Everybody’s favourite Norwegian browser maker has released the beta version of Opera 10.50, the next iteration of the featureful web browser. As Kroc already touched upon late last year, Opera 10.50 comes packed with a lot of improvements across the board, from a new JavaScript engine to an improved address field.
The new JavaScript engine is arguably the biggest new feature. Called Carakan, Opera claims it’s eight times fast than its predecessor. “A completely new JavaScript engine makes Opera 10.50 run Web applications more smoothly,” they says, “Up to 8x faster than its predecessor, the new Carakan engine speeds up even the most demanding Web sites.”
Windows 7 integration is also pretty tight, something my favourite browser (you know) still fails at miserably. Opera makes proper use of the new taskbar (i.e., each tab gets its own entry), has a decent Jump List, and uses Windows’ Aero look where it makes sense. Opera 10.50 also comes with the new Vega graphics library. “Everything in Opera 10.50 is drawn on your screen using Opera’s new, high-performance graphics library,” Opera explains, “This enables super fast and smooth graphics for everything from tab switching to animation on Web pages.”
The address field is smarter, too, now, so you can search through your history or the internet using your search engine of choice. Dialogs created by web pages do not interrupt your browsing experience, as they appear as overlays on tabs, so you can still switch between tabs or windows even when the dialog is still displayed.
There’s more to it than that, so be sure to hop on over and take a peek. Sadly, Linux and Mac users will have to wait a while for the beta: it’s currently Windows only. Mac and Linux users can download the alpha, though.
Going to test it now, loved the pre-alpha and alpha build of it.
Finally! proper Java (plugin2) support. About f* time!
It’s not beta for Mac yet.
“Opera 10.50 alpha for Mac OS X:
While Opera 10.50 for Mac OS X is still not in beta, you can try the alpha version”
It’s not beta for Linux also
That’s because the experiments are done using rats first
Just kiddin’ !!!
Yep, they don’t even have an alpha build for Solaris yet. I’m really interested to see how removing QT may or may not affect being able to run Adobe flash 10 on Opera, which has been broken for a while.
but currently I’ve only got a Mac and a couple old Linux/BSD boxes.
At least Chrome Beta 5.whatever is now available for both Mac and Linux… It is so nice to have extensions working…
Normally I’m an Opera cheerleader, but I’m disappointed by how many bugs and broken features are in this beta. It’s hard to get too excited by speed improvements when the UI makes a much bigger difference to my web browsing, and 10.5’s UI currently has a lot of serious issues.
I guess if you just want to use it like a basic (I’d use the word crippled) browser like Chrome then it’s OK, but use more advanced window management features – the main thing that sets Opera apart in my opinion – and it feels half finished. One of its best unique features, MDI browsing, is pretty much unusable in this version.
Opera 10.5 is probably the biggest change to Opera’s UI since it was first released back in 1996, and I know that I shouldn’t expect a beta to be flawless. It’s just unusual to get an Opera beta that isn’t feature complete and more-or-less fully functional. Every previous Opera release I can think of, going back to the earliest versions, was perfectly usable by the end of alpha testing, and all of the problems in the beta were reported several alpha snapshots ago.
Hopefully it’ll all be working smoothly for the final release.
Apart from that I’m saddened by the way Opera has lost it’s standard Windows look and feel. I usually prefer apps that fit the look of my OS, for example Foobar 2000 and VLC, rather than media players with fancy skins. I guess it’s normal for applications to sacrifice consistency within an OS for cross platform standardisation, but it’s still a direction I don’t like to see Opera take.
I don’t see any major bugs. MDI mostly works as it used to.
If you think it’s unusual for a beta to not be feature complete, you certainly haven’t used a lot of Opera betas
Opera didn’t have a Windows look and feel before. It does now. What you are referring to as “Windows look and feel” in previous versions was nothing but a custom skin!
You are getting it all upside down.
MDI is so bug ridden and problematic in 10.5 it’s pretty much unusable. Actually try using it for browsing – it’s a complete mess.
