As you may remember this Thursday, the 16th of December, Norwegian developer Opera Software announced the release of the final version of the latest and greatest Opera iteration, mainly Opera 11. This version comes with extensions, a new stab stacking feature, and a few other cool features – but more about that later.

On Friday, the 17th of December, just one day after the launch of Opera 11, the Norwegian software developer announced that it saw a record number of Opera 11 downloads. In just one day after its launch, Opera 11 was downloaded a total of 6.7 million times.

Many of these recorded downloads came from auto-updates, but not all of them. Opera Software did not prompt all its users to get v.11 at once. Bad things would have happened if it did so.

“There’s no question that auto-update does help download numbers, as it should,” said Opera Software in a press release. “We want people using the newest version and we want to make it easy for them to get it. Still, not every single person using Opera’s desktop version received the auto-update message. 50 million downloads all at once might, at worst, rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, sending our offices hurtling into a parallel universe where toasters fly and everyone uses MS Bob. Or it might just make the downloads really slow. Either way, we aren’t taking chances.”

There’s no wonder users are rushing to get Opera 11; I mean it comes with the following cool new features:

• Extensions – Extensions are great because they add features and functionality directly into the browser itself, rather than as standalone Opera Widgets or Opera Unite applications. Developers can easily create extensions using supported APIs and open standards like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, while users can easily install extensions by clicking an extension and then clicking “Install” in the small window that shows up.
• New tab stacking feature – you can stack tabs and group them by site or by theme. To stack tabs one on top of another you need only drag one tab on top of another tab. Place the mouse over a tab and the stack will expand in a visual preview. Click the arrow icon and the tab stack will expand across the tab bar. A video that showcases tab stacks is available on YouTube here.
• New bookmarks bar – Opera’s personal bar is now replaced by a new bookmarks bar.
• Safer address field – the address field hides unnecessary information and uses badges to highlight the security status of web pages. Parameters at the end of web addresses are visually hidden when the address field is not focused. All web pages get a badge to the left of the address field. The badge replaces protocols like HTTP, HTTPS and opera:, which are shown only when focusing on the address field.
• Opera Turbo badge – Opera 11 Beta displays a badge when Opera Turbo is turned on. Click the badge and you will have access to info such as estimated data savings for the Opera Turbo session.
• Plugins – users can now set plug-ins to load on-demand. According to Opera Software you can see a performance increase of up to 30% by doing so.
• Auto-update – extensions and Opera Unite applications will automatically update themselves.
• Enhanced mouse gestures – Opera 11 Beta features a new visual interface that highlights mouse paths and helps guide the discovery, use and mastery of mouse gestures. If you are curious to see a full list of mouse gestures, these powerful shortcuts are presented in detail here.
• Speed and lightweight – Opera 11 is some 30% smaller than Opera 10.63 and faster than Opera 10.63, especially on Linux. Opera 11 is some 15-20% faster on Linux.

If you would like to get Opera 11, you can grab it straight from Opera Software here.