Download Opera 11.50 Beta
Presto updated to 2.8.
On the last day of May, Opera Software has released the first Beta version of its upcoming Opera 11.50 web browser.
What’s New?
From the official changelog, it looks like Opera’s rendering engine called Presto has undergone quite a few changes as it now supports various HTML5 elements and other web specifications.
As for other features, Opera 11.50 now includes Speed Dial Extensions, Opera Link password synchronization and Opera Next, which will be familiar to dev build users.
In addition to that, this build has received dozens of minor improvements in user interface, mail, news, chat, network and other areas.
For a complete list to changes, see the following page.
On the side note: if you are using RSS News Reader, be aware that quite a few users have already reported a bug which prevents items from being deleted.
About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
When they released the alpha I looked at the new features and thought “oh well, it’s only alpha”. But now they’ve released the beta, I look at it and think “it’s still only alpha”. This would really have been more fit for a 11.2 release. Seems they too are going the Chrome path of crunking out the highest version number :(
Lots of people were bitching that they should focus on bug fixing instead of adding new features and now when they did that, people are bitching about not enough new features. Even when they still add much more new stuff between major releases that Chrome.
Commonly bug fixes are a .01 release, not a .5 release.
Yes, but they only make .0x version when they find security vulnerability. Besides, like I already said while they focused on bug fixes there are still new features. And they probably don’t want to add more new stuff because they need to thoroughly test password synchronization since it must be bug free for obvious reasons.
I’d rather have them remove some features.
For instance, is that torrent support really necessary?
PS: Replace it with a content sniffer.
I personally like that Opera has built in torrent support and I don’t want it removed. I don’t download torrents very often so I have no real need for another program to download torrents. I recently downloaded Linux Mint using Opera’s built in torrent support and it worked great. Why remove torrent support?
Linux Mint comes with a torrent program right out of the box. :P
Do a lot of people use it for once?
Unite != Widgets != Extensions
They all perform different functions. Unite is at it’s core a simple web server in your browser. Widgets are standalone applications that just use the Presto rendering core to work, but otherwise don’t require opera to be running. Extensions add functionality to your browsing experience.
Of course, there’s overlap sometimes, but they all form different roles (I see widgets finally coming into their own on TV platforms to be honest).
The Mail/Feed/IRC support for me is invaluable. Why *not* have the IRC client in your browser? It’s simple, easy to use, and doesn’t require you to use some sort of AJAX client online.
I’m not sure what you mean by making them ‘optional’. All these features barely take up any space (the opera installer is sub-10mb in size), and pretty much add nothing to the loading time of the browser if they’re not used (based on a snapshot Opera released a long time ago that allowed you to profile component startup in a nice log to see how long the various components took to load).
Opera Widgets are already on the TV. And many “Smart’ TV’s these days are built upon widgets.
They really should unify Unite, extensions and widgets. Think about the first time user. It is confusing for them. That’s it Opera has soo many features that it is confusing to the new user.
I don’t know about you but chrome loads faster, IE9 loads faster. And these are not fresh installs. Compared to the newly downloaded snapshots.
And yes I remember the profiler. I am subscribe to the desktop team afterall :)
“I’ll go as far as bloated”
I wouldn’t say it’s bloated. I think that Bloated basically is when a feature slows down the program or makes it use unneeded resources (ram, cpu, …).
Removing widgets, unite, turbo, irc,… will not make opera faster, smaller or use less memory. And widgets, unite and extensions all have their own use and yet share the same engine inside opera (they all exist out of javascript, html and some css). And they are off (and/or not used) by default.
“Turbo. Well there are people that have unlimited plans”
Turbo could also be used for people on a slow connection as ‘turbo’ uses the opera servers to ‘compress’ webpages before sending them to the end user. This is also how opera mini works and opera mini is (according the android market) 755kb. So removing it will certainly not make opera smaller and since it’s off by default it doesn’t take up resources.
