New Opera developer 39
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l33t4opera last edited byThe first Opera developer 39.0.2226.0
The change log, and the announcement: Introducing power saving mode in Opera for computers.
"Today, we are sharing with you yet another feature to try out in the developer channel for Opera for computers.
We are the first major browser to include a dedicated power saving mode, designed to extend your laptop battery life by up to 50% compared with, for example, Google Chrome. Depending on your type of hardware, it can mean several hours more browsing before you need to recharge your laptop.
Fear of running out of battery
Running out of battery is one of the most frustrating things that can happen to you while browsing. Whether you are traveling, watching videos, or you have just left your charger behind, the icon showing that your battery is dying is something none of us really want to see when we have important things to do online.
Luckily, since people spend almost all their time in their web browser and relatively speaking little time in other desktop applications, this is something we can do something about. Some months ago, we asked our browser engine team to start tuning Opera in order to give people people more hours of browsing when on the move.
Getting started with power saving
Itâs easy to use the the new power saving mode. Once the laptopâs power cable is unplugged, the battery icon will appear next to the search and address field in the Opera browser. Click the battery icon to activate the power saving mode and flip on the switch.
The browser will also suggest you enable power saving mode when your laptop reaches 20% remaining battery capacity.
We made several under-the-hood optimizations to deliver these savings:
- Reduced activity in background tabs
- Waking CPU less often due to more optimal scheduling of JavaScript timers
- Automatically pausing unused plug-ins
- Reduced frame rate to 30 frames per second
- Tuning video-playback parameters and forcing usage of hardware accelerated video codecs
- Paused animations of browser themes
We believe these optimizations provide nice savings for you without compromising the speed and functionality you expect.
Battery savings for real-life browsing
Researching battery life is a typical âyour mileage may varyâ problem. However, we wanted to end up with a solution that would improve your daily laptop experience and not be something that works only in clean lab conditions.
We started by studying how our laptop users interact with the browser, which inspired us to create benchmarks that resemble real-life usage. Unlike speed benchmarks, there is quite a lot idle time and background activity. And, surprisingly, you can save a lot of energy from optimizing those states. Modern processors do an amazing job in saving power by taking tiny naps multiple times per second, and what our development team focused on was writing code that would wake them up as infrequently as possible.
Once we developed the set of optimizations included in this release, we began testing them in an as isolated way as possible using a telemetry framework. It is a great tool that can tell you how many miliwatthours your browser used in the test scenario. But, how could we convert electrical units into something more meaningful in our daily life â saved time?
So, we started doing full battery discharge tests on devices that we use daily. After a day or two, we ended up with lots of seemingly random data. Display backlight level, distance to Wi-Fi access point, antivirus software, system updates, other applications and even a forgotten driver for a motorcycle helmet headset â they can all significantly contribute to power usage. It took us quite some time to normalize our test environments, but still the challenge was to be able to repeat the tests multiple times in order to get statistically meaningful results. Draining battery fully takes time, recharging takes time as well. Therefore, we have been working on estimating battery lifetime from shorter tests that we can do now with a pretty high degree of confidence. The only tedious thing left was to actually plug in and plug out the charger, but, hey, show me an engineer who wouldnât love to hack with some home automation systems?
Up to 50% more time browsing
The results from testing the power saving feature in this developer release show very promising results. In our test, designed to reflect the way people use browsers in real life, the latest Opera developer version was able to run 50% longer than browsers like Google Chrome on a laptop running Windows 10, 64-bit.
The power saving mode results used in this posts were actually done on a Lenovo X250, Core i7-5600U, 16GB RAM and Dell XPS 13, 16GB RAM running on Windows 10, 64-bit, high-performance power mode. We used Selenium WebDriver loading 11 popular websites including YouTube. Each page was opened in separate tab, without closing previous ones, and was scrolled 5 times, then left alone for a minute. The test was repeated until the laptop ran out of battery completely. While testing the battery life with the power saving mode enabled, the ad blocker was on, too.
Changes to browser VPN
In addition to the power saving mode, we have worked on improving the browser VPN experience. After the initial developer release of the integrated VPN feature in our Opera browser, we got tons of positive feedback and suggestions from you. One of the most common requests we heard was to to make it easier to browse with some websites in VPN mode, while at the same time keep browsing other websites with VPN turned OFF . We also realized many people really wanted to use our browser VPN in combination with private browsing. So, we have changed the VPN feature to be part of our private browsing mode.
