BHINDZ

At last, Opera 9.5 is here ^_^
When a pop-up saying that Opera new release have arrive it’s only a split second for me for deciding to download it and upgrade my Opera ^_^

I really want to test its performance soon after I finished upgrading Opera, but I totally forgot that the script I used for testing browser performance are gone along with my laptop >_<. Well, maybe next time ^_^

At first glance, the first I notice are some major changes on its interface. Opera 9.5 default skin are darker and more glossy than the previous version.

What makes it darker are the silhouette icons and black tab bar. The ‘New tab’ button is also changed to become dynamic tailing position of the last tab.

Some Opera users kinda dislike these changes. The ‘New Tab’ button more like following IE7 new tab and glossy skin more like imitating IE7 and Firefox 3 (but I think Opera is better though ^_^). Tab bar size and panel border are bigger that previous version, taking a lot space in the screen.

Status bar now are visible by default with some view icon such as zoom and fit to width.

Side bar back-color seems odd and not blend very well with other panel.

Although there’s some minor set back, overall it’s quite good for me ^_^

Okay, now let us talk about improvement. On mail, Opera automatically make a folder for each your email account. It’s pretty convenient since I don’t have to make some filter to separate email for each account I used to be ^_^

One of the new feature that Opera 9.5 have is Opera Link. You can use it to store some data like Bookmark, Speed Dial, Personal bar, and Notes to your My Opera account and synchronize it with Opera in your other computer and Opera Mini 4 in your cellphone.

If the synchronization are succeed, an icon will show up on bottom left corner.

Opera 9.5 use improved engine (or so they say, I haven’t fully tested it yet) that makes start-up time much faster and memory consumption are optimized significantly. For example, if make my Opera idle without doing any activities, the lowest memory consumption that I recorded are about 2400 KB only ^_^

Opera 9.5 are still support W3C standard since we still can see the yellow face smile clearly.

There’s improvement on new web standard support although it’s not complete yet. Opera 9.5 only got 83 point score on Acid3 test.

That’s all for the review of the new Opera 9.5. Unfortunately, Firefox 3 is still RC so I ca’t review it yet. Just wait for the review, okay? ^_^