Opera 9.5 alpha aka Kestrel
p2pnet news | Browsers:- The Opera browser was the first with tabs and a number of other innovations and p2pnet probably would be using it still were it not for the arrival of Mozilla’s Firefox, available under the tri-license (MPL/GPL/LGPL) as free and open source software.
But opera remains number one with a lot of people and, “Go and get Opera 9.5 alpha!” – posts Opera desktop team manager Huib Kleinhout.
He says Opera 9.5 alpha, code-named Kestrel, offers:
- Full history search
- Improved site compatibility
- Access for everyone
- Improved platform integration
- Preview of bookmark and Speed Dial synchronization
- Magic Windows build number :jester:
Interested?
Download:
Opera 9.5 alpha for Windows
Opera 9.5 alpha for Mac
Opera 9.5 alpha for Unix
Ars Technica’s Jeremy Reimer appears to think so, stating:
Opera claims that the latest version is faster than ever before, and our experience bears this out. When running various JavaScript speed tests, Opera 9.5 scored slightly higher (281ms) than the previous released version, 9.23 (546ms). And Opera 9.x, let it be known, smacks silly the likes of Firefox and Internet Explorer, which tend to have results in the 900-1500ms range on this test machine (a 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM). Opera was 50 percent faster on average than Firefox, and 100 percent faster than IE7 on Windows Vista, for instance. (In all versions, the speed of the test depends on how many tabs are open, so your results may vary. In our experience, Opera always came out on top.)
Not only but also, “Overall, the new Opera raises the bar yet again for web surfing, and it remains my browser of choice,” he says, adding:
“While many will still prefer Firefox for its plethora of third-party extensions, Opera remains a light and fast browser that still manages to cram in more features than clowns in a Volkswagen and is just as much fun to use.”
Also See:
Ars Technica – First impressions: Opera 9.5 alpha a worthy contender, September 5, 2007
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September 7th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Firefox for me…with dial-up, has always been faster than Opera. Also, I can’t live without Adblock or NoScript.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Opera for me…even with dial-up and a crappy computer, has always been faster than Firefox or IE. Also, I can’t live without ad blocking or instant script/image/cookie/plugin/Java/CSS toggling.
Oh, and I actually did try Firefox with 13 extensions starting in beta so I know what’s under the hood there. It’s disappointing to see FF users who barely try to use Opera and whine about missing features when many are actually built right into the base code without adding to disk size and resource usage.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:55 am
I’ve tried using Opera, but I found it too uncomfortable. I guess I’m going with FF.