Opera Software released Opera 7.10 for Windows and Opera 7.10 for Linux Beta with features that are not only new to Opera, but also completely new to the world of browsing. Right from the beginning, users can see the two new buttons FastForward and Rewind in the toolbar, accelerating Opera users’ Web navigation. Users can also speed up researching with the completely new Notes features or view photo files with SlideShow.
Opera 7.10 for Windows and Linux Beta Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
52 Comments
Oh yeah, and if you go to mail.yahoo.com and enter your password and what-not, check your mail, go to osnews.com, click on an article, go to slashdot.org, click on an article, browse the discussions, and then go to theonion.com the rewind button will go back to the root pages of all of those sites rather than the back button which simply goes to the last page, whether it’s a root or not.
….after having used the browser for a while now, has anyone else noticed a slight pickup of speed when rendering pages?
Slightly OT:
On a different note, is there any way OSNews can utilise the Link menu of the browser to provide some quick links on the site – it only seems to be a couple of simple hrefs in the html, and would be pretty handy having the Home link linking back to the main page, the Help to the ‘Contact Us’ page, and maybe the Previous and Next providing the movement between sections of the comments on the site (useful for us dialup users who dont want to load over 100 comments of flames and other OT discussions)
Just a thought….
“Opera’s amazing mouse gestures lets you do frequently performed browse operations with small…”
http://www.opera.com/features/mouse/?session=f2812d4c77bfabf3754de3…
Remember, Opera invented the child window/tab concept…
Hardly. The Program Manager had it since Windows 3.0. Word had it until Windows 2000. They may’ve been the first well-known webbrowser to use an MDI, but they didn’t invent it. And it’s taken until now before they’ve had any equivalent to tabbed browsing[1]—the MDI was just like an SDI except instead of putting windows on the taskbar, it put them on its own.
[1]: I have not tested Opera 7, so I don’t know how well it works. It’s not my favorite browser.
Have a look in the hotlist, quite a few of the best new Opera 7 features are contained in it.
Now that the most annoying bugs are fixed I can happily upgrade to Opera 7.1, earlier versions had some really annoying problems that kept me using Opera 6. IMO there’s a hell of a lot that’s hard to live without in Opera once you get used to it, it’s great being able to customise so much of the browser. For example I’ve stripped the options I don’t often use from the contextual menus to make them more efficient.
Features like rewind and fast forward, the links panel, notes and all the other little touches may seem quite unimportant, but they really do make browsing more fun and efficient. After using Opera there’s no other browser I’m happy using for heavy web browsing.
yeah heres a screen shot comparing konqueror, mozilla and opera.
http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk/browsers.png
also snap shot of my desktop running kde 3.1.1 and karamba
http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk/snap.png
im using debian unstable. But they all use the same mechanism. To render the fonts are u running a true type font servers ? Try installing xfs-xtt or xfstt or both. and in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
u should have a line like this:
Section “Files”
FontPath “unix/:7110” # xfs-xtt local font server
FontPath “unix/:7100” # xfs font server
(ports may differ debian changes the ports to allow all 3 font servers to run at same time)
But other than that the actual thing that renders the fonts should be the same.
Fast forward button……why??……how do you get rid of it???
Fast reverse button……..what is wrong with a pulldown list ???? ……again,how do you get rid of it???
Scrolling up and down is still a joke.
Where is my hotlist button????
Its still slower than 6.06.
On the good side…..at least you can turn that stupid wand thing off…….Who in their right mind is going to line up all their passwords…..idiots.
I think all they have done is moved sideways.
Hardly. The Program Manager had it since Windows 3.0… blah blah blah
You do realize, of course, that I’m talking about this in regards to a web browser. Opera is a full MDI application, while other browsers simply provide “tabs”.
But regardless, the level of integration of window management features into Opera goes well beyond any other browser
“Fast forward button……why??……how do you get rid of it???”
It’s there to speed up browsing by providing a very quick way of moving to the next page. You don’t need to scroll to find the next button, you can use a mouse gesture to flick through a the results of a search or messages in a forum. If you don’t want it you can simply right click on the toolbar icon and chose remove from toolbar.
