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Opera 9.60 Released, With Upgraded Mail Client
Kelson writes "Opera Software has released Opera 9.60, the latest version of their web browser & internet suite. It's an evolutionary release, focused on performance optimization, improving the email client and adding more items to the Opera Link synchronization service."
The official download defaults to QT3 even though same build is offered as QT4 in beta.
There might be graphical bugs but I couldnt find any.
If you haven't tried Opera, I highly recommend you give it a spin. It's a great browser and it's worth using for regular browsing; even better than Firefox, in my opinion. Firefox's extensions still give it the edge for web development, but Opera is quite close. Here are my favorite features Opera has over Firefox:
A sexy default look. I think Opera generally looks much sleeker, and the smooth-scrolling is worlds better (parabolic instead of linear, I think). It's a tiny aesthetic change that makes a big difference in ease of use (I don't lose my place) and feel of the app.
Speed dial. You've got your top nine right there in front of you.
The Wand. It's a huge time-saver if you have multiple logins for a site. Just click the username you need to use, and Opera submits the form with the creds you picked. It's faster and less clunky than the dropdown that Firefox uses.
The Trash bin. It lets you pick any recently closed page; you don't have to Ctrl-Shift-T through all the tabs you just closed to find the right one.
Quick search. Firefox has inline search too, but Opera simultaneously highlights *all* occurrences of the search text as you type.
And finally...
Dragonfly, the Opera javascript debugger. This baby is impressive. It's much easier to use than Venkman and rivals Firebug. The script window lets you pick any loaded script (inline scripts have their own entry!). The DOM tab (which is less spastic than Firebug's) lets you inspect all of your elements in folding-tree style. The Styles pane with then show you the explicit and computed styles on the element. Fantastic.
So give Opera a try. You might find a thing or three that you like.
Miren al Pepino! Los vegetales invidian a su amigo, como él quieren bailar. Pepino Bailarín!
Seriously, Opera's mail client is amazing (No, I don't work for them). I've tried the other biggies (MS and TBird) and I really like the way Opera manages the content. It's almost like they took a step back and examined all the things that email should do as a properly databased system and made it do those things. Finding an email that's a few years old is extremely fast and easy, the filter system/contacts is amazing, it really understands the concept of an instance of the email -- the same email can appear in multiple places but doesn't have to be copied. It's just smooth. Only two minor gripes: 1-it's quite technical and I've had a bit of a hard time showing non-techs how to get the most of it, and 2-no HTML composition, but who cares? I'm in the design business and I rarely need it -- it's one of those features desired by people who really think that putting their content in bright green will make it more interesting/important (sorry, got off on a rant there)
Long-time opera user here, and I feel it's falling behind rapidly. No ACID3, relatively slow javascript, other browsers catching up.
When chrome gets fixed, safari gets inline search off the / key, FF stops being slow and/or any of them get the nifty right/left click gesture to go back I'll be switching.
Although just typing /. in the address bar to go to slashdot may be the opera clincher :-)
They don't have ads anymore. They stopped using ads YEARS ago.
> whats not to love.
Proprietary applications without full source code availability ("of course I trust some American companies browser with my bank's passwords...")
Opera is Norwegian.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Blazing-fast fullpage zoom: using the + and - keys makes Opera a delight to use for those of us browsing at high resolutions with websites designed for low resolutions. With 30" monitors like mine, it's an absolute must.
note:Firefox 3.1 has a horribly slow full page zoom on my dual core 2.2 Ghz AMD.
Instant page backtracking:. No re-rendering delay. (oh how I wish I could use Opera on my iPhone just because of that). The bonus is that any text typed by the user is also saved. A lifesaver for those of us who post on forums and hate to see their comments "eaten" by server and network errors.
Snappiest interface of the bunch: It shows quickdial tabs faster than the firefox plugin. Closing tabs and opening new ones is faster. Scrolling is faster. The reduced input latency makes interacting with the browser more enjoyable. Chrome is second best in this regard.
All of this makes up for the slightly higher incompatibility issues Opera deals with and the lack of addons (segmented downloading? Adblock? etc.). I can always fire up Chrome or Firefox if I need to.
Actually, according to the writers of the test, no engine passed completely until September 25th, when Webkit managed to render the animation portion smoothly
Opera's rendering engine (Presto/WinGogi) and WebKit (used in Chrome / Safari) both reached 100/100 on the 26th and 27th of March, respectively.
Introducing "smoothness" requirements means a browser may pass or fail the test depending on what hardware it's running on (and the opinion of the person watching the test - smooth for you might not be smooth for me). IMO the point of the Acid test is to check standards-compliance, not performance. If a browser gets 100/100, it passed.
And while both layout engines got the perfect score months ago, the current release version of Safari scores only 75/100, and Opera 9.60 scores only 85/100 (highest of any current non-beta browser, but still not 100).
BTW, the Acid3 test has changed several times after bugs in the test itself were discovered, the latest one on September 29th, so maybe no engine will actually get 100/100 when it's fixed.
it used to be that Opera had pretty much cloned all the neato features of other browsers
In fact, they were so good at "cloning the neato features of other browsers" that they often cloned those features months (sometimes years) before the other browsers had them (in some cases, before those browsers even existed). :-)
Personally, I like Opera on Windows quite a bit and it may be my favorite browser on that platform... but I don't browse in Windows [...] you realize they coded it for Windows
If you're going to pick one platform to optimise (or if you're going to pick one platform to benchmark), it makes sense to pick the platform with 90% market share (Windows) over one that barely reaches 5% (OS X), no? Or test all platforms and then weigh the final scores based on each platform's share.