Opera 9.0 Preview 1 Available for Download

Opera has released the future version of their popular desktop browser, which was set free in September, available for public consumption. The browser showcases some of the planned new features and improved standards compliancy. Opera 9 is codenamed Merlin.

One of the major changes is the new advanced configuration interface that can be accessed by entering opera:config into the address bar, which will display a page to manually edit opera's preferential values. This version also features Rich Text editing support, which appears to work in Google's popular email service, GMail. The promised new IMAP back-end has been built-in into the M2 mail client, along with the browser's support for XSLT, Canvas 2D, and Web Forms 2.0.

BitTorrent support has been put back in this preview release, a feature Opera pulled from the older preview releases and thus didn't make it to the final 8.0. This feature works in a very subtle manner with minimal resource footprint.

This Preview release is meant by Opera as a way to get bug reports and general feedback from the users, especially those involving Speed & Stability, IDing as Opera by default, render regressions since 8.5 and connecting to secure sites using TLS 1.1. Forums and Newsgroups are open for user input.

Download: Opera 9.0 Preview 1 for Windows [3.9MB]