So it was just announced that Firefox 3.0 will be coming on Tuesday, but lets not get ahead of ourselves… Opera 9.5 is here today! The Opera team has worked tirelessly to bring you the next generation browser that millions of people will find comfort in using, and what they have to show for their work is something they can really be proud of. The new Opera 9.5 not only looks great, but it also harnesses the speed and power we’ve come to love in the browser.
Before we jump right in to what’s new, lets first take a look at some of the things the development team wanted to point out:
- The number of Opera users has more than doubled since the release of 9.0
- We fixed a new record of bugs, including 2350 showstoppers
- The desktop team ate 12 pizzas while fixing bugs in 9.5 RC
- IMAP is up to 4 times as fast in 9.5 than in 9.2
- Almost 500.000 of you were already using betas of 9.5
Just 12 pizzas in two days? Come on guys… here I thought you were real programmers! 
A complete list of changes is available, but here’s a general overview of what’s new according to Opera Watch:
- Opera Link synchronizes your bookmarks, Speed Dial, and notes between Opera on different computers, and even links to Opera Mini on your mobile
- Enhanced address bar searches your entire browsing history, including the contents of each page
- Security enhancements: malware protection, improved fraud protection, and support for Extended Validation SSL Certificates
- New rendering engine with improved site compatibility and performance
- Opera Dragonfly, the long-awaited tools for web developers
- New skin
I strongly believe that the Opera Link technology is going to be something that will attract a large number of new users, especially those that use Opera Mini on a mobile device. That way they’ll be able to keep their bookmarks in sync no matter where they are at.
In addition to that list I would like to add that the mail client has undergone a tremendous overhaul that brings both performance and feature enhancements. If all of this sounds like something you want to try then maybe you should go grab yourself a hardy helping of Opera 9.5. Otherwise you can hold out for Firefox 3.0 which will be here in just a few days!
Thanks to Oropher, Omar, and Cody for the tips!
Awesome-o-o!!!
still can’t get flash to work on linux on the eee – frustrating! even with the flash 10 beta manually installed. great browser and site though
I’ve been using it for a few hours and it works great!!! Page loading is unbeliavably fast, try for example Gmail, it loads in an instant!
They didn’t say how the big the pizzas were. If they were extra-large from NYPD then I could see them only eating 12. I picked up one of those one time, thing was so dang big I had to put in the bed of my truck as I couldn’t get it to fit in the cab.
I don’t know, but Opera is not my cup of tea. Opera is a very cold company, maybe because they’re in Norway. Brrrr. Their support forum is very weak and unhelpful. Many of the sites that I use don’t render properly, making it very unreliable.
I’ve tried very hard to be friendly with Opera, but the fat lady just won’t sing to me. Sorry Opera!
Hey Cybernet gang…
A USB portable version has been released by a guy who does it as a side-project.
Never understood why the PortableApps site didn’t take it on as well instead of just sticking with Firefox.
Anyway, here’s the link. Definately worth using if you like running your apps/browsers off USB sticks or other portable devices:
Opera@USB mobile Opera – portable Opera for USB / flash drive
[opera-usb.com]
Just need to clean it up to personalize it with your own choices for SpeedDial items and Homepage. Primarly set up with pages for the project by default.
–Cheers
@Claus: You know Opera Link could really make this the ultimate portable browser.
Opera 9.5 has unbeatable features, a sharp new theme, the most intuitive tab bar out there, incredible performance and great recourse use. Just tried Yahoo! Mail, and even after manually bypassing the browser check, the app stops cold just as it starts to load. That’s a shame.
Whatever, Fx3’s not bad.
@Omar: I’m in the same boat.
It’s kinda funny, Opera isn’t supported because of low market share, yet low market share seems to be in part caused by lack of support.
I just downloaded and installed Opera 9.5 out of pure curiosity. I tried to open my second page of “My Yahoo”, and guess what? It won’t open, plus it freezes the page.
I refreshed the page to put it back to work, but there’s no way I could open my second page. This is a loss of time, which I don’t have plenty of.
I don’t seem to see that Opera is all that fast. In my computer Flock and Firefox perform much faster.
This is what I mean that the fat lady refuses to sing for me. I prefer to use Flock and Firefox—they’re reliable!
It does seem a little zippier than Firefox for loading Gmail. Unfortunately the contact management in the new Gmail still has some quirks on Opera.
I’m not sure why he hasn’t taken on Opera either, but there could be some kind of licensing problem. I’m not sure if the Opera@USB guy has the official permission of Opera to create the project?
That is a shame because it’s also somewhat the fault of web developers who don’t take the time to test their site in Opera. I definitely get what you’re saying though. What Opera should really do if they want to create a killer browser is adapt the same rendering engine the Firefox uses. I doubt that will ever happen, but it would solve many of the issues people have with sites not displaying properly.
Huh, interesting. I don’t have any problems pulling up My Yahoo. Guess they didn’t get all of those bugs worked out.
