11 ms·

Hello Opera 12

163 points by Juha 14y ago

nuttendorfer 14y ago
They really improved the responsiveness, it feels as responsive as Chrome now. Here's more if you are interested: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/06/14/twelve-under-the-hood-improvements-in-opera-12 http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/06/14/twelve-under...
cmelbye 14y ago
I don't know why I would ever switch from Chrome or Safari to Opera. On a Mac, Opera still has text rendering issues (http://imgur.com/a/9bK1j http://imgur.com/a/9bK1j), scrolling stutters, and there's a noticeable difference in page load speed (Opera is much slower than Chrome, at least on my computer).
- Tomis02 14y ago
  Features.
  - rrreese 14y ago
    Care to expand this? A quick look at the linked page shows a bunch of under the hood improvements that will appeal to web developers, but as a user I remain ignorant of why people use Opera. To be clear I used to use Opera back when they where the only browser with tabs, but that was close to a decade ago.
    - nuttendorfer 14y ago
      Download manager, BitTorrent support, very good email application included, feed reader, Opera Turbo speeds up browsing if you are on a slow connection by compressing everything on Opera's servers (optional), integrated IRC client. Opera really is a web suite, not just a browser.
    - rplnt 14y ago
      Features that has been there for ages. It's not like they are essential to have in a good browser but once you get used to them it's painful to switch. For me it is configurability (if that's a word). Primarily ability to configure controls out of the box. For keyboard, mouse and mouse gestures. This includes dozens of custom actions, even javascript, all of which can be combined using logical conjunctions. No other browser I tried allows you this, not even close. Configuring the UI is pretty straight forward as well, and if there is anything not available through the UI you can always dig into config files. Some other features it's hard to browse without: global and per-site configuration of: blocked content, pop-ups, javascript, cookies, plugins, on demand plugins, images, custom layouts, .... edit: and back button actually works as expected That's just a small subset of dozens of features I miss in other browsers. I don't use any of those extra apps (reader, mail, torrent, irc, ...) but they don't bother me either. And what I miss in Opera? Switching tabs by their position (alt/ctrl+number in many tabbed applications). That's it. What bothers me is that many sites do not work properly or are completely blocked in Opera. The former is due to low market share of Opera, the latter is because people are dicks (hi google). Just write that it's not supported and I won't call your support line, don't make me change my user agent all the time (luckily I can configure this per-site :P). edit: Totally forgot this but other comment pointed it out: Opera can handle a lot of tabs, no other browser I tried could do this: memory, performance and UI wise.
    - Tomis02 14y ago
      Not really. I've told countless people about how Opera really is the best browser, by far, and how people using Chrome and Firefox are stuck in the stone-age of Internet Explorer 6. I'm getting tired to repeat it. Screw it, I'll do a quick run. Depending on how good your computer is, Chrome will buckle (freeze your computer, in my case) sooner or later after you keep increasing the number of tabs, due to the one process per tab design flaw. That does not usually happen with Opera (unless you have some very demanding pages, which doesn't usually happen to me), it will keep going as long as you have the RAM to supply it. Right now opera:cpu shows me a round number of 115 tabs with 1.5 GB RAM usage, plus the plugin wrapper grabbing an additional 400 megs. Given that this particular computer has 12 GB of RAM I think it's very reasonable. Of course, I don't have a rocket computer at home but the performance is very good as well on a mediocre laptop. Now, what good does it do to have 115 tabs if you can't see them or switch between them at your wish? In Chrome you have one line of tabs that keep pushing against another, and at 115 tabs you could not select your tab properly, nevermind reading the tab title. In Opera I just configured my tab bar to wrap to multiple lines and aligned it vertically on the left side. I also have tab groups that work very nicely to minimize unnecessary clutter. I can also turn the tab bar off altogether and move between tabs with ctrl + tab or right mouse button + wheel, or hold ctrl + tab + mouse click. The possibilities for customization are so numerous I can't be bothered to describe them all. Opera is a true browser and it has all these features out of the box without getting in your way. You're a hacker? Where's your curiosity? Explore Opera's features (like mouse gestures, keyboard navigation, and so on) and see for yourself. And by the way, one last thing. The default option for Opera is to restore your tabs from your last browsing session, which was not the case for Chrome and Firefox last time I checked (and if that didn't change it's retarded, although I would understand the reasoning, they don't want to encourage you to keep your tabs open because the browser might buckle under the pressure of 10 open tabs). So really, feel free to keep open as many tabs as you like. You can also use ghostery (an extension) to block all these resource-consuming background scripts, just in case you have reached the limits of your hardware. I have enable 'plugins only on demand', so no Flash player will be loaded without my explicit consent. Again, this is out of the box. Also, content blocker. And so on and so forth.
      - PerryCox 14y ago
- okamiueru 14y ago
  For me, it is because it simply works straight out of the box, with all the features I use all the time. For me, it is several of the following reasons: * mouse gestures. * the speed dial. * the ease to create custom url-bar searches. * thumbnail images of tabs (to check a potentially nsfw link at work). * in page link or text search using ',' or '.' * the ability to search for links in the sidebar, and select all of them (e.g. to copy to a wget script, etc.) * the ease to customize the content block. ... and probably other stuff, which doesn't come to mind. Also, and this is important: I'm not trying to convince you here. Just pointing out that some will say the exact thing on the switch from Opera to Chrome, Firefox or Safari, with good reasons of their own. Whatever floats your boat. Also, mind you, I have firefox and chrome installed. Firefox I almost never use, and chrome is useful to see shiny WebGL stuff, which has a lot more support. Sometimes also to see new CSS-demos that are broken in Opera (mostly because of lazy developers who don't include the -o- extensions).
