Opera 9.5b2 Web Browser Mini Review Update
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Once it up and running, I proceeded to put Opera 9.50 beta 2 through its paces. The browser, alpha build though it may be, has performed quite well for me so far, with little evident bugginess and no complaints about stability. It's fast too, although always a challenge to judge qualitatively on my dialup connection. Suffice to say that it is fully competitive speed-wise with the faster browsers I use - Safari, SeaMonkey/Camino/Firefox, iCab and the current Opera 9.27 final, which is usually my default browser.
However, one annoying insect that cropped up is a dialog box that appears every few minutes informing me that authentication has failed on some unspecified page. I have no clue as to what this is about, but so far I've not discovered how to disable this nag.
Re-written Opera' Opera 9.5 contains more than a year's worth of speed, standards and performance improvements. The Opera folks say their internal benchmarks show up to 50 percent increase in speed compared to the previous core version in Opera 8.
The Opera 9.50 user interface is pretty much the same as version 9.27, with just some minor changes, a cleaner-looking tab bar theme, and a slightly narrower window title bar.
Besides Opera Link, new features in version 9.50 include AppleScript support, improved font handling, improved image quality when zooming, respect for the Full Keyboard Access setting in Mac OS X System Preferences, many performance improvements (reportedly substantial benchmarked speed improvements in what was already the fastest OS X browser), full history search, improved site compatibility, access for everyone, improved platform integration, preview of bookmark and speed dial synchronization, a rewritten ECMAscript engine, some HTML 5 support, and improved IMAP reliability in the email client module.
Opera Link - Web Everywhere
Opera Link is a feature that enables you to share data between browsers.
You need to use at least one Opera browser to use Opera Link. At the moment, only beta versions of Opera for desktop and Opera Mini fully support Opera Link. However you can access your bookmarks from any other browser through the Opera Link Web user interface by going to http://link.opera.com and logging in with your Opera username and password.
You can log into a web-based user interface using Opera browsers, including Opera for Mac/PC, Opera Mobile or Opera Mini. You can also access your bookmarks using other Web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari.
Opera Link is not a backup of your bookmarks. When you add or delete a bookmark in one of your browsers, this bookmark will be added or deleted in the other browsers as well.
Opera Link continuously synchronizes your bookmarks and Speed Dial between any computers or mobile phones. Simply log in to access your bookmarks. Access them from any other browser by going to a Web page.
Have you ever been at a friend's house, desperately wanting to show your friend a Web site you found earlier, but could not because you bookmarked the site on your computer at home, and not the laptop you brought with you?
Have you ever been out with some friends and wished you could show them a cool site you bookmarked on your home computer â€" but then you could not find it by searching on your mobile phone's Web browser?
With Opera Link you never again have to leave your bookmarks behind. Opera Link makes your bookmarks available wherever you go: at work, at home, on your phone and on the road. Synchronize your bookmarks from your Mac or PC, from Opera Mini or Opera Mobile on your mobile phone, or log on to the Web version of Opera Link.
Getting started on your Computer
1. Download and install Opera 9.5 beta
2. Launch the Opera browser.
3. Go to "File" -> "Synchronize Opera...".
4. You can choose what kind of browser data you want to synchronize in the Options dialog.
5. You will need a free Opera account to finish setting up Opera Link. If you have an Opera account, you can skip to the next step now. If you do not have an Opera account, quickly create one by clicking on the "Sign Up" button. When you have finished signing up, continue to the next step.
6. Type your username and password and click "Log In".
7. Congratulations! You have now synchronized your browser data
After you have logged in, Opera will continue to synchronize your data until you log out.
Getting started on your mobile phone
1. Download and install Opera Mini 4 beta
2. Start Opera Mini
3. On the start page, click "Synchronize Opera..."
4. You will need a free Opera account to finish setting up Opera Link. If you have an Opera account, you can skip to the next step now. If you do not have an Opera account, quickly create one by clicking on the "Sign Up" button. When you have finished signing up, continue to the next step.
5. Type your username and password and click "Log In".
6. Congratulations. You have now synchronized your browser data.
After you have logged in, Opera Mini will continue to synchronize your data until you log out.
