Opera 11 has just dropped with a ton of new features for the red-haired step-child of the browser market. “Oh, yeah! I forgot about Opera,” the nerd doth cry. “Isn’t that the one with the ads?” Well, Opera has come a long way in the last decade. Most of its evolution has come from the increased competition on the innovation front from Mozilla, Apple, and Google.
This latest version includes the ability to use extensions — a feature that is standard fare these days. Interestingly, Opera has taken a new route in regards to tab management. Taking a page out of Apple’s iOS playbook, you can now drop tabs on top of each other to create groups. This will make a substantial difference to the tab-happy browsers among us.
Sadly, Opera (like the folks at Mozilla) refuses to implement h.264, MP3, and AAC support into their browser. They’ve decided to go the route of Theora, WebM, and OGG. If you choose your browser based on political platforms, Opera is great for you. On the other hand, it sucks pretty hard if you like things like music and videos to work out of the box sans-plugins.
Give it a go to see if you like it, but I doubt anything in this update will win you over if you’re not already sold on the concept of Opera. Also, you’re apparently SOL with Opera if you’re an Xmarks user. I don’t think I can blame that part on Opera, though.
So, what do you think about the latest version of Opera? Does it tickle your fancy? Let me know why by dropping me a comment on this post.
