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Internet Opera Releases 9.6 Browser
Jason Mick (Blog) - October 8, 2008 3:31 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 73 comment(s) - last by Daemyion.. on Oct 11 at 9:58 PM
The latest offering from Opera stacks up nicely against Firefox, IE

Opera made waves earlier this year, releasing its 9.5 "Kestrel" version of its desktop browser.  The Norwegian company has grown a small but loyal contingent of users over the years and continues to provide a solid alternative to an Internet Explorer versus Firefox world.

Also known for its Wii and Nintendo DS browsers, Opera today unleashed the 9.6 iteration of its desktop browser on the world.  The browser is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows computers.  It comes in 38 languages, including for the first time Indonesian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil, and, like its competitors, is free of cost.

The new browser offers up many new features as well as some older popular ones.  Among the most anticipated new features is the Opera Link tool, which allows you to synchronize your browser's bookmarks and preferences from any location.

Other more subtle improvements are also welcome, such as new visual previews of RSS feeds, which will let you see what you're subscribing too.  For users who work on older machines, Opera's newly optimized "low bandwidth mode" for its mail utility will offer superior performance.  The email client also has new message prioritizing features.

Overall the speed has also been turned up from version 9.5.  The speed loading pages with scripts is very competitive compared to Firefox 3, Google's new Chrome browser, and the beta of Internet Explorer 8.

Opera Software's CEO Jon von Tetzchner was enthusiastic about the new release, stating, "We believe in making the Web available for people everywhere. The people who use Opera need it to adapt to their needs and we’re proud to continue that tradition today. Our improved e-mail client is now the ideal communication tool. Opera Link gives you more flexibility to take your personal browsing identity with you to any computer. The new Opera 9.6 gives more people around the world new reasons to choose Opera."

One possible improvement that still remains to be implemented is support for Firefox add-ons.  One perpetual reader comment about the Opera browser is that they love the browser and its features, but could not go without Firefox's valuable add-ons such as NoScript and AdBlock.

Still, for a basic browsing experience Opera offers a solid alternative to the bigger names in the browser business.  To check it out for yourself, go here.

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Hooray for Opera...
By Motoman on 10/8/2008 3:41:43 PM , Rating: 1
...the only browser to ever innovate anything.

I just wish that there wasn't that 0.5% of all websites that just don't seem to work right. Maybe this release will fix that, but I won't hold my breath.

I've used Opera for years - even paid for it in it's original incarnation. But I still have to have Mozilla and/or IE around for the occasional website that refuses to work with Opera.




RE: Hooray for Opera...
By CCRATA on 10/8/2008 3:52:20 PM , Rating: 4
You're right. All features in the new browsers are just copies of Opera. Opera invented the internet and was the original browser. /s

You can like Opera, but please refrain from making outlandish fanboy comments


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Motoman on 10/8/2008 5:32:46 PM , Rating: 2
K. Outside of Mosaic, virtually all the hip new features that Mozilla and IE have touted over their last few releases were done first in Opera.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By CCRATA on 10/8/2008 5:56:37 PM , Rating: 3
and most of those feature were extensions or add-ons or plugins to Mozilla or IE before they were part of opera.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By adiposity on 10/8/2008 6:46:56 PM , Rating: 1
What? Tabbed browsing is probably the biggest one I can think of, and Opera had it first by a long shot, although it was technically more like "windowed" browsing in early versions, because the individual tabs could be minimized inside of opera.

What extensions are you thinking of that were first on Mozilla/IE?

-Dan


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By CCRATA on 10/8/2008 7:24:07 PM , Rating: 2
I had tabbed browsing through a wrapper on top of IE 4 (which wasn't true tabbed browsing it just hid the IE windows within the tabs. Visually and Functionally equivalent), which would make it around 1997. AFAIK Opera didn't get it until 1999


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Zurtex on 10/8/2008 10:38:22 PM , Rating: 2
Yup, IE was the first to get tabs with an add-on. Opera was probably the first to natively support it and Firefox popularized it.

But as the post said, most features come from add-ons or extensions before they hit browsers natively, this is just as true of Opera as it is of IE.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By artemicion on 10/8/2008 11:56:19 PM , Rating: 5
Arguing which browser first "invented" tabbed browsing is like arguing who first discovered America.

Interesting for some, but as long as I can sustain multiple streaming pornos in the same browser window, I'll quietly enjoy the benefits of living in the land of the free.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By murphyslabrat on 10/9/2008 12:53:07 AM , Rating: 2
Whoa, he mentioned Porn here guys and he isn't a 6 yet, what gives?


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Motoman on 10/9/2008 1:12:15 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
Arguing which browser first "invented" tabbed browsing is like arguing who first discovered America.


...except that it's pretty obvious that Opera was doing it for *years* before anyone else. By the time Mozilla and IE picked up that effing obvious functionality, it was so old hat as to be not newsworthy. It would be like you driving through some po-dunk town and the motel's main feature is "color TV". Well no kidding. Welcome to...30 years ago.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By frobizzle on 10/9/2008 9:40:03 AM , Rating: 3
And they all have NCSA Mosaic to thank for the first true graphical browser!


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Spivonious on 10/9/2008 10:05:25 AM , Rating: 2
I remember switching to Mosaic from the text browser I had before...I want to say it was Netscape, but I'm probably wrong. Whatever it was, it couldn't display images. Mosaic had a little progress bar at the bottom with a count of how many images were on the page and how many were loaded. Ah, the days of 2400 baud modems.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By William Gaatjes on 10/10/2008 4:32:29 AM , Rating: 2
At that time, Opera was for sure the better browser.
All those nice activex websites and other malware sites loved IE and hated Opera. Early users of Opera have always encountered very few website related malware. When i jumped ship from ie to Opera at that time, random crashes where gone. Not using IE and OE with windows 95 and 98 made those operating systems very reliable and difficult to almost impossible to crash for me. It was like running an NT5 or higher kernel.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Jioklo on 10/8/2008 6:04:57 PM , Rating: 2
You're right. I remember when Opera came out with the idea for multiple processes for multiple tabs. oh wai..


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Motoman on 10/9/2008 1:14:27 AM , Rating: 2
...which would be nice if it did Chrome any good. It just blows up and goes away, despite the seperate processes per tab. What was that supposed to do then?

...and yes, I know what it was *supposed* to do, and I wish it worked more betterly. And I wish that Opera did it, and did it correctly. But...meh. Operationally, don't see a whole lot of benefit. Especially since Chrome just blows up entirely anyway.


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Reclaimer77 on 10/8/08, Rating: 0
RE: Hooray for Opera...
By homernoy on 10/8/08, Rating: 0
RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Reclaimer77 on 10/8/08, Rating: 0
RE: Hooray for Opera...
By Clauzii on 10/8/2008 8:15:26 PM , Rating: 2
I've tried Opera, and it's just as usable as any browser out there. It didn't attract ME, but I don't see why other mainstream (isn't there a better word?) users wouldn't get to like it, like at least 1-2 million users already do?

Personally I'm caught by the fox. So easy to customize almost(!) into oblivioun :D


RE: Hooray for Opera...
By