Opera 9.5
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in Reviews
June13th2008
Do you hate Opera? I know too many people that don't like it, and in the last weeks, it even started to piss me off, although I use it as my primary Web browser. Anyway, we'll talk about my issues with Opera 9.27 a bit later, because there's quite a lot to say.
Now, it's enough to say that the long-awaited Opera 9.5 browser was released today, and since it was a pleasure to update it, I will share my experience with you, while trying to come up with one of the first Opera 9.5 reviews on the Web, and - hopefully - the first honest review, and written from the point of view of an old Opera user.
Setup
When I tried to use the built in update feature, I ended up with a strange message saying that Opera 9.5 wasn't available in my language, although I had the English version. As I saw this, I thought that backing up all my current Opera setup would be a good idea, so I started packing the Opera folder(primitive yet effective backup approach, when talking about Opera), after downloading the setup package from the Opera 9.5 download page, of course.
As you can see above, the first thing that strikes you in the face is the new Welcome screen of the setup program. It's new, I know, and despite the fact I've seen better, this one is simple, yet stylish, and has black and red - one of my favorite color combinations...
OK, so you should - obviously - select the "Upgrade" option when asked, if you are already using Opera, then move on. I had no special problems while updating to Opera 9.5, and I guess you shouldn't, either.
At last, be sure that "Run Opera when I press Finish" is checked, press "Finish," and get ready to rock!
Interface
To be honest, I don't see anything that special with Opera 9.5, when looking at it. Some icons have been changed, the Status Bar got a few new features, but it's not what I expected. So...what was I expecting? I can't exactly tell why, but I had in mind that Opera 9.5 will have a completely overhauled interface. Good for me, that's not true.
Anyway, since after updating, I remained with my heavily customized layout I had before, it's not a surprise that I still feel like using Opera 9.27, except the fact that now...everything is much, much better, as we're going to see right away!
Features
Features, just great! Now, let's leave the features nicely aligned, waiting to be checked, because I have to tell you about the problems I had with Opera 9.27 lately, problems which are now gone.
As we all know, Internet Explorer can be anything but a memory hog, which is not true with Firefox, for example, which is a very good browser, but a huge memory hog. Unfortunately, the same is true with Opera. Well, "it was," because while Opera 9.27 was using over 300MB of memory most of the time, in some cases even going above 500MB, Opera 9.5 only uses about 200MB, most of the time less, and that's in the same conditions - with about 40 websites loaded simultaneously.
In the last few months, Opera 9.27 kept crashing on me on a regular basis. Most of these crashes were not random, since I noticed that, as an example, when trying to download from certain FTP servers, Opera would crash. Opera 9.5 didn't crash so far, but I guess I'll have to think about this again in a month or two.
Next, we have YouTube and other similar sites. What's about them? Embedded Flash video players, of course. OK, what's that special with them? Well, lately I wasn't able to play any video content in Opera, because it kept freezing the video, and I had no sound. Obviously, same sites worked great in other browsers.
At last, there's speed and low CPU load when playing browser-based Flash games or video content. Opera 9.5 is much better than its predecessor at first sight, and I need no tests to prove that!
Since I said "tests," let's see how does Opera 9.5 handle the Acid tests, shall we? Anyway, don't expect screenshots, because it's enough to give you the scores and links to do the tests for yourselves, so here we go: Acid1 - perfect, Acid2 - perfect, and Acid3 - 83/100. As a side note, it's enough to say that, in Acid3, Firefox 2 scores 53/100, while Safari 3 reaches an impressive 75/100.
Opera has all the features you'd need from a modern browser, and even more - BitTorrent support built into the download manager, custom content blocking, tabs and sessions, mouse gestures, quick find, and others, but there are only two things worth being mentioned before I draw the conclusions...
First, there's the new browser engine, which Opera claims to be "More than 2x faster than Opera 9.2 in rendering JavaScript and HTML." I didn't use a timer to compare loading times, but it's surely faster, as I said before. This new browser engine comes together with a very useful Opera Link feature which allows you to sync your bookmarks between mobile phone, computer, and even more than just that.
