Download Opera 12 Pre-Alpha

By | July 7, 2011 | 65 Comments

Download Opera 12 Pre-Alpha

Just a week after releasing the final version of Opera 11.50, here comes the pre-alpha build of Opera’s next generation web browser: Opera 12 (codenamed “Wahoo”).

Although it has no new features or major improvements over Opera 11.50, the following version fixes nearly 40 bugs, which is always a good thing.

Anyway, while we wait… What are some of the major features you would like to see in Opera 12 and is hardware acceleration one of them?

Stay tuned.

Download.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Vit.C

    What i wanted in version 12(Wahooo)

    -Polish featherweight interface
    -HWA(of course we want it)
    -100x faster than 11.50(new presto, very huuuuuuuuuge core fixes)
    -Improve automatic tab stacking(bring it back)
    -Turbo Improvements
    -Memory usage Lower
    -bug fixes,bug fixes and more bug fixes

    this is all whats in my mind for the moment

    • Anonymous

      What do you mean by “Turbo Improvements”

      They have already improved it vastly.

      Do you mean more speed?

      That can be done by moving the servers closer to the demographic on non European users.

  • everybody

    HWA (but only for WebGL), javascript strict mode, IndexedDB, Ragnarok, drag & drop, next step of Featherweight skin… I want to see all those things and more. MOAR!

  • Armin

    Opera Next needs to update faster.

    • Anonymous

      Yes please move servers.

  • GREG 8-)

    Are you kidden me? If there is no hardware acceleration in Opera 12 ..than Opera would take the title from safari the worst browser ever hands down ..it will be dead!! Opera should fire there whole staff (keep the original guy) for not putting it in 11.50 ..Who wants a browser without hardware acceleration? not me

    • Anonymous

      Except of course that Opera is faster without Hardware acceleration that most other browsers WITH hardware acceleration….

      I’m seeing Opera significantly faster at most stuff.

      Try this in IE9 and compare it to Opera 11.50…

      http://nontroppo.org/timer/Hixie_DOM.html

      • Sarjoor

        Except of course Opera is NOT faster with hardware acceleration on graphics intensive tasks.  Mr_Jelly, I assume you missed the implied word “graphics” that goes before hardware acceleration.

        Try linking to some worthwhile graphics tests to test [graphics] hardware acceleration, like the Graphics Demos at:
        http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Views/SiteMap/Default.html

        • Anonymous

          LOL, linking to a Microsoft test that shows a Microsoft browser is a good light.   Are you a retard?

          • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas
          • Anonymous

            http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2011/02/28/webgl-and-hardware-acceleration-2
            That is all.

            It runs faster on Opera too, and will soon be cross-platform and support OpenGL and DirectX backends…

          • Wicket

            Angry Birds is not really playable in Opera. Die Siedler Online is also not playable in Opera because its to slow in Opera. I use Opera since Version 6.5 and its my main browser but some things just don’t work properly in Opera.

        • Mikah

          Opera is  a lot faster in the Peacekeeper benchmark especially the rendering & complex graphics sections than the other browsers.
          Does need HWA  though I guess part of the delay is bringing it to Windows XP & Linux etc.

    • gunnar

      Yes firing the whole staff would be a rational decision.. :-p

    • Guest

      Maybe you should read the part of the blog which says “with all the fresh and juicy stuff coming a bit later”

  • http://twitter.com/Andylee_Sato Andylee_Sato

    well…

    In order of importance for me:

    1.) Bug fixing
    2.) Extended support for HTML5 (no special priority for a feature on my side)
    3.) Further skin polishing
    4.) Mail encryption (yeah I know, won’t come…)
    5.) Opera Link improvement
    6.) WebGL/HWA

    In total, I don’t necessarily need a revolutionary new browser in version 12. Continuous improvements and continually extending standards support is most important to me. Less bugs, more stable and the one or the other new web standard being supported and I am going to be satisfied. (this does not mean I have stability problems or nerving bugs in the current version, I just know that there are some and fixing them is always a good idea) 

  • Flavio Marcato

    I’d like to see:

    1) Integrated pdf viewer
    2) Opera link improvement 
    3) More HTML5 support

    • Anonymous

      yep +1 Integrated PDF

      • http://twitter.com/cyberstream_us CyberStream.us

        Another +1 for that!

  • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

    Wahoo are some of the fastest fish in the sea so HWA would have to be a must.

    I’d also like more HTML5 support (parser in particular), less bloat (like unneeded features, ie torrent client) and MOAR SPEED!

    It would be nice to have bugs squashed. :)

    • http://rudivisser.myopenid.com/ Rudi Visser

      How do you class the torrent client as bloat? How much do you think that it really adds to the size?

  • I kicked my cat only once

    1) Fix printing and print preview
    2) Unleash Ragnarok
    3) Improve tab stacking

    • Anonymous

      Chrome has a great implementation of Print preview.

  • http://twitter.com/DanielHendrycks Daniel Hendrycks

    HTML5 Parser
    WebGL
    Better Updater (server and client side (unlikely, sadly))
    Skin Fixes
    Better Memory Usage, more than just one fix
    Firefox-like Menu Dropdown

    (and hopefully CSS animations; most likely not, since there haven’t been any hints about it)

  • KKK

    Get rid of tab stacking
    Get rid of new speed dial
    Get rid of menu, copy Firefox

    • http://profiles.google.com/fernando823 Fernando López Fernández

      Speed dial is great, all the other browsers copied it.
      Tab stacking is useful at least for me.
      Firefox 4 copied Opera apparency.

  • Nobody

    OLD post, from around ver 11.

    funny to see how little had changed:

    1) network/security compatibility: PACKS, NTLM, auto-proxy, auto proxy
    trought https/http boundaries etc – opera lacks almost everything that
    is a de facto real world industry standards when it comes to WANs in
    large corporations. each time major opera version is released i try
    using it in our corpo network – and each time i ends up uninstalling it
    minutes later (it is banned from computers in DMZ anyway) – entering the
    same id/pass for EACH element on intranet site is too much to ask [almost nothing done in this area]

    2)
    developer tools worth their name and time spent on them. opera starts
    its fourth (or third) year of developing dragonfly and it is still piece
    of shit for kids. meantime google made android fastest growing mobile
    OS in the world, google chrome surpased 10% and apple made iPad.
    meantime, opera and dragonfly project leader still are thinkning geeki
    thoughts about how to pretend to be relevant. failed project managers
    should be fired! [dragonfly seems to be targeted at kids, not developers, so it explains their attitude - check dynaTrace tools to see how pro tools look like]

    3) cookie/history/content managers – opera
    cookie management SUX. it simply lies, it is full of stupid bugs and
    inconsistencies, artificial rules regarding 1/3rd party cookies etc. it
    is completely broken unless you use default settings (ie. do not manage
    at all). it is so from version 7, and it was made worse in version 10.50 [nothing had changed]

    4)
    stop breaking things that work and nobody ever asked them to be ‘fixed’
    – mouse gestures (WTF?!?), auto image resize (WTF WTF WTF?
    firefox/ie/chrome/safari do it THE RIGHT way, opera decided to ride on
    triangular wheels resising ALL images whatsoever, great for 100*50
    miniatures.. and they have the courage to ask WHY it should be reverted,
    while they gve no reason why they break this stuff

    5) stop
    dumbing down your browser. if you dont want to be used by mindles
    hipsters (this is already taken by iZombies) just pretend that you
    believe in mental capabilities of you users – dumbing down adress bar is
    a step into the chasm. lowering the bar breaks the most important
    evolution principle [removing arrow dropdown from address bar (it is in :config but still)]

    6) autocomplete requires deep rework.
    autoupdating from more than one version ago means need for clean
    install. it was so forever and it will probably stay so as some paid
    trolls will say that it is roblem on my end. yeah.. problem on my end is
    that i sold aapl stock with 240% gain instead of 300%.. yeah, thats the
    only problem on my end. [nothing done, autoupdate in opera simply sux, no brainer when their database system changes every version]

    7) extensions.. as long as they require
    dom manipulation to place UI elements, they will suck as it slows down
    browser even on fastests of rigs. they require their own DOM sub-tree
    with no reflow needed. prime example – extension that mimics ‘progress
    bar in the lower-left corner’ – it is done with DOM pos:absolute and it
    slows havey pages to crawl [nothing changed]

