New Opera beta 38
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l33t4opera last edited byThe first Opera beta 38.0.2220.12**, and 32-bit builds for Linux
The change log, and the announcement.
"At Opera, we’re moving forward full steam ahead, and, today, we’re ready to share the beta version of Opera 38 with you. This means this release is feature complete and being prepared for launch in our stable channel.
Let’s take a look at the new features in Opera 38 beta.
Power saving mode
Running out of battery is one of the most frustrating things that can happen to you while browsing. The power saving mode in Opera 38 beta appears as a button in the user’s interface when your laptop is running in battery mode, providing you with up to 50% (or ~49% in our previous test against Chrome) longer browsing. We achieve these power savings by:
- 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
In addition, when the ad blocker is enabled, it enables even more battery savings.
Since the initial release in the developer stream, some people have been asking for more detailed test results. A few also asked whether or not the battery-saving gain is mostly from the ad blocker feature. To answer, here’s a breakdown for the same test as we used for the developer release:
We’re also in process of building a new battery test lab, and we have some early results from this work. We have described the full methodology in detail in the end of this blog post.
Remember that results will vary a bit based on your device, test scenario, operating system, etc. But, we will expand on our test lab and publish more results from it as we proceed with development of this feature.
Ad blocker – add your own lists
Our ad blocker, introduced in Opera 38 developer, now has support so you can add your own block lists. To add your own custom list file, head to Settings and click the “Custom Block Lists” button in the ad-blocking section (note that “Show advanced settings” from the “Browser” panel must be enabled to see the button).
The lists have to be in EasyList-style format, so you can use existing lists such as the EasyList affiliate lists, to ensure you can block everything you want. As a reminder, the Opera browser itself already provides a block list based on the publicly available EasyList, and EasyPrivacy.
Speed Dial improvements
Have you ever removed a website from your Speed Dial accidentally? Now, you won’t have to worry. You’ll now notice three little dots on hover in place of where the delete button used to be. The new button provides quick access to the features previously only available in the context menu, like opening in private tab, or removing a website from your Speed Dial.
Add your own photo as theme
A while back, we introduced the “Create your theme” option in the theme manager. It appears, though, that the option has not been visible enough for you. Now, you can just go to the Customize start page and click the ‘+’ button; then, use your own photos to create a theme.
Extension button visible in the Speed Dial side panel
All extension users will have the extension manager always at hand. The extension icon is visible on side panel on the left side of the Speed Dial page.
Browser upgrade notification
It’s important to keep your browser up to date with the latest and greatest with regards to performance, features and last, but not least, security. Starting with Opera 38 beta, Opera will nudge you when it’s ready to be restarted to update to the newest version:
- The O-menu changes its graphics (becomes red) and “Restart Opera to update to version….” appears on the menu list (Windows).
- A notification dialog with a “Reload” button appears in the upper-right corner of the screen (OS X).
Change in version support for OSX
Starting from this version, we’re updating our requirements on Mac. Now, we’re supporting OS X 10.9 and higher.
Power saving mode – Methodology description in our battery test lab
We used a Dell Inspiron 7559, 15,6″, i7-6700HQ, 16GB, 256GB SSD, Win10, GTX960M using the Balanced power profile. The backlight was set to 100% all the time, Wi-Fi was running in 802.11n mode with RSSI -53 dBm. There was no other software running in the foreground; indexing and background services were stopped.
Laptops were placed on a wooden surface for similar heat exchange.
The browser was automated using WinAPI event injection. For battery status information, IOCTL_BATTERY_QUERY_STATUS was used (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa372699(v=vs.85).aspx).
Battery remaining capacity was being measured once a minute.
In each configuration, the test was run for two hours.
Battery time was estimated in following way:
The tests were done in four steps:
Step 1: Configure the system.
Charge the battery to 100%.
