Browser now supports H.264 and MP3 formats

Oct 15, 2014 14:47 GMT  ·  By

Oslo, Norway-based Opera Software has released a new version of the company’s desktop browser with a range of new features that empower users to organize the web just the way they want. In fact, that’s how Opera markets the new version: “My way to organize the web.”

Chief among the new features is “visual bookmarks,” while other novelty additions include web notifications and support for the latest media standards.

“My way to organize the web”

The Norwegian developer markets Opera 25 as such because this new feature is the tentpole of this new release. Users can now save and sort their favorite pages using collections of thumbnails.

While traditional bookmarking basically just saves the location of a page, Opera's new visual bookmarks allow users to choose a thumbnail for each new site they add. If they don’t choose one, Opera thinks one up on its own. It’s a lot like Pocket, but with more options to view and organize the saved stuff.

According to the company, the aim was to transform bookmarks into “a collection of favorites – websites, products, memories, and more.”

To bookmark a page, both Mac and Windows users can either click the heart icon to the right of the address field or simply use the Cmd+D (Mac) / Ctrl + D (Windows) keyboard shortcut. Finally, users can assign an image for their bookmark and select a folder to save it. Bookmarks can be renamed and rearranged.

Other cool stuff

Opera 25 further adds an integrated PDF-viewer that “enables fast, easy reading of PDFs, directly in the browser,” according to the developers. It supports two new media formats – H.264 and MP3 – and it allows developers to send platform-specific notifications to their users for things like email delivery, triggered events, etc. Web notifications use the computer’s built-in notification system.

Zhenis Beisekov, product manager of Desktop Products at Opera Software, comments, “Over the past year, we did a great deal of research in order to understand what bookmarking options people are looking for today. We realized that many people use bookmarks as a way of tracking their memories, like travel inspiration or a fascinating article. And, since our memories are often visual, we decided to redesign the whole concept of bookmarking.”

Opera requires very little space to be installed (less than 200MB) and works on Windows XP and above and Mac OS X 10.5 and above. The download links are below, as usual. Enjoy!

Download Opera 25 for Mac

Download Opera 25 for Windows

Opera 25 (6 Images)

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