- ernesth 14y ago
  > Opera is much slower than Chrome, at least on my computer It is the contrary on my computer: chrome is painfully slow, whereas firefox is OK and opera is faster. I guess opera is not the best for everyone.
  - jonpacker 14y ago
    I can back that up, it's the same case for me.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    same here, I would also be very unhappy without opera's instant backward/forward navigation.
    - Osiris 14y ago
      Awesome feature. I hate that other browsers ask you to resubmit a form when navigating back. Opera just shows you the cached page that it bad before. Combining that with the mouse flip gesture, browsing is a breeze. In Chrome you have to click BACK or use BACKSPACE (or a mouse with a dedicated nav button). In Opera, I click the right then the left mouse buttons and I'm back at the previous page. Alternate to go back forward.
- tintin 14y ago
  This might also be a font-issue. Most of the time websites embed different font-types like eot, ttf, woff and svg. But some types lack font-hinting. It depends on the order in the CSS file which supported font browsers will use.
- rplnt 14y ago
  The scrolling might be due to "smooth scroll" enabled: opera:config#UserPrefs|SmoothScrolling It is (was some time ago at least) disabled by default in Chrome, Firefox and even on linux version of Opera.
- antihero 14y ago
  Text rendering looks horrific here on Linux, too!
  - colanderman 14y ago
    Looks beautiful here on Linux. Just make sure to pick good fonts (Sans, Sans Serif, and Sans Mono are solid choices) and that qtconfig-qt4 looks OK.
- JohannL 14y ago
  The bookmark management, hands down. Other browsers are for testing and sites that don't work well in Opera; while Opera is for organizing all of the things, especially with things like nicknames for bookmarks and created searches. It also has plenty of themes which actually change how much space stuff takes up... hmm, it's kinda like KDE versus Gnome, with Opera being KDE ^^ There may be apps for Gnome to make it more configurable, but that's just not the same...
ekianjo 14y ago
So now Opera also features extensions ?
- grotos 14y ago
  Extensions were introduced in 11 version almost two years ago. Now Opera is ditching widgets and unite to focus on extenions.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    I just read that on their main page. Are they getting a lot of support from developpers for extensions ?
    - Tomis02 14y ago
      Pretty much. What do you need?
  - gpvos 14y ago
    This is a pity. I have a really nice and unobtrusive SVG Opera clock widget in the corner of my screen, which starts and runs completely separately from Opera. I understand that this is not possible anymore with extensions. I really hope I can keep it after upgrading.
halayli 14y ago
Anybody home?
alanh 14y ago
My connection sucks. Have they fixed this? http://jsfiddle.net/alanhogan/twCXt/ http://jsfiddle.net/alanhogan/twCXt/
- rplnt 14y ago
  Not sure what you mean now? I'm still on older Opera (11.61) and the checkbox is resized.
  - alanh 14y ago
    But it does not look checked, right? One should be checked. Also, clicking it has no (visual) effect (though it will toggle the checked attribute in the DOM). It’s a truly terrible bug, and a strong argument that Opera should not use -webkit- properties like transform until it can actually handle them. I reported it a couple months ago and have not received any follow-up at all.
    - rplnt 14y ago
      It is checked and checking it works as well (11.64 at home now). But as other comment pointed out, it looks ugly. I tried FF 9 - same as Opera - works and is ugly. In Chrome 19 it does not work at all (i.e. the checkbox is small). So it got fixed. And I don't think they do follow-up unless they need you to reproduce the bug or something.
      - alanh 14y ago
        Are you on Windows? I eventually tried in Opera 12 and it does not seem to be fixed. Now I’m not sure why you say it doesn’t work in Chrome at all. Because at least on my platform (OS X), it does, and it looks beautiful and hi-res.
- TobbenTM 14y ago
  Checkbox does get resized, but looks awful
demetris 14y ago
Opera 12 is the first third-party web browser for Windows to offer an official 64-bit version. (Neither Firefox nor Chrome have official 64-bit versions for Windows. And I think Safari for Windows doesn’t have one either.) Does this translate to any substantial improvements in speed? Does anyone here know of any benchmarks?
- gcp 14y ago
  Very unlikely. 64-bit is mostly an advantage if you have to use a lot of memory or are doing processing on actual 64-bit integers. For the kind of software like Opera (and Firefox and Chrome), the additional registers in 64-bit mode help a little, but that tends to be offset by most pointers now being 64-bits and the L1/L2 caches hence being less effective.
  - Egregore 14y ago
    On my computer most memory hungry apps are browsers. And by the way I use opera to open a lot of tabs and it handles those very well (compared with other browsers)
    - untog 14y ago
      Right, but 64-bit computing isn't a magic bullet that speeds everything up. As gcp stated, there are both benefits and drawbacks.
      - excuse-me 14y ago
        Although it does break that annoying 4,294,967,296 open tabs limit!
        solox3 14y ago
        This is nowhere near realistic. Opera's performance degrades linearly after the first 10000 tabs.
Spittie 14y ago
I really like Opera. I've used it for months, but every time i just come back to Firefox. One big problem (for me) it's their release cycle. I know that many people hate the fast releases of Firefox and Chrome, but this way i get new features sooner than Opera. Another problem are addons. I'm an heavy Scriptish/Stylish user, and there aren't equivalents for those in Opera. I know that i can enable the userscript folder and copy scripts here, but I'm honestly too lazy to do it, and loading CSS through javascript is just not fast enough. Then there are the nitpicks. For example, on Firefox/Chrome "right click > search on google" open a new tab, on Opera it load Google in the current tab. Or, on Firefox/Chrome middle-clicking on the back button open the previous page in a new tab. On Opera this just doesn't work (at least, until Opera 11.64 - I haven't tried Opera 12 yet). And Opera is not opensource. While it's not a so big deal for me, i prefer to use opensource applications when i can. There are also features that i would love to see on Firefox. Tab Stacking is awesome, way better than Panorama. I really like also how Opera put the tab bar on the left, I find it better than Tree Style Tab. I'll try the new version later, but i doubt that the new features will be worth a switch for me.
