Submitted by “Opera 11.50 introduces a new and novel type of browser extension: Speed Dial extensions. Instead of handy thumbnails and links to your top sites, you can embed your Speed Dial with extensions that keep you updated – instantly – on what is happening around the Web.” Other cool stuff includes more updates to the interface, password synchronisation between your Opera installations, and lots under-the-hood stuff.
Their download counter is just too entertaining for me not to download it.
I’ve grabbed the download this morning, not many surprises since I was running Opera Next occasionally, but overall I find this release to be a very good one for Opera. They have the best speed dial page by far now, a few of the speed dial extensions are good as well, hopefully that number will increase.
Its goes without saying that the browser is fast, but I’ll say it anyway. The browsers starts fast, tabs open and pages load fast, overall response is fast. I’m not talking about benchmarks here, the difference between those can be measured in milliseconds nowadays. I’m just going on everyday use, and there it matches or beats chrome in pretty much every test I could do.
Extensions are getting better, but it still lags chrome a lot, and firefox by a hell of a lot, but you can find the bare essentials now.
The new theme is good and it his a couple of nice touches here and there. For instance tabs you have not visted or that have been updated since you last looked at them, have little dog eared corners in them to distinguish them from those you have. A small touch but I like it already.
Ok, I’m assuming the counter on their front page is how many downloads they have, but WTF is the red box below it? At the moment, it says:
When I click on it, I get a ‘bad gateway’ error. Typical Opera user experience :p
And why are they dissing Rebecca Black? I understand that kind of thing is funny on Youtube comments, but for a business who’s front page is getting hundreds of thousands of hits? It’s probably in poor taste… the girl is only 14 years old for f–k’s sake.
Edited 2011-06-28 20:50 UTC
That download thing is pure smugness, since they don’t seem to support anything I’ve got I wont be able to try the new version. I use to love Opera, but after about 9/10 I dunno, it sorta lost its way, maybe it was me, maybe it was my fault, but Opera, I don’t love you no more.
Give Opera “one more chance”
‘She’ has changed, ‘she’ is different right now, ‘she’ won’t do the same errors again; ‘she’ is mature and ‘she’ wants to have a serious relationship with you 
Only if ‘she’ has no teeth and a flat head I can rest my beer on
Lost its way? Opera noobs always keep saying that. They obviously weren’t around for Opera 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 (especially the major releases)
I’ve been using it since at least 2006, or whenever it went ad free, and in mu opinion over the last couple of years it’s lost any advantages over the other web browsers and is now lagging. But of course, having not used Opera 2.52, it’s just a newbie opinion.
I started with Opera 2 as a portable browser running from a floppy disk. I’ve used every version of Opera since then and seen pretty much every new release as an exciting upgrade. Look back at some of my older posts here and you’ll see quite a few defending Opera.
I don’t think I qualify as a noob, but to me 10.5 was a massive downgrade that destroyed most of the things I liked about Opera.
10.5 featured the biggest ever change to Opera’s UI, and for the first time it wasn’t possible to customise Opera so that it looked and felt like previous versions. Some of the features and options that made Opera a powerful and unique browser were so bug ridden that they were completely unusable. While all it offered in exchange was added eye-candy and some gimmicky little features. Of course YMMV depending on the features you use…
To be fair it has improved since then, but in every new release (including 11.5) some of the really annoying user interface bugs and broken features have remained unfixed, and in some cases more annoyances have been added.
I also hate the way that some of the changes are forced upon the user, without any configuration options to change them back. To me that seems like a change of direction from the highly customisable “power user” browser it used to be.
In my opinion Opera 11.x still has a long way to go before it’s as usable as 10.10 was. Current versions of Opera still feel like a beta test to me, with a lot of rough edges to make browsing a frustrating experience.
10.5 was a massive step in the right direction. It made Opera faster and cleaner. Sure, there were some bugs, but the important ones were fixed quickly enough.
Both of these claims are wrong. The biggest change was with Opera 7 when they rewrote the entire UI with their new “Quick” toolkit. Lots of features were missing, and it took ages to get them back. 10.5 was a trivial UI tweak compared to Opera 7.
So no, this is not the first time. And you are wrong. Opera can indeed be customized to look and feel like previous versions.
You have already revealed that you are not exactly being factual and rational about this, and once again you are resorting to hyperbole and distortions.
Once again, Opera has always been doing this. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. You can’t keep maintaining every single little weird thing forever.
Once again you are resorting to hyperbole. “I don’t like it, there for it feels like a beta test.” Please.
Like I said: your mileage may vary.
Some of the features that I value the most were completely broken in 10.5, and many are still bug ridden in 11.5. Obviously if you don’t use those features then the problems aren’t going to be important to you.
Personally I wouldn’t call a browser which used transparency effects as stupidly as 10.5 did a “cleaner” browser. Having transparent text menus that pop up over website text was a usability joke.