“IRC client. Why? Mail is ok”
Those are 2 different things. Mail is for… well sending mails and irc is for chatting…
“Can’t these be optional?”
They are optional. They are turned of by default. Ignore and/or remove them if you don’t want to?
Now if I compare opera with firefox (both installed on my pc). They both use the around same amount of harddrive space (not including the settings and bookmarks, etc…) Consider that firefox (without extensions) doesn’t have: email client, irc (none that I know off), speed dial, turbo, unite, mouse gestures, torrent support, widgets, site preferences, interface that isn’t really customizable (in opera you can rightclick any button and remove, or drag any button to any toolbar, move your tabs to the sides or bottom, you can even put your address bar in the statusbar (if you would want that lol), in firefox you only have very limited list of buttons you can drag to a toolbar and for anything else you need extensions)…
And after all that you can basically consider firefox the bloated one :)…
Yes yes I know what turbo and irc is. But cant this all be optional or modular?
It already is. It’s disabled and doesn’t affect you at all, unless you activate it by using it.
There is a lot of debate about that amongst users an Opera itself.
There might be debate among Opera users who don’t know anything about Opera and the way it works, but the Opera staff has made it clear numerous times.
Common, you can see Opera is just as heavy / light as other browsers when you use it… And what’s your computer? 600 MHz 256 RAM?
I got rid of my desktop and currently using a i5 with 4GB ram laptop.
“I’m not going after torrent support explicitly but the program has become too full featured. I’ll go as far as bloated.”
Does not compute.
Opera is smaller and more responsive than the competition.
Features you don’t use do not affect your daily usage.
That’s the exact opposite of bloat.
The torrent support is already included and it’s not really improved or developed, if you want to comment “I want y instead of x implemented” while a software is being developed please choose an in-development feature to piss.
I sense you are calling me an idiot like the way you did with that lifehacker author.
Why it is redundant? It is slow and not full featured. It is too basic to say the least. Simple you say? Meh.
I don’t get it…
Are you nuts? The Desktop team was flooded with messages to fix the bugs first then add something new! Yet, they added Speed Dial extensions and improved tab stacking, what did Chrome add, Angry Birds huh!
I have no problem with “fixing bugs first”, I have a problem with fixing bugs and calling it a .5 release.
Why? Why does it matter what it’s called? And what gave you the idea that there are only bug fixes in 11.5?
If they were really going the Chrome path, they would call it Opera 12. Opera seems to just be having faster release cycles, of which I approve.
For me they’re as they aways was… It’s just, we don’t know yet! > They won’t name it 11.2 if something big is coming and we don’t know about it yet.
In any case, if Presto updates keep coming they’ll bee big enough to give the number 11.5.
“Seems they too are going the Chrome path of crunking out the highest version number”
At least it isn’t called Opera 12, so it’s not all bad.
Even if this is a “bug-fixing” version it still contains to little of improvements and fixing. They broke much more, than fixed.
Beta.
“Broke more than fixed”? That doesn’t even make sense.
Big software development isn’t made by a single person in a single computer, that know everything that has been changed, etc, ever thought of that? Wait forget my logic, simply: new bugs (and even regressions) appear in all kinds of software in all kinds of development phases.
” it now supports various HTML5 elements and other web specifications”
sooooo ughh does this mean i can post links in facebook now??!
nvm :/
I am able to…
Like you aways have been able to.
if the only problem of most people here is the version number… great beta release!
if the only problem of most people here is the version number… great beta release!
“On the side note: if you are using RSS News Reader, be aware that quite a few users have already reported a bug which prevents items from being deleted.”
I can’t help but wonder at the amount of people complaining about this one. How often do you delete a newsfeed?
Like the Windows panel now supports tab stacking
dislike unable to delete mail I have to move it to the trash bin & then empty trash.
Hoping they will be able to include GPU acceleration in Opera 12 when its released.