- Tomis02 14y ago
  > For example, on Firefox/Chrome "right click > search on google" open a new tab, on Opera it load Google in the current tab. In Opera Ctrl+Click opens a new tab, Ctrl+Shift+Click opens a new tab in the background. It's not a new feature. Learn to play your class. ;)
  - adamtulinius 14y ago
    Nice trick. I use Opera as well, and didn't know about this. However, i can't think of any other software where modifier keys makes a difference in context-menus, so i really wouldn't blame people for not knowing.
    - Tomis02 14y ago
      I'm not blaming people for now knowing, Opera has so many cool features it's hard to become fully aware of them. To be honest I don't remember how I found out about this one. In Opera (and other browsers) you can use modifier keys when clicking links, so it kind of makes sense to use this in context menus as well. Opera is always surprising. Did you know you have mouse gestures (such as 'close') in menus such as preferences? It blew my mind.
ricksta 14y ago
Kinda off topic, but Opera Mini and Opera Mobile for Android is vastly superior in terms of smoothness compare to all other available browsers. It is very noticeable especially if the page is heavy. A good test is to load this page http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers... on your Android in different browser and test the responsiveness.
- Osiris 14y ago
  I use Opera Mobile exclusively on Android. Pages load faster and zooming with fit text to screen works really well. My one frustration is that when launching a web page from another app it always opens a new tab so I end up with 10 tabs open and have to close them all every so often.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  I've been using Opera Mobile for a while now. IMO it does tabs best for tablet browsing - however I've had to switch to Maxthon as Opera was just too unstable on my android device.
ilaksh 14y ago
Why don't they enable WebGL by default? I don't see why more people don't realize, WebGL is a prime Microsoft threat and the key to moving away from the MS Windows monopoly. That's why Microsoft has done so much work to try to scare people away from WebGL (by sponsoring 'security research' and creating FUD content on Wikipedia (seriously, look at the history of that article, the person who created the whole 'security' section on WebGL has an ip that originates right next to Microsoft headquarters, and the 'security research' is done by a Microsoft shop)). What the Opera, Webkit/Safari/Chrome, Mozilla teams should focus on is getting mouse capture and WebGL uniformly supported and turned on across browsers and one or two well-hyped and playable 3d first person games. Any industry player who has money and wants to oppose Microsoft should put money behind big WebGL game releases and hype for such. You get that working across browsers and push that and things like Google Docs, EditGrid, ethercalc, Zoho Creator, LibreOffice etc. and you will see WebGL games starting to take down PC games sales and Office alternatives hurting Windows/Office sales. Anyway, please give the people in charge of those programs and funds a link to this explanation if you know anyone like that.
- rplnt 14y ago
  Haven't tried it myself, but from what I've read on reddit (r/operabrowser) it was really buggy in beta builds.
  - sgift 14y ago
    To give an example: On my home pc I have the snapshots of Opera running with hardware acceleration and WebGL enabled: No problems. A few minutes ago I've installed Opera 12 on my work pc and tried the same. Afterwards I couldn't start Opera anymore and had to reset the options in the config file (AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\operaprefs.ini if anyone needs to do the same; EnableWebGL and HardwareAcceleration are the keys). So: Yeah, it's still a bit buggy at the moment (probably hardware compability issues). I've already send my bug report, hope they fix it soon.
- AshleysBrain 14y ago
  This is a real shame, especially for HTML5 games. What's even worse is hardware acceleration on the 2D canvas appears to be disabled by default too, so HTML5 games in Opera 12 on a powerful desktop will run slower than an iPad or iPhone, because they have hardware acceleration. Looks like Opera 12 is a no-go for gaming.
ekianjo 14y ago
Still no ARM version available, by the way ? Or has this changed?
arkitaip 14y ago
A word of warning: this update erased the persistent storage data for all sites. So if you're using plugins or if a particular site is using persistent storage, this will cause issues.
zxzwa 14y ago
I'm a opera user and I was excited to see this news! So I've downloaded the 12th version and went on to test it in the shining page. But it says that my browser is not supported? http://www.shinydemos.com/touch-tracker/ http://www.shinydemos.com/touch-tracker/ -- Your browser doesn’t support all required features: Touch Events. Anyone has the same issue?
- sgift 14y ago
  Same issue here, but I have the desktop version and touch events sounds like something which will only work on a tablet/smartphone. Edit: I've checked the w3 page - it is indeed for touch-enabled devices. Did you test it on a tablet/smartphone?
- Tomis02 14y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, "touch events" is a feature for tablets or mobiles. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events It will probably not be included soon for the desktop version of Opera.
- zxzwa 14y ago
  You're all right. Damn me for this simple mistake!
dsirijus 14y ago
I extensively test my webs manually on basically all relevant browsers, up to few old versions, and on different OS' and devices. My conclusion is that Chrome on Windows 7 is by far the most 'snappy' and Firefox on any OS most 'dev friendly' (even though Chrome is coming along that way very nicely). That being said, Opera on mobile is very fine, but I still prefer using whatever stock browser is on particular device. Everything else is a little buggy. What I found lacking in any of the browsers is the developer friendliness on mobile devices. Anyone has any recommendations on that?
- maggit 14y ago
  Unfortunately, I cannot claim that I have tried it, but I know Opera supports remote debugging. You get to run Dragonfly on your desktop and debug whatever's running in Opera Mobile on your device. There seems to be documentation here: http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/documentation/remote/ http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/documentation/remote/
