Opera Software today released Opera 7.20 for Windows Beta. Opera’s engineers have fine-tuned version 7’s development branch for maximum performance.
Opera 7.20 beta for Windows Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Great to see you back 🙂
Dont forget to mention that a 7.20b7 version is also out for linux..
>Great to see you back 🙂
Thanks, but I am not back yet, I am coming back full time on Sept 2nd. Starting on Saturday, I wont have internet access for 3 days as I will be travelling in France and then back in US.
I haven’t tried any of the 7.2 betas, but I do know that the 7.2 final will be sweet!
7.2 B7 is also out for Solaris sparc
http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=solaris
I tried it today and it’s really faster than 7.11, some sites didn’t work like atptennis.com and now they work.
Very good work.
We use a MS proxy server and I am not sure which protocol it is using, but this beta does not support it.
Safari on the Mac does not either, but Mozilla does. I would think that these kinds of things would be a priority.
I hope they fixed javascript. I think Opera must have had the worst Javascript implementation that I have yet seen. The UI has some really nice features though.
From their web site,
There are no plans to support NTLM, as it is proprietary, and might soon be dropped by Microsoft as well.
Well that is hopeful.
OPera suggests This proxy server will not work with Opera unless you download and install the MS Proxy Client (mspclnt). Ask your network administrator to configure the server in such a way that it gives you access to the Internet through use of the mspclnt to correct the problem.
a few new features that I’ve noticed:
“Close all but active” – close all tabs but the current tab.
“closed” – reopen a tab that you have already closed.
It also seems a bit more stable than 7.11.
“I think Opera must have had the worst Javascript implementation that I have yet seen.”
Huh? Its had a great DOM compliant JS/ECMAScript since 7.0!
Write your code properly and it’ll work fine 😉
Never had a Javascript problem with 6.0. Could you detail?
The 7.20 version is good time for you to test the Javascript again. There have numbers of improvement for Javascript on speed and etc.
Once i read about core code rewrite for 7.* branch, i was totally impressed.
But unfortunately reality showed that 7.* is slower and less responsive for me than 6.*, not to say about 4.* series.
It is especially noticeable on older hardware, so i’m wondering how they expect to use same core on various embedded devices.
And all this skinning and theming hell is now out of taste, rather confusing and disappinting than helping user experience.
I was really BIG Opera fan and evangelist i had hope that with 7.* Opera will win noticeable piece of desktop marketshare. It wasn’t the case, it seems. I’m wondering if this slownes on older h/w is related to implementation of MS-crap support, like DHTML.
I had the exact opposite reaction. For me it is absolutely lightning fast. Simply blows away any browser I have used including 6.
How old is your hardware?
Some of the icons are a bit over the top though although I think 7.2 is better than 7.0
That is interesting. I have a P III 866 MHZ from a few years back (265 MB RAM, 40 gig HDD) and it’s dang fast here (both Win and Lin versions). Certainly faster than 6.
But I agree that this skinning/theming is a waste of code. But, meh, I can live with it.
Haven’t tried 7.20 yet, but 7.11 runs a *lot* slower than Mozilla Firebird .61 (and the more recent nightlies) on my Athlon XP 1800+/Windows 2000 system.
If Links-hacked had better forms and Javascript support, it would likely become my primary browser, however.
Try 7.20. It is a lot faster.
It is interesting, because, to say, for PIII/128 MB RAM 7.* feels faster in some aspects, e.g. background tab opening don’t blocks new clicks, but on about 200 MB computers with 32 MB RAM it feels slower than IE and Mozilla in lot of aspects. I tried to play with RAM-cache settings, but it didn’t help.
Also about usability – Opera has most consistent and best tabbed/MDI browsing model since 4.*, Mozilla is still behind, but with 7.* they introduced that mixed SDI/MDI mess, oohh my Lord! Probably in order to win audience by those IE-addicted, hm, morons. Result is disappinting for me. Also those rounded corners, panel backgrounds (no easy way to get rid of it until you are Opera-skin-master), so they effectively turned it in a toy, instead best proffessioal browsing tool, as it was before
We have at work lot of 100-200 MHz laptops and some same level desktop which totally suit our specifical needs. No reason to waste money on H/W upgrade.
But installation of any IE of version 5.0 or higher turns those machines into snails.Not only in browsing, btw – this is known fact that IE installation plugs itself deeple in system and actually breaks Windoze. So we used there Win95/98Lite.
And Opera browsers. Until 7.*.
Now there are some ancient Mozillas, like 1.0, performing browsing and e-mailing.
“with 7.* they introduced that mixed SDI/MDI mess”
Opera’s configurability helps with this. I think with a little playing around in Preferences you can probably get windows/pages to behave fairly close to the way they did in previous versions.
It’s just amazing how fast you can go forward/back within pages you’ve recently visited. It’s almost as if it appears before I hit the back button on my mouse
Opera’s a great product, really it is. I only wish they would improve upon the interface a bit.
Oh, one more thing. Where’s my Alt-D or Ctrl-L for getting to the address bar? I can’t live without that.
your rigt,firbird’s much faster. it’s still faster than 7.20. I like opera’s UI and mouse gestures though.I hate firbird’s tabs. I wish mozilla.org, or somebody, made a clone of opera that was freeware and had the speed of firebird and
the eye candy of opera; plus all the features that we love. the knowledge of opera would directly apply to the browser. but untill that’s made i’m using opera as defult.
hey That’s something I just might make.
Oh, one more thing. Where’s my Alt-D or Ctrl-L for getting to the address bar? I can’t live without that.
F8. Change it if you don’t like it
You really should test 7.20. I have tested it extensively on older computers, like 99 MHz with 32 MB, etc. It is really quite usable on these older computers. There is a huge difference compared to 7.11 and other browsers.
Will do that tomorrow at work. Btw, anyoune with link to CLASSIC (4-6) skon for 7 WITHOUT backgrounds?
Anyway, i’m still sure that OperaSoftware is almosy last company where engineers and management remember what true programming is:) Suite with fantastical set of features (and hope again fantastical speed) in unbeliavable small size.
And very stable in some builds:) Only that they lost direction a bit IMHO. Coz desktop browser war was at end with win of monster.
Will do that tomorrow at work. Btw, anyoune with link to CLASSIC (4-6) skon for 7 WITHOUT backgrounds?
Have you checked the View->Skin->windows_skin ? Be sure to turn off “Special effects” in that menu too.
With these options set, Opera 7 feels as responsive as the earlier versions on my ancient box (PII@333MHz)
Btw, anyoune with link to CLASSIC (4-6) skon for 7 WITHOUT backgrounds?
There has the classic skin option since 7.11.. It’s in ‘View’ (menu) -> ‘Skin’ .. 🙂
Suite with fantastical set of features (and hope again fantastical speed) in unbeliavable small size.
Above replies are right, the 7.20 has gotten much more faster. They are still working and improving it. You should see how improvement they did on the Javascript, which it gains around %75 speed.
just in time for the US OPEN
If you mean one of two deafult themes, at least in previous 7.* builds windows theme was was quite ugly itself, IIRC.
I used classic them (where Home button was hut with red roof and back/forward buttons were simple green arrows, but couldn’t get rid of panels background, unfortunately
>> We use a MS proxy server and I am not sure which protocol it is using, but this beta does not support it.
>> Safari on the Mac does not either, but Mozilla does. I would think that these kinds of things would be a priority.
That’s the price you pay for using proprietary software (well that and the purchase price ofcourse).
BTW Opera will work with an MS http proxy server, however it can’t authenticate itself using Microsoft’s NTLM authentication (AFAIK). If you turn this of and use standard HTTP proxy authentification it should work fine.
Hey I wish I had a choice. I recommend Mac and Linux wherever I can. I don’t really mind too much about Open Source just for open standards, protocols etc. All the plumbing should be open.
Opera beta 7 versions for each of these SOs: http://my.opera.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28413
obs.: some words ares in Portuguese but the links are ok..:-)
Portuguese MyOpera Forum
I’m using 7.20 beta. Not only faster, it feels a tad more stable.
You can also download themes, which isn’t that hard . I’m personally using Opera-Wonderland.
Looks really good, first thing I noticed are the menu fonts, whole lot better than in 7.11, and the pages seem to pop also bit faster on my 300 Mhz Celereon
I remember hearing something about a version of Opera for MacOS X, are there any insiders who know what the situation is? Are they going to make it fully Cocoa or will they fork code off their UNIX branch and use QT for the base? Either way, I am looking forward to something which is slim and just does browsing.
Don’t get my wrong, I love Mozilla/Firebird, however, I want to see native widgets in the webpage not Mozilla’s XUL widgets (boxy submit button etc) also, the development progress of Firebird has been enemic. What is happening. When will we see a Firebird 1.0? The roadmap on their site isn’t entirely clear. Sure, they don’t want to create false expectations, however, creating no target dates is just as worse.
When people say it is a lot faster what do they base this on. Is it page load time or the UI?
Not trying to be smart just curious.
I’ve only been playing with it for a few hours, but so far I’m very impressed. Ironically this is the first version of Opera 7 I’ve used that doesn’t feel like a beta test. Most of the little UI glitches and annoyances in previous versions seem to have been fixed and there are a lot of little improvements.
For example the window panel now lets you drag and drop pages between windows, plus you can use it to close, minimise, maximise, restore and reload groups of pages. If you browse with a lot of windows open that can save a lot of time, it’s a very elegant way of dealing with window clutter. The ability to reopen closed windows is very nice too, in other browsers accidentally closing a window can waste a lot of time.
The beta is also available for Linux and other platforms… Not only Windows
I’m going to download and try this, but I have a few points to raise. If you ever find yourself stuck using a 486 to go online, installing older Opera is the single fastest upgrade you can do, better than adding ram. As for the 7.x versions before, they are clearly *not* faster than 6, so lets quit lieing to everyone. You guys with fast pc’s are fooling yourselves just as much as the people that upgrade from pentium 90/win95 to a 800mhz Linux and proclaim that Linux is faster than windows. Also on a 256 color vga opera 6 is perfect at rendering pics, but 7.x is bizzarre. A final point, the day after I talked my friend into installing Opera, they started allowing blinking ads in the banner again, and after a few minutes of this very personal abuse I usually want to knock the s* out of somebody. The ‘find’ box can cover the blinking part on some of them, and I also made a blank banner in Visual Basic to cover the flashing one. These things ought not to be necessary, and if it continues I will switch to something else. I raised this complaint last year and was criticized for not registering a second time by someone that hadn’t even registered *once*, so please, no replies from children with credit cards that think the answer to every problem is to throw more money at it.
These things ought not to be necessary, and if it continues I will switch to something else. I raised this complaint last year and was criticized for not registering a second time by someone that hadn’t even registered *once*
Sorry buddy, but that is what the registration/’buy opera now’ is for. To get rid of the ad’s and for support.
And reguarding linux being faster than windows… I’ll grant you that kde/gnome/(even ice) is not going to be faster than win31/95 on a 90mhz system, but with blackbox and a decent amout of ram (32megs) linux will be faster… And on our pII 233 system, linux runs slightly faster than win98 (in most cases).
Well, I for one don’t see much of a speed difference between Opera 6 and 7. In fact, I see a speed increase in rendering CSS and JS heavy sites. However, I noticed plugins like Flash and Java (even the one they bundled) were slower to load on Opera in 7 than in 6. But I think the big reason why people of older computers think that Opera 7 is slower than 6 is because the difference in RAM use. While I see a drop of Opera’s load on the CPU, I see an steady increase in the usage of RAM.
Well, for Opera, there are more people using Pentium IIs, Pentium IIIs than people using 486s.
“Sorry buddy, but that is what the registration/’buy opera now’ is for. To get rid of the ad’s and for support.”
Did I not say I didn’t need any more replies like this? I already said I heard this enough last time. I will not be coerced into paying again, got it? If their business model is that I may use their software in exchange for viewing ads from their sponsors, then great! I cheerfully accept those terms. If instead they want to be the SCO of browsers and try to extort money out of me by blinking lights in my eyes until I pay, then they can stick to Linux users like yourself that give the exact same answers to every question even when told they were already heard the first 20 times and that it didn’t fly those times either. Of course Linux users are not exactly known for their eagerness to pay for software, so good luck to Opera.
“And reguarding linux being faster than windows… I’ll grant you that kde/gnome/(even ice) is not going to be faster than win31/95 on a 90mhz system, but with blackbox and a decent amout of ram (32megs) linux will be faster… And on our pII 233 system, linux runs slightly faster than win98 (in most cases).”
Pure fantasy. The Linux of 4 years ago was slower than Win98, don’t try to tell me the Linux of today is faster, or try to obfuscate the issue by changing which GUI is assumed from case to case. I’ve actually seen a processor requirement of 800Mhz on a Linux distro already.
Anyway, I tried the new Opera last night. I’ve added two more 64meg ram chips to the 32megs I had originally used(please, no ignorant jesting about the amount of ram I have, it’s super-overkill on this IDT RISC processor for just web surfing as it is). Anyway, I think you guys are confusing ‘speed’ with ‘abruptness’. I don’t think there’s much actual difference in speed when a page loads, but when it loads under 7, it ‘snaps’ to the screen very abruptly. I think that is what makes 7 feel less polished than 6, it reminds me of Arachne or DR WebSpyder. The handling of graphics is still crude, as though screen resolution changes halfway through the image if you dare to touch a scroll bar or anything. Also sometimes I can’t move anything until the page completely loads, as if they assume no one uses a dial-up connection anymore. Also twice the page blanked itself while trying to check off a list of email messages to delete, so I had to start over.
I’m staying with 6 until the day it won’t work on things like ebay and web-based email accounts.
A final note though in respect for what Opera has attempted, the abrupt page loading, handling of graphics, etc would not be a big deal if this was truly an attempt to recapture their original focus on speed and compact code, but they’ve combined it with fluff like animated icons and skinning, and that leaves the lingering feeling that the code was optimized to make more room for fluff nobody needs; the speed difference is not clearly demonstrable on either a 486 dx-80 or a 240mmx winchip with dial-up and 32-160mb of ram, anyone that claims they can percieve it on an 800mhz processor with 512 mb of ram is either deluded or using lab instruments to measure it. The most honest review I could give it is “the speed issue is less false than in the earlier 7.x versions”.