Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha Is Out, and It's Fast 274
sgunhouse writes to let us know that, following a leaked internal build over the weekend, Opera Software has now released their official 10.5 pre-alpha. There are no Linux versions yet. And an anonymous reader adds, "Opera's 10.5 pre-alpha includes the Carakan JavaScript Engine. Benchmarks now show that Opera is competitive with Chrome, beating it in Sunspider and other tests. Safari, Firefox, and IE are all behind. This is still pre-alpha, so further speed gains should be expected."
complete whats new and opinions (Score:5, Informative)
Complete What's new:
Carakan
Carakan is our new JavaScript engine. It’s fast, more than 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10 with Futhark on Windows (Mac optimization is not as far along). You can read more gritty details regarding register-based bytecode, automatic object classification and native code generation in the Opera Core blog.
Presto 2.5
We are now using Presto 2.5, which contains a huge numbers of improvements. It also includes support for CSS3 transitions and transforms, and more HTML5 features like persistent storage.
Vega
Vega is our new graphics library. It’s currently software based and displays everything you see on-screen. Vega can be hardware accelerated, but as you can see from the complex graphics benchmark in Peacekeeper, we don’t seem to need it yet. (Note that Futuremarks Peacekeeper test does no include the results of their complex graphics tests in the overall score. We believe this is wrong in 2009 and will simply be silly if not changed in 2010.)
Outside - Platform integration
On Windows 7/Vista, you will notice a lot of visual changes and use of APIs which allow the UI to display the Aero Glass effect. For Windows 7, we also added Aero Peek and Jump List support to easily access your Speed Dials, Tabs, etc. from the Taskbar.
For Mac, a complete rewrite in Cocoa brings an Unified Toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multi-touch gestures (try 3-Finger Swipe Left/Right or Pinch to zoom) and a bunch of other small details. We also added Growl notification support.
“Private tab” and “Private window”
You can open a new Private tab or Private window that forgets everything that happened on it once closed.
Non-modal dialogs
Dialog boxes (JavaScript alerts, HTTP authentication, etc.) are now non-modal and are displayed as a page overlay. This allows you to switch tabs or windows while the dialog is still displayed. Similarly, the Password Manager dialog is now anchored at the top of the page won’t block any content as it loads a new page.
Address field and Search field improvements
Both fields have been upgraded in looks and functionality. They can now remember searches, support removing items from history and show results in a better layout.
Opera just keeps getting better and better. It was in some Opera 10 beta that they improved the JS engine a lot, and now they've improved it over 7x again, along with the on-screen drawing. That's what I've always loved about Opera; UI responsivess and the smoothness of browsing (scrolling, mouse gestures) beats every other browser and everything is thighly packed in, so no need for clumsy addons which quality and speed differ a lot.
However, the preview [opera.com] images seem to have the Windows 7 like layout. I really hope this is just to show it off and it can be switched to normal - I like having my menubars easily accessible.
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Firefox gained popularity because of Tab Browsing and being free. IE lacked Tab Browsing till 2006, and Opera was still Ad-Driven based by the time Firefox was first released in 2004.
I am not saying its a bad browser, but why should I switch over from Firefox? What does it have that Firefox doesn't and don't tell me obscure HTML 5 features that are not used yet or speed. Firefox is still pretty fast and acceptable.
Re:complete whats new and opinions (Score:4, Insightful)
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They might be killer features for other users too if you explain on what some of the buzzwords mean.
Re:complete whats new and opinions (Score:4, Informative)
built in: included as a normal part of the whole.
speed dial: Not sure what this means in this context. Normally, a button on a telephone that dials a sequence of numbers rather than a single digit.
mouse gestures: a means of controlling a software by motions made with a mouse.
email: a means of transmitting messages over the internet.
RSS: a protocol for collecting short descriptions of changes to websites so that the user can decide whether to view the website or not.
third party extensions: enhancements made to a program by people other than the program author, or the program user.
security vulnerabilities: weaknesses in a program that make it possible to retrieve information, or run programs without authorization.
killer features: slang term for characteristics, elements, or traits that are so highly valued that things not having these traits are considered not worth having.
Re:complete whats new and opinions (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't see those words anywhere in what GP said. I think official addons would be good for Opera as well as for FF.
