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Opera Desktop Team

Peregrine takes flight... Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 is here!

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It seems like yesterday we released Opera 9.6 and now you can all get your hands on Opera 10.0. Rather than ramble on, here's a quick list of what's new:

  • Presto 2.2 Engine
  • Performance boost
  • 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
  • Auto-update
  • Inline spelling checker
  • Opera Mail improvements, including rich text composition and delete after X days
  • Widget Improvements on Linux

Can't wait to get your hands on Opera 10.0 Alpha 1, then get it now! :hat:

Download
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Windows
Windows Classic
Macintosh
Macintosh (Intel-only)
UNIX


What's New
Below is an overview of the new functionality in Opera 10.0 Alpha 1.

Presto 2.2 Engine

Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 includes Presto 2.2 (Kestrel includes Presto 2.1.1), an updated version of Opera's Core. Presto 2.2 features numerous new features and loads of bug fixes, such as:

  • 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
  • New regular expression engine, which greatly improves performance
  • Improved CSS performance
  • Pretty-printing of unstyled XML
  • Web font support
  • RGBA and HSLA support
  • Selectors API support

Auto-update
The long awaited auto-update functionality is here! That's right, Opera will now update itself as new versions are released. And for those of you who want every single snapshot release just enable the "Download All Snapshots" setting (opera:config#AutoUpdate). Please be aware that if you do so, you will be upgrading to all snapshots - and as you know: snapshots contain the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all. You have been warned :smile:


Inline Spelling Checker
Opera now checks your spelling as you write! The inline spelling checker is enabled by default for multi-line edit fields and this Alpha comes with a US English dictionary. Use the context menu of input fields to change the settings, and to correct spelling errors. See the detailed changelog for information about using other dictionaries.

Opera Mail Improvements
Rich Text Composition
Opera Mail can now send rich text messages! You can insert inlined images, styled text, links, custom HTML, and more! You can also forward and redirect rich text messages or reply to them with styled text.
In the account settings select "Prefer HTML formatting" in the outgoing tab so that you can start writing rich text mails by default in our WYSIWYG editor!

Remove from server after X days (POP-only)
This new feature is for our POP users with limited server space. Opera Mail can now remove messages from the server that have been there for X days. Of course you can limit Opera Mail to only remove read messages from the server, and/or only fully downloaded messages, which works great in combination with low-bandwith mode.

Other Changes
When viewing a message, the message subjects are now a text field again instead of a button. We have added also a "Thread" button to the message list toolbar to make some features more visible.

Widget Improvements on Linux/UNIX
We have added experimental support for true transparency for widgets on Linux/UNIX. For this to work you have to have an X Server that provides a 32-bit visual device and a running composite manager. If you start Opera from a terminal it will print this message if it detects a suitable 32-bit visual device: "(experimental) ARGB visual detected: Use '-visual 0x6f' to activate it".

If you have a composite manager running you can then try it out by starting Opera with: "opera -visual 0x6f" (0x6f may be another number on your machine).

Detailed Changelogs

Enjoy! :beer:

The baby falcon is preparing for flight9.63

Comments

Matthias 4. December 2008, 12:59

Weeee! Chirstmas came earlier this year <3

Pinni 4. December 2008, 13:00

What a SPEEEeeeeEEEED!!! Big Thanxx!!!

Justas 4. December 2008, 13:03

this is so awesome!!!!

thank you, thank you, thank you

Negadrive 4. December 2008, 13:03

OMG the Inline spelling checker! People I love you!

mrd 4. December 2008, 13:05

WOOHOO! Can't wait to give this a go :smile:

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 13:08

@toscho: HTML5 recommends not supporting it (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#character-encoding-requirements).

@ikarigend: Sorry about that! Fixed.

@harlekinmond and enddead: Please download the universal build again. The universal build was previously actually the Intel-only build.

Grrblt 4. December 2008, 13:10

Spell checker with several dictionaries installed; how is this going to work for people who frequently switch languages? Autodetect or manual? And if autodetect, can it autodetect several languages in the same textbox as well?