ishansharma 14y ago
Opera is still not getting some basic features right and that is costing them users. I remember asking for a feature in forums in days of Opera 11.00. The feature was something that every browser has: "Remembering contents of a text field." For example, when I enter my email address once in a website and then come back another day and write first letter of my email id, it is displayed in a dropdown. But Opera outright refused to even consider. Now, they lack a good full screen mode and drag and drop support in GMail, two real deal breakers for me. I tried Opera 12 for less than 12 min and sent it back to dark corners of my HD! Goodbye Opera 12.
- Tomis02 14y ago
  https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/autocomplete/ https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/autocomplete/
  - ishansharma 14y ago
    Thanks for the link. Had forgotten about it!
- hoppipolla 14y ago
  FWIW we have the "wand" feature which will fill in, and submit, a form for you with previously used values (it's the key icon on the toolbar or ctrl+enter). I know this is not quite the same implementation that other browsers have.
  - ishansharma 14y ago
    Yes, I have tried that. It is fine but I like the Chrome/FF implementation.
  - sim0n 14y ago
    Your "wand" feature also adds a terrifically ugly yellow border to remembered inputs which developers have no way to prevent (like you can with WebKit by using outline: 0). I'm all for a constant UI to create a good UX but not when it can make a site look bad.
hmans 14y ago
Hello.
- nosse 14y ago
  My reaction exactly. Just installed it like always before and no fuss about anything.
rolleiflex 14y ago
I just wish they'd forgo the use of that cramped sans-serif header typeface. It looks like somebody just outlined and compressed it horizontally in Illustrator—awful.
philippK 14y ago
I'm disappointed that they still don't seem to support the file API in JS :/
siodine 14y ago
For me, the most important missing feature is tab lazy loading -- without that my usecase is impossible (hundreds of tabs).
- rplnt 14y ago
  I only use about hundred tabs (not hundreds) but I find Opera best in this regard - mostly because memory usage, stability (as opposed to chrome) and capability of the UI to handle that many tabs while being usable. The thing is, I don't turn the browser off. Maybe once a month to install Windows updates. There's an ugly workaround though - start Opera without internet connection and then reload tabs as needed.
  - siodine 14y ago
    FF has lazy loading. Options->General->Don't load tabs until selected.
simonmales 14y ago
No one has mentioned that Opera 12 is the first GA browser (I believe) to support WebRTC. Basically you don't need to flash anymore to access devices such as webcams and microphones. I built a really simple site to see how this all works. It will fall back to flash if you don't have WebRTC support which includes Google Chrome Canary and now Opera 12. http://gotcaption.com/p/39 http://gotcaption.com/p/39
kevingadd 14y ago
From testing out my demos in Opera Next over the past few months, I've been really impressed with the quality of their JS runtime and the UI. Unfortunately, their hardware-accelerated canvas support doesn't really keep up and their WebGL is outright broken - it looks like they went so far as to disable both by default in 12, a disappointment to be sure - and they still have serious issues with HTML5 audio (to the point of causing hangs/crashes). Given that my only real exposure to Opera is from trying to ensure my stuff runs well in it, it's easy to get the impression that everything about Opera is broken. I wish they had a public bug tracker so it was easier to tell which things are known issues, which things have known workarounds, and which things I should file bugs about. In particular, the audio issues are a point of frustration: At present, if you test the latest builds of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer, Firefox is the only one that actually has low-latency, functioning support for <audio> that doesn't crash or hang. It's ridiculous. Chrome at least has a custom webkit-only API you can use to get working audio, but the rest of the browsers are just flat out broken. And in each browser's case, they've had multiple versions to fix basic issues (limits on how many sounds you can load in a single page context; broken events and APIs; absurdly long playback delays, etc). Oh, and Firefox still doesn't support the loop attribute. :|
- kombine 14y ago
  This is just an indicator that we need a proper native development environment. Devs who embrace new web technologies like WebGL, <audio> or <video> forget that those are just Javascript bindings to the technologies developed in C/C++. Can we please have native code instead, so developer controls the underlying system without having to rely on the wits of browser makers? Google Native Client is a step in the right direction.
  - UnFleshedOne 14y ago
    What, wasn't the whole point of all web technologies to pile abstraction layers on top of abstraction layers so you never have to think about pointers ever again? :) Native platforms and architectures were replaced by browser platforms, trading power and control for deployment headaches. And now you want to write for multiple browsers, multiple OSes and multiple architectures all at the same time while still battling heaps of restrictions any decent OS/antivirus would impose on binary blobs that can be run by a browser directly? (disclaimer: I'm obviously biased towards native development :))
gcb 14y ago
The scroll/codex analogy is cute but doesn't hold up. Sure hope the page based css goes to the limbo.
kidproquo 14y ago
Anyone else having issues with iGoogle? I had it working in 11.6 by identifying as IE, since it would just show a blank page when identifying as Opera/Firefox. Now, with 12.0, identifying as Opera/Firefox still shows a blank page and identifying as IE just shows the widget headers and no feeds.
kakaroto_BR 14y ago
I cant use Opera in home because the lack of a xmarks addon to sync my bookmarks with my firefox at work, it's a pity.
- rplnt 14y ago
  Use Opera at work as well :)
samstokes 14y ago
One reason this is a big deal: Opera now supports CORS [1]. Until now, it was the only significant browser that didn't. (Even IE did, albeit - of course - in its own special way.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing - secure cross-domain AJAX without hacks like JSONP, so you can do POST requests, set headers, etc.

