6905 Opera has released Opera Version 10 Beta 2 with over 150 changes (see the changelog in the Appendix below). One of Opera 10's marquee features is the new Turbo server-side optimization and compression technology that speeds up data transfer on low-bandwidth connections by reducing the amount of data that needs to be downloaded in order to view Web pages by up to 80%, providing significant improvement in browsing speeds over dialup or crowded Wi-Fi in a café or browsing through your mobile phone while commuting.

I began using an Alpha build of Opera 10 Turbo back in March and the beta 1 version since early June, and can confirm that it's a whole bunch faster than any other browser over my poky rural dialup Internet connection. I downloaded Opera 10.0b2 last evening and wrung it out with some production work. The changes and enhancements are mostly "under-the-hood" but the slick smoothness and speed are there and if anything improved. I had found beta 1 very stable and reliable over the past six weeks (as was the alpha build before that), and so far that has carried over.

Opera 10 beta (codenamed Peregrine) also includes an array of new features, a fresh look by designer Jon Hicks, a more refined feel, enhanced speed and performance, and is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux systems.

New in Opera 10 is a resizable tab bar. Just drag the handle underneath the tabs to reveal thumbnails of your open Web pages. You can now also customize Opera's Speed Dial feature to suit your taste by using the Configure button to choose from 4 to 25 favorite Web sites for quick access every time you open a new tab. You can also add a custom background so you feel right at home (some downloadable alternate Opera skins also include Speed Dial backgrounds).

Web integration

If you use a Webmail service as your default mail client, you can tell Opera 10 to do the same. Clicking on email addresses or the Send by Mail in Opera will open the compose page from your Web mail service provider. The same is true with the Feed reader you can now also add any RSS/atom feed into your favorite online feed reader from within Opera 10.

Resizable search field

Get a clearer view of what you are about to search by simply expanding the size of the search field to accommodate more than two words of space.

40% Faster Engine And Cutting-edge Web Standards Support

Opera's developers have optimized the new Opera Presto 2.2 engine in Opera 10 to be much faster on resource intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook. In addition, with an Acid3 100/100 score (reportedly the only browser besides Safari 4 to achieve that distinction), Web Fonts support, RGBA/HSLA color and SVG improvements, Opera 10 beta is ready for the next generation of Web applications.

Inline spell-check

Write freely in your Facebook wall, blog or Webmail. Opera 10 beta underlines any misspelled words. By using the Hunspell dictionary format, you can be sure you'll always have the most complete and updated list of all languages.

Auto-update

Opera 10 beta makes it easy to stay up to date with the latest version. With Auto-Update you will be able to choose completely automatic updates or have the option of being notified when an update is ready to install.

Email Client Built In

Opera Mail can now send rich text messages including inline images, styled text, links, and/or custom HTML. You can also choose to have messages deleted from your POP server after a preset number of days, to help you keep control of your hosted server space.

Automated Crash Reporting

Opera is designed to restart and recover all your tabs if a crash occurs. But, now you can easily send us a crash report to help us continue to make Opera the most stable browser around.

Opera Dragonfly evolved

Opera's Web developer debugging tool is now even better, allowing you to edit the DOM and inspect HTTP headers.


Two installer options:

Intel, English
8.4 MB

Universal Binary, English
14.6 MB

For more information, visit:
http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

Opera 10 is currently in Beta 2 stage. Opera Unite Labs releases are currently on a parallel development track, you can learn more about them at:
http://unite.opera.com/

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Appendix - Opera 10.0 beta 2 for Mac changelog

Changes since Opera 10 beta 1

User Interface

Added

• New Speed Dial icon


• Enabled a errorlog-upload dialog box


• Opera Turbo warning icon


• Warning and advice about why dictionaries.xml file sometimes is missing from Auto update


• A "Synchronize Opera" button in the Speed Dial page


• Tab icons (inverted) for panels viewed as tabs


• An Open Folder menu item to the file browse control


• Multiple-server support for Auto Update


• A left-click context menu to the Opera Turbo button


• New icons for DOM Console, Who is, Send File, Spell Check, Authormode, and Usermode


