News - Latest Opera 10.5 browser offers improved Windows 7 integration

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Pre-alpha release now available to download.

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Read more.

Been out for a while and i've been actively trying it - very good imho and not bad for such an early stage.

I was sure there had been a thread about this before, but I must have been wrong.

Ruari Ødegaard might be saying there is a slight upgrade to the rendering engine, but the JavaScript engine has have a massive overhaul. It is said to be one of the fastest scripting engines out there now.

http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/12/22/

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog...-to-all-of-you

Makes for some very interesting reading.

The browser is very quick in general - it 'feels' much quicker than FF for me and this is especially true on lower powered systems. I'm not a big fan of synthetic benchmarks myself when it comes to browsers but i've spent a few months on FF now and switching back to opera is quite dramatic speed wise for me..

It's a shame it's largely ignored because it's a quality product really.

I've never used FF on any of my own systems, I used IE for long enough but was then persuaded to move to Opera a couple of years ago and have never looked back (still have to use IE for Outlook Web Access which winds me up). I've been forced to use FF on some other peoples systems and I just don't like it. It seems cluttered and clunky, and certainly a lot slower to start up.

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Originally Posted by dangel

The browser is very quick in general - it 'feels' much quicker than FF for me and this is especially true on lower powered systems. I'm not a big fan of synthetic benchmarks myself when it comes to browsers but i've spent a few months on FF now and switching back to opera is quite dramatic speed wise for me..

It's a shame it's largely ignored because it's a quality product really.

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Have you ever tried Chrome? That is amazingly fast (well imo).

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Originally Posted by Singh400

Have you ever tried Chrome? That is amazingly fast (well imo).

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Yup - gave it a go in the early days but didn't see much to pull me away from Opera then. I'm one of those people that sits and tries things on a regular basis (hence my FF jaunt) to see if they're any better. Chrome seemed ok though (aside from a pretty horrible install to your documents and setting directory - hopefully no longer!) :)

Pull the plugins out of FF and it's a pretty weak browser IMHO - I agree it's both clunky and slow to startup. I've got adblocking and autopaging in Opera now so i'm really not missing it (although i am writing this post in FF on the system so i am regularly using both..).

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Originally Posted by dangel

Yup - gave it a go in the early days but didn't see much to pull me away from Opera then. I'm one of those people that sits and tries things on a regular basis (hence my FF jaunt) to see if they're any better. Chrome seemed ok though (aside from a pretty horrible install to your documents and setting directory - hopefully no longer!) :)

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Unfortunately it still does install in docs and settings dir. Not sure why it does that, but makes it a pain in the ass if you want everyone to use it, and have to install it on every user, instead of just once.

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Originally Posted by dangel

Pull the plugins out of FF and it's a pretty weak browser IMHO - I agree it's both clunky and slow to startup. I've got adblocking and autopaging in Opera now so i'm really not missing it (although i am writing this post in FF on the system so i am regularly using both..).

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Never really been a fan of FF. A lot of people like it because of the speed, but with the amount of add-ins. Surely they lose that speed. My time is probably split equally between IE8 and Chrome. My Chrome has got a few nice little scripts/add-ins, but nothing that slows it down at all.

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Originally Posted by Singh400

Unfortunately it still does install in docs and settings dir. Not sure why it does that, but makes it a pain in the ass if you want everyone to use it, and have to install it on every user, instead of just once.

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Urk - that's just horrible and the inner developer in me screams at someone just ignoring the Windows ecosystem rules that way!

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Originally Posted by Singh400

Never really been a fan of FF. A lot of people like it because of the speed, but with the amount of add-ins. Surely they lose that speed. My time is probably split equally between IE8 and Chrome. My Chrome has got a few nice little scripts/add-ins, but nothing that slows it down at all.

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Same with Opera for me - FF out the box requires addins + tweaks to make it anywhere near as useful/fast.

What's that I hear? The sound of all 4 users saying "Woopie" at once?

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

What's that I hear? The sound of all 4 users saying "Woopie" at once?

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Zing! You is on a roll today! :mrgreen:

Don't worry - i'm sure there's a "Opera allies with Bing" post coming soon to complete the circle for you :P

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Originally Posted by dangel

Urk - that's just horrible and the inner developer in me screams at someone just ignoring the Windows ecosystem rules that way!

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They probably do that because restricted users on work computers can install it.
We had this problem with skype and haven't had the time or resources to administer software restriction policies so our auditing busted our abusers.
That said, I don't think skype could get through our proxy server so was probably useless to the abusers anyway.

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Originally Posted by badass

They probably do that because restricted users on work computers can install it.

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I think that makes it worse if anything! Do they still do the bootstrapper installer than goes and downloads the rest of it to hide it's actual download size too? Ack.

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Originally Posted by badass

They probably do that because restricted users on work computers can install it.

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That is exactly why they do it. My sister saw fit to install it on her laptop, even though I've locked down her user.

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Originally Posted by dangel

I think that makes it worse if anything! Do they still do the bootstrapper installer than goes and downloads the rest of it to hide it's actual download size too? Ack.

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Yup, still use the bootstrapper too. Not to mention the services and tasks it adds to your PC constantly searching for updates.

Gah - imagine if MS did that - people would be up in arms - but no, it's google and they're 'nice' aren't they?

I used to use IE solely then tryed out firefox around 1.5 crashed alot and so did firefox 2 so i gave opera a try and now use it as my main browser. I have firefox installed but 3.5 does have some issues. sometimes if i use save and close tabs it wont start properly so i have to say no to saving just to get it to start again.

opera is fast no matter how many tabs you have open and has all features i need. no need for no script with opera since it has site preferences.

IE8 seems slow with like three tabs even on my quad core rig with 6gb of ram.

as for chrome well first off i didnt like the fact it installed in user area and the google update processes and startup tasks. The browser itself didnt seem to have many features but seemed fast. since opera has features,is fast and no background crap ill be sticking with opera.

i dont care how little market share opera has IMO its the best browser and I always like to be different.

The opera update method is the best one out there of all the browsers i think. If you use firefox on a standard user account the check for updates option is greyed out. with opera the file is downloaded opera is closed and admin rights is sorted with a UAC prompt.

cant wait for opera 10.5 final!