Opera 10 Beta Launched

By | June 3, 2009 | 33 Comments

Opera 10 Beta Launched6 months after the 1st Alpha and yesterdays leak, Opera Software has officially launched the very first Opera 10 Beta release.

Besides already reported features, such as: new skin, visual tabs, opera turbo, crashlogging tool, speed dial configuration and resizable search field, Opera 10 Beta also brings faster browsing experience (40% performance increase), “Web integration” and more.

For some more details, please check the official beta page, changelog or just download and see for yourself.

[digg-reddit-me]


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Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Golden Boy

    Expected more

    • http://nocontinues.net/ Tiago Sá

      As always. Opera is like that, unfortunately. I really don’t get why people like it. Then again, I don’t get it how people like any browser other than Firefox.

      • blra

        “As always. Opera is like that, unfortunately.”

        Yeah, how terrible of Opera to share features in snapshots. Now you can get small changes over time instead, so that you can see small pieces fall into place instead of Opera saying or doing nothing until the final version is out!

        Geez, some people.

    • Grrblt

      It appears that most of the “new beta features” were already released in the post-alpha snapshots, that’s why the beta seems underwhelming. Compare the first alpha build to the first beta build and you’ve got a bunch of new stuff.

  • djix

    not bad at all, but v10 is coming up and they havent yet fix the bottom scroll bar on youtube..grrr

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/violetar Dimitar Panov

    Although I really love the tabs-as-thumbnails feature, I don’t see myself using it so often, except for impressing some friends and colleagues.

    I also like the new skin, it’s very clean and beautiful, but I’m so used to have my tabs on top of everything(Chrome-like) that I don’t think I can change Chrome with Opera or some other browser(the Safari implementation sucks, btw) as my first choice.

  • http://zahek.com zahek

    Thanks for news.If anyone to read turkish news can check below news.
    http://zahek.com/opera-10-beta-1e-hosgeldiniz/

  • effzee

    Review follows…

    Having used the snapshots for a while, this beta seems like a milestone for getting the new features and engine to a wider audience.

    Opera 10 feels very quick for loading pages and seems to be much more site compatible since the UA changes from the last snapshot (9.80 vs 10.0), in addition to ongoing tweaks to the engine. Page load and display times are close enough to Chrome to be hard to differentiate.

    Flash behaviour, particularly in Linux, is still less than ideal and I would like to see more process separation a la Chrome. JS and CSS dropdowns still appear under Flash controls, annoying. 10′s JS performance is still behind webkit flavours but performs favourably against firefox up to 3.1; In my view JS performance is perfectly acceptable with the current crop of JS heavy sites, on todays typical (dualcore 1.66Ghz+) hardware.

    Less acceptable is JS compatibility compared with other browsers. I still see more JS-related menu and site weirdies with Opera than other browsers. Problems are localised to a few sites, but it’s still more apparent with Opera, and this could potentially deter new users.

    I would like to have seen some more major changes to mail as well. From another post, my top 10 requests for mail are:

    1. (My pet request) Ability to edit messages within the system, change subject-lines, and remove attachments from emails
    2. Ability to forward, redirect and reply HTML emails, without losing the HTML portion
    3. Some basic HTML composition to keep the colourful mail users happy (doesn’t bother me!)
    4. Increased flexibility for search (date ranges, subject only, within filters, and by other email metadata)
    5. Filters within filters should offer the same functions as (4) and should work properly
    6. Improved Export/Import functions that are bulletproof and work well.
    7. A mail backup feature that turns the complete mailbox, filters, labels etc. into some contiainer file (tar/zip?) for backup and connection to another Opera installation.
    8. More flexible labels. Add/configure your own. With (4) above including boolean search options for labels.
    9. Lots of bugfixing!! Most of them are small irritations, but I’d like to see Opera setting a standard, and there’s a real opportunity to get a killer mail client out there.
    10. Doubt this will happen, but open the specification of the mail storage area of Opera. I can then start writing some tools for manipulating the Opera mail stores, adding missing & recovery functions for example.

    Overall 10 feels more like a heavily polished and refined 9.x rather than the new animal that was originally promised. Users who like Opera’s approach will love that 10.0 brings Opera up to the current browser bar, in some ways surpassing it with the usual crop of browser features lacking in other browsers, and in other ways being slightly behind the competition. In the end Opera positions itself differently in the browser arena – no bad thing – while in many ways setting the standard that others follow – speed dial and tab thumbnails and fraud protection being recent examples.

