pimg alt="opera_logo_dec08.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opera_logo_dec08.png" /Opera today a href="http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2008/12/04/"released/a a sneak peek of the newest version of its desktop browser, a href="http://www.opera.com/browser/next/"Opera 10/a. At the center of this new release is Presto 2.2, Opera's new rendering engine, which, according to the company, offers a considerably faster browsing experience when compared to Presto 2.1./p pOpera has had to face stiff competition in the desktop browser market from a href="http://www.google.com/chrome"Google's Chrome/a, and the company is clearly looking to gain back some ground by emphasizing the speed of the rendering engine over new features in this release./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12816amp;cb=12816' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12816amp;n=12816' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p h2Features/h2 pIn terms of its user interface, the changes between version 9.6 and this alpha of Opera 10 are minimal and mostly cosmetic. /p pimg alt="opera_10_acid_100.png" align="right" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opera_10_acid_100.png" /As for new features, Opera finally supports inline spell-checking. This feature had been sorely missing from Opera until now. Opera 10 can now also auto-update without giving notification to the user, similar to Google's Chrome. /p pOpera 10 also still includes all the major new a href="http://www.opera.com/browser/features/"features/a of Opera 9, including Feed Preview, Opera Link for bookmark synchronization, and the updated version of Opera Mail./p h2Presto 2.2/h2 pThe rendering engine easily scored 100 out of 100 on the a href="http://acid3.acidtests.org/"Acid 3 test/a (and easily passed the Acid 2 test as well). We benchmarked this alpha version against Opera 9.62 using the a href="http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html"Sunspider/a and a href="http://dromaeo.com/"Dromaeo/a benchmarks. In both cases, Opera 10 was clearly faster, but the performance gains were typically around 10-15% and nowhere near the 30% claimed by Opera (though in their defense, Opera's PR material talks about the faster 'browsing experience,' not about benchmarks). Presto also wasn't able to come close to our benchmarks for Chrome./p pimg alt="opera_10_alpha_screenshot.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opera_10_alpha_screenshot.jpg" //p h2A Capable Browser/h2 pOverall, Opera 10, at least in its current state, looks like an evolutionary update to previous versions. This preview version, however, was mostly meant to showcase the new rendering engine, so chances are that Opera will roll out additional new features and changes to the user interface in upcoming alpha and beta releases./p pWe have always had a soft spot for Opera, but somehow, the browser never quite found the sweet spot between speed and functionality that Firefox (in large part due to its extensions) and Chrome have. /p pOpera 10 is a capable browser with a number of very interesting features. However, when compared to Google's Chrome, with its unified address and search bar, as well as its speedy rendering engine, Opera 10 still has a bit of ground to cover before it will be able to challenge Chrome and Firefox./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/opera_10_sneak_peak.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J2iYOtmsbvONk7qbGYfNyvfMT0g/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J2iYOtmsbvONk7qbGYfNyvfMT0g/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=zMarJvd5"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=hSHtOTvO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QEaOjgOM"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QEaOjgOM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QnGt8MtT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QnGt8MtT" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QlNcgCaK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QlNcgCaK" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=1JKsGxSo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=WBQ6vk5n"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/OV9c8LEPrDU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="visual_explorer_logo_dec08.