Opera 9.5 alpha is out
Published September 4th, 2007 6:46 AM EDT By Daniel GoldmanIt’s finally here!
The Desktop team just released the very first alpha of Opera 9.5.
Opera 9.5 alpha uses the new rendering engine, core-2, the same used on Opera Mini 4. In core-2 we have fixed literally thousands of bugs and added additional support for a slew of Web standards. The new rendering engine fixes many of the incompatibility issues with websites broken in Opera.
We’ve also put a major effort into improving performance and speed in Opera 9.5.
This new alpha contains improved performance and many new features and functionalities, including:
- Synchronize your bookmark, Speed Dials, and Personal toolbar across multiple computers.
- Full history search: search the complete content of the webpages you visited directly from the URL toolbar. As you begin typing, Opera will not only search previously visited URLs and page titles, but also the content of the page.
- New ECMAscript (i.e JavaScript) engine, which is faster and less-memory intensive. The new ECMAscript engine uses fewer resources than anything we’ve done previously.
- Fixed thousands of bugs in Opera’s rendering engine, thus improving Opera’s compatibility with many sites.
- Added support for the CSS3 overflow-x and overflow-y properties.
- Added support for JavaScript 1.5 Getters and Setters.
- Improved support for Rich Text Editing.
- Fixed problems seen in various Google’s sites.
- Added support for screenreaders such as Window-Eyes, Jaws, and VoiceOver on OS X.
- Improved spatial navigation and made keyboard shortcuts more accessible for new users.
- Set all single key shortcuts to be disabled by default.
- Improved support for Opera on Windows Vista.
- Opera integrates better with default program dialogs on Windows XP and Vista.
- On the Mac OS X, Opera looks and feels more like a native OS X application, with improved tabs, better default fonts, and pulsing buttons.
- Releasing Opera in 64-bit version.
- New indexing and storage back-ends for Opera Mail, which uses less memory, accesses the hard drive less often, and performs normal functions faster.
- New IMAP back-end.
- Freezing is largely gone when Opera checks for new mail or newsfeeds.
- Opera Mail is now more stable, faster, and less buggy.
- Mail checking and processing is faster and indexing and searching are more reliable.
- Wand will no longer block form submits, making it possible to see if login was successful before storing your login credentials
- Added “Drag to scroll” feature that allows scrolling by “grabbing” the page, much like on mobile phones with touch screens
- When clicking with the mouse wheel, the auto-scroll icon now appears where clicked instead of the center of the page
- Improved Mac look and feel
For a complete list of the changes (and there are a ton of them), be sure the read the changelog.
Ryan over at CyberNet News did an excellent review of Opera 9.5 alpha (video).
This is an alpha version, it will install by default in a separate directory from your previous version of Opera. And… don’t forget to report any bugs you find.
Links
(Synchronize your bookmarks with My Opera)
(Full history search)
using
Hurray!!!
Opera WTF
using
Oops, forgot to turn off identification as FF, of course I’m using Kestrel
using
already playing with it now, very cool. Scrolling is much smoother in linux. Can’t wait for updates.
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For me, it was always smooth under Ubuntu, and the speed is quite the same for the sites that I visit, the sync thinggy is of no use for me, and no ‘major’ new things, so I’ll consider it like the 9.23 with many bugs corrected.
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It reminds of the 8.54 version.Much faster than 9.23.No hanging,no hourglass lingering on the page.This may get me to switch back to Opera.Still want a spellchecker like the one used by Firefox though.
Mike.
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wow, alpha and running without problems… and fast!
but still can’t edit documents on http://www.thinkfree.com … =(
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Wonderful!
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Installed Opera 9.5, Opened Yahoo Search Marketing Web, Saw Error, Closed Opera. Using Firefox and 9.23 Again. No idea what rendering improvements there was but in 9.23 that site stats even loads and while in 9.5 I just get error.
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Always the best, but the default skin still ugly like hell.
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The default OS X skin now is ****, even the brushed metal theme is ****, I went back to using Entr Acte (please make this the default OS X theme, it blends so beautifully well). Other than that I do see noticeable improvements. On the new Youtube comments system, in Opera 9.23, if you went to view all comments on a video with over 25 comments, Youtube would lock up the entire browser and I’d have to force quit opera, but that was fixed in the new Opera version (probably due to the improved javascript function and css support). Overall the build is nice. It’s seemingly more stable for me. The only real bug I found is that after I imported my mail, I went to a new tab and started using the Google search bar next to my address bar and it kept opening my mail instead of searching when I hit return. It has since stopped doing that though.
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Jesus christ, one has to wonder why on earth people who don’t have a clue about software development download alpha or beta versions of applications.
