Opera heeft eerder dit jaar bekendgemaakt te stoppen met de ontwikkeling van de render-engine Presto en over te stappen op de Webkit-engine, die de drijvende kracht achter onder meer de browsers Safari en Chrome is. Na diverse testversies is nu de eerste stabiele release vrijgegeven. Diverse functies die Opera-gebruikers gewend zijn, ontbreken echter nog, zoals Opera Link, mouse gestures, Dragonfly, password manager en bookmark syncing. Verder is ook e-mailen niet meer mogelijk, maar er is wel een aparte client beschikbaar. De release notes voor deze uitgave zien er als volgt uit:
Fixes and stability enhancements since the Opera 12 series
General and User Interface
Opera 15 is a major reinvention for Opera. Going forward, the browser's source code will be based on Chromium and Blink, a fork of the WebKit rendering engine.
Everything for this browser is new:As Opera has recreated its desktop browser, features will be introduced selectively and iteratively.
- New rendering engine based on WebKit
- New user interface
- New capabilities
- New features
- Improved site compatibility
- Silent auto updates
New features
Combined address and search bar
Opera 15 combines the address and search bar, allowing for multiple predictive results that can be filtered by search engine. This bar includes options for adding current pages to Opera's Speed Dial or Stash, and expandable page information.
Enhanced Speed Dial
Opera 15 allows you to combine Speed Dial entries into groups, and introduces a search function that filters through entries.
Stash
Opera 15 introduces Stash - a feature that records the location, meta data, and a screenshot of a page. It places this information into a collapsable list entry on the browser's Start Page, that can be searched by keyword and/or scanned visually by screenshot.
Discover
A recommender service is included with Opera 15. Discover displays news and topical content that can be filtered by category or location/language.
Off-Road mode
Opera 15 adopts the server-side compression technology used by Opera Mobile.Improvements since Opera 15 Next (initial channel release)
- Stability enhancements
- Reintroduction of mouse gestures
- Improved address field behavior
- Improved proxy support
- Performance improvement for retina display on Mac
- Support for 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and XP
- Support for migrating Opera 12 profile data; see the help pages
Browsers
Nog maar even wat langer wachten dan...
