Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Legacy Archives

Opera 8 Web Browser Released Today

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

Opera 8 is a substantial upgrade from previous versions, and includes new features such as a unique security information field that indicates the trustworthiness of banking and shopping Web sites and voice interaction capabilities. The new version of Opera also introduces an advanced page-resizing function that adapts Web pages to fit the width of any screen or window. Today’s release for Windows is available in English, German, Dutch and Polish, with more languages to follow. The Linux version is available in English, also with more languages to come. A beta version of Opera 8 for Mac (English) is also available today.

What to look for in Opera 8:

SPEED

Recommended Videos

Considered “the fastest browser on Earth”, Opera’s speed is the result of its tightly coded core and Opera’s rendering engine, which is designed to display the text of the page as quickly as possible. Plus, Opera offers quick navigation with keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, as well as range of features for more efficient surfing, such as the option to open all your favorite pages at once.

SECURITY

Security on the Internet is an increasing concern as the public becomes more aware of vulnerabilities in other browsers. Opera makes security top priority and as a result, Opera 8 includes new and advanced security measures. A new security information field is automatically activated when you visit a secure Web site, indicating the level of security (1-3) and the certificate owner of the site. This allows users to better evaluate a site’s trustworthiness and minimize the risk of being subjected to online fraud, such as phishing attacks.

SIMPLICITY

Opera 8 offers a simplified tabbed-browser user interface (UI). The default UI design is cleaner, more intuitive and allows for easy navigation. Moreover, users do not need to download additional extensions to access a wide range of features. Advanced features remain built-in and easily activated.

ERA

Opera’s Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) technology enables the “fit to window width” feature that adapts Web pages to fit to the width of the screen or browser window, eliminating the need to scroll horizontally. This is a great feature for small- and medium-sized screens, or to tile Web sites next to each other on the screen. Combined with Opera’s zoom function, users can magnify Web pages and still fit them on the screen.

VOICE

The voice feature allows users to surf the Web by using voice commands and to have documents read aloud. Voice is currently offered in English and runs on Windows 2000 and XP.

TRASH CAN

By clicking on the gray trash can located in the upper right of the screen, users can access all the closed windows and blocked pop-ups from their Internet surfing session.

SVG

Opera includes native support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG 1.1 Tiny), an XML language for rich graphical content used to develop enhanced, interactive multimedia.

For a complete list of Opera 8 features visit www.opera.com/features or to view the changelog visit www.opera.com/docs/changelogs

Availability

Download Opera 8 at www.opera.com

Opera 8 Reviewers’ Guide: http://www.opera.com/press/reviews/

Opera 8 is available free of charge with an unobtrusive banner at the top of the user interface. To remove the banner users must register the browser for USD 39, though various discounts are offered.

Ian Bell
Ian Bell
Publisher
I'm the co-founder and CEO of Digital Trends Media Group, which I launched in 2006 out of my home office to share my passion…
Topics
Microsoft has begun rolling out Copilot Code for building apps with natural language
The workplace-focused vibe coding tool can pull context from emails, documents, meetings, and chats.
Microsoft Copilot code logo

Microsoft introduced Code last month as one of the three core parts of its revamped Copilot app. The app was pitched as an easy-to-use coding agent that lets users describe what they want to build in natural language, like an app, a tracker, a dashboard, an automation, or a workflow, and Copilot would build it for them.

Essentially, it's a workplace-focused vibe-coding app that turns existing work into a functional app, and Microsoft has begun rolling it out through the Frontier program.

Read more
AI agents are acting like rogues and causing a huge headache for US banks
US banks block AI agents over fears they could make unauthorised financial moves
Banking

US banks are facing a new kind of digital headache: artificial intelligence agents attempting to access customer accounts and perform actions that may go beyond what users intended. As AI tools become more capable of navigating websites and carrying out tasks independently, financial institutions are scrambling to prevent them from crossing security boundaries.

According to a report published by Axios on October 22, major US banks have detected third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts without authorisation. Some agents reportedly appeared to attempt actions independently of user instructions. The banks involved have not publicly detailed every incident, and there is no evidence that the reported activity resulted in widespread theft of customer funds.

Read more
Canva enters the AI image generation race with Craft, and it’s thinking beyond pretty pictures
The new model plans layouts before generating images, with precise editing and support for 30 aspect ratios.
Canva Craft Featured Image

AI can generate all kinds of pretty pictures, but getting it to spell a headline correctly or keep a poster's layout intact can be another story. Canva wants to fix that with Canva Craft, its first in-house image generation model. Rather than focusing primarily on photographs, Craft is designed around the posters, presentations, social media graphics, and other visual content people actually create. The goal is simple: spend less time fixing AI's mistakes and more time making something useful.

Canva Craft plans before it generates

Read more