14 DAY TRIAL // As promised, Opera is moving fast and a new major version of the Chrome-based Opera is here. Opera 16 doesn't bring a lot of new features or changes to the table, but that's to be expected with the fast release cycle of just six weeks.
Most of the Opera desktop team was on holiday these last few weeks as well, contributing to the slow pace. But the browser maker promised things would start picking up, though the results of that won't be visible until Opera 17 and 18.
In the meantime, users who got accustomed to the new browser or even prefer it to the old one, will be able to enjoy support for the geolocation API, meaning that sites will be able to access the device's exact location, on request, as well as a few other minor features.
The form auto-filler from Chrome has now been enabled in Opera, for example. The browser also comes with new OS-specific functionality like support for Windows jump-lists and Mac OS X presentation mode.
Opera 16 comes with plenty of bug fixes and some performance improvements as well; overall, nothing groundbreaking.
But the biggest addition is hidden away. Opera now supports the internal flags page that advanced Chrome users have come to love. This is where experimental new features and changes are first introduced to be tested in the wild without breaking the browser for too many people.
If you're feeling adventurous or just want to see if your favorite missing feature is available in any form, you can head over to opera:flags and see what's available. With a few dozen experiments, you may find something interesting in there, even if not all of them will be available on any given platform.
As for the big features that everyone is waiting for, like bookmarks, those won't be coming until Opera 17 or, more likely, Opera 18 and beyond.