Opera just launched the first alpha version of Opera 11, the company’s first version of its desktop browser with support for extensions. As the browser wars continue to heat up, Opera remained one of the few players without a vibrant extension ecosystem. This new version aims to change this and while there are currently only a few extensions for Opera 11, the company promises that adapting existing extensions for Opera should be rather easy for a developers who have already written similar extensions for other browsers.
Installing extensions on Opera 11 feels quite similar to Chrome. A simple click on the “install” button in the extension gallery brings up a confirmation dialog and once you confirm the install, the extension is active without the need to reboot the browser. Uninstalling is also just a question of right-clicking on the extension’s icon and clicking on “uninstall.” Among the 17 extensions that are current available are addons for delicious bookmarking, link shortening with bit.ly and sending links to your Android phone.
Speed
Opera was always a very fast browser and while we didn’t perform any formal benchmark tests yet, the latest version feels just as fast (if not even a bit faster) than Google Chrome. The current alpha version doesn’t include support for hardware acceleration yet, but Opera plans to enable this feature before launching the final version, which should give the browser another speed boost.