163 points by Juha 14y ago

They really improved the responsiveness, it feels as responsive as Chrome now. Here's more if you are interested: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/06/14/twelve-under-the-hood-improvements-in-opera-12 http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/06/14/twelve-under...

cmelbye 14y ago

I don't know why I would ever switch from Chrome or Safari to Opera. On a Mac, Opera still has text rendering issues (http://imgur.com/a/9bK1j http://imgur.com/a/9bK1j), scrolling stutters, and there's a noticeable difference in page load speed (Opera is much slower than Chrome, at least on my computer).

Tomis02 14y ago
Features.
- rrreese 14y ago
  Care to expand this? A quick look at the linked page shows a bunch of under the hood improvements that will appeal to web developers, but as a user I remain ignorant of why people use Opera. To be clear I used to use Opera back when they where the only browser with tabs, but that was close to a decade ago.
  - nuttendorfer 14y ago
    Download manager, BitTorrent support, very good email application included, feed reader, Opera Turbo speeds up browsing if you are on a slow connection by compressing everything on Opera's servers (optional), integrated IRC client. Opera really is a web suite, not just a browser.
  - rplnt 14y ago
    Features that has been there for ages. It's not like they are essential to have in a good browser but once you get used to them it's painful to switch. For me it is configurability (if that's a word). Primarily ability to configure controls out of the box. For keyboard, mouse and mouse gestures. This includes dozens of custom actions, even javascript, all of which can be combined using logical conjunctions. No other browser I tried allows you this, not even close. Configuring the UI is pretty straight forward as well, and if there is anything not available through the UI you can always dig into config files. Some other features it's hard to browse without: global and per-site configuration of: blocked content, pop-ups, javascript, cookies, plugins, on demand plugins, images, custom layouts, .... edit: and back button actually works as expected That's just a small subset of dozens of features I miss in other browsers. I don't use any of those extra apps (reader, mail, torrent, irc, ...) but they don't bother me either. And what I miss in Opera? Switching tabs by their position (alt/ctrl+number in many tabbed applications). That's it. What bothers me is that many sites do not work properly or are completely blocked in Opera. The former is due to low market share of Opera, the latter is because people are dicks (hi google). Just write that it's not supported and I won't call your support line, don't make me change my user agent all the time (luckily I can configure this per-site :P). edit: Totally forgot this but other comment pointed it out: Opera can handle a lot of tabs, no other browser I tried could do this: memory, performance and UI wise.
  - Tomis02 14y ago
    Not really. I've told countless people about how Opera really is the best browser, by far, and how people using Chrome and Firefox are stuck in the stone-age of Internet Explorer 6. I'm getting tired to repeat it. Screw it, I'll do a quick run. Depending on how good your computer is, Chrome will buckle (freeze your computer, in my case) sooner or later after you keep increasing the number of tabs, due to the one process per tab design flaw. That does not usually happen with Opera (unless you have some very demanding pages, which doesn't usually happen to me), it will keep going as long as you have the RAM to supply it. Right now opera:cpu shows me a round number of 115 tabs with 1.5 GB RAM usage, plus the plugin wrapper grabbing an additional 400 megs. Given that this particular computer has 12 GB of RAM I think it's very reasonable. Of course, I don't have a rocket computer at home but the performance is very good as well on a mediocre laptop. Now, what good does it do to have 115 tabs if you can't see them or switch between them at your wish? In Chrome you have one line of tabs that keep pushing against another, and at 115 tabs you could not select your tab properly, nevermind reading the tab title. In Opera I just configured my tab bar to wrap to multiple lines and aligned it vertically on the left side. I also have tab groups that work very nicely to minimize unnecessary clutter. I can also turn the tab bar off altogether and move between tabs with ctrl + tab or right mouse button + wheel, or hold ctrl + tab + mouse click. The possibilities for customization are so numerous I can't be bothered to describe them all. Opera is a true browser and it has all these features out of the box without getting in your way. You're a hacker? Where's your curiosity? Explore Opera's features (like mouse gestures, keyboard navigation, and so on) and see for yourself. And by the way, one last thing. The default option for Opera is to restore your tabs from your last browsing session, which was not the case for Chrome and Firefox last time I checked (and if that didn't change it's retarded, although I would understand the reasoning, they don't want to encourage you to keep your tabs open because the browser might buckle under the pressure of 10 open tabs). So really, feel free to keep open as many tabs as you like. You can also use ghostery (an extension) to block all these resource-consuming background scripts, just in case you have reached the limits of your hardware. I have enable 'plugins only on demand', so no Flash player will be loaded without my explicit consent. Again, this is out of the box. Also, content blocker. And so on and so forth.
    - PerryCox 14y ago
okamiueru 14y ago
For me, it is because it simply works straight out of the box, with all the features I use all the time. For me, it is several of the following reasons: * mouse gestures. * the speed dial. * the ease to create custom url-bar searches. * thumbnail images of tabs (to check a potentially nsfw link at work). * in page link or text search using ',' or '.' * the ability to search for links in the sidebar, and select all of them (e.g. to copy to a wget script, etc.) * the ease to customize the content block. ... and probably other stuff, which doesn't come to mind. Also, and this is important: I'm not trying to convince you here. Just pointing out that some will say the exact thing on the switch from Opera to Chrome, Firefox or Safari, with good reasons of their own. Whatever floats your boat. Also, mind you, I have firefox and chrome installed. Firefox I almost never use, and chrome is useful to see shiny WebGL stuff, which has a lot more support. Sometimes also to see new CSS-demos that are broken in Opera (mostly because of lazy developers who don't include the -o- extensions).
ernesth 14y ago
> Opera is much slower than Chrome, at least on my computer It is the contrary on my computer: chrome is painfully slow, whereas firefox is OK and opera is faster. I guess opera is not the best for everyone.
- jonpacker 14y ago
  I can back that up, it's the same case for me.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  same here, I would also be very unhappy without opera's instant backward/forward navigation.
  - Osiris 14y ago
    Awesome feature. I hate that other browsers ask you to resubmit a form when navigating back. Opera just shows you the cached page that it bad before. Combining that with the mouse flip gesture, browsing is a breeze. In Chrome you have to click BACK or use BACKSPACE (or a mouse with a dedicated nav button). In Opera, I click the right then the left mouse buttons and I'm back at the previous page. Alternate to go back forward.
tintin 14y ago
This might also be a font-issue. Most of the time websites embed different font-types like eot, ttf, woff and svg. But some types lack font-hinting. It depends on the order in the CSS file which supported font browsers will use.
rplnt 14y ago
The scrolling might be due to "smooth scroll" enabled: opera:config#UserPrefs|SmoothScrolling It is (was some time ago at least) disabled by default in Chrome, Firefox and even on linux version of Opera.
antihero 14y ago
Text rendering looks horrific here on Linux, too!
- colanderman 14y ago
  Looks beautiful here on Linux. Just make sure to pick good fonts (Sans, Sans Serif, and Sans Mono are solid choices) and that qtconfig-qt4 looks OK.
JohannL 14y ago
The bookmark management, hands down. Other browsers are for testing and sites that don't work well in Opera; while Opera is for organizing all of the things, especially with things like nicknames for bookmarks and created searches. It also has plenty of themes which actually change how much space stuff takes up... hmm, it's kinda like KDE versus Gnome, with Opera being KDE ^^ There may be apps for Gnome to make it more configurable, but that's just not the same...