We believe that with this change, our browser VPN features provides even better privacy for users. Moreover, we wanted to make it easier to discover for new and existing users, therefore the VPN badge is always visible in the private window.
Additionally, in the first release for VPN, there was an issue where your original IP could be found by the webpage through establishing an WebRTC connection. We have resolved this by deactivating WebRTC when in VPN mode.
Thank you for all the feedback!
Your input is very important for us to release new features as soon as possible. Please continue your great work!"
\m/ :cheers: -
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blkelly1975 last edited by
Great job on integrating VPN with Private mode! My initial response to seeing the VPN option was -This is great! Until I realized it was not usable in Private mode. Then, Opera miraculously incorporates the two! Awesome!
Now, only if I could find out why my Opera browser VPN mode is stuck in a "Connecting" loop while I am at work. Is it possible that my company uses a VPN already and it will not connect? Possibly a port blocked? Hmmm.....
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mseitz last edited by
Power saving is great!
Unfortunately, this release crashes the Shockwave Flash plug-in. Is this the cheaters way to save power? ;-D -
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suppliedrelic last edited by
I'm glad that Opera VPN has been added to Private mode but why was it necessary to remove it from normal browsing? Not all users are going to want to switch to private browsing just to make use of the VPN.
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sw2wolf last edited by
It is not hard to support XP, isnot it ? In fact, we donot upgrade many working XP boxes primarily for hardware limitations.
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leard65 last edited by
Good day!, appeared in the settings function adding filters for blocking ads, but what filters can be added and where they take is not clear. Help with this problem, because with the built-in blocker filters cannot cope with the task.
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hasi68 last edited by
Hello! Is it possible to start Opera Developer directly into a private Window? Is there any command line switch for this?
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leard65 last edited by
Connected VPN through private and very much surprised, as all the checks he failed; 1) ip leak through Flash Player 2)same ip and leak through WebRTC. And it is very bad, so run this feature on your browser is not worth it, because she's on anything does not protect. A useless function. I unplug it.
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sampria last edited by
Please allow VPN with normal browsing and please make it an option to make all connections VPN by default. I used to just start up Opera and browse safely. Now I have to do several clicks to get VPN working everytime it starts. I never use private browsing as my houshold is not my worry but my ISP spying is, so I use the history as shortcuts. This feature is now un usable for me so will have to switch back to my old borowser
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l33t4opera last edited by
New build - Opera developer 39.0.2234.0
The change log, and the announcement: Introducing a smarter, more personal news feed in Opera.
"Today, we want to show you another feature to try out in the developer channel for Opera for computers. Itâs a personal news feed, one-stop news tailored just for you â from all over the world, your country, or your favorite news source, just as you like.
People really need new tools for news
Reading news is one of the things the web is great for. The number of people looking for online news, has been constantly growing during last years. There is an almost endless amount of news out there, and you only need to find a link to discover new, exciting parts of the web.
Our research in this area found that, while many people love reading news on the web, the amount of news stories could be overwhelming to them. They were truly suffering from information overload. The more news sources people found, the less they felt they were capable of keeping up with the news.
We found out that you are looking for a solution, that:
- Gathers your favorite sources, and only your favorite sources, in one place.
- Is clean, minimalistic and readable.- Unlike on social networks, allows you to be in charge of what you see in you feed (If thereâs anything, youâd like to remove from there, you should be able to do it easily).
- Displays news on a structured timeline, so itâs easy to go back to stories published earlier.
- Enables mixing sources from different regions, as many of you read websites in two or even more languages.
- Is smart enough to automatically include publications you visit frequently.
Thatâs quite a few expectations, right? But, we found these insights very helpful and began building a news feed solution that matches up to our usersâ needs. We started with re-doing what we had â the news feature, previously called Discover. We decided to power it up, adding more personalization, convenient reading and smarter options.
How it works
Today, we can show you the first preview of the personalized news feed, which gives you a quick, organized, clean way of following the freshest stories from the web. To start using it, go to the start page and click the newspaper icon on the left. Opera will show you the suggested list of sources based on your location and your browser history. Your browser history data will be kept locally, so it will not leave your computer (any private browsing is not included, since that browser history is not recorded).
