to be pointed to a search.ini file manually. It will then display all available search engines in a table listing information like the name, keyword and url.

The program can be used to add new search engines to the list, remove search engines or to edit their properties far more extensively than the Opera preferences are offering. This includes the selection of the encoding, icons, search type or name id.

The order of search engines can be changed to suite the needs of the user. It is furthermore possible to add separators to distinguish different types of search engines.

Opera Search Edit is a specialized software for Opera users who want to edit the search engines in detail. It does that more comfortably than a plain text editor and more extensively than the preferences in the web browser.

Opera Turbo has been added to the mobile web browser which is a compression technique that is routing Internet traffic through a server that is compressing the contents so that they can be delivered more rapidly to the user. The monthly bandwidth bill will also benefit from Opera Turbo as compressed data reduces the overall bandwidth consumption of the mobile device.

Other improvements in Opera Mobile 9.7 are the improved widget manager which runs independently from the web browser, Google Gears support and hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support. Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta has not yet been released but it is expected to be released soon. Opera created a speed comparison video between Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo enabled, Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and Microsoft IE Mobile.

The loading times differ widely. Opera Turbo speeds up the page loading time of that specific page by more than 20 seconds when compared to Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and an amazing 3 minutes 7 seconds in comparison to Internet Explorer Mobile.

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 security issues that are fixed in the latest version could be used to execute arbitrary code and allow cross domain scripting. Besides those fixes several additional updates have been implemented, many of which relate to certificates. This includes untrusted rootstore capabilities, preventing security information documents from being written to disk or fixing a problem that could cause the incorrect calculation of Certificate IDs.

This version of the Opera web browser added support for platform specific features, namely Data Execution Prevention in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and Address Space Layout Randomization in Windows Vista. There have also been several miscellaneous updates like fixing a problem with a blank inline search or adding an external source viewer to the Opera web browser.

Installation is straightforward. All that needs to be done by the user is to download the zip file containing the extension. A readme with instructions and troubleshooting information will be unpacked next to the setup file. Installation does not take longer than a few seconds usually. An oGet popup will appear after launching Opera that displays all supported download managers. The user has to make his selection here to use the extension.

The instructions are worth a read as they contain information about downloading files from Rapidshare and other file hosts as well as downloading pictures and flash. It also contains information about uninstalling oGet again.

Opera Turbo builds up on the experience that the Opera development team gathered during the development of Opera Mini. The new service will be officially announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The information that can be gathered from the available whitepaper suggests a broader service that allows businesses to run Opera Turbo servers which will manage the compression for their clients. Internet traffic will be routed through Opera Turbo servers which compress it and send it to the clients. The browsers on the client side will also compress any data before it is send to the Opera Turbo server which unpacks it before it is send to the actual destination.

According to the whitepaper Opera Turbo will be able to compress network traffic by up to 80%. The benefits of Opera Turbo should be obvious. The service will save businesses bandwidth, speed up web surfing for clients and reduce costs thanks to the reduced bandwidth requirements. The main Achilles’ heel of Opera Turbo is the requirement to use Opera software to make use of the technique. Opera currently has a web browser market share of about 1% which means that about 99% of all Internet users will probably never be able to test Opera Turbo. Existing Opera users on the other hand might be able to benefit from Opera Turbo as Opera has the intention to utilize the technique into the Opera web browser and Opera mobile browser.

Existing Opera users can alternatively use the Check For Updates option in the Help menu to download Opera 9.63. The only other changes are one addition to the opera:config menu which can be set to close tabs by double-clicking on them. There are also four additions to the mail, news and chat functions of Opera.

List of security changes and improvements:

• Manipulating text input contents can allow execution of arbitrary code
• HTML parsing flaw can cause Opera to execute arbitrary code
• Long hostnames in file: URLs can cause execution of arbitrary code
• Script injection in feed preview can reveal contents of unrelated news feeds
• Built-in XSLT templates can allow cross-site scripting
• Fixed an issue that could reveal random data
• SVG images embedded using tags can no longer execute Java or plugin content
• Opera now imports .p12 private certificates

The thumbnails that are used to represent the websites in the Speed Dial form are taken directly from the website. The best way of identifying the website is probably the title of the website which will be displayed below each thumbnail. The thumbnail itself is usually to small to be helpful in quickly identifying the website.

Tamil who runs a blog at the Opera website posted information on how to exchange the automatically generated thumbnails with custom ones that make it easier to identify the websites. The alternative thumbnails have to be created in png format with a suggest size of 256×192 pixels or less.

The default thumbnails are stored in the Opera profile folder. Windows users can locate that folder at Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\thumbnails. The available thumbnails are randomly named. The only way of identifying the websites is to open them in an image viewer. All that needs to be done to exchange the thumbnails is to copy the name of the default thumbnail and name the new thumbnail identically. Once that is done the thumbnails can be exchanged. It should be noted that Opera has to be closed during the file operation.

Two thumbnails have been exchanged in the above example. This makes it easier to identify websites in Speed Dial. It is easy to undo the changes. Pressing F5 will automatically generate new thumbnails of the website replacing the existing ones.

The update is already available when checking the Help > Check For Updates option from within Opera. It can also be downloaded directly from the official Opera ftp website for all supported operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux and mobile devices.

Here is the list of security issues that have been fixed in Opera 9.63:

• Manipulating text input contents can allow execution of arbitrary code
• HTML parsing flaw can cause Opera to execute arbitrary code
• Long hostnames in file: URLs can cause execution of arbitrary code
• Script injection in feed preview can reveal contents of unrelated news feeds
• Built-in XSLT templates can allow cross-site scripting
• Fixed an issue that could reveal random data
• SVG images embedded using tags can no longer execute Java or plugin content

Make sure to update the Opera web browser as soon as possible to eliminate the vulnerabilities.