    Opera continues to build on it’s strengths in 10.0. Now it’s very fast, stable and the safest browser for the user. It’s also the most feature rich browser out of the box while still feeling like a lightweight application and not a resource hog.

    Continued JS compatibility/performance and mail improvements, in addition to a slew of bugfixing across the feature-set and a possible near future overhaul of the UI could see Opera take a significant bite out of the desktop browser marketplace. The much rumoured marketing campaign could help as well.

    - effzee

    • effzee

      Re. my mail top 10 above, options 2 and 3 are partially covered in 10.0, as well as inline spellchecking.

    • blra

      “Less acceptable is JS compatibility compared with other browsers. I still see more JS-related menu and site weirdies with Opera than other browsers. Problems are localised to a few sites, but it’s still more apparent with Opera, and this could potentially deter new users.”

      Correction: More sites discriminate against Opera and aren’t tested in it. It isn’t Opera that isn’t compatible, it’s sites that don’t support it.

  • nobody

    that is it? ‘THE revolution’?

    opera 10 promised compatibility revolution: it isnt there
    opera 10 was to be ‘new’: it isnt, it is the same old opera 8 in new suit.

    there are STILL major problems dating as far as version 7.

    there is still the major problem – lots of under-developed features, ass-slow progress of general development and lack of any clear goal.

    due to obvious shortage of manpower most features are NEVER touched again after implementation. speed-dial waited YEARS to get simple and obvious customisation.

    when will opera admit, that no-extensions policy was and still is STUPID? instead of fixing speed dial opera could have spent that money on rendering engine overhaul. dont bable about ‘these are different man’ – if they are? fire the speed dial guy, hire the core guy. they are paid with the same money in the end.

    opera might earn some money, but it will never be a major player. and when firefox ports to mobile (that will happen sooner than opera passes 4% mark).. gecko already has better mobile rendering engine, better site compatibility, better developer tools. so who is going to pay for opera, if mobile producers can have free webkit browsers?

    anyone who complains about hassle and extensions – try it, and then complain. firefox extensions autoupdate themselves, you install them once and never again need to worry. firefox autoupdates plugins. opera even cant (considerable % of users, and it is a full install everytime) autoupdate itself… hello, it is 2009!

    • Grrblt

      oh look, it’s nobody being a moron again. i didn’t know it was that time of the week already.

      • Dan

        True, he just repeats himself. I am not going to fight back because he is a broken record. Lol

    • http://my.opera.com/BleedingHeart/blog/ BleedingHeart

      Auto Update, Auto Crashlogging, Inline Spellchecking, HTML Mail, Turbo, Tab Thumbnails + Lots of improvements since 9.64.

      Not revolutionary no but at least this shows they are FINALLY showing some love to existing features before moving on to the next. Hopefully they’ll blow our minds and let us order search engines from within the UI.

      There are settings in the dialog.ini for per-site zoom settings (disabled right now). I we get a consolidation release after 10 that will give us things like UserJS dialog, search engine ordering, more SSP.

      New features were coming in the Beta phase as I heard, that’s not limited to Beta 1.

      • nobody

        “Auto Update, Auto Crashlogging, Inline Spellchecking, HTML Mail, Turbo, Tab Thumbnails +”

        1) it is an industry standard for years to have autoupdate. opera’ one still isnt reliable
        2) firefox had this for years as an extension
        3) industry standard for years
        4) again, industry standard
        5) too few options to be usefull, lack of basic switch ‘leave my images alone’ makes it useless for anyone with a semi-decent connection, because image quality is NOT ACCEPTABLE with turbo on.

        that summarizes opera 10 improvements..

        visual tabs will be introduced into other browsers via extension system in a month time. that is the true power of extensions, it allows company to focus on big stuff like rendering engine, performance etc, and small and agile groups on ‘misc’ stuf. in effect we have a browser that still doesnt work properly on most major sites, but with visual tabs. fire the ‘tabs’ guys, hire more core programmers.. they are paid with the same money.

        btw dragonfly is STILL a complete sh.. this thing is still worse, than js bookmarklets that were available for years. and it RELOADS a page! not exactly smart way if you want to debug with it, isnt it?

        • TTT

          visual tabs will be introduced into other browsers via extension system in a month time.