I actually think a handful of the most common addons in FF SHOULD be made by the FF team. It would lower memory leaks, vastly increase speed, and close a bunch of security holes.
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Re:complete whats new and opinions (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wheres the killer feature?
For some reason, Opera does not have killer features (it had tabbed browsing for ages, and was ridiculed for its MDI UI). Features only become indispensable when someone else copies them.
Mouse gestures, vertical tabs, speed, no plugin conflicts, customization -- those are some advantages that I remember. These days I stick with Firefox because it's not too bad, and it's there by default. And RAM is cheap.
Re:complete whats new and opinions (Score:5, Informative)
erm, wait. tabbed browsing was brought to masses (avoiding "invented" here) by opera.
for me, it's mostly relatively low memory usage, built-in features that you have to hunt firefox plugins down for (mouse gestures and whatnot) and some features ff is missing (although there might be some obscure plugin for them, like tab previews, tab closure undos etc).
major feature is ability to set pages from history to be always loaded from cache, which allows to recover forum/slashdot/tracker/bugzilla messages if some problem occurs - although a major gripe of mine is inability to do this with https sites. that sucks. on the other hand, ff sucks even more badly at this.
then there's (built-in) ability to disable all images by default (enabling cached only ones !) and switch this on tab basis easily - awesome feature when using dog slow gprs.
oh, and opera was the first mainstream browser that introduced "persistent" browsing by saving state of your open tabs and restoring that upon next startup. a feature opera users got used to several years before firefox got this as a basic feature - no idea about msie.
in general, opera has indeed pioneered most of the features in modern browsers. being a passionate opensource user, opera is still the last bastion of proprietary software in my toolbox, despite of some major annoyances with it - which basically means all other browsers are even more annoying.
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And I have to say, in Firefox 3.5.x, it still can't get restoring the tabs back after a crash right some noticeable amount of the time on Windows XP. I go through more of the "This is embarrassing, I can't get your tabs back" (AND WTF, because they are listed in the little list) in one week that I have in Opera since I started using it in 2001.
I honestly don't know what the problem is with FF, but it seems laughable to me. I don't even think about tab restore in Opera anymore - and haven't in years. In fact
Re:complete whats new and opinions (Score:4, Informative)
Opera doesnt have anything as nice as Adblock Plus, but it hasnt required a plugin for content blocking either. Invented here, but not the best implementation.
Ghostery has been ported to operas User JavaScript. Yes, its just a script.
NoScript? Disable scripts (and plugins, and pretty much anything else) globally, then enable them on a site-by-site basis with Site Preferences. Invented here.
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Opera is smaller, faster and with features better integrated and streamlined. It can do what prety much most of the most popular Firefox extensions can, and without everything breaking with each release. Oh, and it's crazy fast and has the most responsive UI, period.
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Except if you like MDI, you should head over to the Opera Beta Forum to vote to get it back in 10.5, because they are thinking of dropping it because no other browser does it. Which, IMO, is stupid.
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So the pre-alpha version of Opera is faster than the competition, but how does it compare against the pre-alpha versions of Safari, Firefox, and Chrome?
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However, the preview [opera.com] images seem to have the Windows 7 like layout. I really hope this is just to show it off and it can be switched to normal - I like having my menubars easily accessible.
It's nothing new - they've had the option to hide the menu bar for God knows how long (since 7.x, I think? maybe even before that), it was just buried deep - it was an UI command with no key bound by default, so you had to bind it first. In 10.0, they've added the option to hide main menu to the menu itself. And in this build, they've made that setting the default, but you can, of course, change it back (and generally change the UI to look like it used to be).
Note though that menu is still accessible with m
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Am I the only one who thinks the Ribbon "perl" idea seems like a fix for a problem almost no one ever had (the old standard menu bar)? And generally is a worse implementation because it adds an extra click for no apparent reason?
Also, I must be the only one who got used to double clicking on the title bar to restore/maximize the window - how do you do that now? Have to hunt for a new button somewhere that is hidden in a drop down?
I know I'm a power user, but really, if I wanted a fisher-price OS and softwar
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Am I the only one who thinks the Ribbon "perl" idea seems like a fix for a problem almost no one ever had (the old standard menu bar)? And generally is a worse implementation because it adds an extra click for no apparent reason?
