New Snapshot of Opera 11.10 Released: Makes Speed Dial Fluid

Speed Dial is undoubtedly one of the most loved features in Opera. It’s also probably the most emulated. Opera first added speed dial back in 2007, to provide a convenient and quick way to access the most frequently visited websites. Since then we have seen Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and others implement variants of this feature.

In the meanwhile, Opera worked on improving speed dial by adding support for background images, customization options, and wide-screen resolution support. Now, the veteran browser maker says that it is ready to take speed dial to the next level. “We are going to make Speed Dial more fluid, dynamic and easier to use”, Cezary Ku?akowski from Opera Software wrote on the Desktop Team blog.

The just released snapshot of Barracuda (Opera 11.10) provides a first look at the planned changes by introducing the new “flow layout”. To be honest, as of now, the new flow layout doesn’t do anything earth-shattering. It just makes the speed dial behave a lot more like a webpage. If the browser window is resized, then instead of your speed dials being shrunk, a scrollbar will appear. Also the cap on number of speed dials is gone. Now, it seems that you can have as many visual shortcuts as you want.

The new snapshot also introduces a new “Discoverability” feature that will subtly encourage users to try new features. If done right, this can turn out to be a really smart move, as Opera has scores of awesome features, that even many old-timers aren’t aware of. Opera promises that discoverability will not be annoying or frustrating. However, I couldn’t check it out as till now I haven’t managed to figure out the three features that were added to discoverability. Let me know if you guys fare better.

The snapshot is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. However, don’t forget that this is an early preview build, and is likely to have stability and performance issues.

Opera Software’s Revenue Surges On the Back of Operator Tie-ups

Earlier in the week, Opera Software released its quarterly financial report. The final quarter of 2010 saw Opera increase its user base to 170 million, out of which 53 million belonged to Opera for desktop.

The past year also witnessed Opera Software going from being the the red to recording record revenues. One of the most significant contributors to its turnaround was operator tie-ups, which Opera had been focusing on during the past few quarters.

Opera’s partners include several big names like Vodafone and MTS. While mobile service providers benefit from the partnership by being able to provide its users a customised version of Opera Mini, which reduces bandwidth costs, highlights their web-properties (through speed-dial), and encourages mobile surfing, Opera Software profits from the licensing fee.

The number of operator-branded Opera Mini users jumped from 2.1 million in Jan 2010 to 11.5 million in Jan 2011. Other than that there were approximately 90 million Opera Mini users last month.

Although partnerships with operators helped Opera generate a significant amount of revenue, the Norwegian browser maker credits stronger than expected desktop and device revenues (chiefly gaming consoles and connected TV) for the higher than expected total revenue. AdMarvel also made a significant positive contribution.

As expected Opera’s profits also saw a sharp increase. However, one-off expenses like closing of Czech offices, and shifting of Opera’s server park from Norway to Iceland pulled down the profit percentage.

In the near future, Opera aims to refresh its mail offering by leveraging the previously acquired Fastmail, develop Open Mobile Ad Exchange to generate revenue from mobile browsers, popularize Opera Mobile Store, and aggressively monetize Opera for desktop (see screenshot embedded below).