Opera 11.50 Aims to Attract More Fans than Lady Gaga

Posted 06/28/2011 at 8:32am | by Paul Lilly

4

Comments

Print

Whether or not you're a fan of the Opera browser, you have to give props to Opera Software, the Norwegian browser maker that despite lagging behind the big three (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome) in market share, they never take themselves too seriously. With the release of Opera 11.50 today, for example, Opera Software didn't set a goal of catching up to the competition, and instead made reference to Star Wars and Lady Gaga, all in same breath.

"Almost 1.2 million stormtroopers, droids, and janitors can fit into a fully operational Death Star. Nearly 11 million follow Lady Gaga on Twitter. Now, Opera aims to put those numbers to shame with the number of downloads for its newest browser," Opera Software says.

The browser maker even put a live download counter on its homepage so you an keep tabs on how close they are to reaching their goals, silly as they might be.

As for the actual browser update, the big new feature in version 11.50 is extension support for Speed Dial. Rather than thumbnails and links to your top sites, you can now embed your Speed Dial with extensions to, say, keep tabs on weather or not news tidbits.

"We're excited about the work that has gone into Opera 11.50," said Jan Standal, VP of Desktop Products, Opera Software. "Before we challenge Lady Gaga though, we've got to surpass the Tom Selleck mustache fan page on Facebook and the number of forum posts Opera fan Tamil has written. We think Speed Dial extensions are amazing enough to do the trick, but we didn't stop there."

Other new features include password synchronization, a streamlined and lightweight design, and thousands of bug fixes. You can download the latest release here.