For a start, it’ll automatically maximise MDI windows if they can’t fit fully in the main Opera window. This is just crazy in a browser where you turn on and off panels and drag down the tab bar to show visual tabs. Turn on a large panel or make the tab bar too large and suddenly all the cascaded MDI windows will maximise.
If you move MDI windows partially off screen then turning on or resizing any toolbar causes them to jump fully on screen. This on its own makes MDI in 10.5 a total pain to use.
Minimising pages doesn’t work properly. There’s no button on the MDI windows titlebar, and if you minimise from the Opera tab bar, then close Opera and restart the session, the minimised windows don’t restore correctly.
Open a window in the background with a middle click and the background MDI window covers up the top window’s window decoration.
There are quite a few other bugs too, like intermittent issues with resizing windows.
I’ve used just about every Opera beta for years quite happily as my main browser. Normally Opera betas, and even some alphas, feel 99% complete with only minor issues and bugs.
This is the first one that I find unusable as a day to day browser, with major problems that render my favourite features a mess. I’d expect such obvious bugs to be fixed during alpha testing.
Total nonsense. Yes, you had to turn on the included ‘Windows Native’ skin, restoring the look that was the default in earlier versions of Opera, but that one change made Opera look and feel like a standard Windows MDI app.
Opera 10.5 does not look like a standard Windows app, even with a custom skin, and more importantly it definitely does not feel like one.
Edited 2010-02-12 11:38 UTC
Actually, Opera does look much more like a native Windows application. At least if you are using a recent version of Windows. Get with the program, and get Windows 7. XP is dead.
As for betas being feature complete, you are wrong indeed.
I’m using Vista, and I’ll stick with a nice and simple look for my desktop. I don’t need so many useless special effects and distractions in my UI, thanks.
Maybe a fancier looking Opera does fit the look of Windows 7, but Opera 10.5 definitely doesn’t feel like a Windows app. Even with the default non-standard skin used in 10.10, it still felt more like a native Windows app than 10.5 does. This is more about feel and use than aesthetics.
Previous versions used standard MDI window management, with all the features and consistency that offered. Opera 10.5 replaces that with a non-standard in-house UI that feels very different in its current version.
I wouldn’t mind if it offered significant advantages, but at the moment 10.5’s window management is far more problematic and less functional than it was in 10.10.
I’m talking about previous Opera betas, not betas in general. In the past most Opera betas were feature complete, with bug fixes and minor tweaks often the only changes in the final release. They certainly didn’t have so many badly broken features and obvious problems.
Opera 10.5 fits perfectly into Vista. But you probably switched off the default VIsta theme and enabled the crappy old 80s-style Windows design instead?
Opera have obviously not optimized for that extreme corner-case.
If you use the standard themes, Opera fits perfectly.
Previous Opera betas have not been feature complete. Check out Opera’s very own version history document.
There are no badly broken features in this beta. “Obvious problems” are mostly minor ones.
With Windows native skin, previous versions of Opera fitted in with the UI whether it was in Windows classic, XP’s teletubby default, the IMO ugly and distracting Vista theme, whatever.
Sorry that I’m not so impressed by shiny, flashy things and just want something clean and functional…
No, it doesn’t. Try to understand that I’m talking about the feel, not just the aesthetics. Like I said: Opera no longer has the standard Windows MDI features, consistent with numerous other Windows apps, that it had since the very first version.
At the moment that loss is causing a lot of usability problems, at least for those of us who use some of Opera’s most unique and powerful features.
I’ve used many previous Opera betas, had a look at that document, and I still think you’re talking nonsense.
Tweaks and bug fixes – that’s generally all that changes between beta and the final release. There are one or two exceptions, but nothing compared with the amount of broken functionality in 10.5. There are past alpha tests have had far fewer major issues.
I always try betas of Opera when they’re released, and this is the first one that I haven’t been willing to use as my day-to-day browser. The first beta where there are too many major problems for me to use it without constant annoyance and frustration.
