Since the release candidate for Opera 10 was announced last week, I’ve been testing the browser to see if it could live up to my standards (which, since I basically live and work on the Web, are pretty high) and if I’d be tempted to switch to it completely.
As I mentioned in my earlier article, Opera hasn’t exactly made any dents in the desktop browser dominion of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox in its thirteen years of existence, but as I’ve noticed Opera fans will even attack you for simply stating that fact. Well now that Opera 10 has been let loose and I’ve had the chance to put it to the test for a week, at least I can understand why it has fans in the first place.
First of all, Opera 10 feels fast. Super-fast, even, close to the speed sensation I had when I started trying out Google Chrome for the first time. It could be nothing more than a feeling of course – we’re looking into ways to do a massive browser speed test – but Opera did say this version would be about 40% faster than its predecessor Opera 9.6, specifically on resource-intensive pages. If you care about speed, check it out, because it’s zooming alright.
The Opera desktop browser has also been given a new lick of paint, but I’ve never really tried previous versions for a long period of time so I can’t tell if the difference is that big. But I have to say the interface that was designed for Opera 10 looks nice and feels quite intuitive. A sweet touch: resizable tabs that show you a thumbnail of what you have opened up in your browser window. Like its innovative ’speed dial’ element, introduced back in 2007, expect it to get copied in other browsers in the near future.
Opera 10 incorporates the new Turbo feature, which helps speed up browsing sessions when surfing the Web on slower connections (3G, sluggish WiFi networks, etc.). The new release also comes with a number of bug fixes, usability and web standard improvements, automatic updates, integrated spell checker and a better in-client Opera Mail. Not in this release yet: Opera Unite and the new Carakan JavaScript engine that promises to process JavaScript about 2.5 times as fast as earlier Opera versions.
There’s not much else to add about the new browser other than it works as advertised, and who knows, maybe it will get a bigger piece of the pie with this release. I, for one, am not sure yet if I’ll be switching completely in the long run but I’m seriously impressed by how good – and fast – the Opera desktop browser really is.
It’s been my favorite browser for years. Built in mouse gestures are so great. The new skin is a little over the top for me, but after some customization I don’t mind it and everything feels nice.
I think they should add a “Private” mode, since IE and Chrome both have it standard.
I have been using Opera for a long long time. It has remained by default browser since V7. And this release is once again awesome.
Given how awesome it really is, its sad that Opera isnt more popular than it is. But, Opera can only blame itself and a lot of poor decisions for not being able to go mainstream (I intend to blog on the missing pieces in Opera later today).
“Given how awesome it really is, its sad that Opera isnt more popular than it is.”
Uh, it has grown by 65% in the last 12 months and has something like 40-50 million users. Not bad for a tiny, independent Norwegian company which had to actually make a living instead on relying on other products or donations.
3% market share in 3-4 years isn’t too bad when you look at the market situation, surrounded by cut-throat giants who don’t even need to make money off of their browsers, and they just use them to push their other wares instead.
It isn’t three % in 3 years. Opera had a sizable market share even before going free.
Opera Browser is undoubtedly growing. But so is the internet. The % growth matters more than increase in the number of users.
And given that Opera is one of the best browsers around (and Opera is well known as a brand thnx to O Mini and Nintendo) it’s market share is unimpressive at best.
No, Opera didn’t really have any market share before late 2005. It had some users, yes, but it wasn’t until it became free without ads that it really got started.
Opera’s market share (3% globally, 7-10% in Europe) is kind of impressive because it’s the only independent browser, and can’t rely on Microsoft’s bundling, Google’s advertising channels or Firefox’s free lunch and huge push from not only Google, but Nokia, Sun, etc.
Opera does it all on its own whereas other browser companies use other non-browser channels to push the browser because they can.
Even in such an unfair market, Opera has achieved tens of millions of uses. I think that’s quite good.
Opera 10 looks nice and feels quite intuitive. With a sweet touch. Seriously impressed by the fastness
“I think they should add a “Private” mode, since IE and Chrome both have it standard.”
Not to mention Safari which is the browser that introduced that feature.
firefox has zillion add ons .. convert it into any browser you like
Yeah, unfortunately all those zillion addons are third party software, and they get awkwardly bolted on to the browser instead of being nicely integrated like Opera’s…
What’s actually getting converted is Opera’s functionality into firefox add ons.
