New Opera Beta Available; Adds Bing Search, Improved Speed, Geolocation

[Nibiru2012]

From: Overclocker's Club.com 6-19-2010

June has been a month for web browsers. First, Apple released Safari 5 for OS X and Windows. Then, Flock announced it was dumping Firefox for Chromium. On Tuesday, Opera Software released version 10.60 B1 of its desktop web browser. Opera has always had a focus on speed, and 10.60 B1 is no exception. Opera claims that improvements made to the JavaScript engine introduced in Opera 10.50 have made it more than 75% faster. I'll provide some benchmarks based on my tests in a moment, but first, let's take a look at some of the other features Opera is offering in 10.60.

W3C Geolocation API Support
With geolocation support, developers can build web based applications that, should you allow, can determine where you are based on Wi-Fi and other information. This could allow you to receive location specific advertisements or search results. If you are in a new city, you could pull up a restaurant review site and have it automatically display reviews of locations within walking distance. If you are lost in an area, Google Maps or Mapquest could pinpoint your exact location and route you home.

WebM Support
As many look to replace Adobe's Flash player with a HTML5 alternative, it had been thought that H.264 might be the standard. However with Google's release of VP8 video codex and WebM contain under a royalty free license, this may end up being the preferred choice. Right now, the standard for HTML5 video is still up in the air, but Opera (along with Google and Mozilla) has added support for WebM.

Speed Dial Improvements
Opera Speed Dial has been updated with widescreen options. Microsoft's Bing Search engine has also been made the default search engine used in Speed Dial which replaces Ask.com. Google remains the default for the search bar and address bar. The Speed Dial window also supports a background image, which can be changed through the Speed Dial options.

UI Enhancements
The Menu button on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD versions of Opera 10.60 has been made easier to find, though to be honest I never had an issue. Tab previews and visual tabs now include icons for Opera features, such as download manager, speed dial, and history. Tabs now have an improved and cleaner "peek" effect when hovered over.

Speed & Performance
As already mentioned, Opera claims that the engine introduced in Opera 10.50 has been fine tuned for Opera 10.60 and offers as much as a 75% performance increase on some tests. I don't want to just take their word for it. I decided to do some test of my own.

For these test, we used Futuremark's Peacekeeper web browser benchmark, SunSpider Core JavaScript benchmark, and Google's V8 benchmark.

The tests show that while Opera 10.60 B1 is much faster than the previous version and scored the best on the Windows 7 test rig, Chrome wasn't far behind. In fact, on the OS X test system Chrome easily passed Opera 10.60 B1 on all tests. The tests also outlined just how pathetically far behind Internet Explorer is compared to the rest of the competition.

If you want to give Opera 10.60 Beta 1 a try, you can download it at http://www.opera.com/browser/next/.

Click here to see more images
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NOTE: I tested my Firefox 3.6.3 at Google's V8 at got a score of: 609 !

 

[Nibiru2012]

This new Opera is fast, very fast! I like it... finally! It took a while for me to customize it to my liking, getting an ad blocking app, skins, etc.

Here's a Snagit Capture:

Y'all might want to give this one a try!

 

[Fire cat]

Nice, but too crowded for me.

 

[Nibiru2012]

Nice, but too crowded for me.

What's too crowded ? You didn't specify.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Nibs - I was thinking that too. What is too crowded?

Perhaps he is talking about the bookmarks or file menu which should be able to be hidden.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I have the option to hide the bookmarks section, which sometimes I do. I left it open so others may see what it looked like is all.

When I surf the web, I leave it open since I'll be shifting a lot of gears from site to site.

 

[Fire cat]

I was reffering to the browser in general. I hate having menus and tabs and loads of other stuff everywere. That's why I like IE.

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the heads up Nib, it's been a while since I had a play with the Opera browser .

 

[clifford_cooley]

I was reffering to the browser in general. I hate having menus and tabs and loads of other stuff everywere. That's why I like IE.

IE8 is taking up more space than Opera.

Now lets remove the tabs from Opera.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I was reffering to the browser in general. I hate having menus and tabs and loads of other stuff everywere. That's why I like IE.

Shouldn't you be doing your homework?

 

[clifford_cooley]

I'm still using Opera.