Accessing Opera Link from other browsers and devices
If you use a computer or device with a browser that doesn't support Opera Link, you can still access your bookmarks and Speed Dial. Go to link.opera.com to log in to the Web version of Opera Link.
New in version 9.50 beta 2:
-Full text history search is now part of the address field, with better results and better performance.
-Introduced a new security notification scheme in the address field;
-Added alternative tab-closing behaviors. The preferences now include the following options when closing a tab:
• Activate the last active tab (default)
• Activate the next tab
• Activate first tab opened from current tab
-New spatial navigation highlighting, similar to the one used in Opera Mini 4 and the Wii browser.
New in version 9.5beta1:
• Following the release of Opera 9 last year, we re-wrote Opera's rendering engine for the coming Opera 9.5 release. As a result, Opera 9.5 contains more than a year's worth of speed, standards and performance improvements.
• Faster and less-memory intensive ECMAscript engine.
• A greatly improved layout algorithm.
• The font-rendering speed is improved significantly, along with the tiling of bitmaps.
• More responsive user interface.
• Internal benchmarks show up to 50 percent increase in speed compared to the previous core version in Opera 8. But, performance is more than just showing Web pages faster. Performance is about making your browsing experience more enjoyable and productive. In the past, we introduced much-loved and powerful features like Tabbed browsing, Mouse gestures, Fast Forward and Rewind, Speed Dial all designed to make you get more out of your time browsing the web.
• Synchronize: The preview - Log in just once. Then access your stuff anywhere, anytime. A new Internet revolution is under way and millions of people are now surfing their favorite Web sites every day. But they're not just browsing on their computers. Instead, they're browsing from practically any device: mobile phones, TVs, game consoles, PDAs. In fact, Internet users today tend to browse from various devices throughout the day. This alpha version of Kestrel contains a sneak preview with support for bookmarks, Speed Dial and personal bar synchronization between desktop versions of Opera. To check it out, just click File - Synchronize with My Opera and follow the instructions. Get your stuff anywhere!
• Full History Search - Have you ever read something interesting, but then later struggled to find your way back to that same small portion of a Web page? Now you can say goodbye to that problem. With Opera 9.5, we introduce full history search - search the complete Web pages you visited, but without requiring you to bookmark them. Unlike previous and other browser history searches which only look at the URLs of the pages you have visited, full history search searches the actual content of the Web pages you have visited. When typing a keyword, Opera 9.5 will automatically search the text of Web pages in your history. Moreover, we have directly integrated Full History Search into the URL field of the Opera 9.5 browser, making it extremely easy and quick to find what you're looking for.
• Status bar with Zoom and Image control - Opera's excellent zoom function and the bandwidth saving control of images are now made easily available on the Status bar. Tip: Add your own buttons like the developer console to the Status bar.
• Restore closed windows and changes in Speed Dial - Kestrel has an improved version of the much loved trash-can feature by adding support for opening closed windows, not only the closed tabs. You can also use the undo function now for Speed Dial.
• Improved BitTorrent performance - We added support for BitTorrent Peer Exchange to allow you to connect to more download hosts and improve your download speeds.
• Platform integration - We worked to make Kestrel feel even more integrated with your platform. Mac users can expect a nice new visual look and feel, while Opera for Linux will add a QT4 build, so you can easily adjust your skin to match the desktop. 64-bit Linux/FreeBSD packages will also be available.
• VoiceOver support - Kestrel adds support for Apple's screen reader "VoiceOver" found in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This allows visually impaired Opera users to more easily use all of the features in the browser. For more details, please see: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover
• Skin - Our skins in Opera 9.5 feature improved conformance to Apple Human Interface Guidelines. We have also added a new native skin with a brushed metal appearance, for those of you into that sort of look.
• Mail improvements - Kestrel features great stability and performance to Opera's integrated email client, Opera Mail. We've added a new mail backend and new IMAP support. Opera Mail is also much faster than in previous versions of Opera. Note to existing Opera Mail users: Please be aware that you will need to install this version on top of your existing Opera version to use this version for mail. Opera will then re-index all your email, something which can take several minutes if you have thousands of emails.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
System Support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://www.opera.com/download/
and
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/
