Opera 11 unleashed

Today sees the release of the newest version on Opera, v 11.0. It continues in the Opera tradition of more functions, more speed and smaller download size than its previous versions or its main rivals. Find out what’s new in Opera 11, and click on the link at the end of the article to download it.

In 1996, the Web was changing. The completion of Cascading Style Sheets would open the door for an era of better design. Amazon was rated one of the world’s top sites by Time Magazine, and a small company out of Oslo, Norway released its first browser. Fitting on a single floppy disk, Opera could do many things other browsers could only dream of. In 2010, the newest version of Opera continues its legacy with new features such as extensions and new takes on some of our most beloved innovations such as visual mouse gestures and tab stacking.

What’s new in Opera 11?

Tab stacking

Opera was one of the original tab pioneers. Now, tabbed browsing is popular, and new ways were needed to organize and use tabs more efficiently. It’s called tab stacking. Simply drag one tab on top of another to create a stack. There are no limits with how many tabs you can include in a stack, nor how many stacks you can have at once.

Opera 4 was the first release with tabbed browsing as we know it today. In the next version, they added a mode to undo tabs.

Visual mouse gestures

Most people love mouse gestures. With the flick of a wrist, you can navigate back and forwards, open new pages, close tabs and so much more. Opera 11 has made it easier to discover and master mouse gestures. Access the full list of mouse gestures here: http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/gestures/

Mouse gestures were introduced in Opera 5 back in 2000. In those days, Opera was sometimes sold with a mousepad depicting the most common gestures. You can still find some on eBay.

Extensions

Extensions have been introduced to help users personalize their browser and what it can do. To launch extensions, simply click the Opera Menu (Tools -> Extensions on Mac) and select Extensions. Then, click ‚Get Extensions‚ , and browse the extensions catalog.

Top five most-downloaded extensions:

The earliest form of browser extensions came in Opera 7.01, which introduced the world to BrowserJS (browser-based JavaScript).

Safer address bar

Besides the ‚Back‚ button, the address bar is the most used area of the browser. In Opera 11, the information presented in the address bar is simplified, so people can make better sense of the security levels of the sites they visit. Opera now hides the protocol information when the cursor is not on the address field and displays a clear badge indicating the security level and allowing immediate, one-click access to security and trust information about the site.

Common tasks

Searching the Web

Opera has two methods for searching the Web directly from the browser. The first is the search field, to the right of the address field. The search field has a drop-down menu with several pre-selected search engines.

You can also search directly from the address bar. Simply key in a word or phrase, and you will automatically search the Web using the default search engine. You can use keyword shortcuts to use other search engines. For example, entering ‚w Opera‚ will search Wikipedia for ‚Opera‚ .

Opera also lets you customize search engines. Try this: visit YouTube.com and right-click in the search field. Then click ‚Create Search‚ . You will be prompted to enter a keyword. (‚You‚ might work well.) Then, you will see YouTube.com has been added to the search bar. Also, anytime you want to search YouTube, you can do so by typing ‚You‚ and the search term. For instance, ‚You Opera‚ will search YouTube for Opera videos.

Browsing

When you first start Opera, you immediately see the Speed Dial. The Speed Dial has nine dials for you to populate with sites of your preference. You can customize the number of dials available by clicking ‚Configure Speed Dial‚ . For fast access to your Speed Dials, you can enter the numbers 1-9 in the address bar.

When you visit a site, Opera will remember the full text on the site. This way, when you want to recall pages you have visited, simply type some of the text in the address bar. Opera will find all the pages that have that text.

Another helpful trick when browsing is the Notes feature. Simply highlight some text on the page you wish to save, right-click and select ‚Copy to Note‚ . Opera will save a note in the Notes panel. Double-clicking on the note in the Notes panel will return you to the page where you took the note. A yellow note icon will appear in the address bar. Clicking this will open the Notes panel and display the text you saved.

If you open many tabs when browsing, Opera has many options to make tab management easier. In addition to tab stacking, mentioned above, visual tabs simplify your browsing. When you drag down the tab bar, tabs expand to give you thumbnails of the page. If you accidentally close a tab, just click the Closed Tabs button to the far right of tab bar. You can reopen your closed tabs with full browsing history for each.

Sometimes we visit pages that we would rather forget. For this, Opera has a private browsing mode. When you close a private tab or private window, Opera will erase browsing history, cookies, any login information and cache related to the tab or window. To open a new private tab, simply right-click on the New tab button or use the Opera menu (File menu on Mac).

When your bandwidth is as flaky as dandruff, and slows down your Internet connection, you can enable Opera Turbo using the speedometer icon in the lower-left hand corner of the browser. This will route your web requests through Opera’s compression servers. They reduce the size of the page so it gets to you faster. Crucially, Opera Turbo does not compress SSL connections, so secure sites remain secure.

The new address bar also shows data savings when Opera Turbo is in use. To enable Opera Turbo, click the speedometer in the lower left-hand corner of the browser.

If you want to make Opera a more social browser, open http://touch.facebook.com or http://m.twitter.com/. Then open the Panels using the icon in the lower-left corner of the browser. Then simply drag the tab into the side panel. Now those sites are available instantly as a panel.

‚We have always worked hard to introduce new and bold ideas in web browsing,‚ said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera. ‚But, sometimes we want to take an idea and improve upon it. Opera 11 adds a layer of polish to features people have known and loved for more than a decade, while introducing extensions. If you have never tried Opera before, Opera 11 will change everything you know about browsing.‚

The rule of 30

Download it

To download Opera 11 at no cost, visit http://www.opera.com/

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5/5

But for now new release looks pretty much perfect, they really pushed it over the top.”,”body-href”:””}]