14 DAY TRIAL // Lots of open-source software developers were busy to announce new versions of their applications on GNU/Linux distributions on the first day of 2017, and today we'd like to tell you a little bit about the latest release of the Otter Browser.
For those unfamiliar with Otter Browser, it's a cross-platform and open-source clone of the old-school Opera 12.x web browser series beloved by most of you out there. The project's aim is to recreate the best aspects of Opera 12's user interface using the newest Qt 5 technologies, and works on Linux, macOS and Windows platforms.
The twelfth Beta has been released on January 1, 2017, greatly improving the tab bar with support for detaching tabs via drag and drop, dropping of URLs and tabs from other instances, a new option to display embedded tab thumbnails, RTL (Right-to-Left) support improvements, as well as better visibility of the Close button.
Other than that, it looks like Otter Browser now draws tabs that demand attention using bold font, no longer centers tab text horizontally, decreases the default tab padding, and addresses a problem with the status tip messages while rearranging tabs. The new version also improves RTL support in address bar and search field.
Otter Brower now better integrates with Unity and KDE Plasma 5
Another interesting change that landed in the Otter Browser Beta 12 release is better integration with the modern Unity and KDE Plasma 5 user interfaces on GNU/Linux platforms by implementing support for progress information and desktop actions. Support for Windows jump list was added as well in the new version.
Additionally, there are a handful of macOS specific improvements, such as the addition of a dock icon menu and support for listing apps that are associated with a given MIME type, there's full-screen support for the QtWebKit backend and the open file path is now saved. Check out the attached changelog for more details.