Webware

Updated: At 2:50 p.m. we added links for Opera 10 beta 3 with Unite, and added a statement from Opera about the crash logging feature.

Opera 10 beta 3 was released Wednesday for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. With a strong European following, the preview version has been able to keep this popular alternative browser competitive by offering page rendering quality comparable to Google Chrome, while offering a robust list of features.

Opera 10 beta 3 offers more tab and toolbar control.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Opera is touting the stability and performance enhancements in the third beta, but in casual testing it appeared to have the slowest JavaScript engine when compared with Chrome and Firefox. Opera notched 3237.4ms in the SunSpider JavaScript test, while Firefox completed the test in 1142.4ms and Chrome was more than twice as fast as that, reaching 508.2ms.

However, JavaScript speed isn't everything, and Opera's built-in feature set offers much to users who like a strong out-of-the-box experience. There are far more options available now for tweaks tabs. Through the menu bar View and then Customize, you can move your visual tab bar to the sides of the browser as well as the top or bottom. You can also toggle showing only favicons or text, or force the tab bar to use multiple row, or just a single one. These options are available for all toolbars in Opera, making toolbar customization more streamlined than in other browser.

Opera 10's crash recovery window.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

There's now a crash logger that Opera says will make the browser "rock-solid," although what that meant was unclear at press time. Opera spokesman Thomas Ford has since clarified the statement, saying that, "It works like the logger that Windows has when a program stops responding. We can more easily identify and then remediate the root cause of crashes." It is not a sandboxing feature, so crashes that originate in one tab will still affect the entire browser.

Users on slower or dial-up connections should see performance improvements in Opera Turbo, too, although they didn't specify what those changes were or what kind of benchmarks users should expect. If you're seeing dramatically better numbers for Opera Turbo on a slow connection, let me know in the comments.

Notably, Opera Unite remains in alpha development and continues to be a separate entity from the main build of the Opera 10 beta. There's no word on how soon integration will occur, although it is apparently planned for before the public release of Opera 10. Opera 10 beta 3 with Unite can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Opera 10 continues to chug along, and the beta build of the browser has updated for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The publisher has declined to put its proprietary Web server service, Unite, in the build, indicating that it's not yet ready for beta consideration. Still, the enormous number of fixes to the Opera 10 beta should make many fans happy.

Several of the visual tweaks include an icon for when Opera Turbo is activated, a "Synchronize Opera" button on the Speed Dial page, and inverted tab icons for panels viewed as tabs. The Opera Wand has been renamed Password Manager, Transfers have been renamed Downloads, and hitting enter to select an item in a dropdown box will no longer submit a form.

There are other bug- and stability-fixes, as well. Changelogs are available separately for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Opera 10 beta 2 with Unite can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux, too.

You wouldn't know it by eyeballing most of the latest browser news, but there is more to browsers than JavaScript speed. Mozilla introduced its add-on alternative called Jetpack, and on Tuesday Opera debuted Unite for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which turns your browser into a Web server and the Norwegian publisher hopes will "reinvent the Web."

That's fast become the browser equivalent of the cliched comic book tag, "In this issue: Everything Changes!" So United uses your browser as as Web server, but what does that mean?

The File Sharing interface in Opera Unite.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

"The initial applications offered by Opera Unite are just simple demos (such as a "messenger" application and a media player) that replicate existing services and online functionality, showing them working in the context of Opera Unite," wrote Lawrence Eng, a product analyst for Opera, on Opera's blog Tuesday morning. OK, so they're basic features, essentially still in beta and meant more to highlight what's possible than to actually offer strong experiences at the moment. Keeping that in mind, let's look at what's available and how they work.

Unite adds a tab to Opera's widget sidebar, and comes with six apps to share your content: File Sharing, a Fridge, Media Player, Photo Sharing, The Lounge, and Web server. Specific URL-based, most are self-explanatory. Two are not.

The Fridge is for note-sharing, kind of like Facebook's Wall but without the interactivity. Once you share your Fridge URL, users can write short messages and post them to your "fridge door." Messages must be short, although I couldn't determine a specific character-limit as there is on Twitter. The Fridge app also wouldn't work in Firefox 3.5 pre, although it functioned fine in Google Chrome.

