Submitted by After a number of alpha and beta releases, Opera Software has announced the final release of Opera 10.50 for Windows, which they call “the world’s fastest browser for Windows”. Apart from performance improvements, Opera 10.50 comes packed with other new features, as well as improved integration with Windows 7.
User interface-wise, the Opera team has taken a few cues out of Google Chrome’s handbook, which can only be seen as a good thing (at least, when you’re a Chrome fanboy like myself). Tabs are now ‘on top’, the menu bar has been replaced by a single button, Aero Glass is fully supported, as are jump lists, Aero peek, and one-taskbar-entry-per-tab. This greatly improves the integration between Opera and Windows 7.
There’s more than just looks, though. Opera 10.50 comes with a rewritten JavaScript engine called Carakan, as well as a new graphics library called Vega. They should bring considerable performance improvements to the Opera browser. This new release also includes support for HTML5 and CSS3, further improving the browser’s standards support.
“Opera 10.50 is the fastest browser in almost all speed tests,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO at Opera, “But, more important than any speed test is the real-world speed during use. We designed Opera 10.50 to be easy to use, while making our unique features stand out, so you can get more out of the Web.”
You can download it from the Opera website, or, as they gleefully point out, through that browser ballot choice whatever thing in Windows. Linux and Mac versions are coming soon.
This was definitely a rush job, released prematurely to go on the browser ballot.
Stick with the default configuration and everything seems to work OK, but go into preferences and start changing things, using some of Opera’s more unusual features, and there are lots of problems. Some of the bugs were reported during alpha testing and still aren’t fixed.
Sure, most people don’t use features like MDI, but if options are there in the preferences then they shouldn’t be broken. I’m not talking about hacks, or things that you have to change in a config file. Even some pretty small and easily done configuration changes, like making the sidebar panel floating rather than docked to the edge, just don’t work properly and mess things up in 10.5.
To me one of the great things about Opera has always been how customisable it is. I couldn’t install Opera 10.5 over the top of my 10.10 installation even if I wanted to; the custom settings I’ve used for years would break it.
To me, with the way I browse, 10.5 feels like a massive downgrade from 10.10. Sure, it’s faster, but the UI problems make a much bigger difference to my browsing.
I’ve usually switched to the latest version as my main browser before the end of beta testing, but this time I’ll be sticking with 10.10 until a bug fixed version is released.
Yes, it is. That’s not a bad thing. No browser is perfect, especially after such a massive upgrade.
You offered one example, and fair enough, it is a definite issue. But I’ve mucked around with plenty of things in my UI, and I’ve not had any more problems than there’s been with any other version. I have no idea why you think installing over 10.10 would break it. Have you tried it? I mean with the final, not the pre-release versions?
I use Opera as an MDI browser. MDI is still pretty much unusable in 10.5, with a number of major problems in its implementation, so that would break it on its own. MDI is my single favourite Opera feature, I’d stick with 10.10 indefinitely just for this.
Then there’s the floating panel, which causes Opera 10.5 to spawn empty, toolbar free phantom windows when started – one for each Opera window that’s open. It also maximises itself whenever a new Opera window is opened.
Minimising tabs is broken too. Any pages that are minimised when a session is closed are inaccessible when the session is reopened. I use minimised pages a lot to keep the window uncluttered.
Those are the main deal breakers for me, but there are quite a few other annoyances. They’re features that are included in the preferences but simply don’t work, not minor glitches or issues of aesthetics.
Obviously it’ll depend on what features you use, but for me a lot of the reasons why I use Opera are no longer working in 10.5. I can’t think of a previous beta that had as many issues that affected my browsing, let alone a final.
Exactly how is this a good thing?
It isn’t. That’s the point, and why I consider it rushed and prematurely released.
10.5, in its current state, is OK for users who don’t tweak, but really annoying for those of us who value customisation and use some of Opera’s advanced features. That’s mainly experienced Opera users, but I’d have throught that some new users would hit the bugs too.
I like to dig through the preferences and experiment with different settings when I try a new application. Having some of those options cause strange problems or not work properly would put me off. But of course most users stick with the defaults and will be perfectly happy.
Despite Opera’s efforts, unfortunately, too many sites out there are already crippled by IE specifics, etc, so some of them (the sites) don’t work properly with Opera, which is 100% Web compliant, as well as Acid test 3 with 100% – it’s one of the reasons why I’m not using it a lot.
Actually, as Firefox and Chrome and getting more popularity, I barely encounter any sites that require IE to show/operate properly. I guess this trend is good for Opera as well.
“Tabs are now ‘on top'”
Tabs have always been ‘on top’ in Opera. Google Chrome just copied this concept.
Uhm, no they haven’t. They’ve been UNDER the title bar and UNDER the file menu.
