14 DAY TRIAL // Even though it doesn’t have the market share of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, Opera browser remains one of the most capable apps in this particular software category, with an impressive feature lineup that scores extra points in terms of usability and customization.
Furthermore, the frequent updates that Opera browser receives make it an always up-to-date choice on all desktop platforms, and users can thus be sure that the bugs they come across are typically repaired pretty fast.
Today, the developing company rolled out Opera 58, a new major update that comes with a couple of notable improvements, especially for those who are long-time Opera users.
Before anything, it’s worth noting that his update doesn’t bring as many breaking changes as the previous releases, but updating to Opera 58 is still a recommended step for everyone using the browser.
The first major change in Opera 58 is the addition of a warning that is displayed whenever you try to close the browser and more than one tab is running.
It might seem weird that such a prompt is only now being added to the browser, but this has long been one of the main annoyances in Opera. In fact, as a former Opera user, I accidentally closed the browser on more than one occasion, especially because my awful mouse keeps jumping around on the screen every now and then.
Beginning with Opera 58, such accidents should no longer happen. If you have more than a single tab running within the app, the browser displays a warning to ask if you are sure you want to close it given that you have multiple active tabs. Disabling this prompt is easy because it comes with an option called Do not warn me when closing a window.
If you disable this option but want to add it at a later time, all you have to do is to launch the browser and head over to this path:
Settings > Advanced > User interface
Look for this option and make sure that it is enabled:
Warn on closing window with multiple tabs
A second update is specifically aimed at Russian users of Opera browser. The start page now displays news articles provided by Yandex Zen, a news recommendation service which Opera says should help offer personalized news articles to its users in Russia.
“What this means for them is that they will get better news, chosen based on their preferences and browsing history. Yandex Zen uses machine-learning technology and automatically adjusts to your news preferences,” the company explains.
More options for the start page are available in the settings screen of the browser.
Opera 58 also includes other more subtle tweaks that are supposed to help working with multiple tabs at the same time in just one window. For example, Opera now allows you to open a new tab with a middle-click on an empty space in the tab bar.
The same middle click action can be used to close a tab when clicking right on the tab that you want to close. I haven’t found any options to disable these new gestures, so hopefully, Opera would update the browser in the future versions to provide more configuration settings in this regard.
Needless to say, Opera 58 also includes more refinements under the hood, so there’s a chance many of the bugs that were discovered in the older versions are no longer there after updating.
I tested Opera 58 on both Windows 10 version 1809 (October 2018 Update) and Windows 10 version 1903 (19H1) preview builds, and the browser seems to be working just flawlessly.
