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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."
Complete What's new:
Carakan
Carakan is our new JavaScript engine. It’s fast, more than 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10 with Futhark on Windows (Mac optimization is not as far along). You can read more gritty details regarding register-based bytecode, automatic object classification and native code generation in the Opera Core blog.
Presto 2.5
We are now using Presto 2.5, which contains a huge numbers of improvements. It also includes support for CSS3 transitions and transforms, and more HTML5 features like persistent storage.
Vega
Vega is our new graphics library. It’s currently software based and displays everything you see on-screen. Vega can be hardware accelerated, but as you can see from the complex graphics benchmark in Peacekeeper, we don’t seem to need it yet. (Note that Futuremarks Peacekeeper test does no include the results of their complex graphics tests in the overall score. We believe this is wrong in 2009 and will simply be silly if not changed in 2010.)
Outside - Platform integration
On Windows 7/Vista, you will notice a lot of visual changes and use of APIs which allow the UI to display the Aero Glass effect. For Windows 7, we also added Aero Peek and Jump List support to easily access your Speed Dials, Tabs, etc. from the Taskbar.
For Mac, a complete rewrite in Cocoa brings an Unified Toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multi-touch gestures (try 3-Finger Swipe Left/Right or Pinch to zoom) and a bunch of other small details. We also added Growl notification support.
“Private tab” and “Private window”
You can open a new Private tab or Private window that forgets everything that happened on it once closed.
Non-modal dialogs
Dialog boxes (JavaScript alerts, HTTP authentication, etc.) are now non-modal and are displayed as a page overlay. This allows you to switch tabs or windows while the dialog is still displayed. Similarly, the Password Manager dialog is now anchored at the top of the page won’t block any content as it loads a new page.
Address field and Search field improvements
Both fields have been upgraded in looks and functionality. They can now remember searches, support removing items from history and show results in a better layout.
Opera just keeps getting better and better. It was in some Opera 10 beta that they improved the JS engine a lot, and now they've improved it over 7x again, along with the on-screen drawing. That's what I've always loved about Opera; UI responsivess and the smoothness of browsing (scrolling, mouse gestures) beats every other browser and everything is thighly packed in, so no need for clumsy addons which quality and speed differ a lot.
However, the preview images seem to have the Windows 7 like layout. I really hope this is just to show it off and it can be switched to normal - I like having my menubars easily accessible.
...and was quite impressed. Very snappy, a better UI, some very nice tab management capabilities (ability to tile tabs horizontall/vertically, not sure if this was in previous versions or not). However the one thing I was even happier about was their new vega library. If you didn't read over the summary, it's a new graphics library that they're using for 2d animation/rendering which has the capability of being hardware accelerated. If you've tried out the direct2d build of firefox, you'll know how nice this is. Pages animate and scroll so smooth you'd swear it was warm honey running down Kiera Knightly's body.
I'm a regular Chrome user. I've tried Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for the last few hours, and I find it at least as snappy on my regular rounds of javascript heavy websites. I also really like the trend in browsers toward simple UI, with no real estate wasted on menubars. The new Opera looks almost as minimalistic as Chrome. Nice. However, be warned, this early build really is wonky. Lots of small errors and things that simply don't work. Don't uninstall your main browser just yet. But, I think you might be able to rely on this pre-alpha build of Opera as your (superfast) gmail client, and then have another browser open for your browsing needs.
Carakan is cross-platform. That cannot be stressed enough. Since Opera is used on a *lot* of devices, from mobile phones, over fridges (!) and airplane entertainment centres, to the Wii, this is truly a major step forward for Opera.
Looking forward to the final release!
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!
Your facts are astound... or wait you don't have any.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
Alpha's and Beta's also usually have debugging/trapping stuff in them so that users can more easily report problems, so there really isnt a general rule that alphas and betas are usually faster, or usually slower.
I'll say this tho.. I ran Opera 10 alpha for quite some time before the official release, and the official release was just as snappy.
