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Opera 10 Alpha 1 Released, Aces Acid 3 Test

Posted by timothy on from the now-it-sees-all-the-spiders-and-tastes-color dept.

Khuffie writes "It seems that the upcoming version of Opera 10, of which the first Alpha has recently been released, has already passed the Acid 3 test with a 100/100. The only other rendering engine to have a complete score is WebKit, which can be seen in Google Chrome's nightly build. Opera 10 Alpha 1 will also finally include auto-updates, inline spell checking, and see some improvements to its built-in mail client, including much-requested rich text composition."

18 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. No Sparc/Solaris port? Bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I scoff at the lack of sparc/solaris ports of the latest Opera browser!

    There was a time not long ago when Opera was the browser of choice for Solaris, but now it isnt even an option.

    dubya tee ehf, mates?

  2. Meh.. by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Informative

    The acid test is important but what about important things for users..

    Other features include a spell checker and auto updating.

    Firefox had this years ago, seriously is this accurate, Opera just got these?

    1. Re:Meh.. by Stuart+Gibson · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, I guess it made up for it by having tabs, mouse gestures, speed dial, spatial navigation and dozens of other things before any of the other browsers.

      --
      It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
    2. Re:Meh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Firefox had this years ago, seriously is this accurate, Opera just got these?

      Different software packages have different features? Details at 11!

      Opera's had spell checking through ASpell for a long time. The new inline spell checking (as Firefox has had) is indeed a huge improvement.

      Opera also has had a half-assed auto-updater for a long time. It would automatically and silently patch its local JavaScript (used for site compatibility fixes), but when a new rev appeared, it would merely direct the user to the download page, rather than do the download/install/restart cycle with a single click. For computer enthusiasts, really, that update system wasn't a serious problem.

    3. Re:Meh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Other features include a spell checker and auto updating.

      Firefox had this years ago, seriously is this accurate, Opera just got these?

      This being Slashdot, I'm sure you'll be amazed to learn that no, it's not true!

      I'm using Opera 9.62 right now. It has a spell checker, which wants to turn Slashdot into "Slashed" and doesn't like the word "Firefox."

      It has an automatic update checker. It doesn't automatically download and apply the update for you, but it'll tell you when a new update is available and send you straight to the download page which is close enough in my book.

      Both Opera and Firefox have a "Check for Updates" menu item in the "Help" menu, and both check automatically.

      These aren't new features that Opera is only just now getting. They may be refined in Opera 10, but they're not new.

    4. Re:Meh.. by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 2, Informative

      No. This analogy fails. It has nothing to do with Opera implementing stuff first, it has to do with them making up for lack of certain useful features by having their own useful features.

      Besides which, spell check, mouse gestures, etc are hardly world-rocking features. It doesn't affect the user experience much if they aren't there.

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    5. Re:Meh.. by boredMDer · · Score: 2, Informative

      'Besides which, ... mouse gestures, etc are hardly world-rocking features. It doesn't affect the user experience much if they aren't there.'

      Indeed, until you start using them. They make the browsing experience better overall.

    6. Re:Meh.. by AVee · · Score: 4, Informative

      Press 12, en/disable Javascript, Java, Plugins, Sound etc. globally, or choose 'Edit site preferences' to change the setting for just the current website...

    7. Re:Meh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Only thing Opera is missing is something along the lines of "no script", its really disapointing they left this out.

      Opera has built in script blocking.

    8. Re:Meh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'll second that. Literally the very first thing I do after running Opera the first time after I install it is enable the mouse gestures (which happens automatically the first time I use one, which I do the first time I open a new page).

      The mouse gestures in Opera, combined with the address bar search shortcuts, make Opera the fastest browser for me to use.

      The fact that they keep releasing new versions before I've even had a chance to really put the previous one through all of its paces is equally impressive.

      I've never missed auto-updates in Opera. It sort of annoys me with Firefox when I run Firefox and before it opens it installs a bunch of updates, including updates to plugins, then asks me if I want to keep using the plugins, then destroys the previous session I was going to load and shows me a page telling me that Firefox was just updated. It's nice that I'm always running the latest version of Firefox, but I don't always *need* to run the latest version, and I don't really like seeing that process as often as I do.

