A technical preview of Opera 9 has been available for download for a while now, teasing us with some of what we can expect. Many have downloaded it,and use it as their primary browser (despite warnings from Opera that it’s an unfinished product, and as such do contain bugs.) But remember: This is a preview. A taste of what we can expect – not all of it. So, what more will we get?
Operawatch broke the news that widgets will be included – small browser windows that display information taken from the Internet on a user’s desktop. Much like the Dashboard in OS X on the Mac. To get it started, around 10 widgets will be provided by Opera, according to CNET, but anyone can make new ones.
Also new will be thumbnails of the pages. These will appear when you hover over the tabs, for easy recognition of what it is. This is similar to what IE7 will provide.
We also will see the return of bittorrent in Opera 9. This was a much loved feature in an earlier technical preview, so this will be welcome news for many. In addition, Opera will provide access to the bittorrent search engine through the browser interface.
But when can we expect to get our hands on it? According to the just released pressrelease from Opera ASA about bittorrent inclusion, technical preview 2 will be released soon (tomorrow at Tuesday, it sems, and according to the CNET article the final release will be at the end of June.)