Opera 47 Stable improves usability

Opera Software released Opera 47 to the stable release channel on August 9, 2017 after a shorter than usual release cycle.

This shorter release cycle means that less major features are introduced in Opera 47, and that the bulk of improvements fall into the lighter category.

The browser comes with usability improvements first and foremost: new export all bookmarks option, custom number of closed tabs that can be restored, personal newsfeed improvements, and smoother video playback on devices running Windows 7.

Opera 47

Opera 47 comes with improved bookmark exporting options. The new bookmark exporting feature exports all bookmarks -- bookmarks, Speed Dial, and bookmarks bar -- as a single HTML bookmarks file.

To use the functionality, select Opera > Bookmarks > Show all Bookmarks, and then on the page that opens the Export bookmarks link in the sidebar on the left.

Save the HTML file to any location on your system. Some browsers support the importing of HTML bookmarks files, but you may also use the file directly, for instance by uploading it to a location on the Internet so that you can access it at any time and any browser.

The Opera browser comes with support of a personal news feed. This works similarly to RSS feeds, but comes with a selection of "top" news sources right away.

Opera users may add custom sources to the personal news feed. The news feed is updated regularly with new content, and Opera 47 comes with two new scan intervals.

The two new options scan news feed updates every three or six hours. The default is set to 30 minutes, and the new longer intervals are designed specifically for situations where data is of a premium. Users who only access the news feed every now and then may also set these new intervals to save data.

Opera's tab restoration feature keeps track of the last 32 tabs that were closed in the web browser. The previous default was set to 10 tabs. This means basically that Opera users can restore more closed tabs than before.

Tabs are restored in the Opera browser with a right-click on a tab and the selection of "reopen last closed tab". It is furthermore possible to click on the "two vertical lines and down arrow" (tab menu) icon in the Opera main toolbar to display all recently closed tabs instead to pick one for restoration from the listing.

Video playback issues on YouTube were fixed on Opera 47 for Windows 7 and Mac OS X. The video pop-out feature of Opera, which lets you move videos to their own window when they play, has smoother video playback as well in the new version of the Opera web browser.

Opera 47 was updated to Chromium 60. Screensaver files, those with the .scf file extension, were added to the list of risky file extensions in Opera 47 for Windows.

Additional information on the Opera 47 release are available on the Opera blog.