by Martin Brinkmann on November 28, 2018 in Opera – 4 comments
Opera Software released Opera 57 to the Stable channel today. The new version of the browser comes with personalized news improvements and a new Netflix recommendations feature.
Opera users who run a stable version of the browser on their desktop computers may load opera://update to run a check for updates. The browser should pick up the new version automatically so that it can be downloaded and installed over the existing version.
Users who prefer to download an installer can do so on the Opera website. Check the advanced options to make sure that the “default browser” option is selected or not selected depending on your personal preferences.
Opera 57
If you are a fan of personalized news, Opera 57 adds something that you probably will be happy about. Opera improved the recommendation engine that powers news on the browser’s New Tab page.
The New Tab page of the browser lists News below the search field, Speed Dial links and the bookmarks bar — if displayed. Just scroll down a bit to find the news section.
News categories such as Technology, Food, Health or Motoring are available and can be switched between.
Individual news articles are displayed with a headline, source, and thumbnail image. A click opens the article on the linked website.
Like and dislike buttons are displayed when you hover over any article. Opera’s artificial intelligence uses these to push news that users find interesting and less news that users dislike.
Integrated into the personalized news feed is Opera’s new Netflix recommendation feature. The company does not say whether it made a deal with Netflix to display these recommendations in the release announcement.
Opera Software notes that recommendations are available in several countries already including Germany, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, France, Japan, and Canada.
The recommendations appear to be based on the installed browser language and locale, and not on location. Opera 57 displayed English Netflix titles in the feed and not Netflix movies or shows available in Germany.
A quick test with a Spanish VPN connection confirmed that as English titles remained visible in the browser. It is possible that this is a caching issue, however. An option to select a Netflix region would be useful in this regard. A click on a recommendation opens the right language version on Netflix though if available.
Opera 57 features several under the hood changes; developers fixed several crashes in the browser, fixed a snapshot issue with Disqus content when taking page screenshots, and updated Chromium to 70.0.3538.102.
Interested users find the entire changelog here.
Now You: What is your opinion on personalized news recommendations in browsers or on sites?