Rehearsing for Big Opening: Opera 10 Alpha
Opera measures up. With a new, faster version of the Presto engine and a 100/100 score in the Acid3 test, the browser might easily get under its competition’s skin.
Opera Software has come out with an alpha version of its Opera 10 that it's presenting to the browser world as a "preview". The alpha should give users a taste of Opera's new rendering engine, known as Presto and currently in version 2.2. In their press release, the company indicates that "Opera Presto 2.2 offers approximately a 30-percent-faster browsing experience as compared to Opera Presto 2.1, introduced in Opera 9.5 in June 2008."
Opera can also brag that it passed the Acid3 test with flying colors. It's easy to confirm the score by opening the Opera 10 alpha to the acid3.acidtests.org website, which will resolve to the page shown in Figure 2. Opera 10 also provides a spell-checker as you type and an auto-updating feature to the newest available Opera version.
The Opera developers, who are now expecting feedback for the alpha, are especially excited about users' possibility to render web pages supporting new technologies. Among these technologies are Web Fonts and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files for transparent graphics that have an additional alpha channel for RGB and hue/saturation/lightness (HSL). Not least of all, Opera's Dragonfly can inspect HTTP headers and edit Document Object Model (DOM) files to help in website debugging.
The final Opera 10 should appear in 2009, exactly when isn't clear. The alpha, intended for exploratory use only, is available for download here.
| Gallery (2 images) |
|---|
|
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.