Opera 8.10 Preview 2 for Windows

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Opera has released a Preview release of their upcoming 8.1 version of it's web browser. This version brings back the built in BitTorrent support (which has been implemented in a very subtle manner), which was removed from the Final release of Opera 8.02. The build number is currently at 7685.

Changes since 8.02

- Changed default browser identification to Opera.
- Enabled BitTorrent support.
- Fixed a crash related to JPEG EXIF data.

Changes in BitTorrent since 8.02 BitTorrent Technology Preview

-Improved transfer performance.
-Fixed an issue that could lead to Opera crashing.
-Added support for the "scrape" protocol to retrieve ongoing statistics about a torrent. See -the transfer tooltip for the additional information.
-Better handling of out of disk space problems.
-Enabled full transfer context menu for BitTorrent downloads.
-Fixed a problem connecting to some trackers.

Download: Opera 8.10 Preview 2 for Windows [3.7 MB]

Cont...

The top 10 software titles for the first six months of the year were dominated by PlayStation 2 games. Sony's console had six games in the top 10, including Sony Computer Entertainment's Gran Turismo 4 in the top slot.

Nintendo had the second most games in the top 10. Game Boy Advance games held two positions with Pokemon Emerald at second place and Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap at seventh. The lone GameCube representative was Capcom's Resident Evil 4 in the eighth slot. But that tied Microsoft's entire Xbox contingent, with the tenth-place Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith lingering at the bottom of the list.

The only 2004 game to crack the top 10 was Take-Two Interactive's controversy-laden Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was released in October. The complete Top 10 consoles games of 2005 can be seen below.

Rank/Title/Platform/Publisher/Release Date/SRP

1. Gran Turismo 4 (PS2, Sony Computer Entertainment, Feb 05 $49)
2. Pokemon Emerald (GBA, Nintendo, Apr 05, $34)
3. MVP Baseball 2005 (PS2, Electronic Arts, Feb 05, $49)
4. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (PS2, LucasArts, May 05, $49)
5. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2, Take-Two Interactive, Oct 04, $47)
6. God of War (PS2, SCE, Mar 05, $50)
7. Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA, Nintendo, Jan 05, $50)
8. Resident Evil 4 (GC, Capcom, Jan 05, $50)
9. Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition (PS2, Take-Two, Apr 05, $49)
10. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Xbox, LucasArts, May 05, $49)

#1 Sushubh on 29 Jul 2005 - 15:23

eesh. i expected to see my name. but that is not important. what i like is that they finally default as Opera on installation. love opera.

#2 caerma on 29 Jul 2005 - 15:29

good news.

(16 replies) #3 kad.au on 29 Jul 2005 - 15:38

if they added some kind of extension support, i might even switch from firefox. until then....

#3.1 Jugalator on 29 Jul 2005 - 16:24

Exactly, that's THE missing feature in Opera right now IMHO.

Unfortunately, the Opera community is also too small to build a nice extension community like with Firefox too. Don't expect to get a huge library of extensions even if Opera would have this, but hopefully it would at least make more people switch, and some being extension developers.

I mean, who can resist a blazingly fast browser with BitTorrent support, great standards support, and very secure.

#3.2 Toxicfume on 29 Jul 2005 - 17:31

If they DO somehow decide to make opera support extensions, I sure hope to god they don't do it the firefox way. Firefox's extensions are just a hassle to handle from what I've experienced, having many of them starts to clog up and new updates and extensions break, etc. Opera should have a better extensions/modules model if they do

#3.3 Galley on 29 Jul 2005 - 20:26

Why do you need extensions when all the features you need are already included?

#3.4 imcrazydammit on 29 Jul 2005 - 20:44

Good point. Opera kicks butt right out of the box. You don't need to add any extensions. Adblock and CTRL+Enter for www.+.com would be nice though.

#3.5 ~*McoreD*~ on 29 Jul 2005 - 21:45

CTRL+Enter for www.+.com would be nice though.

YEAH! Honestly that's like the only reason why I am not switching to Opera.

#3.6 maulia on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:03

How about just typing , say hotmail (as Opera will automatically put in the www. and .com for you

)

Also, don't forget, you can specify in Opera an alias of an address. (If you type the alias in the address field and press ENTER, it will try to find the saved URL according to that alias)
For example I can have:
neowin -> will go to www.neowin.net
myemail -> will go to www.gmail.com

Much better than firefox?

#3.7 Ravensworth on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:14

QUOTE

Opera has an Ad blocker? Nuke anything? Customize Google? I could go on...