‘on top’ means they integrated them into the title bar – JUST like how Chrome does it.
Not that it matters to me – I put them on the right in portrait mode.
Then Thom was still wrong, because if you enable Menu Bar, the Tab Bar will be below both Title Bar and Menu Bar. And this is the placement that makes the most sense, because there is nothing in between the Tab Bar and the tab content that doesn’t belong to the tab.
Chrome just copied ideas after ideas from Opera and implemented them poorly by adding their own “unique touch”, and created anomalies like this:
http://www.chromeplugins.org/google/chrome-talk/closing-last-tab-re…
Have you tried using the Windows panel as a replacement for a portrait tab bar?
Apart from visual tabs (a useless gimmick in my opinion) it offers the advantages of a vertical tab bar, plus a load of advantages of its own.
Being in a panel offers you quick ways of resizing, showing and hiding it. It contains every page in every open window, and there’s a quick find field to filter pages. You can select multiple tabs with ctrl/shift clicking, closing or manipulating multiple tabs together. Great if you browse with a lot of pages open.
Sounds almost like what I did, except I moved the Opera tab bar to the left side of the window. I think this utilizes my widescreen better, and I get an always on preview of other open tabs. I guess the best example of this setup is OmniWeb.
You can always disable the file menu (it’s disabled on windows by default).
“on top” simply means “on top”. Not “on top, integrated into the window’s title bar”. If you wanted Chrome’s tabs, say so. But the concept originated in opera
I have to agree with comment 1, a Windows-only release? That’s not very Opera like. This has been rushed to make the most of the browser ballot, and they’ll fix the bugs in post (since they now have auto-update).
I like Opera 10.5, it’s taking things in the right direction. Take a look at my [admittedly five-mins] mockup from the Opera 10 beta: http://www.osnews.com/img/21613/opera_modified_toolbar.png Looks familiar. They just had to give in in the end and admit that looks matter and I think it’s better for it.
Release version crashed two times already, both times when I was working in another program.
Beta 2 worked flawlessly.
Go figure.
UPD: ok, now it shows me “do you want to send report about the crash?” each time I close the browser. It would be funny if it wasn’t release.
Edited 2010-03-02 13:01 UTC
Fsck it, alphas weren’t so crashy.
Time to try Chrome, I guess.
Does this happen on linux x86_64 with flash plugin?
Nah, Windows XP x32.
Betas were quite ok with flash on Linux (though I had to do some ldd and symlinking to make damn flash 10 work on my distro).
Hi Vanger,
What distro are you using? Where does this distro install libflashplayer.so by default?
M
The “rush to market” of the Windows version, is a good thing to increase the awareness of Opera by the users at large – notably those in Europe in the context of the “browser ballot”.
I don’t recall the alpha and betas of 10.50 being advertised as “better integrated with Windows 7”. The release clearly is.
From the vast majority of the comments here, this appears to translate as “the features used by the common user will work smoothly withing Windows 7…..and those more esoteric may still have un-resolved bugs”.
Changes to the code base to enhance the experience under Windows 7 likely have lead to other bugs surfacing under other environments and for less commonly used features.
Opera appears to have taken a gamble for attracting more common users with the risk of more advanced users being turned-off by residual bugs and/or not fully implemented features. Hopefully, the odds will be turn in their favors.
“User interface-wise, the Opera team has taken a few cues out of Google Chrome’s handbook” – not only. I wonder where i have seen this all in a browser before… ah now i recall here http://www.softpedia.com/screenshots/Maxthon-3_2.png
Really? Opera 10.5 looks absolutely nothing like Maxthon…
Definitely Opera have unique feel but not and the combined menu in the upper left corner presented in the earliest alphas of Maxthon3
I can’t see it mentioned in the release notes, but <audio> appears to be working in my homegrown app.
I care, but I’m very disappointed in 10.50, and here’s why: it feels more bloated to me in some ways.
Before I start complaining, I first want to say you should download 10.50 first and try it out yourself. I’d hate to turn someone off to Opera, it’s a fantastic browser.
I should also say I’m a huge Opera browser fan and have been for years. Opera has been my primary browser since the 9.x days. Also, all of the complaints below, I’ve also shared on their forums and with the desktop team on many occasions after testing most of 10.50’s development snapshots (in a nicer, less complainy manner than I am now, of course… but I complain because I love Opera).
So here goes:
On my Pentium 4 3GHz, scrolling performance in 10.50 is nowhere near as smooth as in 10.10. It’s choppy and CPU intensive on most pages. With 10.10, CPU usage was low and scrolling was smooth as silk. Opera’s smooth scroll was one of the things I loved about Opera.