Second, there's Opera Fraud Protection. Phishing, malware? No more! As you can see above, a dangerous site is market so you can't miss it. Just keep your eyes on the address bar, and be sure to report any malicious websites you pass by, if they are not recognized by the browser as "evil."
That should be it for now. I know there's a lot left to say, so feel free to draw your own conclusions, but first, let's see mine!
Final Thoughts
What do you think I should say about Opera 9.5? I love it! It wasn't about writing the Opera 9.5 review, after all. In the end, it was about restoring a user's faith into a program that started to become a bit of a disappointment. Did it work? Oh, yeah!
Opera 9.5 is faster, more secure and more reliable than before. Opera Link is a handy addition, and Opera Fraud Protection is one of the first bricks added to the foundation of a safer Web for everyone.
Weak spots? Good question! Probably there are still a lot of websites that won't display properly in Opera, simply because they were build for IE 6, in most cases, but I still have to bump into such sites, at least with Opera 9.5.
Leave the past behind, and forget anything you heard about Opera until today. Opera has just reborn, and if someone would ask me to choose a nickname for Opera 9.5, that would surely be "Phoenix." I'll be here, waiting for your own impressions regarding the best browser in the world today. That's it!
Developer: Opera Software ASA
Price: free
Full version download: Download
Now, it's enough to say that the long-awaited Opera 9.5 browser was released today, and since it was a pleasure to update it, I will share my experience with you, while trying to come up with one of the first Opera 9.5 reviews on the Web, and - hopefully - the first honest review, and written from the point of view of an old Opera user.
Setup
When I tried to use the built in update feature, I ended up with a strange message saying that Opera 9.5 wasn't available in my language, although I had the English version. As I saw this, I thought that backing up all my current Opera setup would be a good idea, so I started packing the Opera folder(primitive yet effective backup approach, when talking about Opera), after downloading the setup package from the Opera 9.5 download page, of course.
OK, so you should - obviously - select the "Upgrade" option when asked, if you are already using Opera, then move on. I had no special problems while updating to Opera 9.5, and I guess you shouldn't, either.
At last, be sure that "Run Opera when I press Finish" is checked, press "Finish," and get ready to rock!
Interface
To be honest, I don't see anything that special with Opera 9.5, when looking at it. Some icons have been changed, the Status Bar got a few new features, but it's not what I expected. So...what was I expecting? I can't exactly tell why, but I had in mind that Opera 9.5 will have a completely overhauled interface. Good for me, that's not true.
Anyway, since after updating, I remained with my heavily customized layout I had before, it's not a surprise that I still feel like using Opera 9.27, except the fact that now...everything is much, much better, as we're going to see right away!
Features
Features, just great! Now, let's leave the features nicely aligned, waiting to be checked, because I have to tell you about the problems I had with Opera 9.27 lately, problems which are now gone.
As we all know, Internet Explorer can be anything but a memory hog, which is not true with Firefox, for example, which is a very good browser, but a huge memory hog. Unfortunately, the same is true with Opera. Well, "it was," because while Opera 9.27 was using over 300MB of memory most of the time, in some cases even going above 500MB, Opera 9.5 only uses about 200MB, most of the time less, and that's in the same conditions - with about 40 websites loaded simultaneously.
In the last few months, Opera 9.27 kept crashing on me on a regular basis. Most of these crashes were not random, since I noticed that, as an example, when trying to download from certain FTP servers, Opera would crash. Opera 9.5 didn't crash so far, but I guess I'll have to think about this again in a month or two.
Next, we have YouTube and other similar sites. What's about them? Embedded Flash video players, of course. OK, what's that special with them? Well, lately I wasn't able to play any video content in Opera, because it kept freezing the video, and I had no sound. Obviously, same sites worked great in other browsers.
At last, there's speed and low CPU load when playing browser-based Flash games or video content. Opera 9.5 is much better than its predecessor at first sight, and I need no tests to prove that!
