Opera 10 - review of Internet browser new version. What's new?

On Tuesday a Norwegian corporation Opera Software announced the launch of its new Opera 10 which for some time had been in a beta mode. Now it is fully available to the mass users. And as almost every new thing that is brought to the public assessment usually produces two polar views Opera will surely cause some stir among its advocates and opponents. Meantime, our goal is to bring as relevant and unbiased information to you as possible.

While the appearance of Opera browser in the market has significantly influenced our experience of Internet surfing the latest release doesn't seem to bring any innovations as such. Looking back into the history of browsers' development we can say that Opera was innovator in many aspects. Opera was the first browser to have tabs-now considered an essential part of any browsing experience on any platform-and also led the way in supporting mouse gestures for navigation. More recently, Opera invented Speed Dial-a way to display visual bookmarks in a grid when opening a new tab. This feature has since been copied by Safari 4. Some features, such as a built-in and fully integrated BitTorrent download client, have not yet been adopted by Opera's competitors.

This time the company has just improved and upgraded already existing features of Opera application.

Whether critical for anyone or not changes introduced by Opera include the following new options:

• Improved Tabs setting
• More customizable Speed Dial
• Opera Turbo feature
• Spell checking
• Opera Mail program

Let's look at each of these features separately.

Tabs setting

With previous releases we used to see a large thumbnail when we drive mouse over a tab in the top panel. Now opera adds optional thumbnails for each tab. If you drag the bottom of the tab bar downwards, all open tabs will show dynamically-sized thumbnails.

You can also chose to set the Tabs bar on any side of the browser window: on top, on left, on right or on bottom side. In order to adjust you just click right button of the mouse on a tab. In the pop-up menu you select Tab Bar placement and set it to your taste.

Speed Dial

The Speed Dial page is more customizable, letting users choose from a 2x2 up to a 5x5 grid and select a custom background image. In order to change settings of the Speed Dial click right button of your mouse on a blank space and in the pop-up menu you can tick Enable background image and then select the picture you wish to be displayed instead of a blank page.

Opera Turbo

This feature is off by default, but business travelers, on-the-go freelancers sporting 3G cards, or those who are simply leeching the neighbor's wonky Wi-Fi (you know who you are) can apparently experience "up to eight times faster Web surfing over slow connections" by turning on Opera Turbo.

If the browser detects that your connection is slow it advises you of the fact through the pop-up message in the left bottom corner even if the browser window is minimized. In order to adjust the option you just click on the button that is place in the left bottom corner of the browser. In the menu you can select among Automatic, On and Off options. If you tick Automatic the browser will automatically adjust to the connection speed.

Spell checking

Now the browser has system-wide spell checking (with dynamic red underlining) on all platforms, meaning Windows users no longer have to install the GNU Aspell plugin to improve their posts. But the feature as we know is not new as it has already been used at other browsers like Mozilla Firefox.

Thus, when you decide to write an email message your text will be automatically checked for spelling mistakes and you will see red lines under misspelled (at least as the browser understands them to be) words.

Opera Mail

Opera Mail program seems like a very nice e-mail client for those users who want to get away from Outlook on Windows or Mail on OS X. One handy feature that is new to Opera 10 is the ability to select a webmail client's Compose Message page as the default for new email messages.

Performance efficiency

On the Windows side, particularly on Windows XP SP3, Opera 10 has shown better results than on Apple's OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

On Windows XP Opera 10 was 17 percent faster than Opera 9, and 10 percent faster than Firefox 3.5. However it was six percent slower than the current champion, Chrome 2.0.172 Meantime, Internet Explorer 8 was about twice as slow as every other browser.

On Mac OS X the winner was Safari. Firefox came in second, and Opera 10, while still faster than its predecessor, came a distant third.

Conclusion

The latest release of Opera that once changed the Internet browsing practices shows no great innovations and improvements. While the speed of Opera browser is higher than those of IE and Firefox the gap between them is not significant and anyway it loses to Google Chrome. On the other hand it significantly falls behind Safari on Mac OS X platform. Opera 10 has not overtaken its rivals and the company seems facing serious challenges in creating more competitive features so as to retain its current and attract new users.

Nevertheless, those who love this browser will sure like all the options that were upgraded and improved in Opera. With better speeds and more customization they will undoubtedly remain contented and satisfied. Thus, in terms of your mood you will find this new product either gorgeous or rubbish.