Opera 9.0 Released

Nurgled writes "After teasing us for months with betas and snapshots, Opera Software have finally released version 9.0 of their web browser. The new version features correct ACID2 rendering, native support for the SVG Basic profile, a built-in BitTorrent client, support for Microsoft's designmode and contenteditable extensions, per-site configuration, Atom support, Web Forms 2.0 support, Canvas support (and some Opera-specific extensions), NTLM authentication, some support of parts of CSS3 and lots more. The full changelog is available." p14nd4 adds "And for you *nix users, it hasn't hit their .deb repository quite yet, but there are regular installers available for the major players, including a fixed Ubuntu installer and an x86 Solaris version."

Comments

How about an API

[Magada]

I love Opera. I'd love it even more if it came with the possibility to create extensions.

Re:Good,

[elrous0]

While it is closed source (and doesn't benefit from extensions like Firefox) I'd still like to say that, in my experience, Opera is probably the best browser out there for both supporting standards like Acid and simultaneously rendering IE-specific pages with a great deal of fidelity. In fact, at one time, I actually suspected it was just a skin for IE--since it was so consistently good at rendering IE-specific pages that sent Firefox into a tailspin.

-Eric

Re:Finally

[ceeam]

They tend to try different combinations of features and then check users feedback. They had built-in ICQ client once, for example. If no-one uses something it will probably go away.

Re:Finally

[Danga]

I used to agree but after downloading and installing Opera 9.0 it is using 33MB RAM with just this slashdot article open while IE and FireFox are hovering around using 23MB RAM. While typing that last sentence it has now gone up to 34.5MB. I love Opera and it has everything I need and has always been fast and reliable but this is starting to worry me. There are only 34 comments in this thread so far, what is so much memory being used for? I suspect some type of caching but of what on a slashdot article page? Strange.

Re:OK, since you're so well informed..

[Nurgled]

It varies. Web Forms 2.0 is open and specified at the URL linked in the original summary, though it isn't actually finalized yet. It's also designed to be backwards compatible, so there's no reason why you can't go ahead and use most of it on sites now and suffer no ill-effects. As for canvas, I believe it now works in Firefox, Safari and Opera but obviously not IE. SVG can be added to most browsers via a plugin if they don't support it already.

Certainly we're not going to be making use of most of these things tomorrow, but it's getting to the point where IE is the only one left that doesn't support them. Obviously that's a biggy, but the IE team has shown recently that they are willing to play nice by implementing everyone else's adaptation of their XMLHttpRequest object, so it's not inconcievable that they'd implement some of these other new toys if they prove useful.

Frightening the Fox.

[delire]

Reading changelogs such as these should strike fear into the hearts of the Firefox developers, while that they squander so foolishly their hard-earned market share. If it wasn't for Opera, Joe Clickit wouldn't have reason to think FF was so poorly cobbled together.

Firefox, while it started with good intentions has become thick around the midriff. It's memory useage is embarassing, and I use Linux which is apparently the build target Firefox is most optomised for. How long can we be told we're sick of being told they're imagining FF's gushing memory leaks.. Why does an open-source application fall so miserably behind a closed-source competitor? The trend is the inverse.

EMAIL CAUTION

[sl3xd]

Opera's email client is awseome in general (and is usually my primary email client) -- but there is one issue that I've found that they have yet to fix: IMAP mail...

It's a bit of a weird one: If you use a non-opera email client (with IMAP, at least -- I don't use POP), and that email client is the first to see a new message, there are a few issues. (Say, you use your 'company mandated' email client to get the mail at work, then Opera at home.)

Opera doesn't acknowledge the existence of emails that have been first detected with a non-opera browser. I noticed this because I kept looking for particular emails that had seemed to vanish on me. I finally noticed the problem -- Opera simply wasn't detecting the messages. They were sitting there in my inbox, but Opera coudln't see them.

Otherwise, I've been using the Opera 9 (beta) series, and I've been quite pleased.