Opera Releases Beta of Next Browser
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Today, Opera Software released the first beta of their new version 9.0 software, which has been in testing since last October. The new releases comes with many new features that Opera has been testing, such as widgets, support for BitTorrent downloads, and the ability to block advertisements.The 'widgets' included are small web applications that typically run inside another program. Konfabulator, which is now known as the Yahoo! Widget Engine, popularized the technology. Apple Computer even included widgets in their Mac OS X 10.4 update. Activating the widget feature is as simple as clicking on the "Opera Widgets" button or pressing F6. Widgets can now be used for multimedia, news feeds, games, and more.
However, one of the more impressive features is the BitTorrent support. When browsing a website with torrent files, Opera can download them instead of relying on a separate BitTorrent program. Opera 9 also supports the RSS icon that is used in Mozilla Firefox, and now Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2. It's great that Opera is now supporting a new standard that many websites are now using.