As soon as I clicked the read more my FF crashed wtf
I installed and got the RC screen while I thought it was a stable release.
I just tested it and it is really fast as compare to Firefox.
I think part of Opera’s impression of speed is that it executes mouse-clicks on the click-down, as opposed to the button-release action.
I don’t think so. When does it do that where other browsers don’t, exactly?
No it doesn’t. It took longer to write your comment than check it out, and if you don’t have Opera installed, why do you post such thoughts in the first place?
explain TURBO.
Turbo connects to Opera servers, which compress Web pages before sending them to the browser. So on a slow connection the added ping time is made up for by less data being downloaded.
On a fast connection, it probably makes things slower, so you can turn it on/off depending what your needs are.
On a faster connection it didn’t slow it down for me. What it does do, however, is make photos and graphics all choppy looking and low quality. Probably okay for most surfing. I set it it to automatic now.
Opera put together this funny take on explaining turbo
Opera put together this funny take on explaining turbo
Explain Turbo? Try
http://www.yout...h?v=tYEUFwJXVvw
“Opera hasn’t exactly made any dents in the desktop browser dominion of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox in its thirteen years of existence, but as I’ve noticed Opera fans will even attack you for simply stating that fact.”
When someone points out the fallacy of this claim, it isn’t an attack.
Fact: Opera has only been a free browser for 3-4 years. In those 3-4 years it has reached a global market share of about 3%, and nearly 10% in Europe.
Opera as a desktop browser has been around for 15 years, but 10+ of those years aren’t really relevant since you had to pay. It wasn’t until it was released for free that things started happening. In a year, Opera’s user base has grown by 65%!
Opera was ad supported after the turn of the millenium, so that’s almost ten years. It only spent a few years charging users directly.
“Opera was ad supported after the turn of the millenium, so that’s almost ten years.”
Yeah, ad supported. As in, you had to pay to remove the ads. Not exactly mainstream.
65% of 10 is still pants. go home you monkey.
“65% of 10 is still pants”
Actually, it’s up to 40-50 million users by now.
“usability and web standard improvements, automatic updates, integrated spell checker and a better in-client Opera Mail”… YES, finally! WoOt!
*runs to update Hootsuite Twitter client won’t run on FireFox for me… I may make the switch completely*
I think they nailed it this time. This is the best browser.
And I’m starting to dislike Chrome. Good timing.
Opera > Chrome > IE > FF – that’s simple enough I guess
Really? IE > FF? I don’t even know how to attack that…you’re just wrong
Really? IE > FF? I don’t even know how to attack that…you’re just wrong!
Almost the order I use them, except IE is last.
After long loading …the opera download gave me 404
Site seems borked to me too. FTP might be a better option.
ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/....._Setup.exe
That’s the English, Windows version.
I first noticed that as well, it looks like their servers are under a lot of stress. Try again now.
Even though opera TURBO saved my life when my internet was falling apart recently, I failed to download stuff while the turbo was on. Is that a bug?
It did, until Opera 5 nine years ago. Since actually supporting JS event model it did not, but yes once upon a time it was one of many early speed features.
Opera 10 with the new features seems very appealing. Opera with these enhanced functionalities with awesome would sure catch up more fans.
TechCrunch’s “drag to share” doesn’t work in Opera 10. So, I tried and didn’t like it, uninstalled. I can’t live without Adblock…
Drag to share works fine.
@alma
adblock was the first thing i tried to find for opera when it came out.
a simple google search solves your problem.
http://operawik...fo/OperaAdblock
hmm… some bad words about Opera 10, and my comment is deleted. Sry, I didn’t know if this post was only gimmick for OIO.
I see two comments from you, 8 minutes apart. The replies to your first comment are very good.
So many so called Opera supported, it still one of the lamest browsers out there… 2% and falling!
Falling? Even according to Net Applications it’s growing. It has grown its user base by 65% in the past 12 months, up to 40-50 million.
I still love my Firefox with its lovely extensions but of course I love how fast Opera (or Chrome) is
Nice job everyone. Looks and feels great. Hopefully you’ll see some serious uptick with this release.
