Opera 10 beta released, shows off new features

Opera 10's new skin debuted a few days ago, and this morning the wraps came off the beta version of their next browser. As with other versions, the new release is small, respectably fast, and overflowing with customization features.

One of the most noticeable additions is visual tab previews. What begin as standard, boring tabs, turn into snapshots of your active web pages by simple dragging the tab bar to expand it. Hover over a tab or thumbnail and Opera presents a larger preview image.

The browser also supports HTML5, SVG, Web fonts, automatic updates, and numerous other features and improvements as listed in the official changelog. Though it scores a 100/100 on the Acid3 test, Opera still lags behind the top dogs on benchmarks like Dromaeo and V8 (though my results show a big step up from 9.80). Still, a test is only a test - and Opera 10 feels very comparable in real-world use.

v10 beta shows a lot of promise, and it could very well convince some users to switch to Opera on the desktop. The company certainly seems to be picking up steam - Reuters reported yesterday that Opera has regained the number one spot in mobile browser market share.