Opera 9, the new version of the most underrated browser, brings a fresh look and more goodies than anyone would expect.
Opera Widgets
Widgets are small web applications that run directly on a user’s desktop. They can show stock information, weather reports, news headlines, calendars, latest posts from your favorite blog, games. They live outside Opera's window, but are active only when Opera is running. They are similar to Google Desktop's panels, but Opera widgets don't clutter your desktop: they are visible only when you want to. Just press F6 in Opera and discover a new world.
What you see in the screenshot are:
* KnowledgeMate, a widget that searches Google, Wikipedia and Yahoo News
* Pandora - the radio that plays your favourite music in a mini version
* a clock and a slick calendar
* a slideshow with pictures from Opera Community
* latest posts from Google Operating System
Customize any page
Remove images from pages, block ads, choose if you want cookes from a site, enable or disable JavaScript for a site, enable Java, SVG or other plugins only for the sites you trust. If you find Flash ads from a site obtrusive, you can disable them and you'll never see them again in Opera.
BitTorrent download
You don't need a BitTorrent application if you have Opera 9. You can download torrents like any other file, you can even search for BitTorrent files from the toolbar.
Thumbnail preview for tabs
If you don't remember what site is in each tab, you can hover on the title and see the URL, a thumbnail and the complete title.
Better rich-text editor
You can edit your Blogger posts like you do in Firefox or Explorer, you can use your favourite webmail site to write mails with custom colors, fonts, lists and links.
Your favorite Firefox features
Search engines are editable, you can add a search engine from any searchbox. Opera has about:config, to change your preferences faster. View the source of any page using the new source viewer that has a compact look.
For geeks only
Opera 9 adds support for: CSS 3 (not complete), XSLT 1.0, XPath 1.0, Web Forms 2.0, SVG 1.1. Opera 9 passes Acid 2 test.
Download Opera 9 Beta
Related:
Make Gmail Chat work with Opera 9