Inside Opera Unite--screenshots

The Lounge is an interactive chat room that you host on your computer. You can determine who gets to enter by sharing the URL, but if that's not private enough you can password-protect entry, as well. Where the utility of the Fridge escaped me, I can see a point to having a private, mobile, self-hosted chatroom.

The Web server is interesting, as well. Being able to host a Web page from your desktop computer, without having to worry about paying somebody for the privilege, has the potential to usher in a new age of Web hosting where the only cost is what you pay your ISP and there's no middle-man to go through. However, the most popular things to do online that require your own site--sharing media and writing blogs--can be done effectively and cheaply from third-party hosts. Still, Unite-based Web-serving has potential.

Access is granted on three levels: Public, Limited--which means password-protected, and Private. When you set an app to Limited, you're provided with a password that you can change, and then when you hit the e-mail button to share it the password gets appended to the end of the URL. When you customize a password, it can contain only alphanumeric characters--no exclamation points allowed. Clicking on the link automatically enters the credential. The transition from administrator setup to end-user e-mail was not only a smooth experience, but it involved a minimal number of steps.

What an end-user sees when they receive a link to a Unite media player.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

File Sharing and Photo Sharing are redundant services. They look the same, except that Photo Sharing presents files in a large-icon thumbnail format, and File Sharing shows a file tree with tiny, non-thumbnailed icons. The way that an administrator can adjust the access level granted doesn't vary from app to app, making for a consistent experience that potentially takes some of the edge off of the learning curve. Hopefully, this will remain as third-party developers build their own Unite apps.

The most useful of the apps is the Media Player, which lets you share music from your hard drive in a stripped-down but effective interface. Click on an artist's name to be taken to the album name, which requires another click to get to the songs. One final click will get the song playing. Not surprisingly, it's very much like a slightly visual file browser. However, like many of the apps, it doesn't work perfectly or at all, all of the time. Several of my CNET colleagues tested it with me, with decidedly mixed results.

I was able to stream music from one computer to a second one at my desk. Single-song playback worked well, but the row of buttons at the top--Autoplay, Shuffle, Repeat, Sort A-Z, and the search box--never functioned. The song playback doesn't automatically play songs in order--users will only get songs served up once, and then the player stops. One colleague could only view songs--playback never worked.

A broken image on the Unite landing page in Chrome.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Browser compatibility was inconsistent, as well. The media player wouldn't work in Google Chrome but functioned fine in Firefox 3.5 pre. The Fridge wouldn't work in Firefox, but did in Google Chrome.

The promise of user-shared content melded to Web 2.0 socialization is an interesting step to take, given the current development climate. The strongest point behind Unite is that it provides a socialization-ready widget platform, without forcing Opera to completely reinvent its browser. In today's blog post, Eng cited the potential for game development, and hinted that Unite will play a large role in the browser's future.

Unite tended to use a bit less than double the memory of the regular Opera 10 beta, about 140 MB compared with 88 MB.

For now, Unite is available only in a separate build from the main Opera 10 beta, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but there are plans to eventually integrate the two. Whether Opera can motivate developers to take to it as Firefox developers have taken to that platform remains to be seen.

Inside Opera Unite--screenshots

On Tuesday, Opera Software introduced a technical preview of Opera Unite, a component of its Opera 10 browser. Earlier this morning, I sat in on a Webcast where Opera's Chief Development Officer, Christen Krogh, ran through a demo and answered questions. Opera Unite, which uses your Opera ID to log in, is a Web server housed within the Opera browser. With it, you'll be able to host a Web site, and share files, music, video, notes, and chats with others.

The sharing process begins when you select the hard drive where your files are stored, and then select the individual files you'd like to share. You'll then set your sharing preferences--either public, private, or password-protected--and Opera Unite will create a direct URL, which you can share with others. Guests can view the content from any browser, not just Opera's.

Opera Unite doesn't yet extend to mobile phones and other Opera-powered browsers, but that will eventually be part of the plan.

Security has been a concern so far. Opera Unite is as secure as Opera Widgets, Krogh said. It features native apps running in a sandbox on top of Opera's Web browser, and using local storage. CNET's sister site ZDNet UK explores the security of Opera Unite in an article.

When you load Opera 10 with Unite, you'll enable Opera Unite it by clicking this icon.

(Credit: CNET)

Opera Unite shares similarities with the now-defunct AllPeers, an add-on for Mozilla's Firefox browser. While Mozilla hasn't announced intentions to build a similar sharing or hosting service, it is offering developers a chance to create more robust code packages using Mozilla Jetpack, a recent Labs project.

