Thread: Opera 10 web browser beta

The release of Opera 10 shows that the company is generating its own browser innovations instead of trying to copy Firefox or Internet Explorer. With a slick new user interface and some interesting features, Opera 10 looks like it will be worth considering as an alternative to the two main contenders.

On the downside, however, Opera 10 is hit by the same problems as other less widely used browsers, such as Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome, in that some web sites are still optimised for Internet Explorer or Firefox, and either do not display properly or reject it completely as an unsupported browser.

This seems to be mainly an issue with web-based business applications rather than the more commonly accessed sites on the web, few of which presented any difficulties.

The first thing you notice about Opera 10 beta is its striking but simple styling that sets it apart from Firefox and IE. It supports tabbed browsing, which Opera had long before Firefox and IE, and sports a set of YCR-like buttons for controlling navigation.

As well as Bookmarks, Opera 10 beta includes Speed Dial, a set of thumbnail links to web pages that appears when you open a new blank tab. This feature was introduced in Opera 9.2 but is now more customisable, allowing users to set a background image and how many Speed Dial thumbnails appear, or completely disable the feature. Thumbnails of all open tabs can also be viewed by enlarging the tab bar near the top of the browser window.

The chief new feature in this beta is Opera Turbo, which is designed to speed up browsing over low-bandwidth connections. It does this by routing web requests through a proxy server, which compresses the data before sending it back to the browser. Turbo can be enabled or disabled manually - it is off by default - or set to kick in automatically if the browser detects a low-speed connection.