As for the performance: Opera 10.5 may have done well on webpage benchmarks, but the browser’s responsiveness and use of resources was significantly worse than 10.10. On my netbook 10.10 was fast and responsive, while 10.5+ is pretty painful if I open more than a few tabs. 10.10 still feels like greased lightning compared with 11.5 on an older PC.
From my perspective the idea that 10.5 was an improvement is farcical.
Quick was a toolkit dealing with cross-platform UI skinning (toolbars, menus, etc.), but it wasn’t a complete UI replacement; Opera still used Win32 in windows and QT in Linux.
Until 10.5 Opera still used standard Windows MDI, with all the features that Windows MDI provided. If you switch to the Windows Native Skin in 10.10 then you get MDI windows with the same aesthetics as the Windows theme. If you use utilities that rely on Win32 calls to tweak/manipulate MDI then they’ll work perfectly with 10.10. 10.5 was the first version to completely replace that with their own incompatible system, breaking the Windows theme/MDI utility compatibility, breaking many MDI features, and adding a lot of annoying glitches.
Playing with MDI in 11.5 now, I still get problems like flash video in background tabs showing through to the front, inconsistent window placement, rendering problems when windows are overlapping, minimised tabs causing issues with window ordering, and there are still features completely missing. MDI is the main reason why I use the browser, and in 10.5+ it’s far less usable than in any previous version.
In my opinion, the end of the MDI interface used by Opera on Windows since the very first release was a bigger UI change than those in Opera 7. Of course that’s from my perspective as someone who barely noticed the changes from 6 to 7, but found 10.5 a completely different browser from 10.10.
Utter nonsense. If this was the case then I wouldn’t have any complaints at all. In reality it isn’t even possible to make it fit the native look of my Windows desktop, let alone get it to feel like older versions of Opera.
Actuallly it’s: “The browser has frustrating bugs that seriously affect my use of it, therefore it feels like a beta test.”
Maybe I’m being unreasonably, but I expect final releases to have fewer glitches and annoyances.
Edited 2011-06-29 23:50 UTC
The point is that these insane “lost its way” comments are simply wrong. Opera didn’t lose its way. They’ve been changing stuff before as well.
We have already established that you are basing this on hyperbole and fallacious arguments.
Nope. Qt was only used for fonts and certain dialogs after Opera 7. The UI you are looking at in Opera is the “Quick” UI. That started with Opera 7.
Wrong again. It was nothing like standard MDI. In fact, it was a reimplementation which did a lot of things differently.
Yeah? And your evidence for this is?
Until 10.5 one of the main criticisms of Opera was that it didn’t look native enough! 10.5 actually made Opera look more like a proper Windows application!
What are you talking about? Opera 7 was a rewrite from scratch of the UI. MDI is a minor, trivial and irrelevant change compared to that.
No, it’s: “It doesn’t work the way I personally want it to, and I’m more important than 50 million other people, therefore it feels like a beta test.”
When something is by design and works as expected, it’s got nothing to do with betas.
You are assuming that design decisions are glitches. Once again you are failing to see the actual facts.
We’ve established that you’re a rather arrogant Opera fanboy who can’t deal with other people having a difference of opinion. I’m not sure what else has been established, certainly not that my personal experiences with Opera 10.5+ are fallacious.
MDI in Opera 10.10 was standard Windows MDI, where the individual MDI windows were real Windows child windows. This is something stated by an Opera employee when asked about the changes in 10.5. I can find the quote and give you a link if you like.
Can you name one thing that Opera 10.10’s MDI does differently?
Turn off the tab bar and you even get little mini-windows piling up at the bottom of the browser window when you minimise tabs. Click on the icon on the left side of the titlebar and you get a drop down menu with window options, complete with any additions to this menu added by outside utilities.
These features exist in 10.10 and earlier because they’re provided by Windows MDI, not because Opera developers went out of their way to implement them.
The fact that some people used utilities that added to or manipulated MDI in 10.10 and earlier, but found that they stopped working when Opera stopped using Windows MDI and child windows could no longer accept Windows messages.
You can install a copy of Opera 10.10 and try this for yourself if you like.
In Opera 10.10 I can change my Windows theme from 2K to XP to Vista and the MDI child windows will instantly change their look to match. In 10.5+ it makes no difference, as they keep their non-standard Opera look.
A fairly minor aesthetic issue (although I prefer my applications on Windows to look like Windows applications), but it’s another thing that demonstrates that Opera used to use standard MDI, while now it does not.
Surely not even the most delusional Opera fanboy would consider the problems I listed (including page rendering glitches when using MDI) to be design decisions?
I’m talking about blatant bugs and broken features. Many of the ones I’ve mentioned are considered bugs by Opera developers and are included in their bug tracker, they just haven’t been fixed yet.
I have shown that you are ignorant of Opera’s history, and that you are basing your arguments on misinformation and fallacious claims.
