Info Laptop

Back in March, I reviewed the Opera Turbo Labs preview version of the Opera 10 alpha browser incorporating server-side optimization and compression technology that Opera claims can speed throughput over slow connections by reducing the amount of data needed to display Web pages by up to 80 percent — music to my ears, being stuck at present with a rural dial-up Internet connection that gives me 26,400 bps throughput on good days.

Initially skeptical, I was delighted to discover it wasn’t just hype. Opera Turbo provided such a dramatic speed boost it seems silly to use any other browser. There was some image quality degradation from the compression, but you can always turn Turbo off when you need full image resolution.

Earlier this month, Opera released the first public beta of Version 10 with the Turbo feature, joined by a raft of other enhancements. The alpha build of Opera 10 Turbo I’ve been using for three months has proved amazingly stable and bug-free, but I’ve run into some issues with Opera 10 Beta 1, especially on my Intel Mac.

But to first accentuate the positive, the new Opera 10 beta (code-named Peregrine) includes an array of other new features including an interface facelift by designer Jon Hicks, including etch effects and border highlights giving extra crispness to edges. Text Shadow has a new parameter to reproduce the etched text effect that is standard on OS X and some Windows applications.

The Mac default skin gets a fresh look that’s OK if you like Safari-esque gray. I don’t, and will install a skin I like better — easy to do from Opera’s large selection.

I won’t revisit the Turbo feature in great detail, since how it works was outlined thoroughly in the previous article, but a new configuration option enables an Opera Turbo setting to activate only if a slow network is detected. New in Opera 10b1 is a resizable tab bar that displays thumbnails of your open Web pages on mouseover, and can now also be used to show all open tabs as thumbnails.

Opera’s Speed Dial bookmark thumbnail feature can now be customized to suit your taste by using the “Configure” button to display from 4 to 25 favorite Websites and you can add a custom background (some downloadable alternate Opera skins also include Speed Dial backgrounds) as well.

If you use a Webmail service as your default mail client, you can configure Opera 10 to do the same, so clicking on email addresses or the Send by Mail in Opera will open the compose page from your Webmail service provider. The same is true with the Feed reader — you can now also add any RSS/atom feed into your favorite online feed reader from within Opera 10.

Opera 10’s new Presto 2.2 browser engine is claimed to to be up to 4O percent faster on resource intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook, and Opera is reportedly the only browser besides Safari 4 to achieve an Acid3 100/100 score. There is also enhanced Web Fonts support, RGBA/HSLA color and SVG improvements. Spelling errors are now red underlined as you type in all fields where you can input text, using the Hunspell dictionary format. A contextual menu includes spelling suggestions, the ability to change dictionary languages, or to select additional dictionaries.

The program’s integrated Opera Mail email client now supports rich text messages including inline images, styled text, links, and/or custom HTML, and a new “Delete after X days” feature automatically removes messages from POP servers after the specified interval.

That’s a ton of new features added to what was already one of the richest feature sets of any browser.

Now for the Problems

Turning to the problems, after my first attempt at downloading an installer didn’t work (corrupted disk image that wouldn’t mount) I tried the online update feature, which seemed to install OK, but after I applied it, the browser refused to start. Frustrated, I downloaded the Intel-specific version of the installer and ran it. No joy; Opera 10 Beta 1 would still abort on startup.

Trashing the Opera Preferences and letting the program create new preference files proved the key (I made sure to save my Bookmarks and cookies files first) to getting it to launch, but my troubles weren’t over. For some reason it refuses to load certain graphics, just displaying a placeholder, while others seem to load with no problem, and general performance doesn’t seem quite as smooth and solid as it’s been with the Opera 10 Turbo alpha.

I hasten to add that the online update worked like a charm on my Power PC Pismo PowerBook running OS 10.4.11, although the graphics non-loading glitch afflicts it there too. Hopefully, some bugs will be squashed with the next release, and I remain a fan.

Software innovations are often over-hyped, so I approached the Opera Turbo Labs preview version of the Opera 10 browser with — how shall I say? — hopeful skepticism. As one who has suffered (not too strong a word) with a slow rural dial up Internet connection for the past 12 years, I’m eager to embrace any technology that promises to help speed things up.

Opera Turbo is described as a server-side optimization and compression technology that speeds up data transfer by reducing the amount of data that needs to be downloaded in order to view web pages by up to 80 percent, thereby providing significant improvement in browsing speeds over limited-bandwidth connections like mine, which gives me stone-age 26,400 bps throughput on good days at times of the day when not too many of my neighbors are online.

However, Opera Turbo also sounded a lot like so-called “Dial-up Accelerator” software, activation of which I’ve been paying $4.95 a month extra to my “only game in town” ISP over the past 18 months for. The Dial-Up Accelerator is actually a product of Slipstream Data Inc. — a Canadian software development subsidiary of BlackBerry smartphone maker Research In Motion. It helps somewhat, mainly by compressing, and therefore degrading the quality of web page images to varying degrees depending upon how much speed (ie: compression) you specify using a slider on the interface window. Although to get substantial improvement you really have to nuke the image resolution. It’s been helpful enough that I’ve kept paying the premium, but certainly no panacea.

This Thing Smokes!

However, Opera Turbo turns out to be a totally different story. This thing smokes! Well, relatively speaking. Broadband it isn’t, but it’s a whole lot faster than what I’m accustomed to. There’s a cost of course in terms of image quality. A lot of the time that’s a tolerable trade-off, and if you turn the images off entirely, page load times begin to approach the speed I get on my local library’s Wi-Fi hotspot (with images on in the latter case) fed by a DSL line.

Downside: Image Quality Reduction

This screenshot illustrates the degree of quality reduction with Opera Turbo enabled and reading out a 6.8 times speed improvement. It’s actually something of a worst-case example and some images don’t look all that bad for casual viewing.

As for the browser itself, it looks and behaves pretty much like the non-turbo Opera 10 alpha preview I’ve been checking out for the past few weeks, which is to say very well. Opera is in most respects my favorite browser already, and for me this turbo booster is icing on the proverbial cake.

The only interface difference is a small icon in the lower left corner that toggles the Turbo compression on or off and indicates status and the degree of compression achieved on a particular page load.

Still Needs Some Refinement

This is alpha level software in a time limited test phase, and Opera’s Turbo technology still needs some refinement. For example, I couldn’t get it to load the radar image on Environment Canada’s site, although other images on the site loaded fine. Dynamic Web technologies such as Ajax (XmlHttpRequests) and Flash are supported, but some plugin content will load only after clicking on the empty element. Note also that for undiminished security, even with Turbo enabled, encrypted traffic does not go through Opera’s compression servers, so when you’re on a SSL site, bypass kicks in and you communicate with the SSL site directly.

Works With Any Type of Connection

However, where Turbo works, it kicks butt, and I’m already addicted. Opera says it will work with any type of connection, but obviously you’ll get the most out of it when you’re stuck with limited bandwidth, not just poky dial-up connections, but also in circumstances like when too many people are on the Wi-Fi in the cafe or you’re surfing the Web through your mobile phone when commuting on the train.

Opera says Turbo will be part of future desktop versions of their Opera browser, and I can’t wait for a fully debugged final version to be released.

In the meantime, you can watch it in action or just download the preview on the Opera Labs site and try it out for yourself.