Opera 23 features startup improvements, hearts menu and PPAPI Plugin support

[Reefa]

The last couple of months have not really be that exciting for Opera browser users. While Opera Software released new versions of the browser regularly, most releases were rather uneventful in terms of features that the company added to the browser.

A lot of features that made the original Opera browser great -- original meaning Opera 12.x and previous -- are not available in the newer Chromium-based Opera browser.

The company released a new developer version of Opera today. With it come several new changes that many users will likely find useful.

Opera Developer is the cutting edge version of the browser comparable to Firefox Nightly and Google Chrome Canary.

Opera Developer 23.0.1508.0 contains a bunch of fixes and the following set of new features.

The feature that excites me the most is a new option to delay the loading of background tabs on Opera startup. You can enable the feature in Opera 23 in the following way:

1. Load the address opera://settings/ in the browser.
2. If you do not have advanced settings enabled scroll all the way down and check the "show advanced settings" preference on the page. If you have it enabled, skip the step.
3. Find the "On startup" group of preferences on the page near the top and check the "delay loading of background tabs" option here.

Side Tip: Firefox has had a similar option for some time. Type about:preferences in the browser's address bar, switch to the tabs tab, and select "don't load tabs until selected" for that. Chrome delays the loading by a bit but does not offer native options to not load tabs until selected.

If you look at the screenshot, you see the new heart symbol on the right of the browser's address bar. Opera Software has combined three options into one here. When you click on the heart, it displays the following options:

1. Add page to Speed Dial.
2. Add page to Stash.
3. Add page to bookmarks bar.

If you select either one of those, the heart turns red indicating that you have saved the url to the browser. When you click on it again, you get the option to add the page to the two locations you have not added it to yet, or to remove it from the selected location again.

Another change affects secure websites that load contents from insecure websites. This is known as mixed content and from Opera 23 on blocked by Opera by default. What is meant by this is that the content loaded from http is blocked while the content loaded from https sources is displayed fine.

Opera highlights that with a blocked content notice on the right of the address bar and a blocked symbol there as well. You can click on the icon for an explanation and option to unblock the content so that the site is displayed just fine.

The browser supports Pepper (PPAPI) plugins now and while none are loaded right now in the browser, it is likely that this is soon going to happen according to Opera Software.

Google Chrome's Adobe Flash plugin is likely the most prominent example of a PPAPI plugin right now. No word on whether Google Chrome PPAPI plugins will be picked up by Opera eventually.

Plugin related as well are better crash and freezing information. While I cannot say how those look like, Opera Software notes that users can now disable slow responding plugins or reload pages.

In other news, no sign yet of a Linux version. (via Deskmodder)

Source

Edited May 21, 2014 by F3dupsk1Nup

[QHu91_IT]

I see Opera 23 was bring back bookmark feature, but I don't know how to import bookmark from html file or from another browser :-?

[Rok]

Opera is no more a choice of my browser. I had used this browser for over a decade, but doing away with Bookmarks and notes was certainly their miscalculation. How can a company think to replace bookmarks with speed dial or like ?? Also, after version 12.11, the Opera has become so much resource hungry, the company failed to control it even after so many branch / releases in the past year. Good bye Opera 'forever'.

[Rok]

There is some issue with nsane servers for almost 1 hours, the anonymz.com link parser are not working and the double posting issue has once again appeared.

Note, my above post replicated twice, so wrote the issue here.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Rok

[Fallon]

The feature that excites me the most is a new option to delay the loading of background tabs on Opera startup.

Nice job, but that is not the feature which excites me most in Chromium-based Opera.

Pros:

- The 'Save Tabs as Speed Dial folder' is what I like best. It comes some way to save -in an instant- temporary trips to web places.

This could be improved further with saving to stash folder, improving session manager items.

- New Opera is more stable than browsers without webpages in separate processes. (If Firefox would only solve that!)

Cons:

Aside from the updates, they haven't figured out a comprehensive plan to make users happy again.

- Bookmarks do not have a 'sidebar display', and do not seem searchable as it used to be (stash is searchable).

- Speed Dial and Stash don't seem fully developed yet.

- Tabs cannot double up in rows.

- Jumping between 'Active Tab' and 'last Active Tab', and thus between pages of interest, (in Opera terminology: 'Click on Tab to minimize'), is not back from old opera Presto.

Verdict:

It is probably not all that hard to solve, as long as they stay the course, but they are not there yet.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Fallon

[Sos Gomes]

opera should do different so that it get back old users.they are only copying from google chrome & modyifying like other clones

[rach]

I'd say Opera is still premature since they ditched Presto, but using Blink is not bad move though.

off-topic

It's kinda sad when they decided to stop forums and mail service. It seems dragonfly has become history too

[Fallon]

It's kinda sad when they decided to stop forums and mail service. It seems dragonfly has become history too

It looks like it is still worthwhile to have an Opera account, because they say they will update synchronization to integrate with the next generation of browsers soon (version 14 and higher).

Edited July 10, 2014 by Fallon