Boris 4. December 2008, 13:10

Dear developers :smile:
Please, pay attention to Gmail - it still doesn't work!

Martin 4. December 2008, 13:10

Nice!

Feels good to be on the snapshot-trail again P:

Copied the settings over from my O9 app support and preferences folders over and it seems to work just fine.

Only hitch so far, is that the skin I'm using (Breeze Simplified Micro) looks very very horribly broken ;-)

I'm on Mac OS X Leopard

Bartłomiej Garbiak 4. December 2008, 13:13

@Junyor - opening that HTML5 site with Opera 10 made my entire system stutter...

One more thing: speed dial doesn't show thumbnails for netvibes.com and gmail.com

Yndi 4. December 2008, 13:13

Here are some things I found already:
http://s10.directupload.net/images/081204/tkj8ayfv.png
Checkboxes also look like this. This began after changing color scheme.

my.opera.com looks horrible since a version around 9.6 on Vista x64. This might be the known issue "OpenType Web fonts don't work on Windows."

Scrolling on studivz.de is still juddering. Also scrolling around on my.opera.com makes appear black bars on the screen for 1 second. Then they disappear.

actor 4. December 2008, 13:15

OH! Great!! :D

MAc Bansleben 4. December 2008, 13:16

Yoohoo ! It take 100/100 on ACID3 :D You're awesome !

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 13:17

@Grrblt: Switching languages must be done manually.

Grrblt 4. December 2008, 13:19

@Junyor: intended to stay that way?

alsiladka 4. December 2008, 13:20

The silent assasin strikes back!! Had not been out of touch with the Opera Snapshots since nearly 2 3 years, will give be active again this time :smile:

Charles Schloss 4. December 2008, 13:21

:cool: and so fast :yes:

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 13:27

@Grrblt: Yes.

lynott 4. December 2008, 13:27

Sending inline images works just fine, but when attaching images, images are not shown either in received or sent.There is no attachment icon either. Block external elements is not checked.

Edit/ No attachments are sent. Tested with txt, zip and jpg. None are sent. There are no attachments in sendt elements.

Al 4. December 2008, 13:27

All looking good thus far on Mac. Google Reader and GMail much more responsive but not necessarily faster. Overall browsing speed is now on par with Safari 3.

Good work team! :yes:

Grrblt 4. December 2008, 13:28

@Junyor: bummer. perhaps something for 10.1? :smile:

ra1000 4. December 2008, 13:30

Hi.
How will it be with google apps? Will they be finally supported correct, without any problems?
It´s for me more important than speed.awww

Ravindran Navaneethan 4. December 2008, 13:30

Am facing following problem in Google Reader.

Keyboard shortcut 'v' to open the original article is opening the new tab, but not navigating to the target site. Am I the only one seeing this problem?

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 13:33

@lynott: That's a known issue.

@Grrblt: Something for the wishlist forum, at least.

ra1000 4. December 2008, 13:34

you are lucky, that you have only this issue with Google.

Abilio Henrique 4. December 2008, 13:36

i've just crapped my pants. this rocks.

Remembermyid 4. December 2008, 13:36

cool....:cool:

Mojtaba Nazemi 4. December 2008, 13:37

wow! great. :up:

What about autocomplete forms?

lynott 4. December 2008, 13:37

@Junyor:

Any fix on the horizon? I'm getting ready to ditch Thunderbird all together :cool:

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 13:39

@lynott: It'll be fixed before 10.0 is released.

Andrew Nguyen 4. December 2008, 13:41

CHIRSTMAS PRESENT! AHH! AHH! OMG OMG! OMG! :yes: Sorry... :rolleyes: YES! Sorry again... :faint:

Downloadin' and testin'! penguin

lynott 4. December 2008, 13:42

Will have to keep TB till this is fixed then :yuck:

Otherwise, the falcon flies smooth :smile:

Joe 4. December 2008, 13:43

Originally posted by Scottn1:

I wonder though if Chromes V8 or Webkits JS can be touched at this point since they are so far ahead?


