If you have been watching the Opera headlines, you have probably noticed that we are introducing Opera Turbo in several products. Today we posted an Opera Labs release, so everyone can try it out.

Technology overview
Just like Opera Mini, Opera Turbo requests normal Web content through a proxy. As opposed to the Opera Mini proxy, which uses the OBML format, the Web Optimization Proxy we are using will handle normal web content: markup, styles, JavaScript, images, etc. The proxy also uses the standard HTTP protocol with various optimizations to better utilize available bandwidth. And it is this bandwith save which will give you a speed increase. That means, the slower your network is, the bigger your gain is. But it will also mean that if you are on a fast brodband connection, it might not be any faster at all.

What kind of Web content will be compressed?
Not all content will be compressed when you load a page with Opera Turbo turned on. For example, Flash and animated GIFs won't be compressed. In fact, Flash content won't be downloaded at all initially. Right now you will just be presented with a white box saying "plug-in content" (there will probably be a image there later on). But if you click that white space, the Flash content will be downloaded and will play right away.
If you think an image is compressed too much, you can open it separately (Right click, Open Image) and reload. When doing this, the image will not be compressed.

What pages will go through the proxy?
Not all pages can be compressed by our proxy and some pages—like Intranet pages—won't be compressed. Our server can't reach your Intranet pages, so we will detect that you are trying to reach an internal page and load them as usual. HTTPS pages, like your bank, also won't be loaded through the proxy.

Delayed script execution
Together with Opera Turbo we have also turned on delayed script execution. It will only be turned on if Opera Turbo is on, and not during normal browsing. It will make script-heavy Web pages render earlier, so you can see the content faster than you normally would.

There will be bugs
There is still a lot to do, but we are very interested in your feedback at this point. If you find pages that will never load no matter how many times you try (even after clearing your cache), or features that normally work in Opera stop working, please do report them using our bug wizard. The more detailed the steps to reproduce are, the easier it is for us to fix. This Opera Labs release should be close to what you saw in the last 10.0 snapshot. So if it did not work in the last snapshot, don't expect it to work in this Opera Labs release.

Warning: Although it should not, traffic that is not supposed to go through the proxy can in theory end up there anyway. We don't know of any cases where this will occur, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Remember it is an Opera Labs release.