Opera 10 Beta Released With Faster Performance, New Tab Thumbnails

Today, Opera released the first beta of Opera 10, the latest version of  Opera’s Web browser. It includes a number of features that should appeal to long-time Opera users and those that have yet to give it a go.

• Opera Turbo: Uses compression technology to give dial-up connections broadband-like speed.
• Increased Performance: Opera states that the revamped browser is over 40% faster than Opera 9.6. In our brief tests, the content-heavy Foxnews loaded in 8.1 seconds (compared to 7.8 within Google Chrome). Previously versions of Opera lagged a bit when opening Gmail, but Opera 10 loaded the popular e-mail service in a swift 2.8 seconds.

• Revamped Tabbed Browsing: The tab bar is now resizeable. When you pull down the tab bar, the tabs expand into boxes containing thumbnails of all of your open tabs. Very cool for quickly surveying which pages you have open. When you mouse over a tab, you’re presented with an even larger view of the thumbnail.
• Expanded Speed Dial: The short cut grid now supports up to 25 favorites, displayed in a 5 x 5 grid. When you open a blank tab, click “Configure Speed Dial” to select either a 2 x 2, 3 x 3, 4 x 3, 4 x 4, 5 x 4, or 5 x 5 layout. In addition,  you can add a background image to give the browser extra spice.
• Enhanced e-mail: The integrated e-mail client has been updated to include rich text editing, and in-line images.

Best of all, Opera 10 is available for all platforms: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Poll time! Which browser do you prefer?