Loving it so far. Been using it all morning and have no issues at all.
Superfast opera … it’s called porn … no clothing, no unnecessary gestures … no singing … no music … no scenario … no drama … no bullshit
A2ZEB stuff really, they should call this release Opera Porn (they would prob get more downloads as well)
More seriously, I tried it and it really is a wonderful browser, faster than chrome
Let me tell you, Opera 10.
Opera 10, people.
There’s 10 Opera’s in a tree, and all of them belong to me.
Do you dig it? Do you *KNOW*?
Because I do.
Opera 10 — It’s Only For Porn.
I could not do without the ff accuweather add-on displaying the current and week’s forecast on the status bar. Also, ff’s ad blocking.
I couldn’t even keep the newest ff version 3.5 because it didn’t have the accuweather accompanying it.
Opera has some weather widgets (yes, AccuWeather AFAIK) and such. You can probably get exactly what you want from Opera.
Nice stuff… I downloaded Opera 10 to play with it… and my tab area doesn’t have a resize gripper!!!
I’ve been hunting all over the preferences to find a way to turn it on. Nowhere to be found. That’s the one feature I wanted to check out – anyone else having this issue?
Hi there, right-click on any tab > Customize > Mark “Show thumbnails on tabs”. Maybe the exact menus are different (since I’m using the spanish translated version), but you get the idea.
Now you can resize your tab bar and see those awesome thumbnails =).
Opera in general works faster than IE, Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and Flock. However, the version 10 really IS super fast. I can’t believe the difference.
I got tired of the constant crashes with Firefox and IE is too slow. Chrome I like, but have had crashes lately too. I also love the customization options for it.
I had over 300 tabs opened on Opera and no crashes and still fast. The new version I tested 500 and no problems. I am really surprised at the difference in speed. I hope it lasts.
I have a few complaints about Opera, mainly when you copy and past into documents like Open Office Writer it doesn’t copy the links and photos…defaults to text. IE and Firefox will. And I haven’t figured out a way to set it to do so.
Some functionality of sites doesn’t work, views, videos, etc. For 99% of the time though, it is the best browser I use.
Didn’t opera used to have a way to bookmark all tabs? I was sure it used to have that and I had used it on older version. I use that on my Firefox and really do like and want that feature.
You can save sessions. File > Sessions > Save
I live in a country with a not so good internet connection, and Opera with Turbo saves my life.
I also love their mouse gesture, so efficient.
Testing out Opera 10 and so far it’s the best and fastest browser I’ve used. I’ve been a Chrome fan since it’s released and I’m now switching to Opera as my default browser. Firefox has been slow lately and Safari is fast but a memory hog. Don’t get me started with IE. Only a few things I wanted them to add.
1. Private browsing (Chrome implementation not like the one in IE, Firefox or Safari)
2. All tabs displayed as individual thumbnail in Windows 7. Check out IE8 and Safari has this feature.
For me this is my order of browser preference
Opera > Chrome > Safari > Firefox >>>>>>>>>>IE
I tried the new turbo a.k.a Image compression technology of Opera, some how it managed to impress me.
Though I’m not going to dump Mozilla because same thing can be achieve on Mozilla using addons
Unless there’s an addon that connects to a remote third party server to compress the data (which doesn’t sound very desirable), all a Firefox addon for that would do is compress the image after they’ve already been downloaded. How would this increase speed at all? You’d still be downloading the same amount of data from the server (so the download isn’t affected), and the compression at client end is likely to slow things down because it usually takes more time to compress and then render something (when done on one computer with a particular amount of processing power) than it does to render an uncompressed image.
I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure Firefox doesn’t have anything that would be able to achieve the same thing as Opera Turbo. Firefox extensions are robust and diverse, but there are some things it can’t do (and even if it can, it might be unsafe to do so – I wouldn’t send my pages to some unknown third party).
Really its a great feature rich browser but as said somewhere in comments it has left a few things which could have made it a really threatning competition to FF or IE..Just for example Notse functionality has no way to add a new web email service which is quite inconvenient.This simple option would have made a lot of difference to the Notes function.I have reviewed it on my blog after using it for hours and I can say that its best browser for average internet surfer.For advanced users FF is still the way to go.