          There have been such extensions for years…
          http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-10-beta-leaked-screenshot-release-date/comment-page-1/#comment-61408

        • http://opera.com/ Daniel Hendrycks

          Just shut-up… congratulations there is an extension for Firefox already. An extension make Firefox already slower than it is already. With lots of extensions Firefox becomes as slow as IE. Opera has the best features built in, and it has a smaller footprint than Firefox from the beginning. Bloatfox is not as great as you precieve it to be. Opera 10 Beta was an improvement, the snapshot were downloaded by insiders, they saw the new features not more casual users. Besides more improvements are to come in Beta 2. (Don’t just say blah Opera needs extensions Blah Dragonfly sucks Blah Opera can never grow Blah)

          • http://opera.com/ Daniel Hendrycks

            I was talking to nobody

          • TTT

            Have you tried Firefox recently?
            I have 26 extensions installed and it’s running very smothly even with around 100tabs open… Then again, I’m running a self-compiled (Gentoo) version 3.0 on Linux :P
            Though I could probably uninstall most of the extensions, the only ones I really need are Firebug, AutoPager, Personas, XUL/Migemo and Stylish. These extensions, with the exception of Personas and Stylish, seems to have functionality that no other browser have btw.

          • ps

            I will repeat question mentioned above – have you TRIED FF 3? It is no longer ‘bloatfox’ (a nice one btw). It definately isn’t slow at all, Opera installer is larger (as if it does matter anyway). Check your facts please and try FF 3 with ‘hoards of extensions’.

            And yes, Dragonfly sucks a big time, it is a _VERY_ failed attempt on prooving that Javascript is a language capable of everything. No it isn’t. Especially it is hard to debug Javascript with Javascript. It had to cost a fortune to write this thing, while it would have been much cheaper to just write it in C or whatever language Opera uses. Opera’ reasoning with promoting ‘Scope API’ is pointless because noone needs Scope – Firefox, Safari and IE all work quite well without it.

    • blra

      “opera 10 promised compatibility revolution: it isnt there
      opera 10 was to be ‘new’: it isnt, it is the same old opera 8 in new suit.”

      There can be no compatibility revolution since it’s an insanely complicated problem.

      AND WHEN DID OPERA PROMISE A “REVOLUTION” ANYWAY?

      Also, Opera 10 compared to Opera 8 is like comparing two quite different browsers. Opera has changed a LOT since v8.

      Now stop obsessing over Opera 24/7, and move out of your parents basement.

  • nobody

    so, you are happy with ‘new features’ and ‘new site compatibility’?

    it is what you deliver that matters, opera does lots of work, no doubt. but they have serious problems when it comes to delivery. question it, will you?

    • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

      I was bit disappointed, but Jon said in the press release “We have more surprises on the way”. So still hope that in B1 they have added only the features, which already appeared in other web browsers (visual tabs can be found in Pogo browser) or were already known (turbo, mail updates, etc.)

      • http://opera.com/ Daniel Hendrycks

        I can agree with nobody’s statement.

      • nobody

        do you REALLY believe in press statements? all that stuff that ‘we care’, ‘we are working on it’ and ‘it will blow your mind it is so great’?

        i sure do hope, that you dont, because press statement is a synonymus to ‘a lie’. this is ‘it’. there will be nothing more before final. given opera’ record – final can be as well in this month. they never hesitated releasing early versions as finals. ver 9.0 anyone?

        • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

          Good question. Believe? Not really. Hope? Yes :-)

        • blra

          Stop trolling, obsessive anti-Opera troll. 24/7, wonder what happened to make you this way.

  • nobody

    anyone else noticed that this beta leaks memory with download tab open?

    ive left it for whole night to download something big. and now it had almost 1gig of ram and had VERY irresponsive UI, it takes several seconds to open and switch to tab.. this wasnt there in 9.x

    • Daniel H.

      This is because this is pre-release software.

      • http://opera.com/ Daniel Hendrycks

        Also this is a question for you nobody, in an earlier post you said Opera promised “a compatibility revolution” I never read this anywhere (don’t get me wrong I am not being a smart ***) Where did you read that?

      • nobody

        opera isnt exactly known to fix such issues fast. so i expect it to be also in final version.

        as for the revolution, it was mentioned when kestrel and peregrine were anounced. kestrel was to be a quick fix with compatibility in mind with some features, peregrine was to be a revolution – feature and compatibitlty. yet pages that were broken in 8.5 are still broken in 10beta.. somehow chrome manages to escape such issues, maybe it is good thing, to think why.

        • http://opera.com/ Daniel Hendrycks

          Oh I found where it says compatibility. http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/759403

          Under Peregrine it says “groundbreaking functionality.”

          I hope they live up to their word, I do not know how they will do it though.

        • http://opera.com/ Daniel Hendrycks

          Oh I found where it says compatibility.
          http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/759403

          Under Peregrine it says “groundbreaking functionality.”

          I hope they live up to their word, I do not know how they will do it though.

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