Distributed Life

Today Opera released the Opera version 11.10 Beta version, codenamed Barracuda. I installed it and gave it a first look. Here I present you the new stuff that I recognized.

Redesigned Speedial

This looks as the biggest (and almost the only) change done regarding the user interface.

Although it is an interesting redesign that gives the ability to have as many speedial shortcuts as wanted, I used to use a 3×3 speedial which now seems to fit a little worse in my screen.
An interesting ability is the one of changing the shortcuts’ positions by drag and drop.

Closed-Tabs Can Flashing

Whenever you close a tab in Opera it goes in the closed tabs can on the upper-right. You can use the can in order to reopen a closed tab, ability which is very very useful! Now, the can is flashing whenever a new tab is added (aka closed).

Visual “help”

I noticed that some visual aids for the “novice” users were added, in order to help them get accustomed with some more advanced capabilities of the browser. For example, when you first install the browser and type something in the address bar, you get a message that informs you that you can perform a search straight from the address bar.

Javascript Performance

Before installing Opera 11.10 Beta, I ran the SunSpider 0.91 Javascript benchmark (Opera 11.01 – Ubuntu). The total result I got was 726.7ms +/- 15.5%. With Opera 11.10, under the same conditions (same tabs open, no use while benchmarking, and same OS load) I got a total result of 1003.6ms +/- 0.5%. Probably it is because of some ongoing work being done on the Javascript engine.

Overall

I did not have the time to test the other “big” feature of Barracuda (the ability to install missing plugin, such as Adobe flash, easier), but, in my point of view, what I saw is not enough to explain a new release. I hope the final 11.10 release will have more surprises for Opera Browser’s users.