You think this is a race where a head start guarantees that you'll always stay ahead? :lol:

mrd 4. December 2008, 13:44

Ok I got, installed and played a bit and went cooooo....

Then I closed, copied my mail directory from 9.6 across to the 10 profile folder, and opened Opera 10.

Now the Opera 10 process is sitting in taskmanager consuming 25% of CPU (quad core) and using a constant 19,980k. (Vista x64)

Did I do a silly copying the profile that way? It worked in previous releases; is the 10A1 not yet able to cope with that? (I have about 2GB in the mail folder)

...

Ahh. Just checked the changelog:

"This release uses a database format for Opera Mail (and feeds) incompatible with Kestrel. You will not be able to downgrade to a previous version of Opera and use Opera Mail after upgrading to Opera 10.0."

Remy 4. December 2008, 13:47

great! What about HTML in the email signatures?

Harish 4. December 2008, 13:51

It's really fast! serious visible changes in rendering engine!
Opera rox! :smile:

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 13:52

@Maymee: They are not working yet. See the changelog.

@Scottn1: We have not attempted to beat Chrome or WebKit in this release. There is no revoluntionary new JS engine in 10.0 Alpha 1, just modest performance improvements.

Benjamin 4. December 2008, 13:53

Nice release.

http://animepaper.net - crashes Opera


Works here and doesn't crash.

Flash hangs in Linux i386. :frown:


Flash 9 works fine here (Debian Lenny, kde4)


Copy-Pasting under Linux (i386) creates strange characters on the line endings, probably -> \r\n instead of \n

The YeOK 4. December 2008, 13:54

@ Junyor

Will we see a linux x86_64 release for this build?

Kondratev Artem 4. December 2008, 13:55

hacklb,
well, maybe I have a crash due to the 10th Flash? =)

Remy 4. December 2008, 13:56

Sorry Junyor. I guess my enthusiasm overrode the changelog! Homer: Doh!

ywtbhb 4. December 2008, 13:56

No JS speed improvement! NO memory control improvement ...

JK 4. December 2008, 13:59

finally :smile:

miataninja 4. December 2008, 13:59

Image loading bug present in 9.x still remains meaning some images on some webpages (this is inconsistent) don't load, instead leaving Very Big placemarkers. When the placemarker is selected, you can right-click and choose "Open image" - then the image is loaded. You can then go back and reload the page and it will display with the image.

Example pages: forum on page http://www.byggahus.se/forum/koek/ - the images for "paperclip.gif", "sticky.gif" don't load...

Arup Roy Chowdhury 4. December 2008, 14:00

Thank you for HTML mail, since Opera is my only mail client, this was much needed, rest of the stuff works smooth, thanks for inline spell check, another much needed tool. This version is quicker on javascript heavy sites compared to 9.62. Good job, 10 final would be awesome.

Tim Altman 4. December 2008, 14:03

@YeOK: See the Known Issues list in the UNIX changelog.

@ywtbhb: Your comment demonstrates a lack of knowledge of this release.

nataniel 4. December 2008, 14:06

I use Opera 10 for one hour now and I'm really happy of it. The major bugs I had with images on my Mac Leopard seem to have disappeared. The rendering is really fast. The JS is faster but far from the competitors. Maybe you will improve it later. Good Work Opera Team :smile:

I think I will switch back from FF3 to Opera 10. :D

A 100% Cocoa Opera would be fantastic!

The YeOK 4. December 2008, 14:08

@ Junyor

Thanks for the response, I'm sure that wasn't there when I looked.

Rijk 4. December 2008, 14:10

@LukinPl: which "quick search"? I couldn't see a problem yet. Other issues with Native skin are known here.

@mauritskorse: yes, the spell check mark looks strange in My Opera, depends ont he font apparently. We've got a bug report on that.

@Grrblt: let's discuss options and ideas for multilingual spell checking in the forum: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=259005

@Yndi: see the changelog, using a color scheme will mess up display of skin images with transparency. No idea what you mean with my.opera looking horrible. The site redesign is off-topic here :smile:

acaden 4. December 2008, 14:16

Will builds for Solaris SPARC be coming later?

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