      I could also harp on the memory usage with Firefox, but not only is that discussion out of place here, but it's been really difficult to find the reason why my version of Firefox sucks up all available RAM and other people I'm talking to running the same plugins (Firebug, AdBlock, Forecastfox) on the same sites don't see that. It doesn't change the fact that Firefox uses a ton of RAM, but it's hard to place the blame when it's not repeatable. But for reference, right now Firefox is using 344MB RAM, 397MB virtual with only 27 mins of CPU time. It has 2 tabs open to the same website. Opera is currently using 224MB RAM, 297MB virtual with 10 tabs open (including the same 2 as Firefox), with a total of 13 *hours* of CPU time compared to Firefox's 27 minutes (I already restarted Firefox once today; I think I restarted Opera a week or two ago). Again, it's hard to find the reason why Firefox uses so much RAM, but that doesn't change the fact that it does.

      So anyway, yeah, mouse gestures rock!

    9. Re:Meh.. by mini+me · · Score: 2, Informative

      Every Cocoa application gets spelling and grammatical checking for free on OS X. Having to include it at the application level does seem rather ridiculous.

    10. Re:Meh.. by pizzach · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't care about standards at all, just one company's interpretation of them.

      It's not the interpretation of one company. Do you know what W3C stands for? World Wide Web Consortium. Do you know what consortium means? "An association of companies for some definite purpose."

      Yes, that means that people from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apples' Safari, Mozilla's Firefox, and Opera's Opera all take part in it. Many of the features that are introduced and later get standardized start as propriety features of one browser. Examples are the rounded CSS borders in Mozilla, Text field resizing in Safari, and a lot of DHTML stuff from Internet Explorer. Firefox is now trying to push for OGM support in the HTML 5 spec by putting it into their browser now.

      The standards that W3C publish do not impede on creativity. They just create a baseline for compatibility.

      --
      Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
    11. Re:Meh.. by CNERD · · Score: 3, Informative

      No. If you have Opera 9.x and Aspell installed right click on any text area and you'll see "Check Spelling" as an option.

      http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/spellcheck/index.dml

    12. Re:Meh.. by CraniumDesigns · · Score: 2, Informative

      they included HTML email cuz people asked for it. doesn't mean you have to use it.

  3. Items of note by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Informative

    Okay I gave the OS X alpha a spin. It does get 100 on the Acid3, but still doesn't manage smooth animation on my machine and probably not on the reference hardware. Javascript performance is behind compared to the latest Webkit and the Sunspider test. On my machine the Opera alpha is very slightly slower than the release version of Safari and about six times slower than the nightly Webkit with the new javascript improvements. The alpha does support some OS X system services, but still fails to use the default spelling and grammar checking, instead offering only a proprietary spellcheck that ignores my carefully trained dictionaries that work in most all of my other programs.

    It's nice to see Opera is still in the game and trying, but it feels like they're still falling behind in the new, turbocharged browser race. Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.

  4. Re:Behind the times? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    *ahem* sorry to barge in on the conversation...

    That particular /. summary was posted Dec 4th 2008 about an article posted Dec 4th 2008.

    Unless I just came out of a coma I didn't know about I think that's today's news.

  5. Re:Acid3 by Blice · · Score: 2, Informative

    Midori for Linux also passes Acid3 with a 100/100... Just say "Webkit" is the only engine to pass Acid3..

  6. Re:Acid3 by Fweeky · · Score: 2, Informative

    WebKit nightly, best of 6 runs (several failed at 98%):

    Failed 0 tests.
    Test 65 passed, but took 35ms (less than 30fps)
    Total elapsed time: 1.18s

    Opera 10 alpha:

    Failed 0 tests.
    Test 26 passed, but took 46ms (less than 30fps)
    Test 69 passed, but took 27 attempts (less than perfect).
    Total elapsed time: 0.62s

    Not doing too badly. Test 69 failed on one of the WebKit runs too, but I guess a random nightly is gonna be worse than a scheduled alpha release.