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Opera 8 boasts speed, security, ease-of-use, more
Apr. 19, 2005

Opera Software today officially rolled out Opera 8 for Windows and Linux, and a beta version for Mac, touting it as a "substantial upgrade from previous versions," with improvements emphasizing speed, security, and ease-of-use. As previously reported, the new browser version also adds voice capabilities, but only for Windows users.

"The vast majority of Internet users have had to deal with a slow and insecure browser for too long," said Opera chief technology officer Håkon Wium Lie. "People are spending more time online, and with the increase in online fraud it is vital that they have a browser that is fast, secure and easy to use."

To address the need for security, the company says it has equipped Opera 8 with "a unique security information field that indicates the trustworthiness of banking and shopping Web sites." Additionally, as announced earlier, the new browser version adds speech recognition (in the Windows version), as well as enhanced adaptability to different screen and window widths, ranging from cell phones to desktop PCs.

Opera describes Opera 8's key improvements and new features as follows:
  • Speed -- calling the latest version of Opera the "the fastest browser on Earth", the company says that the browser's speed is the result of the "tightly coded core and Opera's rendering engine, which is designed to display the text of the page as quickly as possible." The browser also offers quick navigation with keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, and a range of features intended to enable more efficient surfing, such as the option to open all "favorite" pages at once.

  • Security -- new and advanced security measures include a new security information field that is automatically activated when you visit a secure Web site, indicating the level of security (1-3) and the certificate owner of the site. This allows users to better evaluate a site's trustworthiness and minimize the risk of being subjected to online fraud, such as phishing attacks, Opera says.

  • Simplicity -- Opera 8's simplified tabbed-browser user interface (UI) is cleaner, more intuitive, and allows for easy navigation. Additionally, users need not download additional extensions to access a wide range of features -- advanced features are built-in, and easily activated.

  • Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) -- enables the "fit to window width" feature that adapts web pages to fit to the width of the screen or browser window, eliminating the need to scroll horizontally. This is particularly userful on small- and medium-sized screens, or to tile Web sites next to each other on the screen. Combined with Opera's zoom function, users can magnify web pages and still fit them on the screen.

  • Voice (only available for English, and on Windows 2000 and XP OSes) -- allows users to surf the Web by using voice commands and to have documents read aloud (see earlier story).

  • Trash can -- by clicking on the gray trash can located in the upper right of the screen, users can access all the closed windows and blocked pop-ups from their Internet surfing session.

  • Vector Graphics (SVG) -- native support is included for SVG 1.1 Tiny, an XML language for rich graphical content used to develop enhanced, interactive multimedia.
A more complete features list is available on Opera's website, here. The changelog is available here.

Opera 8 is available for free with an "unobtrusive banner" located at the top of the screen. Users can obtain a banner-free version for a USD $39 registration fee. Quantity discounts are also available.


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