Open your Wings with Opera 10
Opera one of the popular browser has finally released the Beta version of its upcoming browser.. Opera renowned as the fastest browser has yet again set a benchmark by providing the leading edge innovation and hassle free browsing experience to the end user.. With development in full swing, Opera 10 Beta strives to seek and evoke community response to deliver a more user friendly and faster browsing experience..
With Firefox 3.5 development on peek, it was time for Opera developers to hit the nail with some bold release..So lets see how this new beta release perform when we lay our hands on it..
I had lot of Opera experience with its older 8th version but later-on with Firefox gaining momentum and with handful of plug-ins I switched to FF and have been using it for a while..Installation of Opera is undoubtedly the easiest irrespective of the operating system you use. Opera leaves no stone unturned to ease the installation whether you are a Linux, Winodws or MacOSX user.. Developers have added packages for each and every linux distribution for helping you choose the best.. Though a universal repm/deb could have been better …
Opera tries to leverage the gap and fix most of the annoying bugs present in 9.x release. Opera10 is still in Beta phase but the release is very usable and responsive but don't expect it to work like a stable software..Opera 10 features substantial growth in overall package and features a whole set of new tools and engine to boost the browsing experience..
Opera exquisite Speed Dial has gone through major re-haul .You can now add background and increase/decrease number of search ranging from 4-25 depending on your need..
New Customizable Speed Dial
Opera10 scores a perfect 100 in Acid test compared to 71 of firefox.. Opera 10 brings in some really fast browsing experience courtesy a whole new Presto 2.2 engine.. The new engine provide is far cry from its predecessor and loading as-usual is way better than Firefox..
Opera offers more juice for users still on dial-up connection with its new Open Turbo extension.. This extension compress the image and lower its quality thus substantially increasing loading time.. This is a welcome addition for MID and users with low speed connection...
Opera10 has gone through some major rework.. It now uses a whole new QT theme with pleasant colour combination.. The new tabs is more convenient and the overall look is very pleasing.. Stretching the tabs downward will change it into Visual Tabs.. These visuals tabs not only look good but provide a snapshot of the all the loaded pages.. The only gripe is the page viewing are become less and a bit cramped..
New Visual Tabs | New Default Theme
On top of all these major improvements Opera has added lots of bug fixes and small features. One of them is resizable search field. You can now drag the search field horizontally to increase the typing area for search option..
Opera has also improved its inbuilt email client and spell checking tools.. Apart from these there is provision for easy update and bug reporting.. Though Firefox too has easy update but its unusable in Linux !
Opere Inbuilt Mail Client | Opera System Tray Icon showing email notification
Overall Opera 10 is shaping to be a great browser, Opera 10 will try to lure users with its fast loading and aesthetic UI.. The only gripe I has with Opera is that it is still build on top of QT3 instead of QT4... Being a QT3 application you might have to install extra QT3 library if you are using QT4/KDE4 environment.. I still find it a bit sluggish maybe due to Beta but even the stable 9.x is not as responsive as it should be in QT4 desktop..
Another issue that you are going to face with this Beta release is non-working flash.. With a non working flash all the flash ads/website and video viewing website becomes unusable which is a led down
Nonetheless Opera 10 is a great browser worth giving a shot .. Except plethora of FF addons it has everything to please a user ..I will be looking forward for its final release and hopefully it can replace firefox as my main browser..I hope you will have a flamboyant ride with Opera express !
Please digg the preview here http://digg.com/linux_unix/Open_your_Wings_with_Opera_10
Thanks for reading..
Regards
Darky