The technical preview version of Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You should consider the software experimental; you may encounter bugs or other imperfections while using it. To see more detail about how it works, peer inside via our gallery of screenshots.

Open beta versions of Opera 10 browser that do not have Unite installed are available for Linux, Mac and Windows.

Opera 10 has entered beta with the unstated goal of becoming more than a mere browser. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the Norwegian program hopes to become a speedy utility--Turbo-charged, in their words--that handles browsing, e-mail, RSS, and torrents with robust features.

Improvements to Speed Dial give users more customization power than before.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The most obvious changes in Opera 10 are the new default skin, created by British designer Jon Hicks, and a revamped Tab bar. The skin, Opera says, will continue to evolve before Opera 10 is finalized. Double-click or pull down on the bar below the tabs and above the location bar and you get thumbnail previews of each tab. The previews are resizable, so users who want to see only a small sliver of a tab to identify it visually don't have to worry about sacrificing screen real estate. The bar doesn't remember your last position for it when manually adjusted and then closed by double-clicking, but it does remember when you restart Opera.

One change Opera has yet to make is to rejigger the location bar to perform "smart searches." Whereas Firefox and Chrome have both forced their location bar search protocol to do this by default, Opera's still takes you to a search results page. This may not bother some users, but after spending the majority of the past few months on Firefox and Chrome, I found it mildly irritating.

Opera's revamped Tab Bar can show (or hide) tab previews.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

You'll have an easier time tweaking the look of Opera 10, with improvements to Speed Dial and toolbar customizations. Speed Dial has received a refresh. You can expand it to show as many as 25 Web sites and set a background image. You can also set it to never appear. Customization is easier, too. Right-click on any toolbar to reveal a Customize option. From there, you can hide a toolbar or a particular widget such as the search box, download and change skins on the fly, add or remove buttons, and add or adjust Panels. Opera has had the features in Panels, such as Notes, for a long time.

In this version, though, they round them all up behind one unified sidebar interface. Notes, Bookmarks, History, and Transfers are standard, as is a Widgets option from which you can download more panels. These widgets include things like a Facebook interface, a to-do list, and a Google services manager.

In addition to improvements to the browser, users can create panels to manage to their e-mail, newsfeeds, and chat, as well as select default clients to manage those services outside of Opera. The Opera default e-mail client, however, should be noted as the slickest of the baked-in browser e-mail clients. The e-mail folder tree smoothly integrates in a collapsible panel, while message composition opens in a new browser tab. Combined with Opera's MyOpera synchronization service, it provides users with a full-featured e-mail and browsing experience.

Opera's had e-mail integration for a while, but this is the most seamless it's been.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Web developers will appreciate further improvements to Opera Dragonfly. In addition to the changes introduced in the alpha, developers can now edit the DOM and inspect HTTP headers from within the browser.

Opera 10 continues development of its Turbo mode, which uses proprietary compression technology to accelerate page loading. It's recommended for users in crowded Wi-Fi spots or on slow DSL lines or 56k modems, and users might even see slower page load times if they use it on a broadband connection, according to the company. According to their press release for this beta, Turbo "can offer broadband-like speeds on dial-up." If you have personal experience verifying this, please let me know in the comments below.

The Opera 10 beta 1 is definitely faster than its previous publicly available predecessor, the Opera 10 alpha, which in turn was dramatically faster than the most recent stable Opera, version 9.6. On a Windows XP desktop, with Service Pack 3, 2 GB of RAM, and a 2.8GHz processor, Opera 10 beta scored 5836.6 milliseconds on WebKit's SunSpider JavaScript test. The Opera 10 alpha hit 6068.7 ms on the same machine, while Opera 9.62 scored 7008.2 ms. This works out to be about 13 percent faster, although previous tests that I had done on a different computer found Opera 10 alpha to be three times faster than Opera 9.62.

Customizing toolbars is easier in Opera 10.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Keeping in mind that the test only looks at JavaScript run times and that running the test on different computers can result in shockingly different results, we're still seeing performance improvements, although not as drastic as the jump from version 9 to version 10. Also, due to time constraints, I was unable to run Opera through tests on Mozilla's Dromaeo at the time the story was published. These will be updated later in the day on Wednesday.