The idea of Ribbon (and similar UI solutions) is that all functions that are frequently used should be one click away, and this may be achieved by stuffing some functions that are rarely used further than they used to be.
In case of browsers, at least, I wholeheartedly support this - I've had main menu disabled in Opera for a very long time. I never use it. Why would I want to?
Also, I must be the only one who got used to double clicking on the title bar to restore/maximize the window - how do you do that now?
Surprisingly enough, you double-click the title bar (or whatever is left of it, anyway).
Or, you use the normal maximize/restore butto
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I know I'm different. I use the menus all the time for Bookmarks, IRC Chat, Window Menu (slowly going to the Window Panel for find as you type), Tools menu and View menu. I also use the MDI Window Minimize, and close buttons. I suppose I could now learn keyboard shortcuts, but that's harder than using the menus for now. I'll be honest too, Office 2007 looks bigger to me, but I don't use Office enough to care right now, but I am annoyed everyone else is doing this App Start Menu thingy.
I don't really want to
About Opera's GUI (Score:4, Informative)
I love two things about Opera: One is integrated www, email and rss and the other is it that it's one of the most customizable software I've ever seen. You can change *every* keyboard/mouse/mouse-gesture setting and you can customize *every* ui element (and with a good menu to do so, too).
For software i spend hours each day using, like a browser, I think the most important thing is a good user interface - and there is no better one than the one you built yourself. But it kinda makes talking about the interface pointless - spend 10 minutes with it and it will look like (your personal version of) perfection.
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Dialog boxes (JavaScript alerts, HTTP authentication, etc.) are now non-modal and are displayed as a page overlay.
woohoo. does that also include download dialogs ? excellent if it does, lame if it doesn't.
also, i'll use the chance to point out things i'm annoyed about opera (being opera user since version 3, 4 or so, exclusively).
1. inability to disable refresh for history httpd pages. my current major annoyance. i've set history mode to 3, i've explored every other history option - nothing helps. can somebody from opera software who reads this help me, finally ?
2. new one - i can't find out how to customise opera to b
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But I'm guessing no HTML5 video since that is pretty much stranded on the codec issue. That's the one thing I'd like to get rid of flash...
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Sounds really good, and, in general, I like Opera (and use it almost exclusively). However, I HOPE they will have finally cleaned up the memory issues that gradually suck up every byte of available RAM over time.
Oh yea...there is also the problem that, even when masking as FireFox, I cannot get http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ to work properly. It will not allow me to log in, and, has problems with the interactive star chart...So...Firefox it is. And I will not EVEN
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Have you tried contacting the sites? They might be able to fix it faster than Opera can. If we remember the big FF push to tell sites things don't work in the browser, then we know it's a two way street.
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Too many links to click... it's easier to scroll to the comments. Most of the time they have better information anyway. ;)
I tried it out earlier (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I tried it out earlier (Score:5, Funny)
Pages animate and scroll so smooth you'd swear it was warm honey running down Kiera Knightly's body.
I'm sure your nice metaphor will appeal to the tech crowd here, but if you've ever try running warm honey down anything, body or otherwise, you'll realize it is not the metaphor you want to use if you want to describe smooth rendering behaviour on a computer screen :)
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Hardware acceleration is not enabled yet.
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I got mod points, but I couldn't find +1 disturbing.
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Tiling itself isn't new (Window -> Tile Horizontal/Vertical was there since 1.0), but in previous versions, when you tiled the windows, it worked precisely as in any other Win32 MDI application - you'd see two "child" windows, complete with title bar and other chrome, positioned one after another; if you then dragged the border of any window, only it would resize (possibly overlapping the other windows). Now, though, they've got rid of the child window chrome, and make it look more like a bunch of frames
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Did they finally add vertical tabs on the side of the window rather than on top?
This was already in earlier versions. I use it in 10.10 in Linux.
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Yea, they dropped the Windows (or whatever) OS Standard windowing system to write their own, that does less in this Alpha. Stupid IMO. I wish someone would convince Opera that just because everyone else does it way X, they don't need to change how they've done it for ~13 years to way X (Which is often inferior or at least not obviously better!).
