Opera 15 Preview for Windows and Mac with Chromium Engine Released

I don't get it. Maybe i misremember but I thought Opera was a feature rich browser with an email client, widgets and a bunch of other stuff.<p>Now mail has been shunted into its own product. I don't see widgets. It really looks and feels like a skin for Chrome and nothing more which makes me wonder what the point is. If I want Chrome I will use Chrome.<p>OK, this is a preview but the news doesn't suggest any of these old features are coming across.

No middle click on tab bar to create new tab.<p>Simple mouse gestures work, but without visual guide, configuration and without right click + scroll.<p>Most horrible thing: MDI don't work. Popups opens in new window, like other browsers, instead of new tabs, like old Opera! Alerts currently don't have any chrome, so may be they would develop this later.<p>Opera Link don't work.<p>Text selection in links via mouse don't work.<p>No sidebar.<p>Verdict: in current state unusable for old Opera users.

Sigh...<p>I was hoping they'd keep UI, just swap the internals. That was main reason I used Opera - I feel like it's interface was much more powerful than those of other browsers, but engine performance just wasn't there.<p>But this doesn't bear any resemblance to Opera I knew and liked.<p>No pinned tabs. No 'paste-and-go'. No... nothing.<p>I fully understand why they did it, and it very well might be just what they needed to do to survive, I won't be looking back.<p>...and I was hoping to ditch Safari :(

If the mail client is good, then having it stand-alone is a great idea - with Thunderbird no longer updated I could do with an alternative on Windows (something that uses less RAM than keeping GMail open in a Chrome tab...)

Just installed it and my only comment so far is that, when maximized, there is a non-clickable gap between the top of a top and the top of the screen. This is a big usability mistake so I hope they correct it at some point. Firefox does this too and it drives me insane. Chrome is the only one (that I use) that does it right.

Remember this ad, from exactly three years ago: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaT7thTxyq8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaT7thTxyq8</a><p>And now after all this, they made Opera just a skin for Chrome?<p>These people have no respect for themselves.

Opera used to Pack all the features of a browser and email and more into a 15MB downloadable exe. Now the browser itself is 25MB already<p>This is Chrome. I was hoping for Tab Overflow? No Drop Down list of Open Tabs.<p>They kept it like Opera, which means no H.264 support.<p>Basically that means i am sticking to Firefox.

The performance is amazing!<p>Simple selector test<p><a href="http://jsperf.com/jquery-selectors-vs-native-api/7" rel="nofollow">http://jsperf.com/jquery-selectors-vs-native-api/7</a><p>On my machine<p>document.getElementById<p>Opera 12.15: 2,089,859 Opera next: 15,609,851

Does this use the same process-per-tab sandboxing that Chrome uses? I'm one of those crazy users with far too many tabs, and I was always sceptical that Chrome would be able to handle them all. Opera always ran happily with 100+ tabs.<p>Perhaps this is the reason for the introduction of the 'stash', which in fairness might be a better solution (as I'm not necessarily defending 100+ tabs, but its a habit that has worked for me so far)

I didn't test this one, but the new mobile version of Opera is horrible. I like Opera very much and I just can't believe they released this mobile version (also take a look at the latest reviews: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.opera.browser" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.opera.brow...</a>).<p>It feels like Opera is having a very hard time to keep its head above the water.

I see a lot of complaining around here.<p>Apparently people are forgetting that this a preview release.<p>The features familiar to Opera users that are missing will be added in the next iterations.<p>It's a clear and simple thing to understand. Quit whining already.

Every change will break someones workflow.<p><a href="http://xkcd.com/1172/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/1172/</a>

Let's try to put this in some perspective: this is a 'new product' 'built from scratch' that has been provided at a version 1 'alpha release' level by an independent browser company based on a tried and tested rendering engine.<p>Like most users there are some features I will sorely miss here but I'm going to give it a try for a few days. See how things go from there.<p>Seems like Opera has given us a lot of innovation in the past. Most people might miss the significance of the change to Chromium for a small company like Opera. My gut feeling is that once they get over this initial bump in the road we will see a lot more existing and new features come our way (at least I will hold on to that thought!). I suspect they have much more time to focus on adding cool stuff now rather than keeping their head above water and we should all get a first-rate new browser to play with as a result.<p>Let's see what happens but I won't ever pass judgement on any first ever 'built from scratch' 'alpha' release of something.