Opera 10 remains the only browser to successfully complete all aspects of the test. While the new version of Chrome scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 standards compliance test, it fails the linktest. For users looking for the most complete feature experience, and one that's cross-platform and synchronizable out of the box, Opera 10 remains an excellent alternative browser.

A correction was made to this story. See below for details.

Testing Opera 10 alpha confirms it can boast that it's the second browser in development that is fully compliant with the Acid3 benchmarks. It's also markedly faster than Opera 9.62 at processing JavaScript, but it's half as fast as the fastest Web browser currently available.

Opera 10 alpha is Acid3-standards compliant.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

On both Windows and Mac OS, it was no surprise to see the Acid3 standards test come up 100 out of 100 since that was the big news from Opera Software earlier today. The browser is also three times faster than the current stable release, with the SunSpider Java test clocking in at 5,740.8 milliseconds. That compares very favorably to Opera 9.62, which I benchmarked at 15,468.8 ms, but is still slower than the Firefox 3.1 beta. Mozilla's latest developer build zips in at 2,787.6 ms when running its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

The majority of the changes in this Opera alpha release are aimed at developers. The average user will rarely, if ever, come into contact with them. That doesn't mean they're not important, though, with further support for CSS3. These changes include sourcing fonts, transparency rendering, animation framerates, and two key evolutions in Opera Dragonfly. You can use the DOM inspector to determine the source of traffic, useful for Ajax debugging, and the ability to edit attributes in real-time.

There are three minor but important user-level changes. It's hard to believe that HTML support in Opera Mail was missing before now, but you'll now be able to see all those holiday e-cards within Opera. There's also a spell-checker rolled in for text fields, not just e-mail.

Opera 10 features an auto-install option for updates.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The last new feature, automatic program updates, could be potentially risky. Certainly in Firefox it would likely lead to the disabling of many extensions, although there's not much of a chance of that happening in Opera with its smaller developer community. The bigger concern is one of control: do you choose which version of a program you get to use, or does the publisher of the program? As annoying as Apple's update monitor and nag screen are, they don't force users to update; you can opt out.

It took a little hunting to find, but the default setting in Opera 10 seems to be the more standard notification behavior. If you'd like to tweak your update settings, go to Tools, Preferences, choose the Advanced tab on the right and then Security from the list of options. The Opera update drop-down menu allows you to change the default to "Don't check for updates" or "Automatic updates".

The big news of the standards compliance will only take Opera so far if other browsers match that mark. It'll be interesting to see, as Google Chrome introduces extensibility, whether Opera will go that route or if it'll try to maintain its niche market as a solid and fast out-of-the-box browser. However, Opera 10 was surprisingly stable during a half-day of testing for an alpha release, crashing not even once.

Correction: This story initially gave the wrong name of the Java test I ran. It is called SunSpider.

Thirteen-year-old Opera has been the perennial underdog in the browser wars, but Opera 10 alpha brings some unexpected firepower to the field. Unlike Google Chrome, Firefox 3, or any other browser on the market except for Safari 4 Developer Preview, Opera 10 will comply fully with the Acid3 test, according to the Norwegian publisher.

Opera 10 alpha introduces a text field spell-checker.

(Credit: Opera Software, Inc.)

Expected to be available now for public testing, Opera 10 is powered by an update to its proprietary rendering engine. Presto 2.2 is supposed to be 30 percent faster than Presto 2.1, the engine driving Opera 9.5. Presto 2.2, says the company, will be the basis for future versions of its mobile browsers as well as the desktop editions.

In addition to the engine improvements, the big news is that Opera 10 apparently scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 testing Web site. The Web Standards Project created the Acid tests to check a range of linking and rendering abilities in browsers to encourage a standard baseline for coding. Theoretically, sticking to the test rules should ensure that Web sites can be seen properly on any browser, while reducing development costs.

For comparison, Firefox 3.0.4 scores 71/100, while Firefox 3.1 beta 1 hits 89/100. Google Chrome 0.4 earns 79/100, while Internet Explorer 7 struggles at 14. These scores might be slightly different from the ones in the article linked to because of recent modifications in each browser.

Similar to the development build of Safari 4, Opera 10 alpha doesn't have many new features--yet. The alpha is expected to introduce on-the-fly spell checking for text fields, support for HTML formatting in Opera Mail, and an auto-update feature to force browser updates. It's not clear at the time of writing whether this update is something users can opt out of.