14 DAY TRIAL // Opera 12 is still some time away, but it's getting closer all the time. The browser maker has been working on this major release for many months now, more than it would on a regular release. In fact, it was taking so long that Opera decided to offer Opera 11.6 as an interim option to ship some of the features that were ready.
But work is carrying on, the latest snapshot release, aimed at developers and enthusiasts, comes with an updated address bar with some interesting enhancements.
For one, there are now favicons for the various suggested items. Both Google Chrome and Firefox do the same and this feature comes in very handy especially since the address bar, Omnibox, AwesomeBar or whatever you want to call it, offers all sorts of suggestions, visited websites, search terms, search results and so on.
Favicons are not enabled by default for now. Opera actually goes one step further than Chrome in that it includes the favicons for the actual sites, not just generic icons. Firefox also displays the favicons, but the suggestions only come from browsing history.
The latest Opera 12 build, which is still experimental, also tweaks the way URLs are displayed in the address bar suggestions. Until now, the URLs were simply truncated as needed, depending on how long the address field was.
This left out important information, the most important in fact, the end of the URL. The latest Opera 12 build handles this differently, it cuts out the least needed parts so that if the URL is long and the address bar is short, users still get the most useful information.
For most, if not all, URLs the useful parts are at the beginning, the website domain, and at the end, the actual page you're on. The rest of the navigational breadcrumbs can be safely discarded if there is a space restraint.