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Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha Is Out, and It's Fast
sgunhouse writes to let us know that, following a leaked internal build over the weekend, Opera Software has now released their official 10.5 pre-alpha. There are no Linux versions yet. And an anonymous reader adds, "Opera's 10.5 pre-alpha includes the Carakan JavaScript Engine. Benchmarks now show that Opera is competitive with Chrome, beating it in Sunspider and other tests. Safari, Firefox, and IE are all behind. This is still pre-alpha, so further speed gains should be expected."
I hate to keep harping on this, because I hate Firefox, but I hate intrusive ads even more.
And by 'Adblock' I don't mean 'sorta like Adblock but not really', but something that straight-out duplicates the functionality, allowing be to block any element of any website anywhere, with nothing more than a right-click and perhaps a wildcard.
Please, someone save me from RAM slaying bloat of Firefox!
Hardware acceleration is not enabled yet.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
With all these improvements to Javascript bytecode, how long will it be until it replaces conventional VMs? Should I even worry about learning Clojure (which I just started on) if Javascript bytecode is becoming fast enough to develop on?
</hypothetical hat>
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Wheres the killer feature?
Firefox gained popularity because of Tab Browsing and being free. IE lacked Tab Browsing till 2006, and Opera was still Ad-Driven based by the time Firefox was first released in 2004.
I am not saying its a bad browser, but why should I switch over from Firefox? What does it have that Firefox doesn't and don't tell me obscure HTML 5 features that are not used yet or speed. Firefox is still pretty fast and acceptable.
is nice for advertisers, but it's a lot better for end-users. The current method of tracking clicks, involves Javascript "hacks" that can't be controlled by the client. Either you accept the tracking or you have to completly disable Javascript.
With the browser can offer the user a simple button to turn off the pinging.
Wheres the killer feature?
For some reason, Opera does not have killer features (it had tabbed browsing for ages, and was ridiculed for its MDI UI). Features only become indispensable when someone else copies them.
Mouse gestures, vertical tabs, speed, no plugin conflicts, customization -- those are some advantages that I remember. These days I stick with Firefox because it's not too bad, and it's there by default. And RAM is cheap.
Opera is smaller, faster and with features better integrated and streamlined. It can do what prety much most of the most popular Firefox extensions can, and without everything breaking with each release. Oh, and it's crazy fast and has the most responsive UI, period.
Clever signature text goes here.
The problem with Mozilla was the absurdly long startup times because it was so bloated. Opera starts up faster than Firefox does for me (with Adblock and Firegestures installed), so I fail to see what the problem is.
And I have to say, in Firefox 3.5.x, it still can't get restoring the tabs back after a crash right some noticeable amount of the time on Windows XP. I go through more of the "This is embarrassing, I can't get your tabs back" (AND WTF, because they are listed in the little list) in one week that I have in Opera since I started using it in 2001.
I honestly don't know what the problem is with FF, but it seems laughable to me. I don't even think about tab restore in Opera anymore - and haven't in years. In fact, I never close pages because they just come back when I re-open the browser. I've had the same browsing "session" for years.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
It has always bugged me that opera devs. always focus on benchmark numbers when their browser is already acclaimed for being more than fast enough. What about ACTUAL features that users have been begging for, for 5 or 6 versions. Like a decent extension framework.(this is probably something they must have some sort of magical curse to not do, since they're ignoring people since the beginning) Like a lot more control over ui customization.(try getting the menu next to your buttons so as not to waste a full row, and no, fake menus made of buttons do not behave like menus)
Like type as you find?(or did they finally add that one?)
Features wise, opera only seems to like adding stuff pertinent to a select few, and ignore the rest of the world.
It's just a browser that needs to get out of the dark age of control-is-security.