As I mentioned in my previous post, Opera 10.5 pre-alpha (actually an internal build) has been leaked. There are plenty of changes in Opera 10.5 (codename Evenes) to whet your appetite. Lets take a look at them
New Skin (with more glass)
Tab bar merged with the Title bar – ala Chrome
Improved UI
Annoying dialogue-boxes have been removed. Various features like Wand and Find are now integrated into the UI.
Improved Find
Safari anyone?
Windows 7 Integration
Jumplists and taskbar thumnail tabs
Per-Tab Private Browsing
Opera supports private tabs as well as private windows. When in private browsing mode no browsing history is recorded.
Presto
New rendering engine
earlier, opera had a complex interface… now, i think they are going to be simple like google chrome!
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I am surprised to see how you (and other people) say Opera 10.5 has tabs like Chrome and search like Safari. The tab bar has been above the navigation bar for as long as I can remember, and the menu bar could be hidden as early as in Opera 9 and maybe earlier. Incremental search has been there for ages; you just had to press slash or full stop rather than Ctrl+F. What is new to the incremental search in 10.5 is that it can finally be configured without launching the Ctrl+F window (in fact, you cannot launch the window any more), so yes, in this way, the search is like Safari and Firefox, just more customizable, but the screen shot seems to stress the fact that all matches are highlighted on the page, which older versions of Opera do just as well as the new pre-alpha. :)
I have been using Opera as my primary browser since v7. So, I do know the browser pretty well.
Chrome was the first browser which merged the tab bar with title bar. And, in Windows 7 Opera 10.5 does the same. I didn’t compare Opera with Chrome, because the tab bar was above the address bar. But, because it was merged with the title bar.
I also know about the option to hide menu has also been there for sometime. Go through my past posts and you would find that I have talked about the feature before.
I don’t know if you have used Safari, because if you have the similarity would immediately strike you. Like Safari, Opera 10.5 dims the rest of the page while highlighting the resulsts. This is something I saw the first time in Safari and past versions of Opera didn’t have. Yes, it did highlight the resulsts – but it didn’t dim the rest of the page.
Ah, I am sorry. I have Windows XP and the tab bar is as separate from the top bar as it was before, so I did not quite get what you meant. I did look at the screen shot, but— well, I did not look closely enough.
I do agree about the search, and I have to admit that I interpreted your accents wrongly. Of course the similarity is striking; my bad for not actually trying to find anything using the new search facility.
So, in short, I understand your position better now and indeed agree with it. I am sorry for not doing enough research before commenting. :) Still, I have seen other reviews of the pre-alpha on the Web that, for example, present the incremental without-a-separate-window search as a totally new feature contrasting with the old Ctrl+F search, which is quite upsetting.
I definitely get where you are coming from. I am also tired of seeing inaccurate reports about Opera around the web. Oh well, that’s one of the disadvantages of having a low market share. Most people don’t care.
Anyway, I am glad that you got my point.
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