Oh yeah, and is Opera Adware? Open Source? Hmmm...

#3.8 rm20010 on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:29

Open source DOES NOT necessarily deem a product to be better than its commercial competitors.

And for the last time, the bloody ad in the free version of Opera is no different than what you see up there, at the top of this page.

Ad blocking isn't that good in Opera (a few ads sneak through) when set to 'Block unwanted pop ups', but it fits for most sites. Now for graphical ads, yeah it should be added.

Please define what you mean by 'Customize Google'. If you mean customize your list of search engines, Opera does that as well (although adding engines is less convenient than Firefo

#3.9 Ravensworth on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:33

Open source DOES NOT necessarily deem a product to be better than its commercial competitors.

Sorry but I disagree. With open source you get to decide exactly how a program looks and behaves, and the community can changes and create addons that make improve the program. With closed source programs you take what they give you and live with it.

the bloody ad in the free version of Opera is no different than what you see up there, at the top of this page.

I don't see an ad at the top of this page, I'm using Ad Block. That was my point.

Please define what you mean by 'Customize Google'.

Customize Google

I'm not bashing Opera, I think it's a very good browser. I'd use it over IE anyday; I just happen to think there are better (and free) alternatives to it.

Last edited by 116540 on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:42

#3.10 alex. on 30 Jul 2005 - 05:55

The two most important thing that CG does (add google suggest and directly link images) opera can also do. You can find the scripts to do it here

#3.11 mdew on 30 Jul 2005 - 08:59

For example I can have:
neowin -> will go to www.neowin.net
myemail -> will go to www.gmail.com

Much better than firefox?

like this? http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html

#3.12 cork1958 on 30 Jul 2005 - 11:28

Screw those extensions. I DO NOT want to have to load an extension for everything under the sun as you have to with Firefox. We're talking a great, quality browser here, not some mozilla left over wanna be!!

#3.13 Ravensworth on 30 Jul 2005 - 14:21

#3.14 alerosenfeld on 31 Jul 2005 - 00:58

Ok, now you are just being stupid. I like Opera, i'm using it right now, but its quite difficult to compare them, and saying that is just showing you dont know what you are talking about.
Extensions are meant to leave Firefox light and powerful, so it doesnt have a lot of useless things in it if you just want to use a good browser, but you can have much anything you want on it with extensions. So you DONT NEED to load an extension for everything under the sun, you just CAN (but if you like to do something just because you can, then its your problem). Opera is just different, it has much of the features you would need from it, most because you are paying for it. I dont think any of them should change their way, but extensions to Opera would be something good, but not something as radical as Firefox, just an AdBlock (which they probably wont do on their own) or something else.

#3.15 cork1958 on 01 Aug 2005 - 11:04

Hardly being stupid, just honest.

There isn't anything to compare between the 2. The ONLY reasons Firefox is as popular as it is, is because it's free (without an ad banner) and everybody wants to be as "cool" as the next person. The people that can make up their own minds and not follow the trend all use Opera!!

#3.16 Ravensworth on 01 Aug 2005 - 16:54

The ONLY reasons Firefox is as popular as it is, is because it's free (without an ad banner) and everybody wants to be as "cool" as the next person. The people that can make up their own minds and not follow the trend all use Opera!!

Are all Opera users as arrogant as that? Reminds me of the elite Apple snobs. I do not use Firefox simply because it's free, nor do I use it to be "cool". I use it because it does exactly what I want it to do, and does it very well. I tried Opera and I didn't like it, simple as that.

(2 replies) #4 nic on 29 Jul 2005 - 16:13

I just installed it and I'm trying it now. I haven't tried Opera since v7 beta. First thing I noticed, was some Javascript problems I had on one of my pages. That, and the ads. I'll play around with it some more... but I'm having a hard time seeing the hype around this browsers

#4.1 Jugalator on 29 Jul 2005 - 16:27

That's strange; Opera should support Javascript well. It even supports XmlHttpRequest now for e.g. Google Maps.

I wonder what the problem was exactly... Me gets feeling of non-standard compliant Javascript.

#4.2 cork1958 on 30 Jul 2005 - 11:30

Or, somebody in a hurry and not taking their time to check things out properly. Or, somebody doesn't know what they're doing!

#5 CiwirXP on 29 Jul 2005 - 20:01

very good news, they work hart to make Opera better every day :-D

(5 replies) #6 imcrazydammit on 29 Jul 2005 - 20:45

I'm still using 8.01 and I'm going to wait until this is final, but my question is: can you disable the torrent handling? I'm very pleased with BitComet and I don't need Opera hijacking links and trying to handle my torrents for me.