It really fascinates me that no one, not even in the comments on the Opera blog, seems to have noticed that you cannot add a new search engine. I guess people are happy as long as Google is available.<p>Opera Next aren't going to be released next week, so they can still migrate a lot of features, but I do agree with those who are concerned that they won't manage to move "enough" features to keep all their old users. I also wonder how fare they are will to diverge from Chromium, the further away they go, the harder it might be to keep in sync.<p>One have to wonder: "How important is the desktop browser to Opera business?" Do they make enough money on the desktop version to make it worth porting every single feature in order to keep all their current users?

Opera has been my primary browser since version 9 or so. When I heard the announcement that they will use the Chromium engine I was actually quite happy. They have been contributing to web standards a lot and with the power of the Chrome community I'm sure we will see big innovations.<p>However this preview release is a big downer for me. I know it is a work in progress but it is missing some key features like the RSS reader, the ctrl + z combo to bring back closed tabs and many more. So I'm not switching just yet but I'm hopeful.

I just tried the Peacekeeper benchmark from Futuremark (<a href="http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/" rel="nofollow">http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/</a>) on both Chrome and Opera Next on Windows 8 x64.<p>The results:<p>Chrome Version 26.0.1410.64 m: 2418 points, HTML5 Capabilities 5/7<p>Opera Next Version 15.0.1147.18: 4248 points, HTML5 Capabilities 5/7<p>Anyone else get similar results?

I didn't know Opera mail was so good. Now I want it to be bundled with Opera. It's pretty awesome. Except I wish they had a "All Mail" folder... rather then this rather confusing<p>"Unread" and "Received" folders, that seem to contain pretty much the same thing until you read them, then it is removed from both.

I've never been much of an Opera fan but this is looking really nice. The speed dial and stash features look like a good replacement for bookmarks too.<p>I'd try it out full-time but I can't live without my 1password extension :/

Here's a list of features supported by the latest Chrome and latest Opera <a href="http://caniuse.com/#compare=chrome+28,opera+12.1" rel="nofollow">http://caniuse.com/#compare=chrome+28,opera+12.1</a><p>There's a couple of things that Opera might be loosing in this update, with the switch to Blink. Hopefully anything the do loose they'll be able to port over soon.

Also, I can't find how to put my tabs on the left side of the window.<p>I don't think I can live without this anymore. What's the point of having wide screens if you stack everything vertically?<p>I also hope they won't remove the bookmark panel. Having your entire bookmark tree open anytime is a very pleasant feature in my opinion.

This is a bigger PR disaster than Xbox One. Everyone is criticizing Opera for the gutted features.

Here's my question… If it's basically just a reskinned Chromium, why even bother with it?

No built in Flash? I mean it's kind of a dealbreaker in Chrome, not just against Opera but Safari too.<p>You don't need to install any Adobe crapware, still you can use it. Also you can disable it and set it up to use it like the Click-to-Flash extension.

While I understand what drove the decision to start using Webkit, I was hoping for a more Opera-like UI and experience. All the power features are gone. Unfortunately this preview looks like just another Yandex browser.

It's like I'm really using Chrome! Although probably everyone saw this coming - it's just a skin of Chromium. They just took a few months to make a new mail client and put Opera icons everywhere.

I think they have done a good job of making an opera-flavored chromium. It already feels like opera in many ways. Now all we need is some more features. I'm very excited for the next versions.

A thing I've noticed is that pinch to zoom is much more smooth than Chrome in OS X.<p>How do I switch tabs using my keyboard? Cmd-&#60;N&#62; doesn't work, so does not Cmd-Alt-Left|Right.

Can you install Google Chrome extensions to Opera Next?

Anybody know whether they plan to stick with Chromium or will switch to Blink in the future?

Possibly off topic, but any idea as to what they are going to do with presto?

Have they removed bookmarks?

This makes me wish to pay for Opera just so they keep it as great as it is.

I've just tryed it out and it looks awesome!! Good job Opera!

does it show weird size variations on the text here? that's what i got with chrome on android and why i switched to opera...

Nice to see a company that cares about users up its game. Opera is now at the forefront along with google, and unlike google, will actually make features people want.<p>Never having to use the chrome bookmark manager again (or firefoxes or safaris) is a huge sell for me.<p>As for all the features they dropped, Im sure there are or will be extensions for that. Personally, I prefer the browser to be screaming fast with just enough features that I need. I could never switch to opera in the past because it was simply too slow.<p>Also, I wont get ads for Google products in browser or prompts to "login" to my browser as Google has been doing lately. YAY!