To me MDI window management has always been one of Opera’s most important features – one that set it apart from other browsers since it was first released. In Opera 10.5 it’s a bug ridden, barely usable, mess of broken functionality, no different from how it was in the pre-alpha, when those problems were first reported.
I disagree, but never mind. The “native” skin wasn’t even standard. Now Opera actually fits with the default Windows theme.
You mean MDI like Internet Explorer? Your claims are laughable. Never mind the fact that the context here is look and feel. Opera’s MDI has always been different from everyone else. It isn’t even proper MDI anymore (they have made a huge number of hacks to make it more SDI-like).
But that’s a completely different claim from the claim that it doesn’t look like a native Windows app.
Again, you are wrong. Search for “final” here:
http://www.opera.com/docs/history/#facts
Just some examples of features added in final versions, not betas:
Dragonfly, cookie manager, fraud protection, NTLM support, User JS, password manager…
Wrong.
Wrong again.
So what? You don’t represent everyone else. Hardly anyone cares about MDI.
Yeah, but you don’t represent most people.
Nonsense. They have fixed a lot of MDI stuff since the pre-alpha.
The native skin was included as standard, it just wasn’t the default. Since I’ve kept native on and upgraded my installation with new releases, I’ve had the same consistent look, fitting in with my OS, since I first started using Opera in the 90s. 10.5 is the first one that looks out of place on my desktop. Obviously YMMV.
Completely wrong.
To keep it simple for people switching from browsers like IE they haven’t used MDI as the default for years, but with a few tweaks it’s still a full MDI app, that works just like other proper MDI apps.
Change a few options and the 10.10 UI can work almost exactly like Opera 2/3 from 96/97, with all the same MDI features. Opera 10.5 is a big change from that.
The Dragonfly debugger is itself an alpha test of optional development tools – it isn’t a core browser feature. I don’t think many Opera end users would even know what Dragonfly is.
The cookie manager, password manager and fraud protection were added in 7.1 and 9.1 – updates to Opera which never had their own beta releases. New features get added via point releases to update the browser, but that isn’t the same as features being added between the beta and the .0 final.
As for NTLM support and User JS – Like I said: there were one or two exceptions. I’d call those quite minor ones.
That doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of previous Opera betas were feature complete, without seriously broken functionality, and mainly just needed tweaks and bug fixes before release. You’ve just proven that point.
Maybe (although quite a few long term Opera users do seem to care about it) but that’s irrelevant to the fact that this functionality is included in a badly bug ridden and half finished state, rendering it almost unusable.
There were changes since the very first pre-alpha, but there were several more releases between those changes and the beta. The point is that all the problems were reported well before the beta was released, yet they were not fixed. This hasn’t been the case with any previous Opera beta that I can remember.
Exactly. And now the native skin is useless since they are moving to a standard skin which is even more native for the latest Windows versions.
Wrong. Opera’s UI is not a native Windows UI. It’s using their own cross-platform toolkit, which means that they had to emulate MDI. And while doing so, they added all sorts of hacks. Opera acts nothing like a standard Windows MDI app no matter what you dp.
And THAT is why they shouldn’t have released it? LOL. MDI is irrelevant for 99.999%. Shipping a beta without finishing MDI is perfectly fine.
Irrelevant. It was released with after a beta version.
Wrong.
Again, you are wrong. And the fact is that MDI is irrelevant in the big picture.
Only if you use the latest versions of Windows and their standard skins, change that and Opera’s default look doesn’t fit in. The native skin looked like a Windows app whether I was running Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. From my perspective, as someone who doesn’t like fancy looking GUIs, the new look is a step backwards.
You just don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t believe that you’re still spouting such utter nonsense when you could look for yourself and see that you’re mistaken.
Opera 10.10 and earlier do not use a cross-platform UI – that’s something Opera have added in 10.5 with vega. Opera 10.10 and earlier do not emulate MDI, they are pure Windows MDI apps that can work exactly like any other pure Windows MDI app. MDI isn’t emulated, it’s just hidden from new users, who generally only see any evidence of it when dealing with pop-up windows.
