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I have a very weird view when it comes to Opera browser supporters and fans, is that it is like comparing Scientology vs the four common religions on earth. While the latter have a lot of followers, the former have more genuine (and quality) followers. Wait. I’m supposed to talk about the browser, not the followers. Haha!

First Impression

When I first launch the new Opera 10.50b, I noticed a significantly cleaner interface, and I couldn’t help but notice how it is extremely similar to how Google Chrome looks (in term of placement of the tab bar):

Firstly, you’ll notice the lack of the main bar on top, and the tabs are moved to the title bar. This minimalistic design will enhance the experience of users while browsing website, especially with the abundance of the web applications these days – by making you see more of the website and see much less of the browser’s frame.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that all the core functions (all of those in the menu bar previously) have been combined and integrated into what I called the “Opera Button”. This seems to be a trend on modern application these days, and somewhat similar to Microsoft Office 2007′s “Office Button”. Brilliant, Opera!

The Opera Button!

Just like the current Opera 10.10, you can actually drag the tab bar to grow in size, and it will show you the thumbnails of the website instead! Would be awesome to use on a large monitor, since these days anything less than 30″ is pretty common (well, at least in my group of friends, as most of them have 24″ monitor)

Is it really that fast?

Everytime I am using a javascript-heavy web applications, i.e. Google Mail (with loads of labs extension), Facebook, PivotalTracker, 5pm, etc, I will always switch to Google Chrome, as opposed to my default Firefox, mainly because Chrome handles these apps much faster. However, when I tried them on Opera 10.50b, they are even faster! I am thrilled at the sheer performance of this browser. Using these sites now doesn’t feel like using a web-app, they load, behave and execute as if they’re coded in plain cold HTML 4. Added with stability issues of Google Chrome on 64-bit version of windows (it crashes way too often), this makes Opera 10.50 a much better choice for these tasks.

Opera 10.50 now uses a new Carakan engine for Javascript handling, and it claims that it is up to 8 times faster. Curious, I want to test this right away, so I fired all the browsers installed, that is MS Internet Explorer 8.0 (32-bit), MS Internet Explorer 8.0 (64-bit), Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0 and Opera 10.50b. Let’s see how it fare:

It shows that Opera 10.50 can really perform it’s javascript faster than any of the other browsers (even Chrome 4.0). Internet Explorer is still the slowest of them all, taking a whooping 10 seconds to complete what the rest can do within a second.

Search Enhancement

When I used safari on a Mac regularly a few months back, I noticed that it have a brilliant way of displaying “find on page” results, that is, by dimming the page and highlighting the search term in bright color, saving you time skimming around the page, fumbling for that faint yellow highlight.

Good news is, Opera have taken this step a bit further, not only they have simplify the search hotkey (yes, you can press period ” . ” key to invoke the search bar, or you can press comma ” , ” to invoke the same bar, but only search linked text. This would definitely make life easier on those pesky ad-laden download page where the download link is buried within the ads.

Private Browsing

Opera finally caught up to their competition by providing a private browsing feature, which doesn’t store and remember any private information during your browsing session. This would be handy if you want to do financial transaction with online banking application (or if you are doing odd things that you don’t want anyone to find out). In this mode, the cookies will not be remembered so all your login and personal details are safe from anyone who tries to sniff on them via malicious website programming.

Other Enhancements

Opera 10.50 now integrate very well with Windows 7. It basically works with Aero Peek, so you can quickly access all your tabs from the taskbar itself!

Opera have also refined their address bar to function as a smart bar. Now not only it will display related items as you type into the bar, it will also show the search results from your history (this includes the URL of the webpage and also it’s contents). To make things even better, Opera also allows you to delete a specific history item right on this bar itself!

Conslusion

Opera is heading towards the right direction with this next beta browser of theirs. With the inclusion of support for HTML5 and CSS3, new graphic engine that is very fast (so the browser doesn’t lag, like *cough* Firefox *cough*), not to mention that the performance is very good.

Why don’t you give it a try? Get your Opera 10.50b today!