A first alpha preview of the upcoming web browser Opera 10 has been released by the Opera development team. Among the most notable difference to previous versions is that the browser is passing the Acid 3 test with a score of 100/100. Opera 10 makes use of the new Presto 2.2 rendering engine which improves speed, performance and security significantly.
The Opera team speaks of a 30% speed increase over the previous version of the rendering engine. A test of the JavaScript performance of Opera 10 revealed astonishing results. Opera 10 completed the
Web Browser Javascript Benchmark in 188ms which is very fast compared to Firefox 3.0.4 which needed 349ms, Safari 3.1.2 with 344ms or Opera 9.52 with 420ms. It’s obviously not fair to compare a development release with web browsers who have already been released but it should give anyone an understanding about the performance increase in this new Opera version.
What else is new in Opera 10? Opera 10 adds a long requested inline spellchecker and an interesting auto-update function which can update Opera automatically whenever a new version has been released.
Web developers will like the support of web fonts, SVG and opacity through RGBA and HSLA. The current release schedule aims for a beta in early 2009 and a final release of Opera 10 later that year.
Interested users can download the Opera 10 alpha release for Windows, Linux or Mac.
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Cool. :) 9.50 and later have some performance issues and new rendering engine was in the works for a long time as I remember.
Not touching alpha-anything but it’s good to know it’s coming.
well it is pretty stable for an alpha release ;)
I’ve always been fairly impressed with Opera as a browser. Even though I don’t really like how it looks (opinion related, don’t attack me please :P), it’s always stuck me as one of the better browsers.
I personally didn’t realize 9.6 was out, as I had un-installed it a few sub-releases ago. However, I’m definitely going to have to look at it again, now that firefox is no longer my primary browser.
Indeed, looking forward to beta
Well i am far more impressed with opera 10 than i was with chrome.
I like this a lot
>Even though I don’t really like how it looks (opinion related, don’t attack me please :P)
You do know that it’s VERY customizable with skin support and ability to completely rearrange interface as you like? :) Not all like to bother with customizing interface but Opera is really good for that.
The alpha runs great! Loads of new features as well! The Opera team have done a great job!
Beta will be available before 2009
“Alpha”? Seems like it’s ready & stable already.
One very important test missing from acid3 is the speed & ability to save pages in MHT format.
Only Opera (later versions can do this, seemingly instantly.
If I’m onto M$ IE, then I use a shell to bypass IE’s faults. In order, my freeware IE shells are: Maxthon2, Avant & Crazy Browser. Testing of IE should be done with these IE shells.