• A context menu option to reload images in high quality


• Widget version support


• Password Manager with context-menu support


• Improvements


• Resized the Mac Add-tab icon


• Changed the way Widgets are launched after an installation on Mac


• Removed the menu items to enable/disable the menu bar


• The file input element no longer allows multiple selection


• "Check for update" moved from Help submenu to Opera submenu


• Updated opera:x, error and fraud page interfaces


• Preinstalled dictionaries now have full name in the "Choose default language" page in the wizard


• Allowed Speed Dial to have a custom favicon


• Now possible to set a new spell UI session without a pop-up menu


• Adjusted the progress spinner on thumbnails not to overlap other tabs when tabs are small


• Updated the ID for the Widget logo icon used in installation wizard


• Implemented a progressive disclosure control on "Report a site problem" dialog box


• All submenus are now given icons from the skin


• Shadows on active tabs are now less harsh


• Implemented new Dialog Toggle icons and revised the Mail icons


• Swapped the Send and Do Not Send send buttons in error-report dialog box


• Adjusted the position of the menu button menu


• Updated dialog images


• Allowed for addition of extra line padding in the Widgets panel


• Windowless Silverlight no longer disappears when using context menu


• Pressing Enter to select an item in a dropdown box no longer submits a form


• Enabled tab thumbnails check box by default in Customize dialog box; if selected forces "wrapping off"


• Updated Check, Send and Check/Send icons


• Updated Search icon


• Notification now shown when Opera Turbo servers are busy


• Improvements to hover state on tabs (better contrast) and tabs on the side


• Panels viewed as Tabs now have their own favicon and thumbnail image


• Removed text shadow on buttons and its influence on Web buttons


• Images appended after page load will now display until "screen refresh"


• Updated appearance of standard-skin dialog boxes


• Applied a small tweak to the background of the standard-skin close buttons

Renamed

• "Transfers" to "Downloads"


• "Wand" to "Password Manager" (Tools > Advanced > Password Manager)

Fixed

• MenuButton reappearing after a restart


• Dropdown menus on play.com not having background styling


• A white artifact covering entire page when reloading using Reload button only


• Startup problem after upgrading from 9.x


• Importing feeds without a window being open


• More than 9 Speed Dials covering the Speed Dial image


• Web fonts affecting Mac


• Default font-size for single-line Text fields on OS X not being 12px large on the CJK system


• Text overlaps in enhanced tabs


• Aborting the printing of a Web page


• Login dialogs corrupting on startup


• MultiEdit fields being spellchecked if the spell checker is turned on without focus


• Files with spaces not opening after download


• Editing file/folder chooser boxes by hand


• Automatic Opera Turbo mode not being reflected in the status field


• Aqua skin Progress Bar display


• Translated strings in Romanian not fitting the error-report and Appearance dialog boxes


• Some UI buttons enlarging on focus


• Tiled background in Speed Dial not being remembered


• Panel header text becoming unbolded when customized


• Internet-to-Intranet override polishing


• Background image change not repainting a new area


• Setting Opera Turbo through the Details dialog box


• Activate Next Tab not working when tabs are launched in the background via control-shift-click


• Leaks in the error-logging dialog box


• Closing tabs while a tooltip is rendering


• Issue with Trash can being dragged to the widgets area in Widgets panel


• Background color of alternate rows disappearing in a list


• Opera continuously opening tabs if choosing "Opera Internet Browser" and "Remember choice" in the BitTorrent Client Selection dialog


• BT download dialog box now inherits most of the functionality from the download dialog, including the Save functionality


• Progress Bar not always disappearing after a page has finished loading


• Creating a search when right clicking on a search text field


• Yahoo! mediaplayer in learnenglish.de


• Spatial navigation on the Yahoo! frontpage


• Spell checker occasionally stopped working when immediately pressing Del and Space