Opera has always been snappy. It is arguably the best browser available and has always been a trend setter. They are playing a little bit of follow the leader this time, but they again seem to be doing it just as well if not better.
"His name was James Damore."
http://my.opera.com/ruario/blog/unix-10-50-evenes-work-in-progress
Opera has sort of broken away from that traditional model since so many people like to try the latest versions. They usually release weekly builds and "pre-alphas" on their blog, betas and RCs on their beta download page (more public), and then the stable version. This one seems to have the title "pre-alpha" because it compiled, but not all the UI is complete, and a lot of things will crash it. Basically they haven't finished writing stuff and know some stuff doesn't work, so it's not even to the testing stage (which would be "alpha") or the large scale testing "beta".
Did an Opera user pick on you when you were a child or something?
Fast? Really? Not. The acclaimed SunSpider test:
Opera 10.5 A fresh install:
Total: 4790.0ms +/- 0.2%
FIrefox 3.7a1pre20091222 (with extensions all enabled)
Total: 1928.0ms +/- 3.4%
and just for the heck of it
Opera 10.10
Total: 8887.6ms +/- 1.9%
is there some secret 'disable slow' preference in Opera I need to change?
Granted, this is on an old dual-cpu Athlon MP system so the absolute results are not comparable to anyone else but the relative results are - Opera Fails.
I love two things about Opera: One is integrated www, email and rss and the other is it that it's one of the most customizable software I've ever seen. You can change *every* keyboard/mouse/mouse-gesture setting and you can customize *every* ui element (and with a good menu to do so, too).
For software i spend hours each day using, like a browser, I think the most important thing is a good user interface - and there is no better one than the one you built yourself. But it kinda makes talking about the interface pointless - spend 10 minutes with it and it will look like (your personal version of) perfection.
(and for OpenBSD, etc.)
It's no biggie, just recompile it!
Oh wait...
{{.sig}}
It is arguably the best browser available and has always been a trend setter. They are playing a little bit of follow the leader this time, but they again seem to be doing it just as well if not better.
Wow. That gave me a double whiplash. :)
Heh. How about, each final release of Opera is arguably the best browser available at the time. Right now, however, new versions of other browsers have superseded Opera's stable release (version 10 was good, but quickly overtaken). They're playing catch-up, but looking at this pre-alpha it appears they're doing a damn good job of it.
Sound better?
I can't actually time this, but there is a noticeable difference, granted I only did a single test in each browser... if I had to make up numbers...
Opera 10.5: 0.7 seconds
Opera 10.10: 1.0 seconds
Chromium 4.0: 1.2 seconds
IExplorer8: 1.5 seconds
Safari 4.0: 1.6 seconds
Firefox 3.6 B5: 1.7 seconds
Though, Safari actually "looks" slower than Firefox because Firefox starts rendering sooner, whereas Safari waits for the full page then displays. For what it's worth, DL 5Mb/UL 1Mb connection... less than a second difference between them all, but for a lot of people that adds up, it's like a little nagging voice that eventually turns into frustration, especially when a website isn't what you were hoping for.
The actual speed with which the browser GETs and renders a website is probably close to the last reason why Opera is my preferred browser, however, it is the main reason why Chromium is my secondary browser in tandem with the fact that it also starts about as quick as Opera, so I can quickly test something outside of Opera without having to go make coffee while it does so.
Closed source software stinks. Microsot Windows crawls. Anything good by Microsoft is purchased from a former developer. Adobe is not only slow to fix security holes; it continues to distribute software it knows has holes that are actively being exploited. At work I'm exposed to corporate shit by IBM that is used in every incorrect way possible (arguably IBM is a contributor to this problem). Closed source makes me want to vomit. No privacy. No security.
But then there's Opera: possibly the only closed source project that genuinely competes on quality: accurate, good interface, efficient, and even good security? Who knows.
But then I don't use anything closed source anymore, so perhaps I'm missing some other well deserved programs.