8 ms·

Opera 10.5 Alpha Released, New Javascript & Rendering engine, 7x faster

46 points by taranfx 17y ago

cninja 17y ago
More details from the Opera developer blog can be found here: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2009/12/22/from-all-of-us-to-all-of-you http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2009/12/22/from-all-of-...
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  >Most interactive dialogs will no longer block tabs or disturb your work flow. Tab specific dialogs (like javascript popups) are displayed as part of the tab in an overlay, so you can easily switch tabs without have to move or close the dialogs. I really hope this becomes more widespread. I hate greedy focus-grabbing alerts.
Torn 17y ago
Am loving the new Win7 integration with this release. Definitely feels snappier!
trezor 17y ago
Windows 7 user here. It's been a long time since I tried out Opera properly last time, but I have to say this new release is snappy, smooth and very, very clean. And unlike Chrome it actually tries to mimick the native UI conventions without getting boring. And as other's have mentioned, the Windows 7 add-on features are a nice bonus. I like this very much.
meroliph 17y ago
If there was some sort of adblockplus for Opera I'd jump ship from Firefox in a heartbeat.
- andyking 17y ago
  There's AdSweep at http://adsweep.org/ http://adsweep.org/ - I've never managed to get it to work on Opera 10 under Ubuntu, but I find it works well on Chrome and plenty of people have given it good reviews.
- cpach 17y ago
  I'm not sure Privoxy is as smooth as Adblock, but it might be worth a try: http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/quickstart.html#QUICKSTART-AD-BLOCKING http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/quickstart.html#QUICKSTAR...
  - etherealG 17y ago
    so sad that this is the case, but it is :( adblock seems to have a record (for my personal use at least) as almost never having a false positive. privoxy on the other hand seems to block all sorts during actual use that aren't really ads, especially flash.
- gnoupi 17y ago
  Actually, Opera has already the ad blocker, named "content blocker", for some versions already. Find more details at this address: http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block
- somecanuck 17y ago
  I've used the same reason for avoiding Google Chrome. However, there is hope! I found an excellent "urlfilter.ini" list for Opera this morning. http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ I'm happily using Opera instead of FireFox now. It's FAST and I have more screen space available.
- Pistos2 17y ago
  Opera has had ad blocking built in since at least 9.x, if not earlier. It does the job for me; I don't find it wanting. You can point and shoot to block anything that happens to get through the default filters, and the filtering takes wildcards by default, even. Meaning clicking an ad will block all ads from the same domain or parent path (e.g. adserver.tld/ads/*). Shift click to block just a specific image. The common text ads are also filtered.
voidpointer 17y ago
The versioning nomenclature seems somewhat chaotic... here it says 10.5 and their current version is 10.10 and on the linked page they refer to 10.1 and also talk about 10.50. I guess that 10.10 == 10.1 and 10.5 == 10.50 but it is a bit confusing... Oh, and the download crashes with SIGBUS on my MacPro running 10.6 :(
- gnoupi 17y ago
  Actually, the 10.10 is because of the Unite component. When they released the official new version, 10, they didn't have Unite ready yet, it was on another branch, the 10.10 (they reserved a few numbers for hotfixes for the version without Unite).
karatchov 17y ago
I'm a long time user of Opera. Always surprised why it is very underrated. Just for the record : * Opera is and was the fastest browser on limited memory/cpu machines * Opera is the most user friendly browser, it has always been so. (tabs, sync, speed dials, quick preferences, full zoom, email client, irc, skins, notes, downloader (btw, opera has the best "builtin" browser downloader ever, you can actually open files while downloading), history search (yes, opera's history search is the best), debugger and countless of small other useful details & features) This browser is simply a treasure, yes I have tested every other browser and I keep a copy of FF with a bunch of plugins.
- jules 17y ago
  Chrome comes very close. Its interface is actually cleaner than Opera's. I used to use Opera, but now I'm using Chrome. This new Opera has a better interface that leaves most screen space for the actual website, much like Chrome. Maybe I'll switch back to Opera.
  - karatchov 17y ago
    chrome is taking the good path but its hard to stop some of the opera habits, including F4, F12, "/", past&go, direct search in Wikipedia/ebay
    - Ennis 17y ago
      Exactly! It was so tough for me to change from Opera to chrome. But chrome is much more minimal and the faster load time was enough of a killer feature for me to switch. But this version is pretty impressive.
- pavs 17y ago
  Not only that, according to this: http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/12/move-over-chrome-opera-now-has-the-fastest-js-engine/ http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/12/move-over-chrome-opera-n... Opera even beats the webkit nightly in sunspider benchmark.
yread 17y ago
Known issues: JIT doesn't work on CPU's without SSE2 Wow a JIT working with SSE2! No wonder it's 20 percent faster than chrome
- lt 17y ago
  Is it? I just downloaded this alpha and ran SunSpider. Chrome 4.0.266.0 got 506.8ms +/- 6.6%, Opera got 763.4ms +/- 4.4%.
  - yread 17y ago
    Phew maybe you're right I admit I just saw a comment on the opera desktop team blog and haven't tested it myself. However browser benchmarks are tricky - people can get quite different results on different machines...
  - cninja 17y ago
    It might be machine dependent. For me on an AMD Semperon: Opera 10.5 alpha: 700.8ms +/- 0.8% Chrome 4.0.266.0: 840.4ms +/- 4.2%
    - lt 17y ago
      Certainly. Processor, OS, RAM, etc will matter a lot. FWIW I ran in a Core 2 Duo P9500 with W7 64, 4gb of ram.
    - fnid 17y ago
      On a Mac book pro and Opera 10.10, I got: 5260.6ms +/- 0.7% I'll try with the new version and report back.
lt 17y ago
Thought I'd give this a try since I never gave Opera much of a chance, and I'm usually very tolerant of alpha/betas as long as they mostly work. Lasted about half an hour - Google Reader doesn't seem to work right, and GMail also stopped responding after a while.
- Pistos2 17y ago
  I've had zero issues with Google Reader and GMail with all prior 9.x and 10.x releases. So maybe your experience is particular to this alpha release.
maximilian 17y ago
More details on the javascript vm: http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2009/02/04/carakan http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2009/02/04/carakan From my somewhat limited knowledge of such, it seems like they took a fairly similar route as the Webkit guys. (Register based, etc..)
inffcs00 17y ago
The new look and feel of the Mac version is very similar to Safari.
lovskogen 17y ago
If the default browser in OS X was as crappy as the default on Windows, I'd now be using Opera, with Chrome in a really close second. Firefox has a million extensions, but speed matters more to me.
dirtbox 17y ago
Also, Opera is of course the malware writer's choice du jour because it's tighter than a pigeon's chuff. Quite funny seeing the recent Firefox menu button being a complete rip off of the leaked Opera 10.5 build.