@Omar: Do a clean install of Opera 9.5 (not upgrading from 9.27) and try again.
With Firefox 3, there’s just no reason to budge and try anything else
RE opera and flash on linux i feel like an idiot! somehow plugins got disabled, after turning on in prefs everything is good. typing this from opera on the eee, great stuff!
here are instructions for anyone who needs help:
DL the installer from blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/ and extract the libflashplayer.so
Next, copy it to your ~/.opera/plugins folder (Make it if it doesn’t exist)
Then edit your ~/.opera/pluginpath.ini and add something like /home/user/.opera/plugins=1 to the bottom.
Version 9.5 and still no support for extensions… NEXT! Seriously though, as long as Opera doesn’t support extensions it will not beat Firefox.
I’ve been using Opera for a while now about a year since v9.xx…all was good till v.9.27.
I gave this v9.5 a shot since the upgrade dialogue poped up when I loaded up Opera.
Everything was going good…the look & feel is good…I choose no themes so Black & White goes good with Vista.
There were a couple of gripes though which made me revert back to v9.27.
1. There’s this feature in Opera when you hightlight text & then you right click it has option of “Copy to Note” so that is in my Side Panel. It’s still there in v9.5 BUT everytime I close Opera & start it back the “Notes” column reads the Notes from note no.1
This type of thing didn’t used to happen in v9.27 it used to remember what note I was reading even though I exited Opera.
That’s a real big Deal Breaker for me…minor but it’s important for me coz I have like about 100 notes in there.
2.What’s up with the “system tray icon” seriously? There is absolutely no way to disable it through Opera’s settings…I searched everywhere there seems to be no option which exists to disable it!
The only way I see I can disable it is thorough Windows Taskbar Settings…which I don’t want at all…why should I go all the way to Taskbar settings…hell there’s ton’s of applications which give the option to show tray icon or not. I expect the same from Opera.
In my view there is absolutely no need for a Tray Icon in the first place! Quicklaunch does the job!
I purposely “crashed” Opera by going in task manager & ending the Opera.exe process…then relaunched Opera again there’s 2 icons in the system tray! I have to hover my mouse pointer over one of those icons to make it disappear.
I Closed Opera this way 5 times & guess what there were 5 icons in the system tray!
All in all I would recommend v9.5 to new users or to those who don’t use the Note Feature & are not bothered with extra stuff hanging in your system tray.
For me I guess I’ll have to wait for the next version’s for these 2 things to get sorted out or I’m keeping my v9.27!
@Pieter
Please see this list [files.myopera.com] and then tell me what functionality you miss in Opera.
Nice list. However, these things are just a workaround in the form of widgets, tweaks and EXE installers. I’d like to see a universal add-on installer in Opera.
I tried it but didn’t like the fact that I can’t delete Google as the search provider.
How is that the openness Google pretends to be? I can delete every other search providers in Opera but Google’s.
As long as Opera locks up the option of purging Google out of my sight, I’m not going to use it any soon.
@ Ryan : Opera@USB does have Opera soft’s permission.
@ Jay : Evem if you have a large no. of notes you can easily locate the one you are looking for by using the search feature.
@Pallab – Well thx for pointing that out but I already knew that…see the thing with me is I’ve customized my Opera in such a way that there’s a list of websites at the top toolbar I only vist handful of sites..so basically the main reason I switched to Opera was I didn’t have to type addresses or locate bookmarks like in firefox….I just use my wireless mouse for surfing so with that in mind it really is a lot of work to search for typing for a particular note…I know it’s lazy on my part lol…but still I would like to keep it how it is.
Anyway…anybody have any idea’s on how to get rid of the tray icon? I might go v9.5 still if just the tray icon disappears!
Jay: use ‘notrayicon’ command-line parameter in shortcut (opera.exe /notrayicon)
The System Tray icon is there because you can minimize the browser to the tray instead of to the Taskbar. If you don’t want the icon you should be able to add a switch to the Opera shortcut to block the icon from showing up. Try adding the “/notrayicon” switch as “x” pointed out. This was just added back in January.
@Ryan – thanks I will give it a go.
But something weird just happened! I installed the same file of Opera v9.5 exe in my Virtual Machine of Windows XP ( I had never installed Opera in there before) guess what? The tray icon doesn’t show up!!
What’s going on? lol!
Anyway I got another idea sorta…I will uninstall v9.27…then do a clean install of v9.5 & see if the tray icon pops up or not….if it doesn’t then all & good BUT I will loose all my settings & bookmarks…how am I supposed to make a profile back-up of Opera?
I guess I’ll give it a go & first make a profile back-up!
Ok I got rid of the tray icon thanks to you guys! Cheers!
The reason why The Tray Icon wasn’t showing up in XP was coz I hadn’t configured the mail/feed thingy which it asks for when you load up v9.5 for the first time…when you configure it the pesky tray icon appears but thanks to y’all it’s gone!
Glad to hear you got it all worked out!