ekianjo 14y ago

So now Opera also features extensions ?

grotos 14y ago
Extensions were introduced in 11 version almost two years ago. Now Opera is ditching widgets and unite to focus on extenions.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  I just read that on their main page. Are they getting a lot of support from developpers for extensions ?
  - Tomis02 14y ago
    Pretty much. What do you need?
- gpvos 14y ago
  This is a pity. I have a really nice and unobtrusive SVG Opera clock widget in the corner of my screen, which starts and runs completely separately from Opera. I understand that this is not possible anymore with extensions. I really hope I can keep it after upgrading.

halayli 14y ago

Anybody home?

alanh 14y ago

My connection sucks. Have they fixed this? http://jsfiddle.net/alanhogan/twCXt/ http://jsfiddle.net/alanhogan/twCXt/

rplnt 14y ago
Not sure what you mean now? I'm still on older Opera (11.61) and the checkbox is resized.
- alanh 14y ago
  But it does not look checked, right? One should be checked. Also, clicking it has no (visual) effect (though it will toggle the checked attribute in the DOM). It’s a truly terrible bug, and a strong argument that Opera should not use -webkit- properties like transform until it can actually handle them. I reported it a couple months ago and have not received any follow-up at all.
  - rplnt 14y ago
    It is checked and checking it works as well (11.64 at home now). But as other comment pointed out, it looks ugly. I tried FF 9 - same as Opera - works and is ugly. In Chrome 19 it does not work at all (i.e. the checkbox is small). So it got fixed. And I don't think they do follow-up unless they need you to reproduce the bug or something.
    - alanh 14y ago
      Are you on Windows? I eventually tried in Opera 12 and it does not seem to be fixed. Now I’m not sure why you say it doesn’t work in Chrome at all. Because at least on my platform (OS X), it does, and it looks beautiful and hi-res.
TobbenTM 14y ago
Checkbox does get resized, but looks awful

demetris 14y ago

Opera 12 is the first third-party web browser for Windows to offer an official 64-bit version. (Neither Firefox nor Chrome have official 64-bit versions for Windows. And I think Safari for Windows doesn’t have one either.) Does this translate to any substantial improvements in speed? Does anyone here know of any benchmarks?

gcp 14y ago
Very unlikely. 64-bit is mostly an advantage if you have to use a lot of memory or are doing processing on actual 64-bit integers. For the kind of software like Opera (and Firefox and Chrome), the additional registers in 64-bit mode help a little, but that tends to be offset by most pointers now being 64-bits and the L1/L2 caches hence being less effective.
- Egregore 14y ago
  On my computer most memory hungry apps are browsers. And by the way I use opera to open a lot of tabs and it handles those very well (compared with other browsers)
  - untog 14y ago
    Right, but 64-bit computing isn't a magic bullet that speeds everything up. As gcp stated, there are both benefits and drawbacks.
    - excuse-me 14y ago
      Although it does break that annoying 4,294,967,296 open tabs limit!
      - solox3 14y ago
        This is nowhere near realistic. Opera's performance degrades linearly after the first 10000 tabs.

Spittie 14y ago

I really like Opera. I've used it for months, but every time i just come back to Firefox. One big problem (for me) it's their release cycle. I know that many people hate the fast releases of Firefox and Chrome, but this way i get new features sooner than Opera. Another problem are addons. I'm an heavy Scriptish/Stylish user, and there aren't equivalents for those in Opera. I know that i can enable the userscript folder and copy scripts here, but I'm honestly too lazy to do it, and loading CSS through javascript is just not fast enough. Then there are the nitpicks. For example, on Firefox/Chrome "right click > search on google" open a new tab, on Opera it load Google in the current tab. Or, on Firefox/Chrome middle-clicking on the back button open the previous page in a new tab. On Opera this just doesn't work (at least, until Opera 11.64 - I haven't tried Opera 12 yet). And Opera is not opensource. While it's not a so big deal for me, i prefer to use opensource applications when i can. There are also features that i would love to see on Firefox. Tab Stacking is awesome, way better than Panorama. I really like also how Opera put the tab bar on the left, I find it better than Tree Style Tab. I'll try the new version later, but i doubt that the new features will be worth a switch for me.

