It has been a while since we last checked out the Otter Browser project. To be precise, we reviewed the first and third beta of the project back in 2014 which were rather bare bones at the time.

The idea of the project however was interesting, as the team wanted to recreate the classic Opera web browser (that is Opera 12.x and earlier) which Opera Software abandoned by migrating to Chromium as the new browser's foundation.

Today's release of beta 7 provided us with a great opportunity to check out the latest public release version of the web browser. It needs to be noted that the browser is still in beta, and that things may not work properly because of that.

Otter Browser is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit version for Microsoft Windows operating system and for Linux. Windows users may install it on their system or run a portable version instead.

The interface itself has not changed that much when you compare it to beta 3 but there have been numerous under the hood changes and feature additions that you will notice when you start to explore what the browser has to offer.

Most of these add core functionality that every browser supports. This includes support for customizing toolbars and menus, on-demand plugin loading, a Ctrl-Tab tab switcher or a customizable start page.

Apart from those, and work on those continues as core features are still missing, the developers have added features that are not supported by all browsers.

Among them options to override the user agent, content blocking that is compatible with Adblock Plus, note taking and importing (from Opera Notes), support for extra toolbars, or options to customize keyboard shortcuts for lots of activities in the browser.

The team plans to release at least two additional betas and the first stable release this year. New features planned for those releases are a password manager, support for user scripts, a feed reader and support for tab grouping.

What may be even more interesting from a user perspective is the planned list of features that the devs plan to add after the first stable release. Among the many features listed there is support for browser extensions, and here for Firefox and Chrome APIs.

Additional planned features include an email client, a solution to sync data similar to Opera Link, support for Opera skins, and an instant messaging client.

Summary Article Name Otter Browser Beta 7: how far has the project gone? Description A look at the freshly released beta 7 of Otter browser, a web browser that aims to recreate the best aspects of Opera 12.x. Author Martin Brinkmann

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