Look on the Opera forums if you don’t believe me. Opera developers have talked about why there are issues with MDI in 10.5. They have directly stated that previous Windows versions used standard Windows MDI, and that the change to the vega graphics library – where there are no longer real MDI windows for each web page – has made it necessary to rebuild MDI functionality from scratch, rather than just keeping the standard Windows MDI features.
Here’s a screenshot of a stripped down, minimalist Opera 10 configuration with MDI turned on:
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9392/op10mdi.jpg
Notice how even minimising pages down to a little bar at the bottom works in Opera’s standard MDI? As does tiling and cascading MDI windows, just like in other MDI apps. This is the case because Opera 10.10 and earlier are standard MDI apps under their skin.
No, it isn’t irrelevant, it’s a separate, optional utility that they’re currently testing on developers, not part of the browser itself. What part of the fact that Dragonfly itself is just an alpha test didn’t you understand? Do you even know what Dragonfly is?
No it isn’t wrong. Look at the Opera version history that you linked. That makes it completely and unambiguously clear that those features were added in Opera updates, not features that changed between the beta and final. What is difficult to understand about that?
Do you realise how much of an idiot you look when you make a mistake and then refuse to admit it, just posting “wrong” instead of either defending your point or dropping it?
Whether MDI is irrelevant in the “big picture” is itself irrelevant to my point. Obviously if you don’t use the features that are badly broken in 10.5 then they don’t matter to you, but that doesn’t change the fact that certain features in the beta are full of bugs and barely usable.
All I’m saying – and this point is supported by Opera’s history – is that their past betas were typically highly functional, more-or-less feature complete, and perfectly usable – with the major problems reported in pre-betas already fixed. I simply find the fact that 10.5 is an exception to that rule very disappointing.
Wrong. They use a UI toolkit called “quick”.
Wrong again. They rewrote the UI using Quick in version 7. They had to re-implement everything from scratch.
Wrong again. Yes, the situation is because of Vega, but they did not use standard Windows MDI. How could they, when they were using the Quick UI toolkit?
Wrong. All “MDI” in Opera 7 and later is all re-implemented by Opera.
It was made part of Opera (there’s UI in the actual browser) after a beta. Fail.
Again, you are wrong.
This is wrong. And furthermore, MDI is not a major problem. It’s a trivial corner-case.
Again, you are wrong.
I’ll concede that I forgot about the Quick toolkit, but that doesn’t mean that everything in the underlying Windows version MDI UI had to be recreated from scratch. If you can provide a link showing that to be the case then I’ll admit that I was wrong about this.
The idea that MDI window management had to be completely re-implemented, rather than using standard Windows MDI, contradicts recent statements from Opera staff. They’ve talked about Opera 10.10 tabs being true MDI child windows, with 10.5 the first time in Opera history that this isn’t the case.
For example:
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2009/12/22/from-all-of-us-to-a…
Rijk (Opera staff member):Opera doesn’t create a real Windows ‘window’ for each document anymore as it did until now, it’s all Vega now inside a single ‘window’. So now we have to decide what of the old MDI features need to be implemented – or maybe other features.
Of course, nitpicking about past toolkits doesn’t change my main point that Opera 10.10 and earlier did implemented all the standard Windows MDI features. Whether they were reimplemented or not, it worked exactly like other MDI apps, right down to small details. There was certainly no functional difference between MDI pre and post the Quick cross-platform toolkit.
Whatever. I’d consider Dragonfly a separate utility and not part of the actual browser. The fact that it’s classed as an alpha test itself, despite being included with a final, seems to make it clear that it’s separate from the browser.
Obviously you’re free to disagree and consider it one of the very few exceptions to the rule that Opera betas are feature complete. Even with Dragonfly that’s three small exceptions you could find in Opera’s entire beta testing history, right?