Tomis02 14y ago
> For example, on Firefox/Chrome "right click > search on google" open a new tab, on Opera it load Google in the current tab. In Opera Ctrl+Click opens a new tab, Ctrl+Shift+Click opens a new tab in the background. It's not a new feature. Learn to play your class. ;)
- adamtulinius 14y ago
  Nice trick. I use Opera as well, and didn't know about this. However, i can't think of any other software where modifier keys makes a difference in context-menus, so i really wouldn't blame people for not knowing.
  - Tomis02 14y ago
    I'm not blaming people for now knowing, Opera has so many cool features it's hard to become fully aware of them. To be honest I don't remember how I found out about this one. In Opera (and other browsers) you can use modifier keys when clicking links, so it kind of makes sense to use this in context menus as well. Opera is always surprising. Did you know you have mouse gestures (such as 'close') in menus such as preferences? It blew my mind.

ricksta 14y ago

Kinda off topic, but Opera Mini and Opera Mobile for Android is vastly superior in terms of smoothness compare to all other available browsers. It is very noticeable especially if the page is heavy. A good test is to load this page http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers... on your Android in different browser and test the responsiveness.

Osiris 14y ago
I use Opera Mobile exclusively on Android. Pages load faster and zooming with fit text to screen works really well. My one frustration is that when launching a web page from another app it always opens a new tab so I end up with 10 tabs open and have to close them all every so often.
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
I've been using Opera Mobile for a while now. IMO it does tabs best for tablet browsing - however I've had to switch to Maxthon as Opera was just too unstable on my android device.

ilaksh 14y ago

Why don't they enable WebGL by default? I don't see why more people don't realize, WebGL is a prime Microsoft threat and the key to moving away from the MS Windows monopoly. That's why Microsoft has done so much work to try to scare people away from WebGL (by sponsoring 'security research' and creating FUD content on Wikipedia (seriously, look at the history of that article, the person who created the whole 'security' section on WebGL has an ip that originates right next to Microsoft headquarters, and the 'security research' is done by a Microsoft shop)). What the Opera, Webkit/Safari/Chrome, Mozilla teams should focus on is getting mouse capture and WebGL uniformly supported and turned on across browsers and one or two well-hyped and playable 3d first person games. Any industry player who has money and wants to oppose Microsoft should put money behind big WebGL game releases and hype for such. You get that working across browsers and push that and things like Google Docs, EditGrid, ethercalc, Zoho Creator, LibreOffice etc. and you will see WebGL games starting to take down PC games sales and Office alternatives hurting Windows/Office sales. Anyway, please give the people in charge of those programs and funds a link to this explanation if you know anyone like that.

rplnt 14y ago
Haven't tried it myself, but from what I've read on reddit (r/operabrowser) it was really buggy in beta builds.
- sgift 14y ago
  To give an example: On my home pc I have the snapshots of Opera running with hardware acceleration and WebGL enabled: No problems. A few minutes ago I've installed Opera 12 on my work pc and tried the same. Afterwards I couldn't start Opera anymore and had to reset the options in the config file (AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\operaprefs.ini if anyone needs to do the same; EnableWebGL and HardwareAcceleration are the keys). So: Yeah, it's still a bit buggy at the moment (probably hardware compability issues). I've already send my bug report, hope they fix it soon.
AshleysBrain 14y ago
This is a real shame, especially for HTML5 games. What's even worse is hardware acceleration on the 2D canvas appears to be disabled by default too, so HTML5 games in Opera 12 on a powerful desktop will run slower than an iPad or iPhone, because they have hardware acceleration. Looks like Opera 12 is a no-go for gaming.

ekianjo 14y ago

Still no ARM version available, by the way ? Or has this changed?

arkitaip 14y ago

A word of warning: this update erased the persistent storage data for all sites. So if you're using plugins or if a particular site is using persistent storage, this will cause issues.

zxzwa 14y ago

I'm a opera user and I was excited to see this news! So I've downloaded the 12th version and went on to test it in the shining page. But it says that my browser is not supported? http://www.shinydemos.com/touch-tracker/ http://www.shinydemos.com/touch-tracker/ -- Your browser doesn’t support all required features: Touch Events. Anyone has the same issue?

sgift 14y ago
Same issue here, but I have the desktop version and touch events sounds like something which will only work on a tablet/smartphone. Edit: I've checked the w3 page - it is indeed for touch-enabled devices. Did you test it on a tablet/smartphone?
Tomis02 14y ago
If I'm not mistaken, "touch events" is a feature for tablets or mobiles. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events It will probably not be included soon for the desktop version of Opera.
zxzwa 14y ago
You're all right. Damn me for this simple mistake!

dsirijus 14y ago

I extensively test my webs manually on basically all relevant browsers, up to few old versions, and on different OS' and devices. My conclusion is that Chrome on Windows 7 is by far the most 'snappy' and Firefox on any OS most 'dev friendly' (even though Chrome is coming along that way very nicely). That being said, Opera on mobile is very fine, but I still prefer using whatever stock browser is on particular device. Everything else is a little buggy. What I found lacking in any of the browsers is the developer friendliness on mobile devices. Anyone has any recommendations on that?

maggit 14y ago
Unfortunately, I cannot claim that I have tried it, but I know Opera supports remote debugging. You get to run Dragonfly on your desktop and debug whatever's running in Opera Mobile on your device. There seems to be documentation here: http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/documentation/remote/ http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/documentation/remote/

ishansharma 14y ago

Opera is still not getting some basic features right and that is costing them users. I remember asking for a feature in forums in days of Opera 11.00. The feature was something that every browser has: "Remembering contents of a text field." For example, when I enter my email address once in a website and then come back another day and write first letter of my email id, it is displayed in a dropdown. But Opera outright refused to even consider. Now, they lack a good full screen mode and drag and drop support in GMail, two real deal breakers for me. I tried Opera 12 for less than 12 min and sent it back to dark corners of my HD! Goodbye Opera 12.

