Opera 9.5 Released

For those of you that like Opera, they've just released version 9.5, which has a new GUI:

Noted improvements:

More than 2x faster than Opera 9.2 in rendering JavaScript and HTML

Faster handling of third party plug-ins

Much faster start up time

Superior support for Web standard

It was released Thursday. Your late. lol

What makes Opera stand out from other browsers?

The fact that it's the only web standard browser that passed the ACID2 test.

I don't know what that is, but okay.

Acid2?

ACID2 is a web browser test that determines whether a not is completely web standard. Firefox and IE both failed the test, but Opera has passed it, making it the only wide scale browser that has done so. IE8 has reportedly passed it, but, it's not a final.

ACID2 test

If a complete smiley face shows up with the words 'Hello World' ontop of it, your browser passes, thus meaning it is web standard compliant.

That alone wouldn't make someone to want to switch their browser.

No ones campaigning for anyone to switch their browser. If you like to be on browsers that make your system vulnerable, that's your deal.

Yeah sure. It's the sites you visit. Not the browser.

Yeah sure. It's the sites you visit. Not the browser.

Yeah, I second that.

Yeah, but, the sites take advantage of the vulnerabilites the browsers have. It comes full circle.

What happens if you download software or get software from a CD, and it hijacks your browser to point to a malicious home page? That would be the browsers problem and not a website.

i am on firefox and my browser passes the acid 2 test

This is just to add on about browser security.

Opera 9.x vulnerabilities (14, 0% unpatched)

Firefox 2.x vulnerabilities (23, 13% unpatched)

IE 7.x vulnerabilities (28, 32% unpatched)

No official final release of Firefox passes the Acid2 Browser Test. Neither Firefox 1.x or Firefox 2.x pass the Acid2 Browser test. The standards compliance test is now almost 3 years old. 10-15% of web sites aren't completely compatible with Firefox. Firefox is not 100% Internet Explorer and ActiveX compatible. Web sites that depend on ActiveX or were only tested in Internet Explorer (which there are many) will only render and work properly in Internet Explorer based browsers. Web site features such as Menus, Web forms or other content may not function or behave differently then intended. While Internet Explorer is completely compatible with 99.99% of all Web Sites.

lol Only reason Opera is the lowest is because they're less popular then the rest of the pack.

Actually, that's where your wrong. Opera actually released their first web browser in 1994 (around the same date Netscape did). This, of course, would make it one of the first wide scale web browsers released. Since then, there have been plenty of POWER (hence the word) users that use and take advantage of Opera.

Being less popular has nothing to do with anything. Firefox wasn't popular when it first came out and it was bombarded with extension attacks. In fact. Opera has been considered a pioneer in web browsers. Tabbed browsing? Opera did that first in 1994 with Opera 1.0. The integrated search? Opera was the first browser to do that with Opera 5 in 2000. First web browser to COMPLETELY refute ads? Opera in 2000 with again, Opera 5. If you'd like, I can point more stuff out that makes Firefox more vulnerable then (gasp) Internet Explorer.

you said firefox does not pass the acid 2 test

i have a installed and NON modified version of firefox and it passes it fine

I think you need to go back and read. I said no FINAL version passes. What you have is a beta version. Alot of changes are made between beta and final.

I think Mozilla 3 is being released and it should pass the acid2 test. This is has forced Microsoft to follow trends when it releases IE8, though IE7 should have really been the starting point.

Though IE7 has several more issues, it is more because of its wide scalability, in comparison to FF and Opera. But just from reading around, I see a lot more critical and harmful flaws in Firefox than i do in internet explorer, which is not to say that IE doesn’t have them.

I agree though that with the product not being used as much as IE or FF, it would be less likely to have targeted attacks, even if they have been around for such a long while. I believe that is the opposing point being made here X.

I've been on a few sites that were specifically designed for IE and Opera hasn't been completely compatible, though I'm not going to go into compatibilities.

The reason why I use Opera over IE and Firefox is because of some of its built-in features. The features I like (in no particular order) are:

• Thumbnail tabs - Pretty much the same as Vista's thumbnail previews
• Keyword searches - I love being able to type in Opera "g keyword" and it comes up with Google. It's customisable too; I've added Wikipedia, IMDB and Youtube to my keyword searches.
• Saving on close - Not only does Opera save the tabs that you were previously browsing, it saves your history too! You can exit Opera, bring it back up with the page you were just viewing and still use the back button.
• Crash restores - Face it, it drives everyone mad to have a few pages and/or tabs open in your web browser disappear because one page you've opened crashed the browser. Opera will restore the pages you were viewing (if you choose to do so), including your history.
• Design - I prefer how it looks to FF, Safari and IE. With 9.5 it actually looks like it's designed for Vista, unlike other browsers imo.
• Tray icon - New to me but I like the idea of being able to hide Opera to the system tray.

Sure, there are addons you can download for IE7 to do some of those and the odd feature already included in IE8, FF, Safari or whatever other browser but Opera has all of those.