Opera 9.5 Final Review

Opera Software seems to have successfully pipped Mozilla Foundation to the launch of their latest browse by a good 4 days. The final version of my favourite browser is finally out and I am feeling very smug about it. The worlds fastest browser, apparently, has gotten even faster. While no one seems to be paying attention to ‘the other browser ‘, we shall take a look at its latest features.

If you aren’t using Opera, I suggest you Download Opera 9.5. I’ll tell you why you need to.

Full text search

Every word of every page you ever visited is now indexed in Opera’s database. Its one step ahead of FireFox 3’s title and URL search. Which means that even if you can recall one word from that web page, Opera will dutifully lead you to it. Which means, even if you have the brains of Paris Hilton, forgetting a web page should be a dead and buried exercise.

Revamped interface

As you can see from the screen shot, the navigation buttons seem to have gone to the beauty parlour and so have the tabs. To open a new tab, there is a big triangle button to the right. I do keep confusing it with being on the left, but that wont take to long to used to, I guess. But that’s a very welcome change nevertheless. And of course, the looks are infinitely customizable by way of skins and widgets.

All throughout the betas and release candidates, Opera did not add the new interface. But when I installed the final version, I was in for a pleasant surprise. Opera 9.5 features a very glossy and modern looking interface to go with your OS.

You can also include the status bar to show inside the address bar itself. Which saves space and leaves you with a trifle more area to work in.

Improved Performance and Security

There are tonnes of performance and security improvements throughout and the performance part of it is instantly visible. Opera 9.5 is a lot more stable and starts fairly quick. Pages which are loaded with scripts are that much more faster. Sites like Digg are where you can see these performance enhancements. They may be small but they are significant. You can see the Opera 9.5 changelog and see for yoursef what exactly has been changed.

As for the scripts and CSS test, we’ll do them when Mozilla FireFox 3 is launched tomorrow. Simply because I don’t see the point of putting some numbers if they don’t offer any perspectives for you (BTW, you can help Mozilla create a world record of sorts by pledging to download FireFox3 tomorrow).

My gripes

• I’ve always wanted proper rich-text support, so that I can select even images for copy/pasting. That is one luxury we take for granted in FF and IE.
• Someone improve the performance of the BitTorrent client in Opera. It is slow enough to the point of being unusable.
• I’d like to have the “See selection source” in Opera. Its can be really nifty at times.

Conclusion: If you want a light, fast yet feature rich browser, Opera 9.5 is an excellent choice. There may be a few issues but I guess they can be overlooked.

SatishSays dot Com Rating

7.5/10

Beta Browser Wars: IE8 vs Firefox 3 vs Opera 9.5

One of the most debatable topics on the net is up for debate, yet again. Yes, we are talking browsers, the pieces of software that are everybody’s gateway to the mystical world of The Web. And which run into long pages of rants on various forums online.

All the 3 major browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Foundations Firefox and Opera Software’s Opera are going through an upgrade cycle. The beta versions are out and today we shall see what to expect from them.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

I would be lying if I were to say that I wasn’t surprised at such an early upgrade. I mean, IE6 was around for donkey’s years before the boffins at MS decided that it was time for IE7. Appearance wise, there is little that has changed, but the way pages are handled have. IE finally looks to be following all the web standards quite competently. But all this doesn’t really seem to increase performance at all. It still seems fairly sluggish, but then this is an early Beta and IE 8 gets the benefit of doubt from me.

With that safely tucked away, we have some cool new features like Activities (select text, and it’ll give you options to do something with it. Like search on a map or on any search engine) and WebSlices (MS speak for a spruced up version of RSS feeds. Only eBay and Facebook support this, as of now), an improved phishing filter and auto crash recovery. Oh boy, IE needs this one. All said and done, IE 8 is a step in the right direction.

IE8 Beta 1 Changelog

Download IE8

Mozilla FireFox 3 Beta 5

This is the browser that gave Microsoft the heebie-jeebies and for good reason. It was small, fast, infinitely customizable and best of all, it was open source. And given the Mozilla Foundations marketing muscle, the browser spread like wildfire and replaced the shoddy IE 6 on many a computer.

In the latest Beta, Mozilla seems to have addressed tons of performance issues and it does seem faster than the older one. They have also added a load of personal features which allows you to organize your favorites better. The address bar also allows you to search page titles, in case you forgot the name of ‘that’ website which sold salted peanuts.

My only gripe is that it takes a relatively long time to start up. I hope this will be fixed in the final version.

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5 Changelog

Download Firefox 3 Beta 5

Opera 9.5 Beta 2

I have been an Opera fan boy for as far as I can remember and have been using it since version 6. It’s always been ahead of its times and was the first browser to offer tabbed browsing. It also offers a mail client, bit torrent support, mouse gestures, widgets, themes apart from offering the old lady to cross the road, even if she doesn’t want to. Its claim to fame however was of being “The world’s fastest Internet browser”, which was a conclusion reached by many a tech magazine and website.

In the latest version, Opera offers better a completely search-able database of all your goddamned visited pages. Yes, even the content is indexed which is accessible from the address bar. There is little that it did not have in the first place, to be improved in the newer version. Though, there are lots of performance enhancements to keep you happy.

Opera 9.5 Beta 2 Changelog

Download Opera 9.5 Beta 2

I would have loved to do some performance testing, but since only Firefox is in the final stages of the Beta, it will, quite obviously, ace all tests. IE seems to lagging far behind in the script test, a bit too much for comfort, actually. So, we shall wait till the final versions of all the 3 browsers are released and we shall have a bigger Web 2.0 battle.

Till then, happy surfing.

Tags: browser, internet

FeedReader 3.1 RSS Reader Review

We love simplicity,dont we? And an emphatic yes when we get said simplicity for free. There, thats the bottom line for this review. I found this smart little piece of software in last month’s (December 07) Digit DVD, and I must say I’m quite impressed. Now there’s nothing out of the ordinary in this thing, but the fact that it was free,simple and smart made me want to review it.

Interface

Simple, clean, no-nonsense and intutive, that pretty much sums everything up about the interface. It uses the classic three pane view to show your feeds. Though, you do have other ways to display(2 column and news style). In my opinion, a newbie shouldn’t have any problem at all trying to organize their feeds. Brownie points for FeedReader.

Features

• FR has a feature called SmartFeed which allows you to sort feeds according to your whims and fancies. And while you are at it, you can convert a feed to a smartfeed and back. Whatay fun! [:-p].

• One more nifty feature is the pop-up notification. What this does, is give a small but not irritating, pop-up at the bottom notifying about any feed updates.

• All feeds are available for offline browsing.

• Supports all Windows platforms i.e. Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/3/XP/Vista.

• Works flawlessly even while using a proxy server.

• No spam, no ads, no nothing.

Performance

FeedReader comes in a 4MB package, and on my aging PC(P4 3.2GHz HT, 1GB Ram), it fired up very quickly. Thats why I say, the best things come in the smallest of packages.

 Screenshots

Conclusion

A supremely functional piece of sofware which is also very easy to use. I only wish it had some labelling feature, though. That would have made it the best RSS aggregator out there.

SatishSays dot Com Rating 7.5/10

Download FeedReader

Tags: feedreader, review, RSS, software