This year, in our desktop team, we have been focusing on making features we believe need to be part of your browser in 2016. So far we have introduced key new features such as a built-in ad blocker and battery saver. Today, with Opera 39, we introduce a personalized newsreader and a much-improved video pop out feature.

A revamped video pop out

Video pop out lets you easily detach and move a video over to the side of your screen, so that you can continue watching while you work, play or do research.

And if you’re curious, our engineers are sharing what inspired them to develop the video pop out feature:

The video pop out feature was first released in May and has been polished since then. In Opera 39 we have added several improvements. Now, you can pop out videos from more websites, including Vimeo, and play/pause with a single click. There is also now an option to disable the feature, for those who do not want it.

We took a look at some of the usage statistics for video pop out, and it’s unbelievable how many different ways people use this feature. Some of you use it to share your screen with your kids, letting them watch video while you work on other things. Others use it for watching conference recordings, TED talks, online lectures, coding tutorials or extremely long videos (like slow TV).

Where people consume video the most

We took a deeper look at how people multitask while watching video in different geographies. The results of this research show online video preferences around the globe based on aggregated and averaged data from Opera 38 usage. The data collected does not include privacy-sensitive data.

The top-10 countries span four different continents, showing that the online video boom is truly a global phenomenon. It’s also interesting to see that people in some countries – such as Italy, the UK and Germany – spend much more time watching videos during the weekend, while others, such as China or Spain, tend to multitask more during weekdays.

A personalized newsreader

With Opera 39 you can also experience a new way of enjoying news. Go to the start page and click the newspaper icon on the left. Opera brings you personalized news in our brand new newsreader, with one-stop news tailored just for you.

The feature lets you personalize your newsfeed by selecting from favorite news sources, and choose how you would like to display article excerpts and images. There are no ads, and you can mix new sources as you like from different regions and languages.

Click“Top 50” in the newsreader side panel to get access to top news picks for a selected country. The “Top 50” is separate from your personal feed, but you can easily add sources you like from it to your feed. Find out how we select top sources for you.

Customizable block lists to the native ad blocker

We also added a customizable block list to the native ad blocker in Opera 39. With this release, advanced users can now add their own block lists. To find a new list, make a web search for blocking lists recommended for your region; then, copy and paste it into the “Custom block lists” dialog in your preferences. Once added, the browser will start using the list immediately without the need to restart Opera.

Other features

Another improvement is the search pop-up that makes searching from the browser easier. If you select text in Opera, a pop-up will appear offering the most common functions for text selection – search or copy. This feature can be turned on/off in the Browser / User Interface section of settings.

Also, this version brings an optimization pass for the Blink memory manager, called heap compaction. It reduces memory usage by several megabytes per tab. Learn more about how we optimized memory usage in Opera here.

This version includes several features for developers that we inherit from Chrome 52, such as new CSS contain property, which considers fewer elements while rendering, and the PerformanceObserver API that makes collecting real user measurement data easier.

Browser VPN

Opera 39 beta features a new, built-in, free and unlimited VPN, right in your browser. With the beta version you can now choose whether to use it as a global setting for all tabs or simply when in private browsing mode. It’s very important for us to polish this option and make sure we detect and address any severe issues, before it goes stable. You will not find it in Opera 39 stable yet, but we are working hard on this, so stay tuned.

This version includes several features for developers as well. Please take a look at the technical details described here.

Download Opera 39, and let us know how you like all these changes.

Quick fix for clearing third-party data crash.

We quickly fixed the crash with clearing third-party data. For those of you that already downloaded the Opera 39 Stable – make sure that you download the update to it. For those of you that waited for the autoupdate to kick in – we are starting to distribute the fixed version already. Sorry for any inconvenience.

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