Opera Web Browser for OS X Gains New Power Saving Mode

[MacRumors]

Norway-based company Opera Software today announced the addition of a new power saving mode to its Opera web browser, which is designed to extend battery life when the browser is used on a notebook computer like Apple's line of MacBooks.

According to Opera, the new power saving mode, which is available today in the developer stream, can extend laptop battery life by up to 50% compared to earlier versions of the Opera browser and to Google Chrome, giving heavy web users up to three hours of additional battery life. Opera's testing was done on a Lenovo X250 with a Core i7-5600U processor and 16GB RAM running Windows 10, so it is unclear how much battery savings Mac users will see.

The feature works through various optimizations like reducing activity from background tabs, adjusting page-redrawing frequency, and tuning video playback options.

"It's extremely frustrating to run out of battery on your computer, whether you are out traveling, watching videos, or you have just left your charger behind. Our new power saving mode will nudge you when the laptop starts to consume battery, and, when enabled, it can increase the battery life by up to three hours," says Krystian Kolondra, SVP of Engineering for Opera.

The power saving mode can be accessed whenever a laptop is using battery power by clicking on the battery icon located next to the address field in the browser. It is also able to detect when a laptop battery is running low, offering up an option to enable the mode. Today's developer update also includes optimized animated themes and better memory management techniques to improve performance.

The introduction of the power saving mode comes just a few weeks after Opera added a built-in virtual private network (VPN) feature to its web browser. The developer version of the Opera browser with the built-in power saving mode can be downloaded from the Opera website.

Article Link: Opera Web Browser for OS X Gains New Power Saving Mode

 

[Dilster3k]

For me personally, any other browser other than Safari just feels wrong on OS X.

 

[Kajje]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Installed the Opera VPN on my iPhone and seems to work great!

Hope that Firefox will follow soon with the power save functions. Love my Firefox but hate it's eating battery power out of my MBr like there's no tomorrow.

 

[odedia]

I switched from safari to Opera ever since they offered the VPN option. It is truly a great browser. Love the front page articles, there's always something interesting to read.

 

[LiE_]

Opera VPN function is really great.

 

[vooke]

Whatever they are smoking at Opera should be legalized

 

[miknos]

Safari already use less cpu compared to other browsers. And without crippling it. Can Opera do the same?

 

[vault]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

The whole "secret" of battery life optimisation is suspending background tabs. I find it incredibly annoying that Safari does this with no option to disable it. It makes it useless for certain websites that refresh their content periodically. A power save option is a good compromise.

 

[star-affinity]

I really like the ”Show all tabs” feature of Safari 9 and later – it's very useful and I haven't seen anything as good in other browsers even with extensions.

Otherwise I like Opera on OS X. Chromium/Chrome also (which Opera is based on, right?) feels good to use in OS X in my opinion. Firefox is the exception with its truncated (Windows style) pop-up menus. A good example of how this behaves is the language switching menu on https://www.wikipedia.org

 

[Populus]

This is one of the ideas next Mac OS X 10.12 I'd like to feature: A power saver mode.

 

[Sharewaredemon]

I've been using Opera for a few years now and love it. Not wanting to have too large a Google footprint and wanting certain features not present in Safari, Opera ended up being the browser I settled with.

Plus it's fun putting the Konami code in to unlock power user mode.

 

[Kajje]

The whole "secret" of battery life optimisation is suspending background tabs. I find it incredibly annoying that Safari does this with no option to disable it. It makes it useless for certain websites that refresh their content periodically. A power save option is a good compromise.

You probably have a reason to want your background tabs to refresh, I have a good reason not wanting that. Outside of my Google Mail 'pinned' tab, I don't want any tabs to refresh - at all.

The consensus here probably is that having options for individual background refresh'ability is the way to go.

 

[bratell-at-Opera]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

We have done changes that will reduce the battery usage even without power saver but the big improvements come from power saver. Power saver is doing things that do have visible side effects (though you may have to look very hard), for instance slowing down background tabs or reducing the target frame rate or not auto-playing certain plugins.

Interesting thing about frame rate is that I've learned that many laptops have a screen where animation and a high frame rate results in a slight blur so a lower frame rate might not be all bad, but I have no idea if that applies to Apple's laptops.

 

[millerb7]

Opera VPN function is really great.

Except it doesn't really work like you expect. Your IP is still leaked. Its a smoke and mirrors trick really.

 

[bratell-at-Opera]

The whole "secret" of battery life optimisation is suspending background tabs. I find it incredibly annoying that Safari does this with no option to disable it. It makes it useless for certain websites that refresh their content periodically. A power save option is a good compromise.

Depending on how you use your browser, background tabs can be a relevant battery drain so it makes sense to do something with them. We decided to do it differently than Safari though and only slow them down because we think suspending all background tabs is too invasive. Though we are looking at possible other improvements to background tabs as well.

As someone with a three digit tab count, I'm all too familiar with rogue background tabs...
[doublepost=1463054925][/doublepost]

Except it doesn't really work like you expect. Your IP is still leaked. Its a smoke and mirrors trick really.

