Opera 11.10 Review: Because Internet is Serious Business

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Opera is a very capable and innovative browser. It surprises me how it is not one of the top 3 browsers. On April 12 Opera Software released a new version of their desktop browser, Opera 11.10. Let’s have a look at why it can be your default browser from now onwards!

The basic stuff; yes it’s fast, it has a clear non-clutter interface, it complies with web standards (better than Firefox 4 at Acid3 Test), it renders pages correctly, supports extensions & add-ons, session saving.

It’s secure and informs you of the state of the webpage (Web, Secure, Trusted), has Private Browsing, Geo-location support & personalization etc. etc.

Now we’ll discuss some of the features that make it unique. First on the list is Tab Stacking.

Tab Stacking:

Tab stacking allows you to combine similar tabs into a group on a single tab; from that one place you can than access all the others. Here’s an example:

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And you can add as many tabs to one ‘stack’ as you can open, neat and handy, all you have to do is drag a tab and drop it on the other one; select, drag, drop.

Second on the list are mouse gestures.

Mouse Gestures

Simple mouse gestures were part of Opera but from version 11, visual mouse gestures have been added. These allow you to perform basic browsing tasks with the movement of your mouse. Keep pressing the right mouse button for about 2 seconds and the visual menu will appear, now your mouse movement in any direction will decide what operation is performed.

In this case moving the mouse to the right will take you to the next page of the search results.

Tips:

  • Right Mouse Click + A single press of Left Mouse Button is ‘Back’.
  • Left Mouse Click + A single press of Right Mouse Button is ‘Forward’.
  • Works with Google Search Results, Youtube comments etc. also you can create and edit your own gestures.

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Opera Link:

Allows you to synchronize your Bookmarks, typed history, Speed Dial information, notes, search engines & content blocker rules across different systems.

For example I use it to share bookmarks & related info across my cell phone (Opera mini), office & home system (also between Ubuntu & Win 7 on home PC). You can find it on lower left corner of the browser window.

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Opera Turbo

Opera Turbo allows you to browse faster on slow connections. When you are on Turbo, Opera performs compression to reduce the amount of data required to view the page. In fact your queries are handled by an Opera Turbo server to provide you with an efficient service that’s right to your needs.

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Built-in email client:

Want offline access to all your emails? Send/receive emails whenever electricity/internet connectivity resumes? Want all you inboxes in one place? You can have all this without even leaving the browser because Opera has a built-in email client.

Keep your emails on your PC, send/receive at a specific time and managing mailing-lists & contacts are main features of this email client. It’s pretty basic but it works & fulfills the needs of many out there who may not need a calendar & task scheduler.

And you don’t have to install any other software. When you click any of the folders they open in a new Tab, currently it has just pushed the Gmail contents to one side because it’s the preview pan. This is called simplified communication.

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Better Speed Dial

Opera 11.10 has an updated speed dial. Now you can add as many ‘dials’ (favorite sites) as you want and they adjust to your screen resolution. No more 3×3 grid. The second addition is that besides a screenshot of the page it now shows the Logo (if the site has been optimized for the Dial) or the name of the site. The one below is a screenshot of the Speed Dial after a theme was installed.

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Opera has shortcuts to use for the installed search engines. For example writing ‘w <search term>’ will search the phrase using Wikipedia, with search suggestions.

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More built-in search engines:

  • ‘b <search term>’ to search with Bing.
  • ‘e <search term>’ to search with Ebay.
  • ‘y <search term>’ to search with Yahoo.
  • ‘z <search term>’ to search with Amazon.
  • ‘f <search term>’ to search for that term in the current page.

Some other little perks:

A: Helps you reload the current page at specific intervals, helpful for constantly updated news sites, blogs etc. You can even use it to stop auto-loading pages.

B: Let’s suppose a page is designed for a specific browser (mostly IE, e.g. Lancaster University student page) you don’t need to copy and paste the link, just go to ‘open with’ and select one of the installed browsers. It can also help developers who routinely test their pages for compatibility.

C: One of my much loved features, built-in Ad/Content Blocker. Select this and all the images/Ad’s stand out while the text blurs. Select those Ads/images you don’t want and click done on the upper right corner. You’re done.

D: From here you can decide on different preferences related to the current site. For example, enabling/disabling pop-up’s, accepting cookies, loading images/sounds, enabling/disabling frames/scripts etc.

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And there are lots of other shortcuts that make browsing easier & interesting like ‘Paste & Go’, when pasting a link into the taskbar or a term in the search bar select paste & go instead of paste. It’s like Paste + Enter , in one step. And it has built-in torrent download support & built-in IRC support and the list goes on & on & on…

To explore more please go to: http://www.opera.com/browser/features/

Download Link: http://www.opera.com/browser/download/

Happy browsing :-)


  • It is not one of the top 3 browsers because of many of the 1 reasons and that is Add-ons.

  • It has add-ons but opera calls them “extensions”. Opera introduced many features which other browsers followed, e.g. tabs and speed dials. Reason of non popularity could be lack of advertising. Opera has more features than any other browser in the market, like password protected password manager, notes, voice control, session saving, and rest are mentioned in the article. I hv opened 73 webpages in tabs simultaneously in opera, on a 11 years old 566MHz (0.566GHz) pIII celeron pc, without any lag. Can any other browser do that?

    • i opened 400 tabs in 5 windows on chrome,does that prove anything,i dont think so :)

      Memory consumption should be measured on a more “real life scenario ” nobody works with 70 tabs :D or he doesnt know how to close them :D

      • In places where people do not have WAPDA power outages (like the West), it is normal for people to leave computers on all the time. It’s very easy to build up to 20 or 30 tabs that way over the course of a few weeks.

        I used to do that too, back when there were very few power outages near my office in Lahore (2005-2006).

  • Must have for people having less than 512kbps connection using the turbo mode, otherwise Chrome is the way to go as its not just a browser its almost an cloud OS.

  • It proves that opera is not a resource hog, it EATS less memory than any OTHER browser. If u opened 400 tabs then u cud open 4,000 tabs in opera on same pc.

    East or west, Opera is best. discussion ends here.

    • Memory usage is not linear like that. Some tabs use more resources, some tabs a lot less. for example, for me, propakistani or techcrunch pages are VERY HEAVY compared to many other sites, even though I use adblock on chrome.

  • Give its comparison with Chrome and Firefox, especially the startup speed, crashes, handling flash stuff etc etc

    • Hi Omer.
      This post was meant to introduce the people to Opera browser and its features. Will definitely look into your suggestions for future reviews/comparisons. Thanks!

  • opera is the best browser out there .. its my default browser for 8+ years now ..


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