I’ll attribute this slowness to the new graphics engine they’re using in 10.50 (VEGA) but still: I’ve been a loyal Opera fan for a couple of years now because I’ve always felt that while perhaps JavaScript performance wasn’t on par with other browsers (it certainly is now, beating all other browsers I believe, including Chrome) it /felt/ faster. Everything felt so much faster and snappier than in other browsers. But 10.50 feels slower to me, if only because scrolling is choppy and CPU intensive (scrolling is a pretty big part of web browsing, I would say).
The other reason I’m very disappointed in 10.50 is the addressbar drop down style. I don’t know if this can be changed with a skin (I’ve asked on the forums and blog many times, no answer, and I’ve tried other skins but the dropdown always looks the same) but seriously, the new dropdown http://i.imgur.com/cTs3o.png is clunky and ugly compared to the old one http://i.imgur.com/Ik7Gg.png , which was cleaner and just as functional — the new one seems to waste a whole lotta space IMO.
The other thing about the new address bar is, say you start typing ‘go’ so you can press down and go to the first matching history entry, Google.com. Guess what? In 10.50, you have to press down /twice/, because the first entry is ALWAYS “Search the web for blah…”, not the first matching history entry — in my case google.com. How retarded is that? Very retarded. Again, perhaps there’s a way to change this, but I couldn’t see anything in opera:config, and no one from the Opera team responded to my (and other people’s) complaints about this (you may say they were too busy, but they responded to other complaints, so…)
I like lots of the improvements in 10.50, and I’m sure if you’ve got a newer system, scrolling performance is just fine. But I’m sticking with good ol’ 10.10 until:
1) Scrolling performance is again on par with 10.10’s on older CPUs like 3GHz Pentium 4’s.
2) There is a way to change the address bar drop down style and order back to how it was in 10.10.
If it weren’t for those two things I would switch to 10.50 in a heartbeat because Javascript performance is amazing and there are lots of other cool stuff/improvements they made.
My $0.02. I would still download it yourself and see how you like it.
Alright, back to work…
I prefer the old style address bar too. It was more space efficient, and once you’re used to accessing bookmarked/commonly visited sites with a certain number of key presses, any change to that is an irritation. Especially as the change doesn’t do anything to speed up searching.
Scrolling is ok for me, though I agree the new menu could use some polishing.
I read somewhere that Vega uses Direct2D or something along those lines. Could it be a faulty driver of yours making the system fall back to software acceleration?
I’m on a rather new computer (Core 2 Duo) with a dedicated graphics card.
The scrolling is definetely sluggish.
Actually, if google.com the first matching history entry, you can just press enter. No need to press down.
Faster? I have always used Opera for the snappiness. This thing is real sluggish in some UI operations.
After continously reporting bugs for over an hour, I give up!
Their UI changes was definetely made by someone who have NO CLUE about user interfaces. And I don’t mean the ridicolous tab-bar-title-bar integration (dude, where’s my bookmarks?) I mean that core UI concepts like CLICKING ON CONTROLS or DRAWING TEXT and KEYBOARD NAVIGATION of menus and RESIZING/MAXIMIZING windows don’t work correctly.
Did they even test this thing? Probably, but while looking away.
And I’ve never using anything else than Opera since 5.12.
Edited 2010-03-02 22:09 UTC
Let’s do this…
I hate the name ‘Opera’. It always reminds me of Oprah, which ain’t cool. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the name is shite from a marketing point of view.
From a bloke’s point of view, does ‘Opera’ scream formula one, or does it sound like toyota camery… or something… (I own a 1996 Saab so don’t poke fun.)
I have never felt that the browser was anything but a wannabe.
I like this release because it feels modern. I actually like the ‘Opera Standard’ appearance over the windows version. The drop down menu feels slightly like a start menu in an operating system. Hovering over the ‘Opera Disabled Link’ causes the icon to glow and a title bar snaps to the side explaining what the icon is… cool. There seems to be more space and things seem snappy etc…
I’m not comparing this to the previous releases as I hardly used them so I am just having a rant.
There are two things that Opera can scrap.
1) The gray tabs on the Opera Standard are just too gray – it makes it feel like mac os x.
2) Under Windows 7 it displays all of the open tabs as windows that pop up from the task bar. This is a little bit of overkill when hovering over the tabs themselves will give a small window display.
P.s. Opera feels a hell of a lot better than IE8 – I’ll give you that fa(u)n boys….
Even though it invented a lot of the features that people now take for granted in other browsers?
I think you’ll find that every browser with Windows 7 integration, such as Firefox and IE, will do the same thing. In Opera there’s an option to disable it.
This is definitely released quickly and I see Opera takes more memory for any given site when compared to IE 8.
But still I would rate more for this Opera! They have done a lot in short time frame.
Thanks
The beta prior to the last worked well with all of my sites… then the last beta broke some of them again (javascript issues)… and now they are releasing?
I will try the final release and see if it once again works with our company time/pay webware…