It's fast but buggy (Score:3, Informative)
Carakan is cross-platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Carakan is cross-platform. That cannot be stressed enough. Since Opera is used on a *lot* of devices, from mobile phones, over fridges (!) and airplane entertainment centres, to the Wii, this is truly a major step forward for Opera.
Looking forward to the final release!
Re:Carakan is cross-platform (Score:4, Interesting)
With all these improvements to Javascript bytecode, how long will it be until it replaces conventional VMs? Should I even worry about learning Clojure (which I just started on) if Javascript bytecode is becoming fast enough to develop on?
</hypothetical hat>
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Regardless of performance of JavaScript VMs, JS itself is far from a perfect language. Too many quirks, and oftentimes too verbose syntax, especially when you compare it to the likes of Clojure or Ruby.
As well, regardless of any JS perf improvements, it's not going to beat a statically typed language. JVM is still faster, for example (once it loads).
Does it have Adblock? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate to keep harping on this, because I hate Firefox, but I hate intrusive ads even more.
And by 'Adblock' I don't mean 'sorta like Adblock but not really', but something that straight-out duplicates the functionality, allowing be to block any element of any website anywhere, with nothing more than a right-click and perhaps a wildcard.
Please, someone save me from RAM slaying bloat of Firefox!
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Please, someone save me from RAM slaying bloat of Firefox!
I hear ya there bro, all these pristine gigs of DDR2 I have in my machine... It's so beautiful, would be a shame to dirty up all them bytes by loading something into it.
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I hear ya bro, you've got 2 gigs, you might as well fill 350 megs with bytes to display about:blank.
Hang on though, which bytes are actually needed to display an EMPTY PAGE ?
Even considering he's storing the DOM which is basically a set of empty containers for js, document head, document body, css objects etc., why in fucks name does it take 350 meg ???
Re:Does it have Adblock? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
Right click, choose "Block content", then select elements on a page you'd like to have blocked. Flash, images, iframes, what have you.
May not be as complete as AdBlock, but it's certainly useful.
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I think he was looking for more a preemptive block, not so much something you do after you've seen the ads already.
Kind of like a Shoryuken to web advertising's Hadouken.
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I use an (older) version of AdSweep to get rid of more than 90% of the ads, and Opera's own block content function for the few things that still annoy me.
Yes, it's not quite AdBlock+, but close enough.
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Prefered method would be a Tatsu-maki Senpuu-kyaku nowadays since you will go through any wave motion fist Shenanigans.
Re:Does it have Adblock? (Score:5, Informative)
Fanboy's list works great. [fanboy.co.nz]
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You can block the ads via hosts file: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt [mvps.org]
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Install 6 extensions (especially firebug), and actively browse in at least 6, if not 12 tabs for a day. If your memory utilization doesn't hit AT LEAST 500 meg after 8 hours, call the editors of the Guiness Book.
This may sound like an extreme usage pattern, but it's all to common for anyone doing any sort of web development.
Alpha (Score:2)
This is still pre-alpha, so further speed gains should be expected.
Isn't the opposite ussually the case? Alphas and betas are often a bit quicker than the final releases. I've always assumed it is an artifact of trying to tie off issues quickly right before release so maybe this isn't ussually the case with the Opera dev team?
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No, many features aren't fully implemented and there are shortcuts that avoid blocks of required code. This is why not all pages are rendering properly. Once these get fixed it will seem to slow down in order to fill all the requirements.
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you stick to wishful thinking and I'll stick to reality and history lessons.
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I'll say this tho.. I ran Opera 10 alpha for quite some time before the official release, and the official release was just as snappy.
Opera has always been snappy. It is arguably the best browser available and has always been a trend setter. They are playing a little bit of follow the leader th
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It is arguably the best browser available and has always been a trend setter. They are playing a little bit of follow the leader this time, but they again seem to be doing it just as well if not better.
Wow. That gave me a double whiplash. :)
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It is arguably the best browser available and has always been a trend setter. They are playing a little bit of follow the leader this time, but they again seem to be doing it just as well if not better.
Wow. That gave me a double whiplash. :)
Heh. How about, each final release of Opera is arguably the best browser available at the time. Right now, however, new versions of other browsers have superseded Opera's stable release (version 10 was good, but quickly overtaken). They're playing catch-up, but looking at this pre-alpha it appears they're doing a damn good job of it.
