Today, the 9.5 alpha version of the browser - Kestrel - was released. The reason it took a whole year was 'cause they were rewriting the code from the ground up. What does this mean? Well Kestrel is damn fast. Like crazy fast. Like faster than the latest Firefox Alpha release (what was it, number 6 or 7?).
There is native synchronization for all bookmarks - so whether you keep or delete or reorganize your stuff, it'll all be synchronized online automatically, immediately. Hopefully this feature will expand in the beta and official release to include toolbar configurations etc. so when you download Opera onto a new machine, it'll automatically arrange and update everything to the way you like it. That would be so cool and hassle free
Kestrel also has support for the new CSS 3 selectors, so there are a number of cool things one can code - like you can have stuff with SHADOWS - up to six of them. If IE and FF get on the bandwagon, OMG, the new lj designs that'll come out will be BRILLIANT. So. Much. Shiny.
I've lost track of the number of times I've googled something, found a cool site, forgot to bookmark it and couldn't find it again. Kestrel has history search - so if you remember even one word from that web page, it'll find it for you *__*
*rips out heart and hands it over to Opera*
The best thing about this release is that it's just the alpha version - there'll probably be more obviously shiny goodies in the beta and final releases. Meaning that by the official release it'll also have very few bugs. That's the only reason I haven't installed 9.5 over my current 9.23 installation. Just in case *something* happens. But I really want to. I want to test the M2 client properly. BUT I WILL HOLD OUT FOR THE BETA, YES I WILL.