Opera's Beta 9 Browser

April 20, 2006
Opera Software today announced the first public Beta of Opera 9. This version includes Widgets, small Web programs running in their own windows that are fun, easy-to-use and live on users' desktops. The Opera 9 Beta also features support for BitTorrent, a popular file downloading technology, in addition to an easy-to-use content blocker and thumbnail previews of tabbed sites.

And yes, Opera remains available free of charge.

"We're proud to release this Beta of Opera 9 to Web users around the world," said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "Opera 9 brings powerful new features to enhance the Web browsing experience and empower Web 2.0 developers. Opera 9 unlocks new levels of productivity for the Internet ecosystem."

8 days ago Opera announced the release of Opera 9! This version of Opera is by far an evolution in all explorers because this is definetly something you would never have expected in an explorer.

Opera 9 features include:
-Widgets
-BitTorrent Integration
-Content Blocker
-Improved Rich Text editing
-Customizable search engine
-Thumbnail preview
-Site Specific preferences

Feature defenitions:

Widgets - Small Web applications (multimedia, newsfeeds, games and more) that make your desktop experience more fun. Any Web developer can create their own Widgets and share them, regardless of operating system. Try the Widgets in Opera 9 by pressing F6. Look for further development of Opera Widgets in future releases.BitTorrent - Instead of having to use a separate BitTorrent application for downloading large files, users can now simply click a torrent file and start the download
Content blocker - Choose the content you want to view. Remove ads or images - it is up to you. Right-click on the Web page and choose "Block content"
Improved rich text editing - Take advantage of rich text editing capabilities when using the latest Web mail or blogging services
Customize your search engines – Use your favorite search engine in the search box. Right-click on the site's search field and select "Create search" from the menu
Thumbnail preview – It's easy to have many tabs open at once in Opera. But exactly which tab had that video you wanted? Hover any tab to see a thumbnail preview
Site-specific preferences - Do you need to view a site in a different way or deny certain cookies? Want to block pop-ups on certain sites only? Site specific preferences hold the key

The first thing i noticed was BitTorrent. Opera offers the ability to download .torrents! which is definetly a feature that has revolutionized exploring the net.

What do you think about this new evolution in internet exploring

The first thing i noticed was BitTorrent. Opera offers the ability to download .torrents! which is definetly a feature that has revolutionized exploring the net.

Well, it's no biggie. I mean, you have firefox extensions for the same as well. But I am curious about the widgets. Will these widgets be like Yahoo's Konfabulator or will these things close once the browser window is closed?

I'm not particularly fond of Opera. I've tried it out, but then came back to firefox because I missed all the extensions .

It sounds like Opera's devlopers are putting thought into their latest release. More than what can be said for *cough* Microsoft's IE team *grins*But still ... I'm a huge Firefox fan, so I probably won't be checking this out anytime soon. It's nice, though, that Opera fans have something new to use.

I've downloaded and installed this one quite sometime back and I'd say definitely a BIG improvement in terms of performance and stability. And very very feature rich. The cool thing is now - you can hover your mouse over any of the open tabs and you get a thumbnail preview popup of the page loaded in that tab.. that's really cool. I didn't like the inbuilt torrent downloader much. Not very flexible and doesn't give you much of a control. I'd prefer to use a separate torrent client. Still a lot of features to explore. Overall I'll say GOOD WORK

I am a big fun of Opera, it is my main browser and this is really something I am waiting for, when Opera 9 will be stable I think I will encourage everyone to use it. Now I will try the beta version. I used to be a Firefox fan, due to all the powerful extensions, but faster browser is my priority, that is why I moved to Opera. All I miss in Opera 8.5 is some features which work with Firefox (Even IE), XSL+XML and AJAX related stuff.. As I read through, Opera will have more support to different things and still will remain fast and free. Really great news.EDIT: Well, I just noticed it has some differences in showing WML Pages, which makes my Site's WML version look a bit crappy, will need to fix the problems.. Also, it differently shows XML+CSS which is quite annoying, it seems they are back to the Opera 7 for this, but now it nicely shows XML+XSL which I like

Edited April 29, 2006 by Quatrux (see edit history)

Yeah it's great. I'm still using the old opera 8.5 (I think) but I will upgrade soon.I tried the beta of opera 9 before but all my settings wand passwords and cookies etc had been gone, so i continued to use opera 8.5It does look much better, i tried a couple of pages with the beta version and it's much more stable and faster.Also There's that nice opera widgets box that hovers at the top of your screen whenever opera is running (could even have it minimized to the taskbar and it'l still show). You can easily download widgets without any hassle.They also have alot of widgets to choose from and they create quite a few, so if you don't find one check back in a week and see what's new ;)I might end up downloading opera 9 right now, depends if i can be bothered -HellFire

What I don't understand about the new version is, when installing, you tell it to upgrade, and what it does instead, is install in it's own seperate BETA folder. That's just wrong. Still, I'm a Firefox supporter, but I'm an Opera user.

I'll have to give this a look-see eventually. Like many have mentioned, I too am a firefox user but I've always liked Opera. If firefox wasn't around I'd be using opera no doubt. If for whatever reason you don't like FF opera was always a good alternative and this is looking to be a great step forward for them, woo!

Opera was my first alternative browser a few years ago until Mozilla/Firefox caught my eye. Was using Firefox until last year when Opera came out with a new version without the ads there. Gave it another shot and now I'm back to using Opera. Will download this version and see how much of an improvement they made.