If it had been standard Windows MDI, it would have used Windows MDI controls. It did not. It is a custom interface exclusive to Opera.
Wrong.
Page rendering glitches when using MDI? What on earth are you talking about?
No, you are talking about Opera not bending to your whim, and instead focusing on things that actually matter to more people.
What are you talking about? Of course it used Windows MDI controls.
Opera added extras on top, such as the tab bar, but 10.10’s implementation of MDI features was about as pure and standard as any MDI application I’ve ever used.
I can’t believe you’re still arguing about this when Opera’s own employees disagree with you. They themselves state that it used Windows MDI until Opera 10.5. Don’t you think that they should know their own browser?
Here’s an example in Opera 11.5, occurring when there are overlapping MDI windows:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/fec643138650822
I suppose that’s a design feature to you?
Incidentally, that screenshot is of Opera using the Windows native skin. It doesn’t look much like a native Windows application to me. Changing the Windows theme doesn’t alter the look of the Opera 11.5 window, while in Opera 10.10 the titlebar, buttons, window borders, etc. all change to match the theme you choose.
Edited 2011-06-30 18:06 UTC
To clarify my point regarding Opera’s look, here are three stitched together screenshots from Opera 10.10:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/52858f138655066
All of them show Opera 10.10 with the same Windows Native theme. The only difference is that the Windows appearance has been changed from ‘Classic’ to ‘Vista’ to ‘High Contrast Black’. If I load Opera 10.10 on a Windows XP system it uses its (hideous) curved blue window decorations too.
In contrast, Opera 10.5+ child windows keep the same non-standard Opera look regardless of the theme you’re running.
you’ve gone off the rails with this one
With 10.5 they started using native Windows controls to draw the program window and such. That’s how you get the transparency and all that.
I wouldn’t say they’re dissing rebecca black herself, they’re dissing the song…
I don’t think you get it.
They aren’t dissing her. They are commenting on her status as an online/geek culture sensation.
It’s a humorous look at geek culture, basically. It is not so much making fun of her as it is commenting on geek culture in a novel way.
Don’t you think it’s interesting that something this universally loathed can be as prevalent as this in today’s culture?
Edited 2011-06-29 05:33 UTC
Try to hover the other white dots with your mouse.
Some social networking “facts”, I guess.
And yes, many links seem broken.
PS : I always wonder when I see a “download counter” like this… You agree that it can’t actually be updated in real time at this speed, right ? So how does it work ?
Edited 2011-06-29 07:35 UTC
(imagine underscores to be indentation)
Basically, they run a function that adds rate to the current value of the counter ten times a second. The initial value of the counter and rate (currently 9; it was 10 some minutes ago) are sent by the server and don’t change unless you reload.
Okay, so that would get a bit desynchronized with the actual count after some time, but if the rate has proper averaging this is more than precise enough for a webpage that people just view for a few seconds
The release is great… the only thing I noticed (I use Mac) was that this release gives you a 98 or 99 (either one at random) in the acid 3 test. Kind of funny because I noticed that safari for mac (latest and greatest) also has this same issue.
Anyone else notices this?
I’ve just got 100/100 with Opera 11.50 in my macbook.
Dang, thanks. It was actually an extension causing this. Vanilla Opera runs perfectly.
where 11.10 locked up on me all the time, 11.5 has been great (been using betas and RCs). Huge improvement. Finally I’m happy using it day to day again, after 10.5 and 10.6 represented 10 months of my most visited site being broken and 11.10 locking up all the time on me
Edited 2011-06-29 02:05 UTC
My Ubuntu systems updated this morning, it is very nice. But I am still at FF user and FF 5 is also nice!
I’m still a firefox user, mainly because of the extension “Vimperator”
Does anyone know if there is anything alike for Opera?
Regards
http://my.opera.com/Blazeix/blog/vimperator-for-opera
I read about that but just thought it was too old to still work (it’s from 2008!)
I guess I might give it a try whenever I have time…
Regards
It works. When it comes to controlling the browser with the keyboard, I prefer Opera with those keybindings to Chromium with Vimium and Firefox with Vimperator.
You could try this: https://addons.opera.com/addons/extensions/details/hit-a-hint-for-op…
… the best browser just got better
I’ve been using the new Opera for about 24 hours and it’s pretty solid. I wasn’t a fan of the 10.x releases, but 11.x has really come together well. If you’re one of those people who were disappointed with Opera last year, I think it’s worth giving 11.50 a try. They’ve cleaned up the bugs and the speed is excellent.
I am still waiting for the options that will allow pinned tabs to retain their width and position. The changing (in version 11.00) of that behavior with NO options to return to it has been a dealbreaker for me. I won’t upgrade from 10.63 as long as this option isn’t back, no matter how it’s provided and no matter how good this 11.50 is. So yes, @Dave_K is totally right. And when my obsoleted browser becomes a security liability, I’ll simply switch full-time to Firefox.