First public beta of Opera 9.6: Chrome is on their mind, too

The first publicly released builds of the latest Opera browser suggest developers are working to clean up the rendering engine and spruce up its features, in light of new, bright, and shiny competition seemingly from out of nowhere.

Opera is the world's #4 browser on all platforms in terms of usage share, according to up-to-the-minute data this afternoon from Net Applications. But it cannot afford the perception of slipping to #5, even though in actuality, the first betas of Google Chrome have yet to come close to knocking Opera off of that perch.

So the 9.6 version for desktop computers, premiering today, may very well be that organization's attempt to step on the gas and stay in the race. In the Opera testing process, private betas undergo extensive scrutiny before entering their own private release candidate phases. Therefore, "9.6 Beta RC1" passed muster yesterday, after having been presented for private testers' review only last Friday. The final version 9.5 was released only last June.

Version 9.6 will not be a comprehensive change to the way Opera works, but will instead add some unique features while addressing some of the bugs users discovered in version 9.5. Testers on FileForum were particularly split down the middle with 9.5, with a majority rating it 5 out of 5, but a sizable plurality rating it at the bottom of the heap, citing rendering problems and perennial bugs.

"Opera has so much included but 80% of what is there is only half-baked," wrote FileForum tester metshrine last month, referring to version 9.52. "They are features added just to say, 'We did it first,' and then left to stagnate."

The sentiment is echoed in Opera's own tester forums. "Come on, Opera. You must start to bring your A-game," wrote user pjn123. "Google Chrome is looking great and with more options (like disable pictures). I'm seriously thinking of switching over and suggesting it to others."

One of the new "A-game" features for version 9.6 is a welcome one: a way to add any Web site's search engine into its search bar, including optionally making it the default. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 tried to own this issue by enabling Web sites to present code that actively advertises to users their ability to serve as alternate search bar providers.

But Google Chrome blew the issue wide open, essentially asking, why should Web sites have to petition for the right to be search providers? Chrome enables any Web site with an obvious search button to serve results, through its unified address and search bar. Now, Opera 9.6 is following suit by letting users enter search provider alternatives into its separate search bar. (A similar "Generate Custom Search" feature appears in the Google Toolbar for IE and Mozilla Firefox, although it's not a native feature of either browser.)

For our test, we added BetaNews to Opera's search providers by right-clicking the Search bar on our own home page, and selecting Create Search from the pop-up menu. From there, a dialog box gave us the option to rename the search provider (it's given the title from the home page by default, though that's often too long), and customize any of the elements tacked onto the end of the URL. After clicking OK, our own search engine was added to Opera's list, which already included Google, Yahoo, Ask, Amazon, Wikipedia, eBay, Yahoo Shopping, and BitTorrent.

UPDATE Though Opera is touting this feature, a BetaNews reader and long-time Opera user told us this afternoon that it's actually been present since Opera 9.0 in 2006. It's amazing the things we learn from our readers.

In light of Chrome's ability to scoot tabs around at will between container windows, we wondered whether Opera 9.6 had similar functionality. On Monday, we reported on the latest alpha build of Firefox 3.1, code-named "Shiretoko," and how it's addressing the problems of moving already loaded content between windows without reloading that content from the Web.

We tested Opera 9.6 on a newly minted Windows XP Professional SP3 virtual machine, in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. It's easy to shut off its virtual network adapter, especially to prevent Opera from reloading a page. And yes, we can scoot tabs between open windows, with the content in those tabs staying intact. Score one more for the anti-Chrome contingent.

Naturally, we could not resist the urge to impose the Acid3 standards compliance test on this new build. When the final version 9.5 was released in June, it scored an 83%. Moving up in the world, this latest build scores an 85%. This compared to a 79% from the very latest build of Google Chrome, which we noticed automatically updated itself on one of our systems today, and which we also noted was much faster in rendering that 79% than the earliest build.

"When Google announced Chrome, many experts predicted the death of Opera," the organization's representative, Thomas Ford, told BetaNews this afternoon. "Google is too big, Opera too small. At the time we said our numbers would grow and we would continue to innovate. I'm pleased to say we're doing both."

One of Opera 9.6's other major innovations is said to be its improved synchronization with Opera Mini browsers on mobile phones. We'll test that statement soon.