Yesterday, Opera 9 Beta was released for Windows. Ever since I heard that it had passed the Acid 2 test, I have been excited about it. So as soon as I heard it was released, I got myself a copy and happily and anxiously installed it.

Side note: As a developer/designer, I like to have as many browsers at my disposal as possible. I installed Opera 9 Beta without any reservation because it didn't interfere with my ability to have Opera 8.54 co-exist on my machine. Sadly, I do not have IE7 Beta 2 Public on my main machine because I still need IE6. Kudos to Opera for allowing me to have multiple versions.

So I've been using Opera 9B for a full day or so and I must say, I'm quite impressed. Aside from small little rendering issues I've found, I really can't complain. They fixed the XMLHttpRequest issue and tons of other rendering issues (including alpha/opacity), but the extra features are where I think Opera 9B really shines.

Now, it is still too soon to have a comprehensive review of the browser, but after only one day I can tell you that if my computer is on, Opera 9B will be open. The reason for this is because of the OperaWidgets. This is pretty much the equivalent to OSX Dashboard, but now us Windows users can have it too. Hopefully the selection of widgets will grow, because that is probably my only complaint with it. Hell, I might even look into making one myself.

Another great feature that they added into 9B is the support for BitTorrents. Now, I usually use uTorrent, but will probably just start using Opera for grabbing any torrents from now on. I have the browser open anyways.

One thing that I was hoping to see, but didn't (or haven't found it yet?) was what Shiira calls 'Tab Expose'. Opera 9B does have a preview of the tab when you mouse over, but I would LOVE to see some way of viewing all those tab previews at once and then being able to choose the tab I want based on the visual. Ah well, can't ask for everything.

All in all, I must say that I'm rather impressed. Opera has done, from what I've seen, a great job. And as my brother said,

Oh great. Now I have another browser I have to test for.