Yet another new browser: beta 1 of Opera 9.6 appears
Norway's Opera Software is following the examples of Google and Mozilla by offering a pre-release version of the next release of its eponymous browser: Opera 9.6 beta 1.
It's not a major release, so don't expect any revolutionary novelties, but it does show substantial improvements in the details. Synchronisation, for example - probably the most useful innovation in Opera 9.5 - can now copy across custom search-engine keywords between different installations.
Clicking on a newsfeed icon now results in an attractive preview of the RSS or Atom feed, rather than an immediate invitation to subscribe. The Scandinavians have also given the email client a bit of a polish: specific threads can be ignored or followed, and there's a special mode for low-bandwidth users, when Opera Mail only downloads a minimal amount of data from IMAP or POP accounts until the user explicitly asks the client to fetch more.
The change log gives more details – for example, phishing protection now works through proxy servers. The stop button can now halt the loading of iframes and small improvements to the rendering engine have raised Opera's score in the Acid3 test from 84/100 to 85.
(lghp)
