Opera 11 beta available, brings extensions and tab stacking

[Jos]

The first beta version of Opera 11 is out today, and as expected, it brings a very important yet long-overdue new feature to the mix: extensions support. The latest pre-release version of the browser uses a similar approach to that employed by other WebKit-powered browsers like Chrome and Safari, installing extensions as buttons to the right of the search bar that can auto-update. So far there are a little over 130 extensions in Opera’s extension gallery -- a small number compared to Firefox or even Chrome, but the feature has been available only in a limited alpha release for the past month.

Opera 11 also comes with another major feature called tab stacking that will come in handy to those who have large numbers of tabs open on a regular basis. Basically, instead of keeping tabs alongside each other, tab stacking enables you to group them by site or theme, similar to what Panorama does in Firefox 4. To use it, simply drag one tab on top of another, after which you’ll see a small arrow next the tab that will let you expand or contract groups as needed.

Mouse gestures have undergone an upgrade in Opera 11, with a new visual interface highlighting available mouse paths, the address field now hides unnecessary information and puts the security status of each page front and center, plug-ins like Flash can be set to load on-demand, and browsing speed gets a small boost. You can download the latest version of Opera 11 Beta for Mac OS X and Windows – Linux users will have to wait a little longer or get the alpha here.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/41256-opera-11-beta-available-brings-extensions-and-tab-stacking.html

 

[edison5do]

My favorite Brouser finally updated.. I´ll go back as soon as they lauch the final version.

 

[Guest]

i really like the idea of tab stacks. i find it a lot more useful than firefox's panorama feature. wish they had gone this route

 

[Guest]

Good Luck, Opera, i find out, that opera is the only browser without a major enterprise behind it!!

 

[lawfer]

Nah, at first I found Panorama sort of useless. But lately it has just been the very opposite.

When you have tons of tabs open working on something, or simply doing something important, and then you suddenly need to research for some completely unrelated, you feel the need to open a new tab. But it doesn't feel quite right since the work is so unrelated, that when you need to get back to it, you might get lost trying to find that tab that just happens to be in the midst of all other other previous work you had open; it gets tedious. But with Panorama I simply open (and name) another group and separate the research. It's so much easier to keep track of things -not to mention the dozens of tabs open- all without even opening another browser, or a new window.

But I actually love the approach Opera took, it looks more practical, though I'm sure it might get confusing when you open the amount of tabs I usually open. I'll try it out and see for myself.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Cool... I usually have tons of tabs open so this will be helpful! I have already suggested being able to double or even triple the height of the tab bar so you can have another row of tabs. But I see that didn't get far.... Perhaps tab stacking is a better idea anyway.

 

[Guest]

I just played around with Tab Stacking and it seems it might be useful for people who don't keep too many tabs. I'm more like lawfer, though, in that I often have heaps of tabs open. When I opened up enough tabs so that they started becoming small and mixed in a few groups, I found that it quickly became unweildy and hard to keep track of especially when opening groups and having every other tab move around to accomodate it.

 

[Arris]

Install, and trying it out now
<3 Opera.

 

[fpsgamerJR62]

I'm looking forward to the final release of Opera 11. I've been using Opera since version 5 and only use IE 8 to access Windows Update.

 

[Guest]

Maybe I'll switch back to Opera since they now have extension support. This was one of the main reasons I didn't stick with the browser. I've used most of the popular ones and I don't like any of them though I settled for Chrome. I hate Google; Opera 11, do it right!