Since I said "tests," let's see how does Opera 9.5 handle the Acid tests, shall we? Anyway, don't expect screenshots, because it's enough to give you the scores and links to do the tests for yourselves, so here we go: Acid1 - perfect, Acid2 - perfect, and Acid3 - 83/100. As a side note, it's enough to say that, in Acid3, Firefox 2 scores 53/100, while Safari 3 reaches an impressive 75/100.
Opera has all the features you'd need from a modern browser, and even more - BitTorrent support built into the download manager, custom content blocking, tabs and sessions, mouse gestures, quick find, and others, but there are only two things worth being mentioned before I draw the conclusions...
First, there's the new browser engine, which Opera claims to be "More than 2x faster than Opera 9.2 in rendering JavaScript and HTML." I didn't use a timer to compare loading times, but it's surely faster, as I said before. This new browser engine comes together with a very useful Opera Link feature which allows you to sync your bookmarks between mobile phone, computer, and even more than just that.
Second, there's Opera Fraud Protection. Phishing, malware? No more! As you can see above, a dangerous site is market so you can't miss it. Just keep your eyes on the address bar, and be sure to report any malicious websites you pass by, if they are not recognized by the browser as "evil."
That should be it for now. I know there's a lot left to say, so feel free to draw your own conclusions, but first, let's see mine!
Final Thoughts
What do you think I should say about Opera 9.5? I love it! It wasn't about writing the Opera 9.5 review, after all. In the end, it was about restoring a user's faith into a program that started to become a bit of a disappointment. Did it work? Oh, yeah!
Opera 9.5 is faster, more secure and more reliable than before. Opera Link is a handy addition, and Opera Fraud Protection is one of the first bricks added to the foundation of a safer Web for everyone.
Weak spots? Good question! Probably there are still a lot of websites that won't display properly in Opera, simply because they were build for IE 6, in most cases, but I still have to bump into such sites, at least with Opera 9.5.
Leave the past behind, and forget anything you heard about Opera until today. Opera has just reborn, and if someone would ask me to choose a nickname for Opera 9.5, that would surely be "Phoenix." I'll be here, waiting for your own impressions regarding the best browser in the world today. That's it!
Developer: Opera Software ASA
Price: free
Full version download: Download
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10 Comments on Opera 9.5
On 06/13/2008 at 9:00 am Dwayne Charrington said:
After reading this I decided to download the new Opera release just now. I tend to use Opera on and off sometimes, but I am an avid Firefox user. But, I am not a closed minded Firefox user that thinks it is the most superior browser on the Internet. I've always thought that Opera had the upper hand when it came to load times, memory usage, cpu usage and it's light-weightedness.
One thing that I use Firefox is the adblock extension and it's plethora of other extensions that make it a really awesome web browser.
I'll be sure to extensively test the new version. Thanks for the honest and very influential review.
- Dwayne Charrington.
http://thricescene.com
On 06/13/2008 at 12:12 pm Anonymouse said:
Hey could it be that you're still using the old skin?
Opera 9.5 does import skins and there IS a new default skin in black & red.
On 06/13/2008 at 12:45 pm White Eagle said:
You will see the new interface if you choose the default skin.
On 06/13/2008 at 1:11 pm Codrut Nistor said:
Yeah, I know opera imports skins, I already had a few installed. I checked the default skin in the meantime too, but I am staying with my Tango skin, for now.
On 06/13/2008 at 5:02 pm toblakai said:
Your screenshot when you talk about the new interface is really misleading, since Opera 9.5 DOES have a very new skin, while you are just showing off some custom-installed skin of yours while giving it off as being the new skin.
On 06/13/2008 at 5:48 pm Codrut Nistor said:
I am sorry if I mislead you, but I never said the new skin is different. The interface is about the same as Opera 9.27, we just have a different default skin. Skin is not interface, and the other way around, obviously. I am sure those crazy about the looks of their browser will always find something better than Opera...
On 06/16/2008 at 9:00 am BakaNeko said:
>One thing that I use Firefox is the adblock extension and it's plethora of other extensions that make it a really awesome web browser.
To the first poster, most AdBlock lists used in FF can be adapted to Opera use. It's the same basic principle, only you have to manually updste the blocker file.
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3 trackback(s) on Opera 9.5
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