Opera 9.0 Technology Preview 2

Opera released a technology preview of Opera 9,codenamed Merlin. The new Opera 9.0 preview version contains features such as

• Opera Widgets – Similar to , Opera Widgets are small AJAX applications that provide specific functionality like
  getting your favorite news, converting currency and so on. Opera has posted documentation on Opera Widgets not only how to use them but also how to make them.
  
  
  
  
  Opera Widgets can be accessed from “Tools” -> “Show Widgets”. Once you selected the widget, it will be downloaded and launched. The Opera Widget is visible even when you minimize Opera’s main window. You can also download Opera widgets from Opera Community.

  Opera Widgets include Calendar,Digg spy Widget,GSearch,Digg Frontpage News Viewer,CSS Design Lab,digg,multiSearch,My Opera Community,GoogleSearch…(I think there are 34 Opera widgets right now).

• BitTorrent – BitTorrent has become one of the most popular file transfer protocols around. Opera built it right into the browser so we can download torrent files easily. No more hassle finding the right port, no worries about setting upload and download speed.
  
  
  
  
  BitTorrent and Opera signed an agreement allowing Opera to use the BitTorrent trademark and access the BitTorrent search engine from the browser’s user interface.Opera claims that integrating the technology will allow more efficient and quicker downloads of large files.

  The BitTorrent service will be offered to Opera users in two ways. Users can search for torrent files in the browser’s integrated search field, or, when a file has been selected, Opera’s Transfer Manager feature will handle the download. Separate software will no longer be needed to search and download content.

• Customize your search engines – Use your favorite search engine in the search box. Go to the site you want and right click on the search field site and click on the search field. You will then be prompted to “create search”.
• Improved content blocker – Just right click on a page and select “block content”. Any content not greyed out can be blocked with a click. Select “done” and see the page the way you want.
• Improved pop-up blocker – Opera added more intelligence to help weed out even more pop-ups. But since not all pop-ups are created equal, use the trash can to retrieve pop-ups you may want.
• Site specific preferences – For those of you who want to control settings for specific pages. Want to accept some cookies and deny others? How about setting your own style sheet to make the site more accessible? Just right click on the page and select “Site preferences”.
• Thumbnail preview – Opera conserves system resources and uses less memory than other browsers so it’s easy to have many tabs open at once. But just what tab had that video you wanted? Using the thumbnail feature, you can find out by resting the mouse on any tab.

My Experiences

I feel that Opera 9.0 renders web pages better than 8.50. The rendered pages looks almost like the web pages rendered by Firefox.

The Opera widgets helps to expand Opera’s functionalities.

Since this is a “technology preview” version, you can expect some bugs in it. After installing Opera 9.0 TP2, I found that I could not reply to my emails in Gmail. Also it closed unexpectedly several times for me.

Opera 9 is not a final product and may contain bugs. You should only use it for testing.

Download Opera 9 Technology Preview 2