Tomis02 14y ago
https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/autocomplete/ https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/autocomplete/
- ishansharma 14y ago
  Thanks for the link. Had forgotten about it!
hoppipolla 14y ago
FWIW we have the "wand" feature which will fill in, and submit, a form for you with previously used values (it's the key icon on the toolbar or ctrl+enter). I know this is not quite the same implementation that other browsers have.
- ishansharma 14y ago
  Yes, I have tried that. It is fine but I like the Chrome/FF implementation.
- sim0n 14y ago
  Your "wand" feature also adds a terrifically ugly yellow border to remembered inputs which developers have no way to prevent (like you can with WebKit by using outline: 0). I'm all for a constant UI to create a good UX but not when it can make a site look bad.

hmans 14y ago

Hello.

nosse 14y ago
My reaction exactly. Just installed it like always before and no fuss about anything.

rolleiflex 14y ago

I just wish they'd forgo the use of that cramped sans-serif header typeface. It looks like somebody just outlined and compressed it horizontally in Illustrator—awful.

philippK 14y ago

I'm disappointed that they still don't seem to support the file API in JS :/

siodine 14y ago

For me, the most important missing feature is tab lazy loading -- without that my usecase is impossible (hundreds of tabs).

rplnt 14y ago
I only use about hundred tabs (not hundreds) but I find Opera best in this regard - mostly because memory usage, stability (as opposed to chrome) and capability of the UI to handle that many tabs while being usable. The thing is, I don't turn the browser off. Maybe once a month to install Windows updates. There's an ugly workaround though - start Opera without internet connection and then reload tabs as needed.
- siodine 14y ago
  FF has lazy loading. Options->General->Don't load tabs until selected.

simonmales 14y ago

No one has mentioned that Opera 12 is the first GA browser (I believe) to support WebRTC. Basically you don't need to flash anymore to access devices such as webcams and microphones. I built a really simple site to see how this all works. It will fall back to flash if you don't have WebRTC support which includes Google Chrome Canary and now Opera 12. http://gotcaption.com/p/39 http://gotcaption.com/p/39

kevingadd 14y ago

From testing out my demos in Opera Next over the past few months, I've been really impressed with the quality of their JS runtime and the UI. Unfortunately, their hardware-accelerated canvas support doesn't really keep up and their WebGL is outright broken - it looks like they went so far as to disable both by default in 12, a disappointment to be sure - and they still have serious issues with HTML5 audio (to the point of causing hangs/crashes). Given that my only real exposure to Opera is from trying to ensure my stuff runs well in it, it's easy to get the impression that everything about Opera is broken. I wish they had a public bug tracker so it was easier to tell which things are known issues, which things have known workarounds, and which things I should file bugs about. In particular, the audio issues are a point of frustration: At present, if you test the latest builds of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer, Firefox is the only one that actually has low-latency, functioning support for <audio> that doesn't crash or hang. It's ridiculous. Chrome at least has a custom webkit-only API you can use to get working audio, but the rest of the browsers are just flat out broken. And in each browser's case, they've had multiple versions to fix basic issues (limits on how many sounds you can load in a single page context; broken events and APIs; absurdly long playback delays, etc). Oh, and Firefox still doesn't support the loop attribute. :|

kombine 14y ago
This is just an indicator that we need a proper native development environment. Devs who embrace new web technologies like WebGL, <audio> or <video> forget that those are just Javascript bindings to the technologies developed in C/C++. Can we please have native code instead, so developer controls the underlying system without having to rely on the wits of browser makers? Google Native Client is a step in the right direction.
- UnFleshedOne 14y ago
  What, wasn't the whole point of all web technologies to pile abstraction layers on top of abstraction layers so you never have to think about pointers ever again? :) Native platforms and architectures were replaced by browser platforms, trading power and control for deployment headaches. And now you want to write for multiple browsers, multiple OSes and multiple architectures all at the same time while still battling heaps of restrictions any decent OS/antivirus would impose on binary blobs that can be run by a browser directly? (disclaimer: I'm obviously biased towards native development :))

gcb 14y ago

The scroll/codex analogy is cute but doesn't hold up. Sure hope the page based css goes to the limbo.

kidproquo 14y ago

Anyone else having issues with iGoogle? I had it working in 11.6 by identifying as IE, since it would just show a blank page when identifying as Opera/Firefox. Now, with 12.0, identifying as Opera/Firefox still shows a blank page and identifying as IE just shows the widget headers and no feeds.

kakaroto_BR 14y ago

I cant use Opera in home because the lack of a xmarks addon to sync my bookmarks with my firefox at work, it's a pity.

rplnt 14y ago
Use Opera at work as well :)

samstokes 14y ago

One reason this is a big deal: Opera now supports CORS [1]. Until now, it was the only significant browser that didn't. (Even IE did, albeit - of course - in its own special way.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing - secure cross-domain AJAX without hacks like JSONP, so you can do POST requests, set headers, etc.