Sound better?
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Isn't the opposite ussually the case? Alphas and betas are often a bit quicker than the final releases.
I don't know what software you're using, but on any normal code, alphas/betas aren't quicker at all, simply because they often do not have asserts and other similar checks compiled out to assist in debugging, diagnosing crash reports, etc.
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Again, they aren't shortcuts that make things faster. They are bug that actually often make things slower.
We know that features you don't use don't actual
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I always thought in the Alphas and Betas, all the debugging code would slow it down over a release where that's been disabled. Certainly I've seen betas get faster for final release.
IPv6 (Score:2)
Pre Alpha?? (Score:2)
Beta is when you let outsiders test your product. Closed if you are controlling who and how many, open if you aren't.
Alpha is internal testing.
How could something that is alpha or "pre-alpha" be "out"? If it is out... it's should be called beta, or even public beta. If alpha is the first testing, how can there be anything before alpha?
This sounds like it should be called a public beta. Just because it's not on the schedule, doesn't make it less public.
Can i blame Google for causing the abuse of these ter
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+1 Informative. Thanks. Gave you a point on the goldfish thread.
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Beta is when you let outsiders test your product. Closed if you are controlling who and how many, open if you aren't.
Alpha is internal testing.
I've no idea where you've got those definitions from. The ones that I traditionally see being thrown around are:
Alpha - feature set not frozen, planned features may be missing, likely to have bugs; released to get feedback on new/changed features and new feature requests.
Beta - feature set frozen, likely to have bugs; released to get bug reports.
RC - feature set frozen, no known bugs except for those deemed non-release-critical and postponed for next release; if no more release-critical bugs found in a set
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that's an extremely commercial software centric viewpoint. here's one way how most opensource projects would put it.
alpha : it's just what we are working on. nothing is set in stone, major features might appear or disappear.
beta : this has a chance to be next stable release. no major features will appear or disappear, but we will fix stuff and change detail here or there.
release candidate : this will be final release. UNLESS we find critical bug, like major functionality broken or a security bug.
some projec
And they are dropping the Qt dependancy! (Score:2)
allowing for integration with Gtk and Qt [opera.com]!!!
Where's the Linux Version? (Score:2)
This is Slashdot after all.
FAIL (Score:3, Informative)
Fast? Really? Not. The acclaimed SunSpider test:
Opera 10.5 A fresh install:
Total: 4790.0ms +/- 0.2%
FIrefox 3.7a1pre20091222 (with extensions all enabled)
Total: 1928.0ms +/- 3.4%
and just for the heck of it
Opera 10.10
Total: 8887.6ms +/- 1.9%
is there some secret 'disable slow' preference in Opera I need to change?
Granted, this is on an old dual-cpu Athlon MP system so the absolute results are not comparable to anyone else but the relative results are - Opera Fails.
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Granted, this is on an old dual-cpu Athlon MP system so the absolute results are not comparable to anyone else but the relative results are
This is because the JavaScript engine (Carakan) does not currently compile to native code for CPUs lacking SSE2. Support for older CPUs will be added in future builds.
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That's because you're using a pointless test:
"This is SunSpider, a JavaScript benchmark. This benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs."
Which is about as useless as it gets. Your typical web page doesn't do number crunching in JS; the heaviest operation it does is going to be AJAX calls and DOM manipulation, lots of it. So JS perf is nowhere nearly as important as the speed at which browser can redraw while DOM is being updated. And on that metric, Opera is fast;
Rendering speed (Score:2)
People seem to be focusing a lot on JS speed (often meaning specifically number crunching), but equally, if not more, important part is rendering speed, and DOM manipulation speed. And Opera has always been really, really good at that.
Now, I don't have hard numbers... but as an anecdote, consider that of all browsers that I've used, only Chrome and Opera (not just this alpha build, but 9.x and 10.x stable as well) are fast enough to not visibly lag while scrolling "Web 2.0" Slashdot discussions. Firefox, in
Not available for Linux? (Score:3)
(and for OpenBSD, etc.)
It's no biggie, just recompile it!
Oh wait...
