ray|raven
Think Zen.
Following all that hype about the new Opera, I decided to try the beta.
Here’s a list of the new features exclusive to the 9.5 series , codenamed Kestrel.
1.Opera Link. 2.History Search. 3.Improved Mail Client.
Opera Link:
*www.opera.com/img/products/desktop/next/tf-link.jpg
The Opera Link feature is a new feature to the 9.5 series of Opera and the 4 series of Opera Mini.
It saves the Bookmarks, Speed Dial and the Personal bar online.
I had tried Flock before with the option to publish bookmarks to del.icio.us and wasn’t quite impressed with it.
One of the most impressive features I found was that Opera Link allowed multiple log-ins and kept the sessions running for all multiple log-ins.
Also once logged into Opera Link, the browser remembers the log-in data and logs you in on the restart of the browser,
unless you log-out before closing the browser.
The link option is available by clicking File > Synchronize Opera.
On clicking it, a window opens asking you to sign-in.
If you have a my-Opera account, you can use to sign-in to Opera Link.
There is also an option to select what you want to synchronize.
You can also sign-up there itself if you don’t have a my-Opera account.
Once signed-in, the status bar shows the user name with which you have logged in and the status of synchronization.
The Synchronization is quick and needs no user intervention.
This is indeed a very nice feature in my opinion as it helps keep my bookmarks organized between systems.
The bookmarks and Speed-Dial can also be checked from other browsers.link.opera.com provides this feature.
This again, is a very nice option, as we might need to check the bookmarks with no Opera available.
I used Opera Link from three sources,to test Link.
1. Opera 9.5 beta on ZenWalk Linux 4.2
2. Opera 9.5 beta for Windows XP.
3. Opera Mini 4 on Nokia 6300.
I could log-in simultaneously on the three places and not lose connectivity.
Opera was clever enough to store bookmarks originating from the mobile into a separate folder called Opera Mini.
Although the bookmarks were synced nicely,I did have some problems with the Speed-Dial.
For some reason, the speed dial wouldn’t sync sometimes.
And all of a sudden while I was browsing the speed dial would start syncing.
Other than that minor problem, I didn’t encounter any problems with Opera Link.
My only gripe was that it would be nice, if Opera synced toolbar layouts and widgets too.
History Search:
*www.opera.com/img/products/desktop/next/tf-history.jpg
This is another new feature in the 9.5 series, which to my surprise, I found really helpful in less than an hour of usage.
What it does is really is, add history searching abilities to the address bar.
While it may sound simple, it’s quite helpful.
Opera indexes every word in every page you visit so,
typing a word say “Linux would not only show you the list of addresses beginning with “Linux”,
but also all the pages that contain the word in them.The word is highlighted and also the date and time of last visit is displayed.
This is a very nice option, quite revolutionary in my opinion,
People do tend to forget to bookmark pages and have to resort to searching through pages of history to find it.
This feature makes it a lot simpler.
Improved Mail Client:
*www.opera.com/img/products/desktop/next/tf-mail.png
If you install 9.5 over a current installation of Opera with a mail account configured,as I did over my 9.23 install,
Opera now takes time to re-index the mails, supposedly for faster access.
I couldn’t find any difference, perhaps due to the fact that I barely had ~50 mails in my test account.
I used a GMail account to test the mail client.
The Google support pages contain info on how to set-up the mail client with IMAP.
It was easy enough to configure, and it started off very quickly indeed.
The Inbox,Drafts etc appear as folders,
Also, the labels in GMail appear as folders,which might appeal to some users.
You can select which folders to update regularly.
This is a very nice feature as you can uncheck folders such as Spam. Also, the notification system has been revamped, each mail generates as separate notification.
Overall, the new mail client was very stable.
Although, i couldn’t experience much of a performance boost over 9.23.
The Browser: Faster Than Ever
After my excitement for the new features subsided, I decided to see how better the browser was compared to the stable 9.23.
Amazingly, the 9.5 beta opened pages faster than 9.23.
The speed difference is obvious when compared against other browsers, especially IE.
Scrolling in the page, is now smoother than before too.
The Rest: Not many changes
Nothing much changed in the rest of the browser, and still works like stable version.
The In-Page search has been improved and now works like in Firefox.
Immediate feedback to typed words is now included in 9.5.This is a much appreciated improvement.
Although, this works only while using the search-field on the toolbars.
When trying to search using Ctrl+F,it’s still the old search.
The Content Blocker seemed to be more intelligent,
Once you block content on a page, same/similar content is blocked when you navigate to pages originating from the same site.
This I found especially useful, blocking nasty flash ads that are becoming common these days.
Verdict:
The current release is a beta.However, it runs like a stable release.
The only issue I had was that Opera used to hang suddenly.
I had about 6 feeds subscribed through Opera and whenever they were being checked for updates, it used to hang, until the check was over.
After Removing the feeds, it was back to normal.
This is indeed strange as I had the same set of feeds in 9.23 and I don’t recall Opera ever hanging for me.
Other than that,I had no issues, and in my opinion, its quite stable.
In fact I have replaced 9.23 with 9.5 on both my systems.
The only things I miss are the blogging and media features from Flock.
Opera already has quite a few features that other browsers lack,
such as the ability to create searches from any field on the web, ability to natively download torrent files etc.
Adding to those, the new features in 9.5 are quite revolutionary and in my opinion, put Opera way ahead of other browsers.