Step 2: Load chicagotribune.com, elitedaily.com, faz.net, latimes.com, mashable.com, mlive.com, nj.com, nydailynews.com and youtube.com/watch?v=tnsQ8DjD6YE – in separate tabs.
Step 3: In a loop, scrolling activity is simulated in one of the tabs:
- For 30 seconds, pressing of Arrow Down was simulated every 100ms
- 5 seconds of idle time
- For 30 seconds, pressing of Arrow Up was simulated every 100ms
- 15 seconds of idle time
Step 4: Each minute, the current battery capacity is recorded.
Our outcome:
The raw results from the test run is available here: battery_test_data_o38.
Beyond Opera 38 – Browser VPN next steps
Thank you very much for your feedback following our latest browser VPN release in the developer channel. We’ve heard from a lot of you and value what you have shared. In response to it, we have decided to work on it more in the developer channel before we schedule it for the stable release. Accordingly, we are not going to release VPN in the beta channel, yet. More updates are coming to the developer stream soon."
\m/ :cheers: -
A Former User last edited by
I'm on beta 38.0.2220.12 and now the taskbar doesn't go away while opera in full screen mode. Nothing critical, but distracts when watching youtube in full screen )
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treego last edited by
Is there a way to make speed dial tiles show only website thumbnail images OR the colored-(name of website)-tiles? I got some speed dial tiles showing website thumbnail images and others showing colored-(name of website)-tiles. I'd like consistency, I guess.
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
When you bookmark a site, you can choose an image to go with the bookmark. If the bookmark is also a speed dial, that image is used as the speed dial. So go to the page, click on the heart icon in the address bar, and change the image. (Yes, I agree - if you have several folders of several bookmarks each that will be cumbersome.)
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kludikovsky last edited by
in the old Opera speed-dial had the option for reload of the page.
This was a very nice feature, as to get an update on pages and get a hint whenever one opend a new tab.
E.g. pages for wheather, alarms, news, stock quotes, etc.
I don't need to be alarmed and interupted for every event, but recognise a change and can follow up.is there any intent to reintroduce this usefull functionality?
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A Former User last edited by
I'm on beta 38.0.2220.12 and now the taskbar doesn't go away while opera in full screen mode. Nothing critical, but distracts when watching youtube in full screen )
What OS? I can't reproduce it on Windows 10.
Sorry, there was no notification that I got a reply.
win 7 64. Found a workaround though – open youtube video in full screen mode, click on the taskbar, then on the video. Works till the next launch of opera. Weird. -
l33t4opera last edited by
New update - Opera beta 38.0.2220.25, the change log, and the announcement
Today’s update, is our candidate for stable release, so you should expect, that it delivers a stable quality, as well as some fixes. Please check it out, and let us know if you encounter any issues!
The most important improvements, are as follows:
Downloading of executable files, will now be more secure – "Save As" dialog, will be displayed by default.
DNA-54097 Power saver mode gets disabled, when a new browser window is opened: this is now enabled all the time, even when opening a new window or private window.
DNA-54378 Unable to remove some exception entries: this is now fixed, and you shouldn’t have any problems with removing with removing ad blocker exceptions.
\m/ :cheers: -
l33t4opera last edited by
The Opera 38.0.2220.29 has been promoted to the stable channel
The change log, and the announcement: "Opera 38 goes final with new battery saver".
"The web browser is by far the most-used application on the computer. Your hours of listening to music, watching videos, or simply having many tabs open simultaneously results in rapid battery drain that reduces a laptop’s performance.
After testing in developer and beta versions, our new battery saver is today ready in the stable version of Opera for computers.
When first released in the developer version, this feature generated a lot of positive feedback from you and brought us many new users. We really appreciate that, as the developer channel really helps us test some completely new features and improve our browser.
Hats off, @opera, this makes a lot of sense! https://t.co/pA0MMsYHRY
— Juraj Kováč (@JurajKovac) May 12, 2016
Chromium/Blink with built in VPN, Ad Blocking and Battery Saver. Somehow @opera became the best desktop web browser without anyone noticing.