    8) plugin rework – opera, it was you
    who screwed Netscape Plugin API implementation, not microsoft, not
    google,not any other plugin developer. you made it too strict,
    you made it too paranoid. world ignored you. just fix it, it was your
    fault. it is rather telling that apart from flash, that works ~95%,
    other plugins simply fail yet they work with browsers that werent even
    there when plugin first arrived [nothing changed, trying to make google earth work or java is a hit or miss - even norsk bank do not work (java)]

    9) marketing, do more of it. one
    reddit stunt and few quite clever mobile ads is just that – one stunt
    and few ads. at the same time, your overhyped crap – unite comes to mind
    – flops so badly that even you back out. market your strenghts (mobile)
    to help your sucking end (desktop) stay relevant [nothing]

    10) make it
    customisable. some silly buttons that place the same functionality in an
    ugly way isnt customisation. giving us an option to ‘fix’ tab stacking
    (a trully neat way of doing it) ie. turning auto stacking ‘on’ on our
    liking is a customisation. you know, let ME choose from broad set of
    options. instead you make people choose from ‘in’ or ‘unin’ stalling
    opera. there are countless examples where simple opera:config entry
    would be enough to NOT antagonize YET ANOTHER small group of users. your
    user base is already stagnant, making new enemies each time you delete
    something that you should have left alone is stupid. yet you do it with
    passion and with some snidy remarks you make yourself proud out of it.
    is there a wank contest in opera or what: ‘who will make more users go
    away?’ [big progress - they managed to antagonize another group of users by removing something that most users use..]

    11) release ONE x.00 version that doesnt have at least 5
    critical quality issues. every software has them, but somehow there are
    ‘issues’ and ‘issues’ and the later make opera look really lacking in QA
    (maybe make certain QA people that like to spend time on their blogs
    and twitter do some work or something..)

    and last

    12)
    learn to copy from others, others made a fortune on opera features. it
    is about time that opera get head out of their asses and see that others
    also have great ideas. popular in jerk circles ‘opera invented
    everyryryryrything’ is simply not true.  [nothing]

    absolutely last:

    all
    other browsers use CTRL-F5 to do hard reload – to bypass
    cache/cache-controll. opera – as always – knows better and a) does not
    allow hard reload in any way (excelent for webdevelopers, ask them) b)
    does completely different thing than all others. [nothing]

    readers not blessed with gift of reading with comprehension and certain opera employee (starts with H, likes to tweet and after long and fruitfull career is now a Blog Comment Manager – likes to use proxy and create lots of dumb logins) are encouraged to press backspace on their keyboard to post a reply

    • God Sent Me

      I disagree with points 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
      I wish I could bless you with the gift of appropriate conversation. Did Haavard kill your dog? Or something equally inappropriate as your language? It’s a mystery to me. However, it is fun seeing such blatantly ignorant rants, accusing others (and a specific person) of the same behavior.
      Carry on.

      • Doc

        I think he said once that he’s an Aspie (has Asperger Syndrome) or some other form of autism.
        Asperger Syndrome is “an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.”

        Might explain why he keeps reposting the same thing over and over.

        Wikipedia also says: “People with Asperger’s often display intense interests”

        This, too: “Intense preoccupation with a narrow subject, one-sided verbosity, restricted prosody, and physical clumsiness are typical of the condition”

        In his case he has developed an unhealthy obsession with Opera. When he periodically fails to get his treatment he’ll lapse back to that obsession, and you see the result here.

        • Anonymous

          That is not a really nice thing to say. 

          It is he’s opinion. He shouldn’t be classified as anything for giving an opinion.

           Lay off the prejudice.

        • Nobody

          yet another ‘first and only post’ by disgruntled opera employee hiding behind a proxy?

          Doc, Guest, Disqus84763 and Mikah and some other turds here is the same person :) i wonder how much extra it pays to do this stuff after hours? hey, opera blog comment manager?

