Opera 10 Alpha, Even Faster Than Before

I’ve been following Opera’s new releases quite closely, and whether it’s one of the mobile versions of the browser or the desktop Opera, one cannot say they aren’t active. The numbers, unfortunately, just aren’t on their side: regardless of having a great feature set and being very fast, the desktop version of Opera just isn’t gaining significant traction.

Opera’s next big release, Opera 10, raises expectation merely by its round version number, and now there’s an alpha version for everyone to try out. The new Presto 2.2 engine should bring speedier browsing, and even better adherence to W3C standards. Furthermore, there’s an inline spelling checker and auto updating, but these features are hardly a novelty since Firefox already has them both. Finally, Opera Mail has been improved, as well as widget support for Linux.

Will these new features bring Opera to the web browser spotlight? I’m afraid not. Google Chrome has pleasantly surprised us, and it’s fast as hell; the new Opera could prove to be faster, but I doubt that the performance can be drastically better. As far as other improvements go, they’re either minor features, or catching up with the competition, and that won’t be enough to gain significant market share.

If you’re brave enough to try Opera 10 Alpha 1 yourself, you can download it here.