#6.1 maulia on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:03

I usually just Right click on a torrent link, save it on a disk, double click the file and my Azureus will handle it for me

(Don't left-click on a torrent link as Opera will handle it automatically)

#6.2 rm20010 on 29 Jul 2005 - 22:30

Although I didn't try the test builds of Opera with BT support, I assume that you can change the behaviour of torrent files via the Preferences dialog, under the Advanced tab and the Downloads section.

#6.3 imcrazydammit on 30 Jul 2005 - 01:13

Right now I left click on torrent files and they go straight to my download directory. I would like to keep that functionality without opera trying to snag them. Sometimes I just browse and then open BitComet later on before I go to bed to get my torrents. I don't want Opera to be downloading torrents and eating up bandwidth.

#6.4 alex. on 30 Jul 2005 - 16:55

read my reply a couple of posts down, to disable the torrent support.

[quote]yes, if I remember correctly open the opera6.ini file in operas profile directory and add/change the following

[BitTorrent]
Enable=0[/quote]

#6.5 YeCKeL on 03 Aug 2005 - 06:00

just switch how opera handels the file in mime types jeze

(1 reply) #7 cork1958 on 30 Jul 2005 - 04:52

Is that Bit Torrent something you can disable/enable?

#7.1 alex. on 30 Jul 2005 - 05:51

yes, if I remember correctly open the opera6.ini file in operas profile directory and add/change the following

[BitTorrent]
Enable=0

#8 king_turkey on 30 Jul 2005 - 09:32

Yeah I tried out the tp for the torrents and while I found it a nice feature, it just wasn't as featured as a standalone client such as Azureus and I ended up going back to 8.01, but with the full 8.02 torrents support has been removed again so I'm using it. When they put support back in I hope that they include some better speed limiting, I don't want to edit the .ini everytime I want to change the torrents' speeds.

(5 replies) #9 cork1958 on 30 Jul 2005 - 11:32

I hope they take the Bit Torrent back out of Opera. Could be looking like the beginning of bloat to me. Don't need or want it anyway also.

#9.1 alex. on 30 Jul 2005 - 16:51

so an increase in size of 24kb to add in bittorrent support which you will be able to disable when it finally gets inplemented fully is bloat?

Strange I call it good programming.

#9.2 NyaR on 31 Jul 2005 - 05:37

do you need to have opera running in order to download with bittorent? if so they its worthless

#9.3 elliot on 31 Jul 2005 - 16:46

so an increase in size of 24kb to add in bittorrent support which you will be able to disable when it finally gets inplemented fully is bloat?

Yes it's called feature bloat.

#9.4 megamanXplosion on 31 Jul 2005 - 21:43

It's not feature bloat either. If you don't use torrents then you will never know its there. If you do use torrents then it behaves like any other download, surely you're not going to claim that regular downloading is contributing to feature bloat?

It's not filesize bloat, it's not performance bloat, it's not feature bloat, it's not bloat at all. Get over yourselves.

#9.5 YeCKeL on 03 Aug 2005 - 05:58

word.

it is just a good feature ;p

#10 bush on 31 Jul 2005 - 10:20

Much better than firefox?

you can do it in firefox with keywords in favorites. seems to be much easier for me.

(1 reply) #11 trigger_my_passion on 01 Aug 2005 - 05:11

small thing I noticed: When you install this on top of older versions where you had Identify as IE' checked, that setting is going to carry over. So after installing this new version, press F12 and change it to 'Identify as Opera'.

#11.1 alex. on 03 Aug 2005 - 09:38

It's not recommend to install the beta/preview versions over final version because as you have found out some settings are carried over and some functions might not work as expected.

(1 reply) #12 klesh on 01 Aug 2005 - 13:40

on my computer, startup firefox needs 15+ seconds, and opera, <5, so i choose opera

#12.1 Alien Spy on 03 Aug 2005 - 05:45

I switched to opera for the same reason. Sometimes firefox just takes forever to open.

#13 viral_sonata on 03 Aug 2005 - 05:41

If 10 seconds is that important to you, then I advise therapy, not a new browser.

(1 reply) #14 YeCKeL on 03 Aug 2005 - 05:57

Any one know how to make tabs/pages in opera load in background?

#14.1 alex. on 03 Aug 2005 - 09:30

There are a few ways

CTRL+SHIFT and clicking on the link
middle clicking on the link
right clicking on the link and using the gesture down+up

the first two also work from the bookmarks panel too.

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