Opera 11.50

Pros

Fast. Minimal interface. Turbo feature makes slow connections even faster. Tons of extra capabilties. Built-in mail and Bittorrent clients. Good HTML5 support. Syncing of bookmarks, settings, passwords, history, and more. Mac and Linux versions. Extensions. Live tiles on start page.

Cons

Extension gallery not as extensive as Firefox's or Chrome's. Some sites display a message saying the browser isn't supported. No "do not track" feature.

Bottom Line

Opera is fast, HTML5-compliant, and the most feature-packed browser available. More and more sites display correctly in it with each passing day.

Install

The Windows installer is a quick sub-10MB download.

Installation Options

The installer lets you choose language and other default options after you click the Options butto

Speed Dial

Opera innovated with its Speed Dial new tab page, and continues to do so with Speed Dial extensions.

Extensions Menu Choice

Extensions, which you start using from this menu choice, came in version 11

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Extension Gallery

As with Chrome's and Firefox's, Opera's extension gallery shows highlights, categories, and user reviews and ratings for extension. The library isn't nearly as extensive as those for Chrome and Firefox.

Installing an Extension

Extensions install snappily, and you get a privacy choice of whether to allow them to work on secure pages and in privacy mode. 

Manage Extensions

Like Chrome, you manage Opera extensions in a browser window rather than in a separate dialog as Firefox and Internet Explorer do.

Pinned Tab

Like Google Chrome, Opera lets you pin a tab so that it's always available, and now, also like Chrome, the pinned tabs are icon-sized, as shown here with the ABC tab at the left.

Tab Stacks

Version 11 brought this way to combine tabs into a stack. Note the top image shows tabs combined, while pressing the arrow expands them to the lower view.

Tab Stack Preview

Hovering the mouse cursor over the tab stack reveals these large thumbnails of the sites underneath.

Address Bar Security Info

The redesigned address bar clearly shows each page's security status. The top site has a clean record, the middle is securely connected, and the bottom is verified with a security certificate. 

Mouse Gestures

The beta adds clearer guidance to mouse gestures; these large dark circles appear when the user starts a mouse gesture.

Bookmark Bar

Opera 11 replaced the Personal bar, which used to be above the tabs, with this more Chrome-like bookmark bar, which lives below the address bar. 

On-Demand Plugins

Only running plugins like Adobe Flash when they're needed can have a positive effect on performance.

Pinned Tab

Like Chrome 10 and Firefox 4, Opera 11.10 lets you keep a smaller pinned-tab for sites you always want open.