Opera Browser Beta Adds Voice, More

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, the first public beta of Opera 8 is available for free download. It adds voice input/output and a host of other niceties. Key new features include improved RSS handling, fit to window or paper width, a start-bar for easy access to the most commonly used functions, and automatic update checks. The beta release supports Windows only, but a general release is scheduled for early 2005. Opera and IBM have partnered on XHTML+Voice (X+V) technology for several years, co-announcing a Multimodal Browser and Toolkit early in 2003."

Comments

The new beta is awesome.

[beeswax]

I think everyone here that likes firefox should give the Opera beta a try. I've used it since yesterday and it's a top quality piece of software in my opinion.

Firefox might be better than IE, but Opera is much nicer, faster than firefox.

Re:Face it

[vcv]

Better formatting: Opera is the most innovative browser on the market, bar none. This is fact, whether people like it or not. Firefox would be not where it is today without Opera.

Why I like Opera better:
- Gestures are implemented better, more customizable, and can be used across the WHOLE browser app and not just the browser window.
- Tabbed browsing is better, more natural.
- Rewind and fast forward
- The way Opera handles cache on windows, by cache'ing the GDI objects instead of just the page data.
- The start bar
- Better and easier customization
- Smooth image zoom
- Simply faster
- Sessions and reloading all my pages after a crash.
- MSR/Fit to width/SSR
- The option to have the progress bar pop up at the bottom of the window and hide when it's done.
- Wand, it's simply better.
- Author/user modes
- All images/cached images/no images toggle
- Native windows skin. With OpusOS, it's great.
- Paste and Go
- That a page is actually a window and I can break it off from the main window if I want.
- Trashcan that keeps track of closed pages.
- Reload every
- Hotclick

And all the little details that aren't features. Firefox simply can't provide all this, even with extensions. And if there were an extension for each thing.. it would use a lot of resources, be slower, and they would not work as well together.

Opera: still leading the pack

[RAMMS EIN]

It amazes me that, after so many years, Opera continues to lead in browser innovation. Sure, Mozilla has copied tabbed browsing, popup blocking, mouse gestures, and a few more, but Opera has so much more. Small screen rendering, WML support, slideshows, keyboard shortcuts everywhere, ... And it's a lot faster and smaller, even with mail and IRC client built in.

And now they bring voice recognition. If they get that to work on Linux, I'll be happy to buy a couple more licenses from them.