46 points by taranfx 17y ago

More details from the Opera developer blog can be found here: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2009/12/22/from-all-of-us-to-all-of-you http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2009/12/22/from-all-of-...

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
>Most interactive dialogs will no longer block tabs or disturb your work flow. Tab specific dialogs (like javascript popups) are displayed as part of the tab in an overlay, so you can easily switch tabs without have to move or close the dialogs. I really hope this becomes more widespread. I hate greedy focus-grabbing alerts.

Torn 17y ago

Am loving the new Win7 integration with this release. Definitely feels snappier!

trezor 17y ago

Windows 7 user here. It's been a long time since I tried out Opera properly last time, but I have to say this new release is snappy, smooth and very, very clean. And unlike Chrome it actually tries to mimick the native UI conventions without getting boring. And as other's have mentioned, the Windows 7 add-on features are a nice bonus. I like this very much.

meroliph 17y ago

If there was some sort of adblockplus for Opera I'd jump ship from Firefox in a heartbeat.

andyking 17y ago
There's AdSweep at http://adsweep.org/ http://adsweep.org/ - I've never managed to get it to work on Opera 10 under Ubuntu, but I find it works well on Chrome and plenty of people have given it good reviews.
cpach 17y ago
I'm not sure Privoxy is as smooth as Adblock, but it might be worth a try: http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/quickstart.html#QUICKSTART-AD-BLOCKING http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/quickstart.html#QUICKSTAR...
- etherealG 17y ago
  so sad that this is the case, but it is :( adblock seems to have a record (for my personal use at least) as almost never having a false positive. privoxy on the other hand seems to block all sorts during actual use that aren't really ads, especially flash.
gnoupi 17y ago
Actually, Opera has already the ad blocker, named "content blocker", for some versions already. Find more details at this address: http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block
somecanuck 17y ago
I've used the same reason for avoiding Google Chrome. However, there is hope! I found an excellent "urlfilter.ini" list for Opera this morning. http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ I'm happily using Opera instead of FireFox now. It's FAST and I have more screen space available.
Pistos2 17y ago
Opera has had ad blocking built in since at least 9.x, if not earlier. It does the job for me; I don't find it wanting. You can point and shoot to block anything that happens to get through the default filters, and the filtering takes wildcards by default, even. Meaning clicking an ad will block all ads from the same domain or parent path (e.g. adserver.tld/ads/*). Shift click to block just a specific image. The common text ads are also filtered.

