Opera Link, Opera Widgets, Voice technology, speech-enabled browsing...
New in v9.50 Beta: Opera Link (continuously synchronizes your bookmarks and speed-dials picks between any computers or mobile phones), history search, enhanced mail, various minor enhancements and bug fixes for earlier releases; Release Notes - Last Updated: 05.07.08 (v9.50 Beta Build 9972)
Upgrade Meter: 3
New in v9.27:
Improved stability and security, scripting and display fixes for the Silverlight plug-in, improved stability and performance of BitTorrent, fix to allow toolbars to use bold fonts again, tabs can be dragged between windows using the Windows panel again, info panel title now correctly displays Web page title and mail subjects that contain HTML, various other minor enhancements and bug fixes for earlier releases; Release Notes - Last Updated: 04.03.08 (v9.27)
Upgrade Meter: 2
New in v9.0:
Opera Widgets feature, BitTorrent support, content blocker, search shortcut editor, thumbnail previews of Web pages, syntax highlighting in source viewer, experimental support for NTLM authentication, new email header toolbar, improved IMAP folder synchronization, support for YCCK and CMYK formats in JPEG images, support for CSS 3 opacity; much, much more; Release Notes
- Last Updated: 06.20.06 (v9.0 Official Release)
Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v8.53:
Macromedia Flash upgraded to v7r61 (adresses issue raised in Secunia Advisory 17437), Answers.com search option (with 'a' as keyword to search from address field), solved severe stability issue when using the Acrobat Reader 7.0.5 plug-in, multiple stability fixes, various other minor enhancements and bug fixes; Release Notes
- Last Updated: 03.06.06 Upgrade Meter: 4
New in v8.50:
No online banners anymore! (all advertisement banners removed), registration options removed (no registered version available anymore, although premium support can still be purchased), updated end-user license agreement, Browser JavaScript fixes broken Web sites on the fly, various other minor enhancements and bug fixes; Release Notes
- Last Updated: 09.20.05 Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v8.02:
Three security patches (Secunia Advisories SA15870, SA15756, and SA15781), multiple stability fixes, fix for Flash bug, various other bug fixes; (Note: BitTorrent support, which was present in the 8.02 Technical Preview, has not been included in the official release); Release Notes
- Last Updated: 07.27.05 Upgrade Meter: 4
New in v8.0:
Voice technology (browse the Web with spoken commands, have pages read aloud);
new rendering technology for supporting wide range of platforms; "Fit to window width" abolishes horizontal scrolling; integration with Adobe's Creative Suite 2 platform; enhanced RSS tool; IMAP improvements (including support for the IDLE command); security enhancements, including whitelisting of top-level domains that have implemented anti-homographic character policies or otherwise limited the available set of characters to prevent URL spoofing through use of internationalized domain names (IDN), as well as added support for the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) — real-time requests for certificate status; enabled downloading of ua.ini files for site-specific changing of the user agent string; font preference setting for reading e-mail; numerous other minor enhancements and bug fixes for v8.0 beta releases; Release Notes
- Last Updated: 04.18.05 Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v7.50: Redesigned interface, Opera Mail client (with spam filtering), IRC-compatible Opera Chat client, improved panels, various other enhancements; Notes Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v7.0: Links Panel, The Wand password manager, Fast Forward, Spatial Navigation, panel management, Small-Screen Rendering (SSR) technology, new rendering engine with DOM and CSS2 support, new M2 e-mail client, sleek new look, smaller footprint and improved performance, improved drag and drop support, bug fixes; Notes Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v6.0: Completely redesigned user interface, new skins, new Pagebar and Personal bar, new Panels feature, Hotclick feature, Microsoft Outlook import capabilities, Unicode support, single/multiple document interface option, much more; Release Notes Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v5.0: New ad-supported freeware edition, integrated searching and instant messaging (with ICQ interoperability) functions, improved memory usage, support for new JavaScript versions, improved mail stability, accessibility to different Web sites
Upgrade Meter: 5
New in v4.0: Redesigned interface, integrated e-mail and newsreader clients, 128-bit security world-wide, Cascading Styles Sheets 2 (CSS2) support, XML support, experimental support for WML, ECMAScript and JavaScript 1.3 support, auto-completion feature, support for Sun's free Java Plug-in 1.3, updated Hot List window, mouse wheel support, euro symbol support, updated toolbar buttons, bug fixes; Release Notes Upgrade Meter: 5
Pros: Fast and inexpensive (now free!), advanced multimedia capabilities, Java support
Cons: Lacks a few features relative to the "Big Two," ads present in freeware edition