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/visual_explorer_logo_dec08.png" /Today we came across a href="http://www.visual-explorer.com/"Visual Explorer/a, a new browser that wants to provide users with a better, more tightly integrated browsing experience. Similar to what a href="http://flock.com"Flock/a does with Firefox, Visual Explorer is built on top of Microsoft's a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx"Internet Explorer/a and provides users with a new user interface, as well as a number of new features. While Flock focuses on integrating lots of social media services, Visual Explorer tries to provide its users with a more extensive set of general browsing features such as live previews for tabs or an enhanced download manager./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12804amp;cb=12804' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12804amp;n=12804' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pBecause of its dependence on Internet Explorer, Visual Explorer is only available for Windows. There, however, it will run on any version of Windows, including Windows 98, ME, NT, and 2000./p h2Features/h2 pAmong Visual Explorer's more interesting a href="http://www.visual-explorer.com/feat_user.htm"features/a are its built-in themes, content filters, and its ability to use IE add-ons. Unlike the latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome, Visual Explorer does not feature any private browsing modes, but it does feature an interesting 'cloaking mode' which hides the browser after it has been inactive for a set amount of time./p pimg alt="visual_explorer_1.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/visual_explorer_1.jpg" //p pSome of Visual Explorer's other interesting features that are not available in IE7 or the latest public beta of IE8 are its ability to a href="http://www.visual-explorer.com/feat_gen.htm"save web pages as images/a, an enhanced download manager, and easy access to RSS subscriptions (though no integration with third-party RSS readers)./p pOddly missing, however, is a bookmark bar where you can drag-and-drop your most often used bookmarks for quick and easy access. Visual Explorer also doesn't support IE8's a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/features/accelerators.aspx"Accelerators/a./p h2Just as Slow as IE8/h2 pJust as expected, when we ran Visual Explorer through the a href="http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:%5B237,239,240,242,241%5D,%223d-morph%22:%5B187,187,186,186,187%5D,%223d-raytrace%22:%5B267,271,270,269,267%5D,%22access-binary-trees%22:%5B176,176,177,178,179%5D,%22access-fannkuch%22:%5B503,499,497,495,510%5D,%22access-nbody%22:%5B260,263,262,263,261%5D,%22access-nsieve%22:%5B128,126,130,130,129%5D,%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:%5B122,120,121,121,120%5D,%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:%5B182,179,177,179,177%5D,%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:%5B322,315,316,311,314%5D,%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:%5B212,210,209,205,205%5D,%22controlflow-recursive%22:%5B140,141,141,143,140%5D,%22crypto-aes%22:%5B207,212,201,209,210%5D,%22crypto-md5%22:%5B112,112,112,113,111%5D,%22crypto-sha1%22:%5B113,112,112,112,112%5D,%22date-format-tofte%22:%5B255,261,262,255,259%5D,%22date-format-xparb%22:%5B235,236,233,236,237%5D,%22math-cordic%22:%5B274,273,272,274,275%5D,%22math-partial-sums%22:%5B226,182,183,182,183%5D,%22math-spectral-norm%22:%5B154,153,153,156,155%5D,%22regexp-dna%22:%5B271,266,264,267,270%5D,%22string-base64%22:%5B929,928,924,921,925%5D,%22string-fasta%22:%5B267,267,268,270,270%5D,%22string-tagcloud%22:%5B200,205,197,202,198%5D,%22string-unpack-code%22:%5B215,218,217,214,214%5D,%22string-validate-input%22:%5B210,214,215,219,209%5D%7D"SunSpider benchmark/a, the results were identical to those for Microsoft's IE8 - and just as unimpressive, especially when compared to Google's Chrome or the latest nightly releases of Firefox 3.1. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Visual Explorer, just like IE8, feels just as fast as Google's Chrome when browsing regular web sites./p h2Can it Find its Niche?/h2 pThe browser market is obviously huge, so even getting a small piece of this pie would be a huge success for Visual Explorer. Other companies like a href="http://www.maxthon.com/"Maxthon/a and a href="http://flock.com"Flock /ahave been able to carve out a niche for themselves, and Visual Explorer might be able to do the same by giving users who need to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer more flexibility and useful features than the original product./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/visual_explorer_new_browser_on_top_of_ie.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/cytzamUwNdRfwW12sLwO5OwXYiI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/cytzamUwNdRfwW12sLwO5OwXYiI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=q49AOcY4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=eh2YNriK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=As1rc69E"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=As1rc69E" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=tyXKFTEz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=tyXKFTEz" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=g8JOwX92"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=g8JOwX92" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QY8AYTFJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=w4vzb6B8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/kD7AxeSNBaA" height="1" width="1"/