14 DAY TRIAL // The Opera Team has released Opera 10.0 Alpha 1, now available for Macintosh, Windows, as well as Linux machines. Having passed the Acid3 Test for web standard support to perfection, the browser's engine has seen observable improvements, being able to handle CSS, XML printing a lot better. RGBA and HSLA support has also been added in this early build of Opera 10.0.
Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 (Build 6166) delivers the “long awaited auto-update functionality,” according to Adam Minchinton, Opera Mac developer. “That's right,” he says, “Opera will now update itself as new versions are released. And for those of you who want every single snapshot release just enable the 'Download All Snapshots' setting (opera:config#AutoUpdate).”
Minchinton also warns that, in doing so, users will be upgrading to all snapshots. “...As you know: snapshots contain the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all,” he says.
Looking back on the team's progress over the last few months (since the 9.6 release), Minchinton reveals their current achievements with great satisfaction, saying “It seems like yesterday we released Opera 9.6 and now you can all get your hands on Opera 10.0. Rather than ramble on, here's a quick list of what's new: Presto 2.2 Engine; performance boost; 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test; auto-update; inline spelling checker; Opera Mail improvements, including rich text composition and delete after X days; Widget Improvements on Linux,” Minchinton enumerates.
According to the changelog, one Mac-specific tweak changes the View Source shortcut from Command-U to Alt (Option)-Command-U. Users should be advised that Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 is an alpha version of Opera, which may have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. The Opera Team advises that users install the new version of the browser only on computers that are properly backed up. Additionally, users should not replace previous Opera versions with this one. One reason is that users will not be able to downgrade to a previous version of Opera after upgrading to Opera 10.0, with Opera Mail becoming unusable.
Download Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 Build 6166 / 9.62 Build 5256 (Free)