— Jonathan Haslett (@jonathanhaslett) June 3, 2016
Please help us spread the word about Opera’s new battery saver!
How good is the power saver?
Last month, we made several tests to find out how the battery saver performs. In some tests, the feature increased the battery life by as much as 50% comparing to other browsers, such as Google Chrome.
After the initial release in the developer stream, some of you have been asking for more detailed test results. Together with the beta release, we presented a breakdown for the the initial tests as used for the developer release.
However we know that video works much better than the thousands of words. That’s why we shot a video showing the full test. Enjoy watching this time-lapse:
Beat the heat during summer
There is one more thing we realized recently. If something consumes more energy, it usually gets warmer – basic physics. That’s why your laptop gets overheated during your heavy browsing sessions. This heats up your lap, sets off a loud and annoying fan, and can cause problems such as random blue screens or even data loss.
We’ve made tests comparing the temperature of bottoms of two laptops. One was running Opera with battery saver enabled and the other one Opera with the mode disabled. Test results with the new battery saver enabled showed that Opera can keep laptops over 3 degrees °C cooler. It’s actually pretty nice difference, especially when you think about bringing your laptop along for summer fun and letting it bake your lap (which is not good for your health BTW).
Improvements under the hood
Wonder how we achieved this cool down and power savings? With several under-the-hood optimizations:
- Reducing activity in background tabs
- Waking CPU less often due to optimal scheduling of JavaScript timers
- Automatically pausing unused plug-ins
- Reducing frame rate to 30 frames per second
- Tuning video-playback parameters and forcing usage of hardware accelerated video codecs
- Pausing animations of browser themes
- Including ad blocker – when enabled, it enables even more battery savings
How to enable battery savings
Using the new power saver mode is easy. Once the laptop’s 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 saver mode and flip on the switch. The browser will also detect when the laptop’s battery is running low and will suggest enabling power saver mode.
Other new things in Opera 38
Ad blocker – add your own lists
You can add your own block lists. To add your own custom list file, head to Settings and click the “Custom Block Lists” button in the ad-blocking section (note that “Show advanced settings” from the “Browser” panel must be enabled to see the button).
Speed Dial improvements
Now, you don’t need to worry that you removed a website from your Speed Dial accidentally. You’ll now notice three little dots on hover in place of where the delete button used to be. The new button provides quick access to the features previously only available in the context menu, like opening in private tab, or removing a website from your Speed Dial.
Add your own photo as theme
A while back, we introduced the “Create your theme” option in the theme manager. Now, this option is more visible for you. Just go to the Customize start page and click the ‘+’ button; then, use your own photos to create a theme.
Extension button visible in the Speed Dial side panel
All extension users will have the extension manager always at hand. The extension icon is visible on side panel on the left side of the Speed Dial page.
Change in version support for OS X
Starting from this version, we’re updating our requirements on Mac. Now, we’re supporting OS X 10.9 and higher.
We are really happy to bring power saver, as the first major browser, to the stable version. Together with ad blocker and the video pop out, it makes Opera the browser that really responds on today user expectations.
Download the latest Opera for computers, and let us know what you think about it in the comments."
\m/ :cheers: -
l33t4opera last edited by
New update - Opera stable 38.0.2220.31, the change log, and the announcement
"Today’s update info is a short one – we have updated Chromium to 51.0.2704.84, which should improve stability, and fixed a download issue."
\m/ :cheers: -
l33t4opera last edited by
New update - Opera stable 38.0.2220.41, the change log, and the announcement
"Today’s Opera stable update contains an important fix. All those, who were unable to enter the YouTube full screen mode, when Windows DPI was set to more than 100%, should be happy to know, that the feature works correctly now. Please try out for yourselves.
This update also has a number of stability fixes – for details, please take a look at the change log.
Chromium has been updated to 51.0.2704.106."
\m/ :cheers: -