• Saving a picture that has not been fully downloaded


• Uninstalling a dictionary


• Spell checker occasionally stops working after correcting a word


• Spacing between Search and the Address fields


• Incorrect escaping/unescaping of characters in WebserverRequest.uri


• Session not being saved when closing Opera


• Creation of Speed Dial duplicates when merging


• "Go" button not taking new search field into account


• Downloading a new .torrent file with Opera Turbo enabled


• The Wikipedia Cortado Java Theora player working in Opera 10


• Posting loading/posting of links on a wall at Facebook


• An issue with TinyMCE and Opera Dragonfly


• Keyboard focus not showing in the Opera user interface


• SVG background images disappearing on hover


• Inability use a folder nickname as home page

Mail, News, Chat

Added

• A dialog to warn about the mail database consistency check


• An account preference to determine if the content transfer restriction is set to 8 bit or 7 bit


• Several icons to the Compose menu


• New icons for setting status in a chat window


• Improvements


• Lightened the color of the Page Bar: icons now working on all toolbars, panel color enhanced for better differentiation


• Changed several icons in the Tools menu to colored versions that already exist


• Mail-header buttons no longer overlap the bottom of the toolbar


• Improvements made to HTML e-mail composition


• Clicking on a new message notification now trying:


• to find a window where the message is visible


• to open unread if it is visible there


• to open the account view if it is not visible there

Fixed

• Double-clicking a note to insert into mail when replying


• Replying to a message and the cursor is invisible


• 8 bit not being the default content-transfer encoding


• Changing a mail account breaks the automatic encoding selector


• Opera Mail welcome message encoding and other strings


• Reopening a HTML draft with "prefer plain text" and HTML source shows in compose window


• Pasting a message and the paste buffer is cleared


• An old draft being shown on reopening


• HTML keyboard shortcuts working in plain text mode


• Mail client selection dialog not being displayed on first mailto click after an upgrade


• Chat connection status for multiple accounts


• Adding a large attachment to a message prevents e-mail composition


• Plain text e-mail composing


• Setting "Open with other application" to "Opera" for mailto


• Printing mail which resulted in an empty page


• Doing "Synchronization" on POP3 mail check


• Importing mail stops when files are open


• Disabling spell checker in multiline edit boxes causing a shut down


• Title in IRC channels equalling the title shown in the app window title bar


• Ability to paste into inline find in mail view


• Decoding error when writing an HTML mail with a non-ASCII character


• Text not fitting in several dialog boxes when switching to the Romanian language


• Signature not changing when changing an account


• Links opened from mail and newsfeeds not loading when focusing on another mail/feed entry

Display and scripting

Added

• An Open Folder menu item to the file browse control


• Improvements


• Web fonts loaded in memory and the font name retrieved


• FormatBlock now correctly affects ancestors of the contentEditable element


• browser.js can now be disabled when doing auto update


• DOMContentLoaded now fires when traversing history


• Support for getting localized strings from JavaScript


• Max values now set for the automatic memory cache


• Fixed


• Onload script not executing in frameset where one frame's src is set to "#"


• Hardcoded strings in XML files


• Scope when defining getter for the HTMLElement document prototype


• Regex [^x]* failing to match certain characters


• Recursive regular expression causing stack exhaustion

Network

Added
• A link on the error page for cross-network communication

Security

Added
• Full set of padlock icons for security dialog box

Improvements
• Improvements made to prevent spoofing of services

Fixed
• Recognizing EV certificates issued directly from the Root
Importing certificates

Miscellaneous

Added
• A placeholder in Opera Turbo for plug-ins that are not loaded yet
• Functionality for switching Opera Turbo mode off for separate image elements

Improvements
• Now possible to add Opera Turbo configuration files per language
• Improved anti-spoof checking

Fixed
• Loading an automatically saved session
• Various dialogs with third-party mouse plug-ins installed
• High memory use related to the disk cache on huge torrents

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