Fast reverse button……..what is wrong with a pulldown list ???? ……again,how do you get rid of it???
A pulldown list is slower as you have to search through it, while the rewind button does the job with a single click. Again you can remove it like any other toolbar button or other control in Opera.
“Scrolling up and down is still a joke.”
Personally I haven’t had a problem with scrolling, it’s as fast as any other browser I’ve used.
“Where is my hotlist button????”
On the toolbar?
“Its still slower than 6.06.”
Not IME.
“On the good side…..at least you can turn that stupid wand thing off…….Who in their right mind is going to line up all their passwords…..idiots.”
Almost everything in Opera can be turned off if you don’t want it, the ability to customise the browser is Opera’s best feature IMO.
“I think all they have done is moved sideways.”
By adding numerous optional features and greatly improving the rendering engine and compatability with most web sites? What exactly would you consider an upgrade?
“On the good side…..at least you can turn that stupid wand thing off…….Who in their right mind is going to line up all their passwords…..idiots.”
I suspect the implementation of a password manager is considerably more secure than IE for example, and its continual security flaws. Opera’s security record has been almost spotless, apart from a few teething problems with the initial 7 release.
Fast reverse button……..what is wrong with a pulldown list ???? ……again,how do you get rid of it???
How many times do you visit multiple sites in one window, then find yourself going back through them to get to the main page of each. Well the fast reverse button does this a lot quicker than a list of every single page you’ve visited (still available from the back button).
“Its still slower than 6.06.”
LOL….I admit the 6 series is speedier for some sites, but from the improvement I’ve seen in 7.1 over the past 24hrs on a 56k, I have to say it is now hands down the fastest browser in my experience.
I don’t know how they’ve tweaked it, but pages seem to load much quicker, even with the cache emptied. Also try using more RAM cache if u have the ram to spare – it helps a lot. The ‘perceived’ load time is always much quicker in opera IME, simply because you get to see the page as its rendered, rather than the all or nothing approach of some other browsers.
By adding numerous optional features and greatly improving the rendering engine and compatability with most web sites? What exactly would you consider an upgrade?
Some people obviously don’t know a good browser when they see one
_ _ _
Once again slightly OT…
_ _ _
As far as skinning of 7.1 goes, my new fave skin has to be http://my.opera.com/customize/skins/skin.pl?id=456 (M7)…currently running under the Sand ‘Color Scheme’…u’ve gotta love super retro orange
> Remember, Opera invented the child window/tab concept…
Microsoft invented the MDI. Apple tried to dismiss it as obsolete and unpractical, and even Microsoft believed it for a while. Then Opera (and others) did the bleeding obvious: they added a tab bar with a list of the open documents on the bottom of the MDI frame. No more reaching for the Window menu or CTRL-F6’ing. Then everybody started to copy it, and the rest is story
> Looks pretty good. Although I’m not sure how well a
> fast-forward feature could work, guessing a user’s
> browsing choice, such that it could be called “intuitive.”
it works pretty damn good. It recognizes “next” links, login forms, structural meta-links, etc. It’s a real pleasure to use. Too bad that pattern matching has been broken a bit between 7.03 and 7.10
Can anyone explain what those buttons do? All I see on press release or the webpage is that they improve the user’s experience… With no explanation as to WHAT they do…thanks
The rewind button brings you back to where you first jumped into a site. For example, if you bookmarked mysite.com/forums.html, and navigated around for a little bit, the rewind button would bring you back to mysite.com/forums.html. Not revolutionary, but useful.
The fast forward button brings you to where you usually go (I think). For example, if you usually go from mysite.com to forums, the fast forward button would do just that for you. Why you wouldn’t just bookmark mysite.com/forums is anybody’s guess, but that’s why the little button hasn’t lit up for me yet.
When on a page that looks like a slide show, the Fast Forward button becomes a slide show button, and will follow the image links one at a time in a page until you come to the last one. Very, very useful for trudging through other people’s vacation photos.
