A couple of months ago Opera released the alpha release of the latest version of their web browser. Among the touted updates are:
- Updated rendering engine with better standard support and faster speeds
- Inline spell checking
- Web fonts (a way of embedding fonts using CSS without resorting to image replacement tools
- CSS transparency
- More CSS3 support
I’ve never had any problems with Opera in the past; I’ve never been a fan, but I’ve never felt it was a bad browser. However, having played around with Opera 10 for a bit, I can’t say I’m very impressed.
Despite what they’re saying, I actually found the new rendering engine appears rather slow. I’m not sure what it is that gives this impression (obviously they’re not going to say ‘fast engine’ if it’s not), maybe I’m just too used to Safari.
Something else that I’m too used to in Safari is the chrome itself and lack of smooth scrolling. I’m sure this doesn’t bother current Opera users, but I would find it too irritating to start using the software permanently (in fact, it’s the reason I stopped testing Opera 10).
What I also didn’t understand is a dashed horizontal line appearing across the window where the fold was when I scrolled down occasionally. If anyone has any ideas what this is, then please let me know!
It may seem that I hate everything about Opera now, but that’s not quite true. I can’t remember if it’s in Opera 9, but I like the autocomplete from the history. Unlike Safari which only completes the entire URL, Opera will complete from anywhere within the address. So if you type example.com and have subdomain.example.com in your history, the latter will also appear.
I’m sure Opera 10 is a big change, especially for the rendering engine. However I’m just too used to Safari to be able to change the browser that I use. There are some important and useful updates, but even with these I still can’t really see Opera as anything much more than “just another web browser”.
I’ll vote Opera for the SVG animation.
Maybe security issues, common/new features, speed, web standards are their first priorities rather than SVG support.
Do you use Opera yourself? How come you prefer it over the other browsers, like Firefox?