Opera 10 hits release candidate status

Opera Software has spun out a near-ready version of its upcoming web browser - Opera 10. The Release Candidate comes loaded with "a surprising array of new features, a fresh look and feel, a new application icon, and enhanced speed and performance," said the Oslo, Norway-based firm. The completed version of the browser will …

[MarkOne]

And rather good it is too.

Wouldn't waste my time with any other browser these days. The fact all my bookmarks and notes stay in sync with my Opera Mobile without having to do anything is invaluable to me, knowing it's the most secure and one of the fastest and feature packed browsers gives me that warm fuzzy feeling...

[Bill Gould]

Maybe...

...if they would focus on the browser and not the email client they'd have better luck.

[Tom Maddox]

Record-setting

Are they going to try to set a Guinness record for fewest downloads on release day?

I'm going, I'm going.

[Rab Sssss]

Is it going to have....

A emo rage report MS to whoever they feel like module built in?

[Glen 9]

Pity...

that the Opera marketing department is shite.

[Ketlan]

Go get 'em

"Maybe if they would focus on the browser and not the email client they'd have better luck."

Got to agree with that. Is there NO way to get rid of it?

[Dave Mundt]

but have they fixed the memory problem?

Greetings and salutations.

I like opera a lot, and use it almost exclusively. However, the fact that it slowly will grab more and more memory, until it brings everything to a creaking, cold molasses covered crawl is more than JUST a little annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking forward to it.

I've tried out many browsers over the years, but I've always stuck to Opera as my main one. I love it. Just wish I didn't have to occasionally use IE to correctly load a page...

[spencer]

vimperator

i lvoe opera. but theres some firefox addons that i just can't live without, so unless it's shit-your-pants fast or there's some feature that is mental then i can't see myself switching.

[Mark Jan]

They could have had a better future...

It's a shame that Opera only quite recently dropped its fee based approach if you didn't want the advertising sponsored version of its browsers. If they hadn't followed this path, I have no doubt doubt that Opera would be a far more used browser than Firefox, Safari and all the "other, apart from IE" browsers put together.

As it is, Opera remains a "best kept secret". More secure, faster and certainly more innovative than any of the other browser producers.

Like MarkOne said, I wouldn't waste my time on anything else.

[MarkOne]

@vimperator @Def

My bank blocks Opera for no reason at all. However if you press F12, Edit Site Preferences, Network, I can masquerade as Firefox and everything is just dandy. It does not change the way Opera works, only tells the server it's Firefox and give me Firefox code...

What Firefox Addons? Almost all of the good ones are already in Opera by default. And because they are built in, you don't get the security holes than Firefox has..

[PaulR79]

Forced e-mail client!

Can MS complain to the EU about them bundling a mail client that is woven into the browser with no option to remove it? Yes it's pedantic and I'm not serious about the complaint part but why add bulk when some (most?) only want a browser?

[Lu]

excellent

Nice. Bring it on.

[MarkOne]

@PaulR79

The email client does not add any bulk. You get a browser, email, RSS, IRC client all for half the size of Firefox..

None of the features consume any resources until they are activated (in the case of mail, creating a mail account activates the mail backend code).

[John Meredith]

Yeh baby

C'mon the fan boys...we'll make sure we download millions and billions of copies...i'll have at least 2000 downloads myself. Yummy.

Although I am silly, I do love Opera...been using it for about 8 years...nonstop. Like a trucker on Redbull.

[spencer]

@MarkOne

"What Firefox Addons? Almost all of the good ones are already in Opera by default."

Well, i quite like vimperator. As well as firebug and Greasemonkey.

Don't get me wrong, i love opera and i used to use it extensively. But for whatever reason the dev community has sided with firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

@MarkOne

"The email client does not add any bulk."

Did you actually think about this statement before you posted it? Of course it adds bulk. Maybe it's still smaller than FF, but it still increases the installer size and drive space occupied after installation.

"None of the features consume any resources until they are activated". So no disc space is used until they are activated? Hmmm. Okay!

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC at 12:29

Actually, Mark One is correct about the features not consuming any resources.

If the Opera installer was properly designed, the Mail feature would be marked as 'advertised', which means it looks like it's there, but it's actually not, and the installer will install it when you want to use it. That is a standard feature in Windows Installer, which is the technology behind the Opera installer.

Sometimes a technology like that has its benefits.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dave Mundt re: memory problem

Dave, my sentiments exactly. I've found the same problem, especially when you've upgraded from a previous version.

The excuse that "it must be the plugins etc" doesn't hold water when the problem did not occur before the upgrade.

So the only option at this stage is to:

1) Uninstall old Opera

2) Back up old profile information

3) Install new Opera

4) Restore bookmarks, mail etc, but not the settings

5) Reinstall new plugins

This was my prime driver to go to Chrome provisionally (Chrome certainly has no problem with memory leakage of this magnitude that I can see).

[Ross 7]

Title

"It's a shame that Opera only quite recently dropped its fee based approach if you didn't want the advertising sponsored version of its browsers"

Eh? I can't even remember when they dropped the advertising banner - prolly 2000-ish. Certainly was a long time ago like. The original fee based approach prolly didn't help initial take up mind and gave FF an opening (which is the only reason I can think that people initially went to FF 'cause it was awful to begin with)

Not sure about the memory leak - I run Opera on a 756MB 1GHz Athlon under Win 2k and have never noticed any resource hogging either in Taskman, increased paging or general slow down. When you run with less RAM than a netbook you tend to notice memory leaks. The alleged 40% speed increase will be nice if it does pan out though. Anything to avoid me having to enter the C21...

Oh well, as long as they keep chuntering along making decent, fast, standards compliant browsers I'll be happy. Roll on September...

[MarkOne]

@Anonymous Coward 12:29 GMT

Clearly when I was talking about resources, I was referring to CPU and memory..

All Operas functionality is contained in a single DLL, that weighs in at 4MB. That's the rendering engine, the browser, the news/RSS, the chat, widgets and all the other stuff.

If they pulled out mail, it might save 200KB of disk space. If that worries you, then I suggest you stop using your PC right now....

As for addons. Greasemonkey is built into Opera (called UserJS and more powerful), as is FireBug (it's called FireFLy in Opera), and you can get vimperator from here:

http://my.opera.com/Blazeix/blog/vimperator-for-opera

[spencer]

@Markone

Well, thats told me. i guess i'll be installing opera 10

[PaulR79]

@MarkOne

OK I didn't know that. I haven't installed Opera for a while, at least not recent enough to remember the options on install, but the mention of e-mail client made me think it was a default part of the program. I used to use Firefox exclusively but I have an addon addiction that rendered it painfully slow so I now use Chrome. I may gave Opera a try when the final release is out, I always liked the right-click "paste and go" option and only Chrome has it as a normal option outside of Opera.