While I haven't worked on the VPN feature myself, I believe the main problem, WebRTC, was solved in the newly released build. It is at least mentioned at the end of http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/05/introducing-power-saving-mode/

 

[odedia]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Installed the Opera VPN on my iPhone and seems to work great!

By that logic, why does the iPhone have a power savings mode?
Clearly you're paying a small penalty of performance and background processing at this mode.

 

[coolfactor]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Installed the Opera VPN on my iPhone and seems to work great!

Hope that Firefox will follow soon with the power save functions. Love my Firefox but hate it's eating battery power out of my MBr like there's no tomorrow.

First, software evolves. Developers learn over time. This is a natural progression of features and functionality that occurs with all software. Opera has been around for many years.

Second, anytime I see someone say "I love Firefox", I immediately take anything they say with a grain of salt. Firefox started out as a good attempt at being a lightweight version of Netscape Navigator, which became bloated over the years, but Firefox has also become bloated now. For several years, the browser was absolutely horrible (on the Mac platform) feeling like a poor Windows port. Eventually, they cleaned that up and made a better effort at having a native-looking interface. It's definitely improved and is a good browser, but is not the best browser in all ways, shapes and forms.

In my job, I use 3 browsers simultaneously — Safari on my laptop, with Brave and Firefox on my external monitor. I also open up Chrome occasionally for different sites. It's not about one browser that can do everything perfectly. It's about choosing the best browser for the job, I say.

 

[jezbd1997]

For me personally, any other browser other than Safari just feels wrong on OS X.

Well Safari in Yosemite and El Cap has sucked, not as fast and it's ugly. Looks more complicated too.
This is coming from someone who would not touch any other browser than Safari.
Chrome looks nice and performance is quite a lot better with lots of tabs/windows, compared with the newer Safari :/

 

[millerb7]

Depending on how you use your browser, background tabs can be a relevant battery drain so it makes sense to do something with them. We decided to do it differently than Safari though and only slow them down because we think suspending all background tabs is too invasive. Though we are looking at possible other improvements to background tabs as well.

As someone with a three digit tab count, I'm all too familiar with rogue background tabs...
[doublepost=1463054925][/doublepost]

While I haven't worked on the VPN feature myself, I believe the main problem, WebRTC, was solved in the newly released build. It is at least mentioned at the end of http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/05/introducing-power-saving-mode/

It appears you are correct. That was the issue I was referring to which made the VPN useless. I'm on version 39.+ right now and it appears it was fixed 1 or 2 versions ago.

 

[unobtainium]

My Mac is constantly running hot or slowing down because of some rogue Safari tab. According to some of the replies in this thread, Safari automatically suspends unused Safari tabs, but if that's the case, why does Safari cause me so many problems?

 

[Rose-Opera]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Installed the Opera VPN on my iPhone and seems to work great!

Hope that Firefox will follow soon with the power save functions. Love my Firefox but hate it's eating battery power out of my MBr like there's no tomorrow.

Hey, my name is Rosi and I am working for Opera. It's nice to hear that you are liking the new VPN app and I hope you will continue enjoying it
Which functions we introduce, highly depends on what our users want. So when we saw that more and more people are using portable devices, we knew that we could help them out by integrating this feature. Feel free to test it out and send us a feedback.

 

[Kajje]

Second, anytime I see someone say "I love Firefox", I immediately take anything they say with a grain of salt. For several years, the browser was absolutely horrible (on the Mac platform) feeling like a poor Windows port.
.

I've switched from
Netscape to IE around 1998
IE to Firefox about five years later

I agree with your statement. But I'm done switching.

 

[redheeler]

For me personally, any other browser other than Safari just feels wrong on OS X.

Opera is my secondary browser next to Safari, it's good for a Mac running 10.7-10.9.5 (where Safari is no longer being kept current) but definitely consumes more resources (as do Chrome and Firefox). It also doesn't seem to get along with my 24" white iMac.

 

[ignatius345]

If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Oh come on. If they'd built in ultra-low power consumption by default, people would be complaining about speed and responsiveness. Even iOS recognizes that having a low battery is a usage scenario where the user is willing to sacrifice performance for power consumption.

 

[997440]

@bratell-at-Opera and @Rose-Opera

Has the sale to China received approval?

By AMIE TSANG and PAUL MOZURFEB. Feb. 10, 2016

HONG KONG — A group of Chinese investors sees $1.2 billion worth of potential in the world’s sixth-place Internet browser.

The group, which includes a Chinese private equity firm and two upstart Chinese technology companies, said on Wednesday that it had offered to acquire the Norwegian company behind the Opera web browser.
.....
Opera said that the agreement would give Opera access to Kunlun and Qihoo’s Internet users in China, as well as funding. Kunlun and Qihoo will also be able to sell their products to Opera users and use its mobile advertising platform.

Qihoo runs its own mobile browser, which it could combine with Opera’s, and it also could benefit from the company’s advertising network. Kunlun, which makes and licenses games, could use Opera’s apps as a way to broaden the distribution of those games.

Opera’s board has unanimously decided to recommend that shareholders accept the offer.

The deal is still conditional on Kunlun’s getting approval at its general meeting in March to participate in the consortium.
.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/dealbook/china-opera-kunlun-qihoo-golden-brick.html?_r=0