14 DAY TRIAL // The first Beta development milestone of Opera 11 is extremely close, according to Opera Software, which released a new Alpha version of the browser on November 17th.
Opera 11 Alpha Build 1094 brings to the table two new features as well as mail improvements, which Huib Kleinhout from the Opera Desktop Team reveled are connected to the upcoming Beta Build.
With Opera 11 Alpha Build 1094, the Norway-based browser vendor has enhanced the address bar, adding security features.
Kleinhout explained that Opera 11 will make it easier for customers to protect themselves from attacks and cyber scams involving spoofing, namely malicious domains masquerading as genuine web destinations.
There are a number of new address field features for Opera 11, and Kleinhout highlighted them:
“ •All web pages gets a badge to the left of the address field. The badge replaces protocols like HTTP, HTTPS and opera:, which are shown only when focusing on the address field.
•Clicking on the badge provides a easy overview of the potentially more complex security state of the current web page.
•Parameters at the end of web addresses are visually hidden when the address field is not focused. (You can disable this with opera:config#UserPrefs|HideURLParameter if you still want to see the whole address all the time.)
•And lastly, there is a badge for browsing with Opera Turbo on. Clicking on this gives, for example, information about estimated data savings for the Opera Turbo session.”
Opera Software has also made it easier for end users to leverage mouse gestures. An innovation that was initially introduced in opera back in version 5.1 which shipped in 2001, mouse gestures are designed to allow users to perform common tasks by moving the mouse in a certain pattern.
In Opera 11, customers will be able to long press the right click button of the mouse in order to access a visual guide to how mouse gestures work.
Opera 11 Mail also evolved with the mail panel now allowing vertical navigation through a single global scrollbar as opposite to multiple scrollbars.
“We have merged the old filters, labels and saved searches into the new more powerful labels. We consolidated all mail search fields into one, which enables you to search wherever you want, with the help of a new toolbar that appears when searching,” Kleinhout said.
“If you want you can save this search as a rule that will automatically label all the matching messages. You can set a custom icon on your new label in the label dialog, but the label dialog is going to undertake some changes soon.
“We also did some improvements when it comes to the mail startup speed, mail skin fixes for Windows and Mac, some HTML compose related and other bug fixes.”
Offered in Opera 11 for the first time, extensions also received a boost with the latest Alpha release of the browser, and more improvements are on their way.
“They will now run on secure sites (HTTPS) by default, and we have added a privacy setting where you can allow/disallow extensions to run on secure connections or in privacy mode (disabled by default),” Kleinhout noted.
“In addition to that, we now allow extensions to have a preferences page. Both the options page and privacy settings can be accessed from the extensions manager.”
Opera 11 Alpha for Windows is available for download here.