Well, you really proved me wrong – I only said that there were “one or two” exceptions…
Again, you seem unable to read the simple document that you linked to yourself.
Here are the examples you gave:
Cookie manager – Apr. 11, 2003: 7.1 final
Wand/Password manager – Apr. 11, 2003: 7.1 final
Fraud Protection – Dec. 18, 2006: 9.1 final
All new features that were added via point releases, after the .0 final, not after a beta.
Now, are you still going to tell me I’m wrong about this?
No, what he’s referring to is simply that the way Opera handles windows has changed.
It’s part of the browser. It was added with UI and all, after a beta.
Again, wrong. They were added right into the final version, after beta.
No he isn’t. Please work on your reading comprehension then take another look.
It’s completely clear that Opera was an MDI app, with tabs generated as standard MDI child windows. This has only changed with vega in 10.5, not with the UI toolkit in Opera 7.
Bear in mind that versions of Opera for different operating systems have different UI features due to the platform they’re running on. For example, while it uses Opera’s Quick toolkit, the Linux version draws using Qt, and has a number of UI differences from the Windows version.
It’s possible for an application to use a cross-platform UI toolkit, and still use UI features that are native to an OS, like Windows MDI.
And that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still an alpha test of an optional utility for developers, not a core browser feature.
But we’ve already gone over this – even if you’re right, it’s still one of a tiny number of features added to Opera between the beta and final.
It doesn’t contradict my point (in fact its uniqueness supports it) that most previous betas were feature complete, with just bug fixes and tweaks before the .0 release.
Just saying “wrong” or “LOL” or “fail” isn’t an adult response, it certainly doesn’t prove me wrong about this.
I’ve just posted absolutely clear proof, from Opera’s own history page, that you are completely and unambiguously wrong about this.
7.1 is an update to 7.0, 9.1 is an update to 9.0, and neither .1 update had its own beta test. A feature added in 7.1 or 9.1 isn’t something that was added between the beta and the final – it’s clearly an update to the browser after the .0 final was released.
Those final releases, 7.0 and 9.0, didn’t add extra features that weren’t in their betas – in other words, the betas were feature complete.
I don’t know how I can restate this point any more simply. If you’re still unable to understand then I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can do to enlighten you.
I vote for Dave_K in this debate. I think his use of language and willingness to expound on his points indicates his superior grasp of linguistic flourish and reason.
I have no idea who is actually correct. But PresentIt, your style is just…. Wrong.
(LOL)
Yes he is. They were using Quick, not Win32.
No, if you look at Opera’s history they had to reimplement it in Opera 7.
Again, wrong. It’s part of Opera. It’s a feature. It was added after beta.
Again, you are wrong.
No, they are using Win32 and Quick, somewhat similar to how the Linux version uses Qt and Quick.
Opera have described Quick as a cross-platform skinning system – it is not the equivalent of their vega UI engine, and it did not replace the use of UI frameworks for specific operating systems. That has only changed with vega, which replaces the standard Windows MDI in Windows, and ends the use of Qt in Linux.
Quoting Opera developer Arjan van Leeuwen: For our Unix builds, the underlying backend implementation used to be implemented with Qt (Windows and Mac use Win32 and Cocoa, respectively).
How am I wrong?
You’ve looked through Opera’s entire history, more than a decade long, and you could only find 3 features that were added between the beta and the final release. Two of those, UserJS and NTLM support, are pretty minor things, and Dragonfly is an alpha test of a utility only used by developers.
Considering all the beta releases Opera has had, and all the features that have been added to the browser, you’re really arguing that your grand total of three features isn’t a tiny number?
I’m sure Microsoft wishes that were so, but it’s still the single most widely-used desktop OS. Its death throes are probably going to last a while.
I downloaded and tested the new beta, and I did a quick javascript test to compare it to the newest Firefox and Chrome, and found it about 2 times as quick as both of them…….
So, whatever they at Opera are doing, whatever opinions you might have on the new UI (which I actually kind of like), the Javascript engine seems to be on steroids!