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I develop a software myself so I do “have a clue”
Since it said
“Fixed thousands of bugs in Opera’s rendering engine, thus improving Opera’s compatibility with many sites.”
I reported that yahoo still doesn’t work since opera 9.2x or opera 9.xx
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Thanks for no longer forcing the cursor to the center of the screen when middle-button dragging
The search with google from the address bar is a great addition for many users who’d probably find counter-intuitive to type a letter to define a search action; these same users would love that one-key shortcuts are turned off by default (and I love that re-enabling them only takes a couple clicks). Good move on the E-mail Client Selection dialog on first run! I think most users will be puzzled by the absence of a Go button by default.
The open-with sub-menu means that I can now always use Opera, and only load other browsers as required. Also, a big thank you for adding “Permanently accept this certificate” - some institutions are pretty bad about issuing their own SSL certs; the security prompt got annoying (legitimate though it was).
I haven’t had a chance to play with the revised M2, but I love Opera 9.5; thanks for your work, Opera team. (Congrats on the new JS interpreter, seems twice as fast as its predecessor, per http://celtickane.com/projects/jsspeed.php) Except perhaps for Flock, this is the first time I see a browser offer sync services as well - I love it. I’ll wait for the beta or final release before trying it out, but I know I’ll use it.
Q1: Is it on purpose that site favicons are no longer draggable next to the address bar button? The only way to do it is by opening the Customize dialog: I haven’t found an option in Prefs…
Q2: Where can I enable Drag-to-Scroll?
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RE: Q1 - it works with the personal bar, so I guess it was on purpose; but I would love to have the option to drag favicons next to the address bar buttons!
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Chuck Monroe: shift+drag works
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Cool! Thanks Olli
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yeah, your comment says otherwise.
Report?, sounded more like a moan. Regardless, this is not the place to report anything, go to the forums and start a proper thread. Since you say you are a developer yourself, wouldn’t you like to receive proper feedback from your users instead of moans?.
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Very nice
It’s also quite stable, I’m using it now for some hours and it had not crashed yet. I really love the history search 
using
Finally, a version that could convince me to switch from 8.54. Thanks Opera Team!! Although I’ve yet to test CSS. **crosses fingers**
Yahoo and Google works perfect for me, so why don’t you try to tell them what’s wrong rather than general whining.
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Nice alpha build but…
Really disappointed with many features are removed in this build (Kestrel branch).
- View bar
- Full shell context menu in transfers tab
- No more size in bytes and the content-type in the download dialog (lacks information)
- Missing tab shortcuts
+
- No improvements to RSS reader
- Smooth scrooling (I don’t like it in this build only)
using
I can’t believe how fast this build is. Nice work. I hope it reaches beta-state soon
using
About Sync with MyOpera:
What about sync’ing Contacts, Notes and Wand?
Can’t we use the Wand on the log in dialog? Would be great!
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For suggestion about the sync gohere
Some clarification about the sync look here
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I am really dissapointed. The native Mac theme (both of them) is REALLY really bad. I like the Opera theme, just stick with that. Stop trying to blend it in with the OS. Your can’t do it unless you are willing to use Cocoa and all that.
The speed is nice and the ability to sync is wonderful, but other than that there isn’t anything else. Total lackluster, plus the movement and removal of some buttons sucks.
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Amazing!
For an ALPHA release this is incredible. So far has been very stable for me with six to ten tabs open.
Google sites work much better. Still not perfect though, but much better. Now to get Google to update their browser check.
The snc feature is simply killer. I expect that we will see more items available for sync as time goes on.
I think the drag+shift to add tabs to the address bar is a pain and a bad idea. If you are trying to avoid users acidently doing this and getting confused, pop up a warning the first time with a ‘do not display again’ and ‘disable this feature’ check box.
I have not used M2 yet, I actualy stopped years ago. I am going to try it soon though.
Great start to the future guys!!
I do think more attention needs to be paid to assisting new users getting up to speed. Personally, I think a systematic ‘tip of the day’ is worth looking at. This would slowly spiral the new user into Opera. Maybe even build in some AI to customize the tips based on the users usage patterns.
I am looking forward to the next build.
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We need someone to design some buttons/banners/graphics/etc that we can put on our sites and in forum sigs to advertise Kestrel.
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Running great here! No crashes ! Not even a single and I’m using this since DT released it
:D
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My biggest thing: Y!Mail still doesn’t work. At least there’s the helpful ability to launch alternate browsers.
One good improvement: before, clicking OK in an options page would often take very long to go thru and temporarily freeze the browser. I haven’t noticed this behavior once since.
Opera keeps alternating between “synchronizing” and “sync complete” + “logged in as…”, w/out me adding bookmarks. Does this thing do history also (I’d like that)?