By "fast", let's hope they don't mean... (Score:2)
... that the Error Console window now pops up before the main browser window begins rendering. It's almost that fast now in Opera 10.10. Now I rarely even begin reading a web page because that window is bound to pop up in the middle of my reading the first paragraph of text. It used to be annoying as all get out until I realized if I merely minimize it, instead of closing it, I only have to look at it once per browser session. Making it possible to control how sensitive Opera is to minor errors should be po
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In 10.10, you can turn off the error console completely. I never have it pop up. Try going to Tools -> Preferences, Advanced tab, Content Leaf, Javascript options button, and uncheck show error console on error.
Closed source doesn't always suck (Score:4, Insightful)
Closed source software stinks. Microsot Windows crawls. Anything good by Microsoft is purchased from a former developer. Adobe is not only slow to fix security holes; it continues to distribute software it knows has holes that are actively being exploited. At work I'm exposed to corporate shit by IBM that is used in every incorrect way possible (arguably IBM is a contributor to this problem). Closed source makes me want to vomit. No privacy. No security.
But then there's Opera: possibly the only closed source project that genuinely competes on quality: accurate, good interface, efficient, and even good security? Who knows.
But then I don't use anything closed source anymore, so perhaps I'm missing some other well deserved programs.
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Your facts are astound... or wait you don't have any.
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Just check the clown's post history...
His/her history is quite irrelevant, but nice try at an ad-hominem there. Gp is correct; that AC did not provide any benchmarks, statistics, or other facts to back up the claim that was made about Opera performance vs. Chrome performance. Now, if GP really is a "fanboy" and you want to do something about that, how about some solid evidence for why Opera is inferior?
Note, I use neither Opera nor Chrome. I use Firefox. But this low-quality nonsense that passes for debate gets old.
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Re:You Fucking Piece Of Shit (Score:4, Funny)
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Like Windows? I'll help build that Ark.
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Like the V8 benchmark, you mean? LOL.
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The prayers of the thousand left handed mouses users have been answered.
FTFY :)
More on the dropping of Qt (Score:3)
http://my.opera.com/ruario/blog/unix-10-50-evenes-work-in-progress [opera.com]
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No, it's free but proprietary.
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no. but you probably knew that and were partially trolling.
would be mighty cool if it became foss one day, though.
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Not once in my 15+ years of using web browsers have I thought to myself "Man, this *browser* sure is slow."
I've had mostly the same experience, but we've probably made sure to be using decent hardware all that time as well. A year or two ago, on a low-end netbook, I found trying to open a Slashdot discussion with the new interface in Firefox 2 to be agonising. One of the reasons I switched to Ubuntu Netbook Edition was specifically so as to get Firefox 3.
In fact maybe that's the way to illustrate how important JS speed is: try opening a Slashdot or Digg discussion page in Firefox 1 or 2 ... and have a fire extin
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And - I'm sorry to say - scrolling isn't smooth, even on my recent computer. Hardware accelerated scrolling certainly makes sense. Maybe more buffering could do the same thing, but FF3.5 is not as smooth as it should be. The android phone I tried today easily beat it.
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I can't actually time this, but there is a noticeable difference, granted I only did a single test in each browser... if I had to make up numbers...
Opera 10.5: 0.7 seconds
Opera 10.10: 1.0 seconds
Chromium 4.0: 1.2 seconds
IExplorer8: 1.5 seconds
Safari 4.0: 1.6 seconds
Firefox 3.6 B5: 1.7 seconds
Though, Safari actually "looks" slower than Firefox because Firefox starts rendering sooner, whereas Safari waits for the full page then displays. For what it's worth, DL 5Mb/UL 1Mb connection... less than a second diff
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Actually, according to DragonFly, over an average of 5 searches each:
10.5: 538ms
10.1: 625ms
Guess my internal clock is a bit slow, and that's just the GETs, doesn't measure rendering speed.
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Well, I've used older versions of Opera, say 9.5, on New Slashdot. It's painful. Or try 9.x on some web app interfaces (Like Zenoss Core 2.2 or so) and see how painful it is. Firefox was faster there. I've also seen slowness on other apps, like the js implementation of a NES ROM emulator. So yes, there are things that could certainly be faster.