Source : My Blog(Jus Started)
Here’s a list of the new features exclusive to the 9.5 series , codenamed Kestrel.
1.Opera Link. 2.History Search. 3.Improved Mail Client.
Opera Link:
*www.opera.com/img/products/desktop/next/tf-link.jpg
The Opera Link feature is a new feature to the 9.5 series of Opera and the 4 series of Opera Mini.
It saves the Bookmarks, Speed Dial and the Personal bar online.
I had tried Flock before with the option to publish bookmarks to del.icio.us and wasn’t quite impressed with it.
One of the most impressive features I found was that Opera Link allowed multiple log-ins and kept the sessions running for all multiple log-ins.
Also once logged into Opera Link, the browser remembers the log-in data and logs you in on the restart of the browser,
unless you log-out before closing the browser.
The link option is available by clicking File > Synchronize Opera.
On clicking it, a window opens asking you to sign-in.
If you have a my-Opera account, you can use to sign-in to Opera Link.
There is also an option to select what you want to synchronize.
You can also sign-up there itself if you don’t have a my-Opera account.
Once signed-in, the status bar shows the user name with which you have logged in and the status of synchronization.
The Synchronization is quick and needs no user intervention.
This is indeed a very nice feature in my opinion as it helps keep my bookmarks organized between systems.
The bookmarks and Speed-Dial can also be checked from other browsers.link.opera.com provides this feature.
This again, is a very nice option, as we might need to check the bookmarks with no Opera available.
I used Opera Link from three sources,to test Link.
1. Opera 9.5 beta on ZenWalk Linux 4.2
2. Opera 9.5 beta for Windows XP.
3. Opera Mini 4 on Nokia 6300.
I could log-in simultaneously on the three places and not lose connectivity.
Opera was clever enough to store bookmarks originating from the mobile into a separate folder called Opera Mini.
Although the bookmarks were synced nicely,I did have some problems with the Speed-Dial.
For some reason, the speed dial wouldn’t sync sometimes.
And all of a sudden while I was browsing the speed dial would start syncing.
Other than that minor problem, I didn’t encounter any problems with Opera Link.
My only gripe was that it would be nice, if Opera synced toolbar layouts and widgets too.
History Search:
*www.opera.com/img/products/desktop/next/tf-history.jpg
This is another new feature in the 9.5 series, which to my surprise, I found really helpful in less than an hour of usage.
What it does is really is, add history searching abilities to the address bar.
While it may sound simple, it’s quite helpful.
Opera indexes every word in every page you visit so,
typing a word say “Linux would not only show you the list of addresses beginning with “Linux”,
but also all the pages that contain the word in them.The word is highlighted and also the date and time of last visit is displayed.
This is a very nice option, quite revolutionary in my opinion,
People do tend to forget to bookmark pages and have to resort to searching through pages of history to find it.
This feature makes it a lot simpler.
Improved Mail Client:
*www.opera.com/img/products/desktop/next/tf-mail.png
If you install 9.5 over a current installation of Opera with a mail account configured,as I did over my 9.23 install,
Opera now takes time to re-index the mails, supposedly for faster access.
I couldn’t find any difference, perhaps due to the fact that I barely had ~50 mails in my test account.
I used a GMail account to test the mail client.
The Google support pages contain info on how to set-up the mail client with IMAP.
It was easy enough to configure, and it started off very quickly indeed.
The Inbox,Drafts etc appear as folders,
Also, the labels in GMail appear as folders,which might appeal to some users.
You can select which folders to update regularly.
This is a very nice feature as you can uncheck folders such as Spam. Also, the notification system has been revamped, each mail generates as separate notification.
Overall, the new mail client was very stable.
Although, i couldn’t experience much of a performance boost over 9.23.
The Browser: Faster Than Ever
After my excitement for the new features subsided, I decided to see how better the browser was compared to the stable 9.23.
Amazingly, the 9.5 beta opened pages faster than 9.23.
The speed difference is obvious when compared against other browsers, especially IE.
Scrolling in the page, is now smoother than before too.
The Rest: Not many changes
Nothing much changed in the rest of the browser, and still works like stable version.
The In-Page search has been improved and now works like in Firefox.
Immediate feedback to typed words is now included in 9.5.This is a much appreciated improvement.
Although, this works only while using the search-field on the toolbars.
When trying to search using Ctrl+F,it’s still the old search.
The Content Blocker seemed to be more intelligent,
Once you block content on a page, same/similar content is blocked when you navigate to pages originating from the same site.
This I found especially useful, blocking nasty flash ads that are becoming common these days.
Verdict:
The current release is a beta.However, it runs like a stable release.
The only issue I had was that Opera used to hang suddenly.
I had about 6 feeds subscribed through Opera and whenever they were being checked for updates, it used to hang, until the check was over.
After Removing the feeds, it was back to normal.
This is indeed strange as I had the same set of feeds in 9.23 and I don’t recall Opera ever hanging for me.
Other than that,I had no issues, and in my opinion, its quite stable.
In fact I have replaced 9.23 with 9.5 on both my systems.
The only things I miss are the blogging and media features from Flock.
Opera already has quite a few features that other browsers lack,
such as the ability to create searches from any field on the web, ability to natively download torrent files etc.
Adding to those, the new features in 9.5 are quite revolutionary and in my opinion, put Opera way ahead of other browsers.
Source : My Blog(Jus Started)
Last edited:
