Opera 9 Technology Preview 2

By Håkon Wium Lie

We've released a technology preview of Opera 9, codenamed Merlin, on Opera Labs. There are some very cool features we want you to try:

Opera Widgets – Widgets are small AJAX applications that provide specific functionality – like getting your favorite news, converting currency and so on. We've posted documentation on Opera Widgets – not only how to use them but also how to make them. Go to My Opera Community to download Widgets.

BitTorrent – BitTorrent has become one of the most popular file transfer protocols around. We built it right into the browser so you can download torrent files easily. No more hassle finding the right port, no worries about setting upload and download speed. We've worked to optimize all of that for you.

Customize your search engines – Use your favorite search engine in the search box. Go to the site you want and right click on the search field site and click on the search field. You will then be prompted to “create search”

Improved content blocker – Cosmetic surgery for Web pages. Just right click on a page and select “block content”. Any content not greyed out can be blocked with a click. Select “done” and see the page the way you want.

Improved pop-up blocker – Just try it with some nasty popups. We added more intelligence to help weed out even more pop-ups. But since not all pop-ups are created equal, use the trash can to retrieve pop-ups you may want.

Site specific preferences – For those of you who want to control settings for specific pages. Want to accept some cookies and deny others? How about setting your own style sheet to make the site more accessible? Just right click on the page and select “Site preferences”.

Thumbnail preview – Opera conserves system resources and uses less memory than other browsers so it's easy to have many tabs open at once. But just what tab had that video you wanted? Using the thumbnail feature, you can find out by resting the mouse on any tab.