Simply tick the suggested sources that you want to follow in your personal news feed, and untick ones you donât want to be included. Click the âAdd moreâ button to add more sources from several categories such as sports, technology or food. You can also mix sources from various countries.
Your personal news feed is structured on a timeline. At the top, you will find the freshest stories, while news published earlier today and yesterday are listed below. You can easily change the way sources are displayed by clicking the icon on the top. Whenever you want to add new sources, just go to the side panel and click âAdd sourcesâ.
Share your feedback
As you can see, our personal news feed is much more than just a new incarnation of the previous news feature. It gives you many more personalization options and gathers content for you in a smarter way. Itâs a first step towards a better, online news-reading experience.
Please help us improve this feature by sharing your feedback. We are very interested in what you think about this feature.
Browser VPN â the next steps
Thank you very much for your feedback, following the latest browser VPN release in the Developer version. We hear it, and we value it a lot.
We see three main patterns people would like to use browser VPN for: the full browser level VPN, a separate window (or a tab) and private window. That reflects situations, when we are on a public WiFi, and we want to protect everything we browse online. Also when you want to access only a few different websites, while keeping your other tabs at full browsing speed. Last but not least, when you want to enhance your external privacy, not only clear local traces (history and cookies). So we are going to polish the first and third use cases a little bit more to provide rock solid quality. However, we need to admit that current Blink implementation has too many assumptions about how regular window and private window work, so the second scenario will require additional effort.
Please keep providing us your feedback, so we can improve our product."
\m/ :cheers: -
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rstacey last edited by
Not working how?
Open new private window, VPN shows blue and enabled.
Try to go to any site, shows "Sending request to <url>..."
Eventually times out. Same for all four VPN Virtual locations.
Worked perfectly prior to this build.
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horadrim4o last edited by
everyone is describing the same behaviour - simply can't open ANY page when VPN is on. before this build was working perfectly fine.
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l33t4opera last edited by
New build - Opera developer 39.0.2245.0
The change log, and the announcement.
"In the latest version of Opera 39 developer, weâre bringing you new functionality in the personal news feed, and a much wanted global preference for browser VPN.
Personal news
Weâve continued our work on personal news, one-stop news tailored just for you. There are various improvements and tweaks waiting for you to try out, including updated layout, the option to remove suggested sites and a better way to add and remove sources.
This update also introduces a new top 50 stories feature. This gives you top picks for a selected country and is a nice way to look for inspirations or interesting articles to read. This top 50 content is separated from your personal feed, but you can easily add sources you like from it to your personal feed.
Operaâs service, which powers the personal news feed, checks over 10,000 news sources to find trending and interesting articles from different categories and countries. Various aspects are taken into account before article or piece of news gets on the list, such as popularity among users, including hot topics (e.g., important sport events), freshness and website popularity. We also try hard to balance different articles and source, so single news or site will not dominate the whole list. You can expect mostly news, sports and entertainment along with interesting stories from other categories.
Weâre still developing the feature so keep an eye on following updates. Also keep the comments coming they are very helpful for us.
Custom ad-blocking rules
Since we introduced native ad blocker, we have got a lot of requests to have a possibility to add custom lists. First we introduced an option to load them from a local file, today we add functionality to load it from any URL. Just make sure you have advanced settings turned on, then in the âCustom block listsâŚâ dialog you can add any address, which contains ad-blocking rules in EasyList format.
Usually, such files contain modification date as well as the update frequency. These values determine how often the list will be automatically updated. If the list definition says that the list expires in 4 days, that means it will be updated every 4 days starting from the last modification date mentioned in the document.
Browser VPN back as browser preference
Thank you very much for the feedback about how youâve been using VPN. We also promised, that we are going to offer both functionalities: a full browser VPN and a separate one that works within a private window only. This release contains them both, and we would appreciate your feedback on this improvement, too!
Other info
In the previous release comments, you have reported general slowness when browsing with the ad-blocking feature on. This has been fixed â please check out the newest version and let us know if everything is OK for you.
Chromium has been updated to 52.0.2739.0.
Known issues:
â VPN badge is always visible. It is a bug, and we are going to fix it, so you will be able to tune it in preferences.
â Source labels in personal news are sometimes misplaced.
â Top 50 has hiccups and doesnât show anything in some countries.
â Top 50 shows news according to language selected in the catalog.
â A number of strings is not localized."
\m/ :cheers:
