JoelNothman.com

I had to write about it some time, and it’s just too hard to avoid now. The Opera web browser, which I have been using dedicatedly since 2001, on Tuesday released an alpha version of their upcoming version 9.50, codenamed Kestrel. I’m very excited.

I’ve always loved Opera for their extraordinary innovation, their focus on speed and agility and security, and just their ability to create a powerful and accessible tool. A tool I can use with (nearly) only keyboard, or (nearly) only mouse. A tool that innovated sessions and tabs and mouse gestures and Fast Forward and Speed Dial; a tool that doesn’t need extensions because it’s got it all. A tool not only focussed on the present desktop market, but working towards the future on the Wii, on your mobile, on your PDA, on screen-readers for the visually-impaired, or on the One Laptop Per Child project.

The upcoming version is exciting for a number of reasons:

1. The moment you open it, it feels fast. And the tests say it is fast. Even faster than its predecessors.
2. It promises a new long needed, wait-free email client backend. Although the current one is great for accessing things, it can slow down the browser at times once you’ve accumulated 1.5GB of email, like I have.
3. It brings with it new features I’ve been hoping for, like searching through page content history, and not making you save your password before you can see whether it worked.
4. It is implementing new technologies that will make the web of tomorrow. Now we’re just waiting for Internet Explorer to make an effort to catch up… Still waiting…

You can see Opera Watch for more…

If this is an alpha, what goodies should we hope for in the final version??!

So yeah, I’m a nerd. But I’m an excited nerd!