Released on wrong stage, like most their betas
First – DON’T try installing over your current version – you’ll get one big mess
Windows 7 interface look try ala MS Office + OSX dropdown for search bar – looks silly
All tabs are opened in new windows, it’s always on top. I lost(?) menu bar icon (top left) than trying to do something with Alt+F10/Shift+F12, failed at customizing buttons – than I just sat back, uninstalled and went back to 10.10 with additional 15 min spent
My experience – awful release, never again in Opera betas until stable release is there
You aren’t supposed to install betas over final versions.
What makes you think it was released at the wrong stage? It seems to be just fine to me. Most people are praising it.
Yeah, installer shouldn’t in the first place let installing over existent version, but that’s another story
Also try installing 10.10 over 10.50 beta for fun
It depends what beta means to you, to me it looks like pre-alpha. Take up mentioned foobar2000 beta releases as example
How does it look like pre-alpha? It’s relatively stable, and there are no major problems.
It’s too buggy, man
Don’t want to repeat obvious and what’s been already said, here or on beta forums
Opera is my default browser since version 3.6 and I don’t like to see it betas working crippled like this
It’s because I care
I don’t find it to be crippled at all.
Oh man, you are so persistent
It behavior is different than current stable, and will be different then next stable, because some thing aren’t right:
Why does it open tabs in new windows when I set it not to do so?
Why it’s on top of other windows so I can’t use my auto-hide taskbar?
How come I can’t remove some buttons if I go to Appearance > buttons, but then I can if exit Appearance dialog
I really hope toolbar will have major polish, as it distracts from whole layout (Opera 10.10 balances fine between Windows/OSX look – but new beta brutally mixes them – take a look at drop down boxes on “address bar”, or just look at any toolbar or panel: if decision was made towards Windows 7 look, stick to it)
And I just tried it briefly, because I was quickly disappointed by overall – who knows what else is left there
It’s sure faster than before which is great, and Opera was always fastest browser on my Windows
No more than you are…
Uh, it’s a beta.
What tabs?
Not really. Opera 10.5 actually looks like a Windows Vista/7 application.
I know it’s beta – About box says it so, I was trying to tell you that if beta won’t have too much common with prev/next stable (because it’s too buggy behavior) then beta release stage is wrongly done, and we can see that when stable will be released
You can stop repeating yourself – we’ve heard your opinion, let others have their. There is no way that I’ll agree that Opera looks like a Windows Vista/7 application just because it has Aero window and OSX dropbox between it’s toolbars
Sure this beta will have things in common with the next/previous stable. It isn’t “too buggy” at all. It’s just a beta.
You misunderstand… you are allowed your opinion, you just don’t have the correct one and if you share it you must be engaged in inane bickering until you give up.
While I agree that it currently has a lot of bugs (check out the desktop team blog – it’s a lot for a “beta”) and though I don’t really use MDI a lot in Opera, I think people shouldn’t be deterred from trying it out – as long as they make it a separate install!
I imagine that the changes involved are huge, so I’m willing to forgive the shakiness of the recent releases…but the speed and polish are simply awesome! I’ve been using it as my main browser, and the bugs and crashes seem to be disappearing at a rapid rate.
When it is ready it will be leaps and bounds beyond Opera 10.1, and really be competitive with Chrome and Firefox.
What I see in the desktop team blog is a bunch of people repeating the same minor issues over and over again. Not really an usual amount of of bugs.
who cares about browser war!
opera is a fine browser
chrome is a fine browser
safari is a fine browser
heck.. wait for it..
explorer is a fine browser
fact is. firefox ppl actually care about the Right things and that’s why I use it. They’re the good guys. They’re reliable. They try to make the web and therefore the world (it has such a huge impact if you think about it) a better place.
they’ve all my support.
Sites that previously did not work in the Alpha now do work (corporate, internal sites, etc.)
I like the look and feel of this version. I wish there was a stripped down version, sans email and other “apps;” just a browser.
Other than that I think it looks pretty usable.