Hello all,

Today we are introducing Opera 52 beta. We are happy to announce that this build comes with an improved ad blocker which lets you load pages faster than on Opera 51 or Google Chrome. We are also introducing a new, convenient way to select and copy multiple page addresses at once and some very cool error pages animations. Keep reading.

Faster ad blocker

Almost two years ago, we introduced the first built-in ad blocker into our browsers. Since then, we have stayed committed to bringing you the fastest, safest and most interruption-free browsing experience. Our ad blocker is also used to provide safety features, including protection against cryptojacking attacks, which we introduced in January 2018.

This time, we are focusing on browsing speed. The performance gain in our ad blocking mechanism was possible due to an improvement in the string matching algorithm.  In order to check how much faster Opera 52 is, we performed some tests. Our benchmark tests were conducted on 15 popular news websites which were tested in ten iterations each. The results show that Opera 52 performed 16 percent faster than Opera 51 and 44 percent faster than Chrome 64 with its newly introduced ad blocker.

Read more about how the Chrome and Opera ad blockers compared in our benchmark tests here.

Select multiple tabs and copy page addresses

Ever wished to be able to perform actions on multiple tabs at once? Well, now you can.

With Opera 52, selecting multiple individual tabs can be done by holding down Ctrl (⌘ on macOS) and clicking on the tabs. You can also select a range of tabs, from left to right, by holding down the Shift key and clicking on a tab. You are now able to run the same commands with multiple tabs selected as you did with a single tab, including reload, duplicate, pin, close, mute or save to Speed Dial.

We think this improvement to tab manipulation will prove to be very useful. Now, for example, you’re able to close only the selected tabs or open the context menu to perform additional actions. A new function found in the context menu called “Copy page address(es)” copies the addresses of your selected websites to your clipboard. This becomes really useful when you want to send a bunch of pages to your friends. Moreover, rather than saving your entire current browsing session for a future session, you can now pick and choose particular tabs you wish to store for later in a Speed Dial folder.

Note that you can close a tab by holding alt and clicking it. Previously, you would use the Shift key plus a click to close a tab.

New animations

Error pages tend to raise our blood pressure. Who wouldn’t be upset by a DNS error, right? We decided to make this experience a tad more pleasant by introducing some cool animations. Check them out:

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