The main feature of this release will be the new widget behavior. Here is a short explanation if you are not familiar with Opera Widgets. Widgets to Opera are what add-ons are to Firefox. The main difference so far was the fact that widgets had to run in their own web browser window while add-ons did not. The other prerequisite was that Opera had to be open at all times for the widgets to show up.

This behavior changes with this new release of Opera. It is now possible to run widgets without Opera being open, pretty much the same way that widgets are used in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Opera calls this Opera widgets for desktop.

Concentration on this new feature becomes apparent on the first start of Opera 10.20 alpha. The welcome page displays a Twitter and Google Translate gadget which will redirect the user to the Opera widget repository. Launching a widget will now install it on the computer system. An icon will be placed in the start menu of the computer and it is now possible to run the widget without Opera running.

Opera needs to be installed on the computer system but it is theoretically possible to install and use the widgets without running Opera afterwards at all. This is however just a first implementation of the widget for desktop feature. Widgets can be installed to every location of the computer system. The announcement over at the Opera desktop team blog contains all the changes and known issues of this Opera 10.20 alpha release. The comments are worth reading as well. The blog post does contain download links for all supported operating systems as well.

The Opera web browser still needs to be installed on the computer system but that is the only requirement. Widgets will work even if it is closed (and never opened again).

Opera users who want to test the new functionality need to download the latest Opera labs build (which is the latest Opera 10.10 build) to do so. The download links are provided in the post announcing the new feature over at the Opera website.

Opera Widgets and the SDK to create widgets are available at the Opera Widgets website. Widgets are available for many web services and uses.

Already installed widgets need to be imported to a location on the local hard drive. Opera will open the Widget Import Wizard automatically if it finds installed Opera Widgets. The wizard is later available under File > Import > Import Widgets if the necessity arrives.

New widgets are installed from the Opera Widgets website. The Opera web browser needs to be used to do that. A click on the launch button next to each widget will display the widget installation dialog. Here it is possible to customize the installation by selecting an installation folder and the shortcuts that should be created.

The widgets can then be started by double-clicking their shortcuts or from the installation directory where an .exe should be available that can be started.