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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."
I didn't want to bloat my summary by going into too much detail about that, but to be specific they've created a new rendering context for canvas which is designed to make it easier to create 2D games by giving more raw access to the framebuffer. It is using the designed-in extensibility for canvas (which was, of course, a Safari extension to HTML in the first place!) and Opera is working with other browser manufacturers on a 3D rendering context for canvas which will allow full hardware-accelerated 3D when it's done.
It's becoming increasingly vaugue these days what constitutes a "standard" in the web sphere. Various other organisations are springing up outside of the W3C and proposing their own extensions and new specs, and I for one am quite enjoying the new stuff we're seeing as a result of this "competition". Other such third-party "extensions" include XMLHttpRequest (Microsoft), canvas (Apple), opera-2dgame (Opera), Web Forms 2.0 (WHATWG) and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. Opera supports all this stuff and also supports several W3C standards to boot!
It supports netscape plugin API, and Widgets, is that enough entensions for you?
"Sounds like"...? Have you actually tried it?
I am an avid Firefox user but I have always been impressed with the speedy interface Opera offers, despite all the extra features they put in. And from release to release, they manage to simplify the interface more and more. The options menu is no longer the scary mess it used to be, I suppose they are learning from Firefox's success. They may be adding a lot of stuff in that people would consider bloatware, but they manage to add it in a way that the browser doesn't seem to be suffering from it one bit. Take into consideration the constant advancement of the rendering engine and the unusually wide spectrum of platforms it supports and you've got quite a good browser.
I'd also like to hear your reasoning for complaining about the built-in BitTorrent client. After all, downloading is one basic feature of a browser, so why not jump in at exactly that point and help advance the system to a more server-friendly standard. Most common users don't know about Azureus and uTorrent and whatnot, so I think it's a good way to introduce the protocol to a wider audience.
parasight.de
Most people seem to take your comment as "I wanna block ads", while it's one purpose of extensions in firefox, there are so many other great ones, like the web developper toolbar and such.
I really love opera, and it's really innovative and advanced (you don't see features like xhtml + voice in most browsers, it's pretty cool stuff), very standard compliant, lightweight, fast, etc. But the thing that keeps me primarily on firefox is the extensions (even though it pretty much always takes over 500MB of RAM even with tweaks, and crashes every couple of days).
The day Opera gets extensions I'm definitely switching - instantly. I'd even pay good money for it. I think they'd increase their market share significantly - much more than by adding a BT client really.
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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.