Also, is there any way to access synced bookmarks on a website (my.opera.com)? There should be. Then I could truly access my bookmarks anywhere, requiring nothing more than logging into a site. Now, you’d have to install Opera 9.5alpha wherever you want to access your bookmarks. Until a site is setup to list bookmarks as links, this feature won’t be useful to me.
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Also, let’s get inline spell checking running w/out any extra install.
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BTW: Thanks for providing the best browser on earth
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Just started using the built in mail prog. it’s excellent.Love the notifications it now uses.Quicker and cleaner than before.Just a little help please,when I go to the BBC news page and click to play a video,Windows Media starts up and I am being asked to download new codecs.This has never been required before and no other browser needs changing.
Mike.
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The new “Open with” item in the right click menu is definitely useful. I can now get rid of the custom buttons.
I also like bookmarks and Speed Dial syncing (I don’t use the personnal bar). Great job.
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Fantastic, guys! What a wonderful upgrade to an already amazing browser! I’ve even written about it: http://granttlc.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/kestrel-flies/
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It has finally become feasible to use Opera for browsing, email, and RSS - no more freezing, super fast deletion and display of emails/feeds. Great job, M2 team!
One little detail about the address bar: it seems like the “Search with [default SE]” should always be visible at the bottom of the history list, without needing to scroll (see Mozilla/SeaMonkey)…
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Using Opera 9.5 on Win XP Pro
I’m glad that opera 9.5 is here. It’s GREAT!!!! I had troubles with my homepage which is Comcast displaying certain parts of it with Opera 9.23. But so far with 9.5 everything displays fine.
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FYI: For me on Vista, alpha keeps crashing when attempting to save an image.
Thanks for making Opera use non-standard URL’s as search queries. Great usability decision
Although I like being able to setup [letter][space][query] for custom searches, having to type to the default SE letter all the time became tedious.
It’s very hard to switch back to the otherwise more stable 9.23 - can’t wait to see 9.5 released to the public. Keep up the great work!
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PS: Where can I enable Drag-to-Scroll? Aside from opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableDrag, set to 247, I found nothing. Thanks anyone.
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Am I the only one who would like the new ability to search history by text in the website to be extended to bookmarks as well? It could make the address bar the ultimate search location. What it could do, is show history results up top, then bookmark results below under a divider. If the URL of a bookmark already exists in the history, it would only be shown in the history section. So the bookmarks section would just be for bookmarks that are not in history.
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@Chuck Monroe:
Don’t you mean this one
opera:config#UserPrefs|ScrollIsPan
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@Chuck Monroe
How about reading the changelog?. It’s not that hard, is it?.
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Anyone besides me find it odd, that the day after Opera releases 9.5a, with an emphasis towards fixing specific issues with Google sites, that Google reader stops working in Opera? At least it does not work in both 9.23 and 9.5a anymore. On Tuesday, Reader DID work in 9.5a. Then Google ‘upgraded’ Reader on Wednesday and no worky in Opera.
Probably just a case of ‘I am big and can ignore a portion of my customer base.’ Makes you think though…
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Oops, my bad. Opera 9.21 not 9.23.
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Thanks Berend
That’s exactly it, the feature is great when you use a wacom tablet as mouse.
A great moddification to ScrollIsPan would be a modifier key that toggles ScrollIsPan off if you want to select text for example (IE7 on Vista toggles the “Panning Hand” with Alt+G). Since ScrollIsPan isn’t in the Prefs > Shortcut dialog, I don’t know how to assign it a kbrd shortcut…
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Thanks Chocker, I’m sorry I missed the link.
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@Chuck Monroe: if you’re in you’re keyboard shortcuts and create an new one, you should be able to find “override scroll is pan” I have ctrl \ as an shortcut and put an option on my navigation bar.
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Seems to be a place to brag or you’ll get shot down. I hate the fact the blank tab always apppears.( 2 tabs always open - the desktop link I click on plus blank tab or speed dial, if so configured.
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Thanks Berend, that sounds exactly what I was looking for. Where did you go to find “override scroll is pan”? I tried in mouse and keyword under shortcuts (Prefs), and in opera:config, without success.
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Chuck Monroe, here’s where you change the the ’scroll is pan’ settings:
opera:config#UserPrefs|ScrollIsPan
(copy and paste)
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Thanks Daniel
Is it possible to set a keyboard shortcut to toggle Scroll-is-pan on and off?
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Chuck, not that I know of.
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No problem, thanks
It would be a nice addition for anyone who uses a stylus, to toggle between scroll and text-selection mode…
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what about the buttons on the side of the address bar for getting to webpages faster. can’t do that with this is alpha version what happened to that feature.