The First Public Beta of Opera 9

Opera Software announced yesterday the first public Beta of Opera 9, which incorporates Widgets, BitTorrent support, content-blocker and others.

"We're proud to release this Beta of Opera 9 to Web users around the world," said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.

"Opera 9 brings powerful new features to enhance the Web browsing experience and empower Web 2.0 developers. Opera 9 unlocks new levels of productivity for the Internet ecosystem," he added

Here are a few of the most important components:

- Widgets - Small Web applications (multimedia, newsfeeds, games and more) that make your desktop experience more fun. Any Web developer can create their own Widgets and share them, regardless of operating system.
- BitTorrent - Instead of having to use a separate BitTorrent application for downloading large files, users can now simply click a torrent file and start the download.
- Content blocker - Choose the content you want to view. Remove ads or images - it is up to you. Right-click on the Web page and choose "Block content"
- Thumbnail preview - It's easy to have many tabs open at once in Opera. But exactly which tab had that video you wanted? Hover any tab to see a thumbnail preview

Opera 9 Beta (Build 8367) has been certified by Softpedia as being 100% Clean and is available for download here.