voidpointer 17y ago

The versioning nomenclature seems somewhat chaotic... here it says 10.5 and their current version is 10.10 and on the linked page they refer to 10.1 and also talk about 10.50. I guess that 10.10 == 10.1 and 10.5 == 10.50 but it is a bit confusing... Oh, and the download crashes with SIGBUS on my MacPro running 10.6 :(

gnoupi 17y ago
Actually, the 10.10 is because of the Unite component. When they released the official new version, 10, they didn't have Unite ready yet, it was on another branch, the 10.10 (they reserved a few numbers for hotfixes for the version without Unite).

karatchov 17y ago

I'm a long time user of Opera. Always surprised why it is very underrated. Just for the record : * Opera is and was the fastest browser on limited memory/cpu machines * Opera is the most user friendly browser, it has always been so. (tabs, sync, speed dials, quick preferences, full zoom, email client, irc, skins, notes, downloader (btw, opera has the best "builtin" browser downloader ever, you can actually open files while downloading), history search (yes, opera's history search is the best), debugger and countless of small other useful details & features) This browser is simply a treasure, yes I have tested every other browser and I keep a copy of FF with a bunch of plugins.

jules 17y ago
Chrome comes very close. Its interface is actually cleaner than Opera's. I used to use Opera, but now I'm using Chrome. This new Opera has a better interface that leaves most screen space for the actual website, much like Chrome. Maybe I'll switch back to Opera.
- karatchov 17y ago
  chrome is taking the good path but its hard to stop some of the opera habits, including F4, F12, "/", past&go, direct search in Wikipedia/ebay
  - Ennis 17y ago
    Exactly! It was so tough for me to change from Opera to chrome. But chrome is much more minimal and the faster load time was enough of a killer feature for me to switch. But this version is pretty impressive.
pavs 17y ago
Not only that, according to this: http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/12/move-over-chrome-opera-now-has-the-fastest-js-engine/ http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/12/move-over-chrome-opera-n... Opera even beats the webkit nightly in sunspider benchmark.

yread 17y ago

Known issues: JIT doesn't work on CPU's without SSE2 Wow a JIT working with SSE2! No wonder it's 20 percent faster than chrome

lt 17y ago
Is it? I just downloaded this alpha and ran SunSpider. Chrome 4.0.266.0 got 506.8ms +/- 6.6%, Opera got 763.4ms +/- 4.4%.
- yread 17y ago
  Phew maybe you're right I admit I just saw a comment on the opera desktop team blog and haven't tested it myself. However browser benchmarks are tricky - people can get quite different results on different machines...
- cninja 17y ago
  It might be machine dependent. For me on an AMD Semperon: Opera 10.5 alpha: 700.8ms +/- 0.8% Chrome 4.0.266.0: 840.4ms +/- 4.2%
  - lt 17y ago
    Certainly. Processor, OS, RAM, etc will matter a lot. FWIW I ran in a Core 2 Duo P9500 with W7 64, 4gb of ram.
  - fnid 17y ago
    On a Mac book pro and Opera 10.10, I got: 5260.6ms +/- 0.7% I'll try with the new version and report back.

lt 17y ago

Thought I'd give this a try since I never gave Opera much of a chance, and I'm usually very tolerant of alpha/betas as long as they mostly work. Lasted about half an hour - Google Reader doesn't seem to work right, and GMail also stopped responding after a while.

Pistos2 17y ago
I've had zero issues with Google Reader and GMail with all prior 9.x and 10.x releases. So maybe your experience is particular to this alpha release.

maximilian 17y ago

More details on the javascript vm: http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2009/02/04/carakan http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2009/02/04/carakan From my somewhat limited knowledge of such, it seems like they took a fairly similar route as the Webkit guys. (Register based, etc..)

inffcs00 17y ago

The new look and feel of the Mac version is very similar to Safari.

lovskogen 17y ago

If the default browser in OS X was as crappy as the default on Windows, I'd now be using Opera, with Chrome in a really close second. Firefox has a million extensions, but speed matters more to me.

dirtbox 17y ago

Also, Opera is of course the malware writer's choice du jour because it's tighter than a pigeon's chuff. Quite funny seeing the recent Firefox menu button being a complete rip off of the leaked Opera 10.5 build.