Notes lets you jot down, well, short little notes in the hotlist. It’s handy for copying addresses to mapquest through an intermediary, or keeping track of names. It’s not revolutionary, but it does save you the trouble of opening a separate notepad program and switching between it.
Info gives you the main page url, the charset, mime type, size (in bytes), num of inline elements, size of inline elements, security types, and the location of the local cache file. Mostly the information is useful for developers and not much else, but the cache file location can be very, very useful. Hopefully this will expand to include the date of last modification of the page and other useful pieces of data (whois data, for example), and tying the local cache data to the history.
The wand is a password manager like all others… press the wand button or ctrl-enter to enter your pre-recorded name and password on a page. It is faster than the Mozilla password manager, but it sends an Enter key for confirmation, which on a few bank pages (namely mine) causes a page reload. Still, new for 7.1 the wand can now save passwords server-wide rather than on just one page, so that pesky forum logins can be auto-inserted on response pages without having to use a primary login page.
Another feature that many people don’t know about new for the 7 series is titlebar integrated searches. Like ICAB, typing “g rummy” will search google for the word “rummy”, “e powerbook” will search ebay for a new powerbook, and “f franklin” will search the current page for one of our most beloved presidents.
I have yet to find the new cookie manager or how to create new mousegestures, but I’m pretty happy with my cookie server filters and the default mousegestures. I’ll look for them later.
how can I open the hotlist in a *SEPARATE* window ? Scrolling bugs, etc…
I haven’t seen the scrolling bugs you mentioned (on windows… Linux box is Xless), but to open the hotlist in a separate window, goto view->hotlist->floating.
One of the advantages of Opera is that it is basically infinitely customizable now. Every interface element besides page tabs and folders is treated as a swappable object. You can move hotlist tabs to the main bar, add bookmarks to your right-click menus, move the address bar up to the home space… However you want to work. I’m so tied to mousegestures that I’ve removed the forward and back buttons, but more radical departures are available… people have combined buttons for example, to make forward / fast forward buttons.
Opera is slowly moving away from being a “fast and easy” browser to being a “fast and intricate” browser. It is a powerful tool if you do a lot of HTML work or web surfing, and can speed up your browsing / make your life easier. But with that power comes a rather steep learning curve… I recommend Opera to everyone who is computer proficient, but computer literacy may not be enough to understand or enjoy that power.
If there is anything you don’t like about Opera’s interface, there really is a way to change it. Whether that takes two hours of research and ini scripting or two mouseclicks…
That things does work wonders speedwise (P200 MMX, W95)but for some strange reasons it keeps asking me for a password to visit my company intranet homepage.
I never had to enter anything .
If I do it says I am not allowed.
Is there something I need to do to sort that one out?
Otherwise I am happy with it, I ll get rid of a couple of bookmarks (maybe 99.99% of them) and some buttons but I will definetly keep it.
Looks pretty good. Although I’m not sure how well a fast-forward feature could work, guessing a user’s browsing choice, such that it could be called “intuitive.”
There seems to be a problem with scrolling(jerkiness not smooth at all.)
Use it at http://www.heightbooster.com/
I tried to visit macromedia.com but it just give me a blank page.
Anyone got the success story on this website???
I find mouse gestures very intuitive and find myself trying to use them everywhere. I hope this feature finds itself into some future version of mozilla.
I have to admit, this is worthy of the .1 release. At last we can fully sutomise mouse gestures
Its a shame they’re standing by their original (and IMO a bit too OTT) skin, rather than something nice and clean from my.opera.com
A good release though, and I love where this browser is heading, having used it since the v5 days…
I find mouse gestures very intuitive and find myself trying to use them everywhere. I hope this feature finds itself into some future version of mozilla.
It is already availabe for Mozilla, and has been for some time. The plug-in is available here: http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/.
I also agree, once you are used to them they are hard to live without.
Works here on Debian sarge.
It seems a lot of lingering bugs have been fixed (including using the new window gesture on an empty background). Hats off to the Opera team.
i wish they made something like middle-clicking a link to open in a new tab like mozilla.
There seems to be a problem with scrolling(jerkiness not smooth at all.)
Use it at