Earlier today Opera Software released an alpha build of the long-awaited version 10 of their desktop browser. Opera 10 alpha promises to be faster at rendering, more standards compliant, and even sports a brand new in-line spell check.

Here’s a short list of things we should expect in this alpha:

• Presto 2.2 Engine
• Performance boost
• 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
• Auto-update
• Inline spelling checker
• Opera Mail improvements, including rich text composition and delete after X days
• Widget Improvements on Linux

For a more detailed list and downloads for Windows, Linux, and Mac please visit the developer blog.

When I first ran the Acid3 test, it only scored 97/100. I mentioned this to a few people, and Kyle Baker reminded me that UserJS can interfere with the test. I disabled UserJS for the Acid3 test, and my score was much better.

Back in May I solicited questions for an interview with Arjan van Leeuwen, the lead developer of the Opera Mail client (also known as M2). Arjan is currently working on a major upgrade of the Opera mail client that will include a significant speed performance boost.

Note, ‘Kestrel’ is the codename for the next major upgrade to Opera, likely Opera 9.5. And ‘Peregrine’ is the codename for the major upgrade after Kestrel.

Bill: Why has M2 been allowed to languish so long? What assurances do we have as users have that after this upcoming upgrade it will be given ongoing resources and continued to be actively developed?

A: We think that mail is an important part of the Internet, and therefore an important part of an internet suite like Opera. We are committed to keep making the best internet suite in the world, and that includes the mail client.

Heathen Dan: Will M2 ever be released as a standalone client?

A: I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. M2 benefits a lot from being an integrated part of Opera. Don’t forget that almost every mail client has to include a complete rendering engine just to show HTML mails, where we can just use the facilities that are already there.

The use of M2 from within the browser should be as seamless as possible, and there are some possibilities for improvement there still. We will work on making M2 even more a part of the system.

That said, we are looking into the option of having a separate ‘mail view’ (a window specifically tailored for mail usage) in the future, for users that prefer keeping their mail separate from their browsing. In that way, we can still have all the benefits of being integrated with Opera, you’d be able to run it as if it was a separate mail client.

IceArdor: Will we see a new M2 GUI in Kestrel or Peregrine? Will it be called M3?

A: There will be a radically changed UI for the mail client in Peregrine. We haven’t really thought about the name yet, all suggestions are welcome .

Gail: Will the delays and freezes with mail be dealt with?

A: Yes. One of the biggest changes in M2 for Kestrel is a complete rewrite of the backend used for the storage of mail. The main goal of the new backend was to increase the speed, since the old backend sometimes froze Opera while it was doing its thing. You will see a vast speed increase when using Kestrel.

GT500: Will there be any improvements to handling of blocked images? I would love to be able to tell Opera to block all images (maybe just all images in certain views, such as ’spam’), and then have a nifty button that I can click to show images in a specific e-mail.

A: We’re looking into the possibilities for improvement there.

Rachid Finge: How would you rate Opera’s current IMAP implementation in comparison to those of your main competitors? I especially mean Thunderbird, which seems industry leader when it comes to IMAP protocol support. What kind of rework are you planning when it comes to IMAP?

and

Graste: What improvements will the new IMAP backend bring in Kestrel and Peregrine? Will the IMAP standards support be similar complete as in clients like Mulberry?

A: As Graste mentioned, Kestrel contains a rewritten IMAP backend, based strictly on the IMAP standard, with (improved) support for features such as nested folders, keywording and working offline.

I wouldn’t exactly call Thunderbird the industry leader when it comes to IMAP support – Mulberry takes that one hands down. However, I don’t think we’ll easily be able to support the amount of IMAP extensions that Mulberry supports: Mulberry is a client that’s specifically designed around the IMAP protocol, while M2 is a client with its own design that supports IMAP as one of the possible protocols for the messages it stores. In other words, our goal is not to support as many features and extensions of IMAP as possible, but to make M2’s way of handling messages work seamlessly with as many IMAP servers as possible. We take a similar approach to Thunderbird in that respect.

Operafan2006: Will M2 support html formatting?

A: We have been experimenting a lot with HTML formatting in our mail composer, but we’ve not yet been able to get satisfactory results from it. This is a feature you will see appearing in the future though.

Dan DeVaney: Will Digital Signatures or Email Encryption be available in the next generation of Opera’s mail client?

and

Andrewdied: Opera and M2 are normally touted as secure, but M2 doesn’t have support for S/MIME or PGP/GPG. Is M2 going to get any of these per-message security features?

A: We are looking into integrating encryption and signing features into M2, but don’t expect this for Kestrel.

Frank Bacher: What does Opera want M2 to be? A full email client (within the browser) that can compete with solutions intended for business use or a client for the casual user?

Currently I don’t see the direction M2’s development is headed. For a business solution its contact management is sub par and a calendar is non existent. A solution for the casual user wouldn’t IMHO need to be as sophisticated.

A: We want M2 to be a productive and easy to use email client for people who have to use their email at a daily basis, even if they have to handle a lot of mails. We want to make organizing your email as easy as possible, whether you are using it for business or just for your personal mail.

We don’t have the ambition to be a personal information manager like Microsoft Outlook is – we want to be a mail client, and we want to be good at it.

Graste: Will there be any mind-blowing new and advanced features we small Opera enthusiasts or your competitors can’t even think of?

A: Yes, but I can’t tell you about them of course .

FataL: What are main goals (not features) for upcoming new version of the mail client?

A: For Kestrel, our main goal is to improve the user experience by providing more efficient and feature-rich backends in M2. For Peregrine, we want to make M2 easier and more fun to use by improving our user interface design.

FataL: Will news feeds client still stay as part of mail client? (Personally, I like this approach)

A: Yes.

Mark: Will the age old problem of restricting how many newsgroup messages get downloaded be fixed?

A: Yes.

Gail: Any way to archive/store old mail?

A: We are working on easier archival solutions for M2 that will appear in either Kestrel or Peregrine. It’s currently possible to manually export and import mail, but I’d certainly agree with you that that is not a perfect solution.

Rachid Finge: M2 has pioneered the approach of a database like mail client, e.g. using filters instead of folders. While this might appeal to advanced users, it seems often confusing to less demanding users, which probably are in the majority. Do you think, in hindsight, the approach of M2 was the right one? And will it remain the same for its successor?

A: Yes, I think that was the right approach, and I think that approach still has a lot of potential. Much of the redesign of the user interface in Peregrine is aimed at making very useful features of M2 that might be difficult to discover at the moment a lot easier to use.

Chesss: Will M2 become more resource hungry with the upgrade?

A: No, M2 will use less system memory and less CPU with the upgrade, and we will continue to try and find ways to improve that.

DynaBMan: Are there any plans to implement a more functional interaction between M2 and the mail server. Thunderbird has a feature that allows the user to leave the messages on the server until they are deleted from the mail client. This would be very handy to have in M2.

A: I’m assuming that you are talking about communication with a POP3 server here. That is indeed one of the features that Kestrel will have.

Suribe: I like the M2, use everyday with 3 accounts and love it! Thanks for such wonderful application. My only wish is to apply tags to messages, as the labels, but more than one. Thanks again for this excellent application!

A: You can already do that, although the feature is confusingly called ‘Filters’ in M2. Filters work like tags, in the sense that more than one of them can be applied to one message (by dragging the message to different filters), and you can easily view all the messages that have a specific filter. Expect improvements in this area with the Peregrine release.