    • Disqus84763

      Funny to see how little has changed indeed. With Nobody, that is. Still obsessing and ranting pointlessly. With a list that is so far from hitting the mark that it’s just sad.

      Fail.

    • http://rudivisser.myopenid.com/ Rudi Visser

      I love reading this guy’s post, they’re all laughable!

      Entertainment for the day sorted (once again) :-)

    • Anonymous

      I disagree with the dumbing down point. If “Dumbing down” means simplicity then please make it as retarded as possible.

      Dragonfly has really improved. It has some nice features.

      Why are you trying Opera in a corporate environment? You are being too generous.

    • Armin

      I especially disagree with point five. Dumb it down as much as possible so that everybody instead of nobody can get into Opera. They still give you enough options to make Opera your own, right? Long time Opera users won’t be affected by this anyway.

      • Nobody

        they remove features, and only sometimes give options to bring them back – like arrow besides address bar

        mostly they DONT give such options – for a user dependant on it it means ‘adapt to opera without options i loved’ or ‘go elsewhere’. rather pathetic market share shows, that option two is popular.

        removing used options for no other reason that ‘give us a reason that we shouldnt do it’ without providing fallback is something that even apple cannot do – see FinalCutX fiasco. this is dumbing down that i talk about.

        • I kicked my cat only once

          An arrow beside the address bar is not a feature, it is a gui setting. And you can bring it back, it is not removed, only disabled by default. I believe it is this setting:
          opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowDropdownButtonInAddressfield
          Compare the number of configuration options with any other browser. IMO, Opera provides plenty of them.

          Can you give any feature that has been removed in the last years? Likely there will be some, but I can’t think of one, for the moment.

          • Nobody

            type favbrowser into your adress bar and press enter, then do it in opera 10.

            see the difference?

            what is extraoridinary is that opera still keeps ‘server autocompletion’ dialog in settings, while it does absolutely nothing now. there might be some hack to bring it back, but it isnt obvious and for someone who relied on this option this is a big loss.

            for other examples, there are opera forums to look for, but quickly before opera censors remove these threads.

          • I kicked my cat only once

            Mmh.
            * Pressing f2, typing favbrowser + enter gives a search result, as expected.
            * Pressing f2, typing favbrowser/ + enter gives favbrowser.com thanks to server autocompletion, as expected.
            This is not an example of a removed feature.

          • Anonymous

            That is not auto completion.

            They broke that feature.

            Server name completion used to be like FF implementation where it guessed the prefix and suffixes of an url. Now it does nothing.

            Not everything has a .com

          • I kicked my cat only once

            Your reply is wrong, wrong and wrong:
            1 You’re missing the point. Nobody gave an example, I learned him how to use Opera correctly in that situation.
            2 It is not because the behavior is not exactly like another browser that the feature is broken.
            3 When I type wikipedia/ and press enter, wikipedia.org is loaded. Indeed, not everything has a .com.

          • Anonymous

            You dont get it. It used to work without symbols.

            Ok Everybody Press F2. Now type. And now press ctrl + enter

            Ok everyone. Press F2 now type and add a / after to get your FIRST name completion from local region order

            FYI: Empty Cache. Try en.wikipedia/ – even with cache. Opera is too dumb to solve it quickly.

            And your no. 1 point does not make sense.

          • Mikah

            Works fine for me , try changing the preferences>advanced>network sever name completion & add the suffixes you need eg :   co.uk,com,org.uk,gov.uk,net,org

          • Anonymous

            Mine is com.au,com,gov.au,edu.au

            But I am saying I could have typed: skype and press control + enter.
            Fine that shortcut adds the suffix .com . When I do / as a suffix it works down from .com.au, to com, to gov etc.

            Luckily skype redirects to .com from .com.au. Say I have a .gov address. Now that is third on the list. I put the slash to say a very popular site that ends in .gov. Opera would first go to .com.au. See if it gets a reply. Nope! try .com . Nope then finally go to .gov. 

            The question is what happens when there is a site with a registered .com and I want .gov.

            Lets try Firefox as an example. I type in wikipedia hit enter: Resolving………. Found! wikipedia.org

            Opera. wikipedia/ hit enter: Resolving………Found! http://teststartonline.com/d/w3i7k605 — wtf?

