Opera browser version history

Introduction

The Opera browser started out in 1994 as a research project in Norway's telecom company, Telenor. Independent development was continued by Opera Software ASA in 1995. The first public release of the Opera Browser was version 2.12 although earlier demo versions have been found and screenshots of the 1.0 version are available on the web.

Opera's co-founder Jon von Tetzchner made the first public announcement of Opera on usenet on July 14th 1996. He used the following introduction, which after many years of development still capture the core qualities of Opera!

Are you looking for an alternative to Netscape and Microsoft Explorer? Do you like the idea of having an MDI user interface and being able to browse in multiple windows? Care for a full keyboard interface for your browsing? Want to start up with multiple windows? Is your browser slow? Try Opera at http://opera.nta.no/opera.

This page tries to give a short overview of Opera's history, from the early beginnings up to the most recent state of the art releases. I also offer a lot of previous Opera versions for download on another server. This server will probably be shut down in the near future, so Lars Kleinschmidt was kind enough to host the collection on his server.

Series 1

Though not publicly released there are screenshots of the then-called MultiTorg Opera. It's fun to recognise the features that are still present in Opera's current form. In weblogs across the web evidence of a Multitorg Opera 1.0b4 can be found. I'm still hoping to find it one day.

Series 2

The first public versions of Opera was the 2-series. They are of course extremely outdated but test-driving them you can witness the birth of the legend that is called Opera. The oldest version found is a Norwegian demo version of Opera 2.0 which was included with a PC Magazine. It will only load local pages but you can already see a lot of key features that have made Opera famous! This is serious test-driving fun!

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Series 3

The Opera 3 series saw Opera evolve from a geek's tool to a powerful browsing machine with a climax in features, stability and speed with version 3.62. This version is often taken as a the standard to which future version of Opera are compared. It was far ahead of its time in CSS support and this browser can still view the web in a surprisingly good way, considering its respectable age. :-)

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Series 4: "Fly the web!" / "The Best Internet Experience on any Device"

[Series 4]Opera 4 was long-awaited the first browser based on a new cross-platform core which facilitated the release of Opera for different Operating Systems and thus speeding up Project Magic. The core supported more standards such as CSS1, CSS2, HTML4, XML and WML and a new integrated e-mail client was included.

The O4 browser was meant as the leap towards the larger public. Unfortunately the earlier versions were very unstable and buggy and didn't do Opera's reputation much good, though the later maintenance release 4.02 was very usable.

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Series 5: "The fastest browser on earth"

[Series 5]The 5 series really made the jump to the large public due to the new ad-sponsored version instead of the 30-day trial period. Furthermore Opera 5 was stable and during following releases it gained new features such as the integrated Instant Messaging, the fantastic mouse-gestures, hotlist panels and the integrated search. The 5 series ended with the 5.12 release which is still used by many today.

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Series 6: "Simply the best Internet Experience"

[Series 6]The Opera 6 series introduced the long-awaited unicode support. Also a new SDI/MDI interface was introduced, facilitating the transition from the SDI-browsers to Opera's unfulpraised MDI-interface. During the later bugfixreleases the kioskmode was enhanced, the integrated searches became editable and a lot of printing problems were solved. The 6 series has become stable and feature rich and now really has become a serious competitor to NN and Internet Explorer.

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Series 7: "Hey Presto!"

[Series 7] Opera 7 has been released in early 2003. It features a brand new rendering engine under the name Presto, which has enhanced and expanded its support for standards and now includes W3C DOM and the Small Screen Rendering technique for handheld devices. The entire interface was redone, making use of a custom cross-platform skinning system which significantly reduced resource usage, and the entire UI is now configurable: keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, menus and toolbars! With the new combined SDI/MDI interface the user has even more power at his command and new innovative features such a FastForward, Notes and Slideshow make the user experience even more enjoyable.

An especially noteworthy change in Opera 7 is the new mail and news client, called M2. This e-mail client is based on a powerful filtering system and offers revolutionizing mail organizing abilities, which will change the way you handle your e-mail. Read more about M2 in my tutorial.

Opera 7.5 introduced a brand new default skin as well as a revamped interface that removed a lot of clutter. A RSS newsreader as well as an IRC chat client was introduced and M2 was optimized for speed. With the 7.60 version, Opera introduced their first iteration of a multimodal browser that can be operated by voice commands alone and that can obey aural CSS while reading pages aloud. A true step forward!

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