Opera 11 Will Have Extensions

[Sope]

This development may be of interest to Opera users like myself :-

opera-11-will-have-extensions

I find Opera meets virtually all my needs with a little customisation (I quite enjoy playing with this aspect of it), but there are a few areas in which this could well be a very welcome addition.

[MidnightCowboy]

Yes, I saw this posted in the main site comments too.

I loved Opera but on joining the site admin the deal breaker for me was no full WOT support like is possible now even with Chrome. I use this thing so often that I need it siting on the toolbar for instant reference. I believe there is currently a scripted option for this available but a lot of folks won't be keen on (or even able to follow) this method of installation.

[Sope]

Yup, presumably developers of the more popular browser extensions which are currently available, will take the opportunity to port their extensions for use with Opera 11.

I currently employ other methods to be able to use WOT, adblocking lists etc. with Opera 10 but full blown extensions for these would be welcome. Just as long as they don't hog resources or become a significant security weakness that is. Hopefully the extensions will be more successful than the widgets currently are!

[deya]

Opera 11 alpha is released today, so for those who like to take an early look you can read about it, and download the Opera 11 extensions build here.

It installs seperate from your existing Opera browser [if you have one] and there are some extensions [14 at present] available to try. I've only just downloaded it so haven't tried any yet, but the browser works fine. So, if you're interested, you can give it a go.

There's a Windows, Mac and Linux version available to download from the page.

[Sope]

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be giving this a try out over the next week myself.

[deya]

The extensions are easy to install, buttons appear at the top right of the browser, and you can uninstall them from the manage extensions page, no restart required for either. It's a bit like Chrome, from what I remember. I've tried a couple and they work well enough .. memory use increases slightly though.

The browser itself works fine though, seems stable and no crashes so far, so it's ok to use for those who want to try it. The WOT SurfCanyon search engine works fine so you can get the search ratings - no WOT extension as yet, although they've added 2 more extensions to the list since I first posted about it so I expect they'll start to come thick and fast in the near future. You can learn more about them here.

[Sope]

Ok, I couldn't resist giving it a go. (installed it in a Ubuntu 10.10 VM for now)

Opera 11 Alpha itself worked as expected without any issues so far.

Originally Posted by deya

The extensions are easy to install, buttons appear at the top right of the browser, and you can uninstall them from the manage extensions page, no restart required for either.

Indeed. Compared to Firefox, the extensions install almost instantly, and without the need for a browser restart - very impressive so far. The few I tried feel well integrated as part of the browser, rather than separate add-ons, but this may be just the particular ones I tried (mouse trail, Opera configurator, YouTube video downloader). FastestTube is particularly impressive.

All in all, seems very promising and slickly done on first impressions.

[deya]

Agreed. The extensions work well and it seems hard to believe that this is just an alpha version, very fast. I was searching around and came across a page on the WOT blog, seems that their extension is to be one of the first available, although I can't see it yet. See here - There's a preview image of how it will look.

[cheffo]

Am very impressed, it will be gr8t to have some of the extensions that I use running in Opera. ( Lastpass, WOT, Add block Plus. ) This IMHO will make Opera the No 1 browser
once the above add-ons and more have been released. Which should not take the dev of
the mentioned extensions very long to do. Happy Days

[Sope]

Originally Posted by cheffo

it will be gr8t to have some of the extensions that I use running in Opera. ( Lastpass, WOT, Add block Plus. )

Yup, these were probably the first three extensions that came to my mind when I first heard about Opera 11.
They are already achievable by other means (at least to a certain extent) but as extensions they will be much more easily accessible.
Even though I'm not a big fan of NoScript, I guess that's another one that would appeal to many, and it appears there is already an extension available claiming to add that type of functionality, though I didn't bother to try it myself.