          • Mymail

            Did you try favbrowser/ ?

            Same feature but implemented in another way doesn’t mean feature removed. Get the facts prior to say something false 

        • I kicked my cat only once

          An arrow beside the address bar is not a feature, it is a gui setting. And you can bring it back, it is not removed, only disabled by default. I believe it is this setting:
          opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowDropdownButtonInAddressfield
          Compare the number of configuration options with any other browser. IMO, Opera provides plenty of them.

          Can you give any feature that has been removed in the last years? Likely there will be some, but I can’t think of one, for the moment.

        • hypocrisy

          When other browsers remove or change features without the ability to get them back, or force people to adapt: Good!

          When Opera does it: Bad!

          Eh?

        • hypocrisy

          When other browsers remove or change features without the ability to get them back, or force people to adapt: Good!

          When Opera does it: Bad!

          Eh?

  • http://stylegehen.de/ andreas

    The only thing concerning html rendering – please fix the percentage bug!
    –> http://www.highresolution.info/webdesign/testcases/opera_integer_percentages_bug.html

    • Anonymous

      Yes!

  • Sirnh1

    My wishlist: (in this order)
    1) Support authenticating with a Chip-card (Really needed around here)
    2) Option to disable tab stacking completely 
     
    3) Bug fixing 
    4) Extended support for HTML5/Javascript
    5) Further skin polishing (and remove any and all transparency effects from the skin)
    6) Sync feed (just the feed adress would be enough)

    • Mikah

      Point 5 : disagree there are hundreds of skins available without Aero
      My wish list
      HWA
      A calender integrated with Mail
      Improvements to notes : colour labels, selectable font & text size.

  • http://twitter.com/cyberstream_us CyberStream.us

    Here’s what I want to see in Opera 12:

    - Full Opera Link synchronization (mail, rss feeds, extensions, everything!)
    - Extension API improved (but not made incompatible with the current API unless it is a very impressive API)
    - CSS3 3D animations
    - Fix the unnatural sidebar gradient
    - Improved history search suggestions (the <meta> information is search, but not the <title> tags)
    - Don’t disable features like tab stacks: just add options to disable those features

    Impress us again with version 12, Opera! :)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EKMCL43XL4XYSGIMGA7QZKSC5I Blaz Pristav

    It looks good until is in full size screen than all style falls a part “looks ugly”.
    Run mileage is getting better, that’s very important (how long can be used without any hiccups).

    One question is this fixed design or it will go another faze of strange turn around. Opera should stop playing substitute teacher and get a grip, again it present a half job done design. I’m just saying until you got something solid, use what got, don’t rush it OK. Or put a poll out what design can attract more users, simple as that.

    • Guest

      I don’t think the “some language” to English translator you are using is very good… I don’t understand anything you’ve written so far.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EKMCL43XL4XYSGIMGA7QZKSC5I Blaz Pristav

        If Guest it’s not using Opera then it should be and my English was 99% spotless.

        Only one mistake a part it should be apart the rest is dead on, capish.

        • Guest

          You’re not making sense. Maybe you should stick to posting comments on local sites in your own language.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EKMCL43XL4XYSGIMGA7QZKSC5I Blaz Pristav

    And for god sake get more respect, when i test Opera, web site actually slow down all home network, that web browser sniffing from web sites if user use Opera is poison and hurting users at the end.

    • Anonymous

      O> Settings> Prefences> Advanced>Server Name Completion> Turn off ” Look for Local Machine”

  • http://twitter.com/pneumatig Pneumatig Gdynia

    Hardware Acceleration will most likely make it into O12. I’m personally interested about interface changes Haavard mentioned on twitter some time ago – redesigning panels. 

    • Anonymous

      O> Settings> Prefences> Advanced>Advance> Server Name Completion> Turn off ” Look for Local Machine”

  • Stuff

    Customizability. LOTS of them. I hope O12 can allow me to disable address field lowlighting, image downsizing, and lots of other similar “I want to be IE” annoyingly bad UI.

  • manish

    Bug Fixes,HWA,WEBGL,Angrybirds,

  • Bharat Ghanta

    HWA/WebGL

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