Opera has launched a release candidate of Opera 9.5, the latest version of the company's web browser. Opera 9.5 has been in beta for several months, but the release candidate is a bit more stable, sports a few new features, and more importantly, a bunch of bug fixes. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Features a previously mentioned new skin
• Smoother upgrade from Opera 9.2 to 9.5
• "Download message bodies" enabled on all POP accounts
• Stability fixes
• Improvements to the Mac native skin and fixed support for Mac OS X 10.2

Unless major issues with Opera 9.5 RC are found, this version could eventually be marked a stable release. If you haven't tried Opera in a while, it's worth taking for a spin. While there are still a handful of sites and web services that don't render properly in Opera, (Google, we're looking at you), overall the browser is incredibly fast and full featured.

It's been a few years since the Opera web browser's interface got a major overhaul. But now the Opera Desktop Team has posted an updated version of Opera 9.5 beta which features a shiny new theme.

The new theme is a bit closer to what you'll find on Opera's non-desktop browsers, including Opera 9.5 for Windows Mobile and Opera for the Nintendo Wii. Aside from a darker look, there are a few nice features, like an animated stop/refresh button that turns red when a page is loading, and green when it's finished.

There's also a new settings icon in the main toolbar that lets you open the side panel to launch the Opera Widget engine, bookmark sidebar and other tools.

The updated version of Opera 9.5 beta is a development snapshot, so there are some known issues. But there's an option to install this version side by side with an existing version of Opera so you don't lose your settings.

For a long time, NetFront was the reigning champ of Windows Mobile and PocketPC web browsers. While Pocket Internet Explorer comes standard with most Windows Mobile phones and PDAs, the browser renders pages slowly, lacks support for tabs, and doesn't handle AJAX very well. NetFront does all of those things and more. And if it weren't for the introduction of Opera Mobile a few years ago, which has the same features plus speedier page rendering, we would still heartily be recommending NetFront.

But ACCESS, the company behind the NetFront browser is working hard to keep up with Opera. This week ACCESS released the second concept version (or beta) of NetFront 3.5 for Windows Mobile. When the final version is released you'll have to pay for this browser, but while it's in beta, it's free and definitely worth checking out. Here's a short list of updates in the latest version:

• Improved CPU usage
• AutoCruise function has been removed
• Faster page rendering
• Faster page zooming
• Faster scrolling
• Faster switching between rendering modes (landscape or portrait, single column or desktop style)

The beta will expire on August 31, 2008. Note that you should install NetFront to your device's main memory, not to a storage card or you may experience some stability issues.

Flock, the social web browser built from Firefox code keeps getting more social. Flock 1.2 beta adds Digg, Pownce, and AOL Mail integration. Once you login to Digg for the first time from the Flock browser, you'll have the option of opening up a Digg sidebar which shows you all of your Digg contacts and their recent activity. You can also click a button in the sidebar to submit any page you're currently visiting to Digg.

Micro-blogging service Pownce has also been added to the sidebar. If you have a Pownce account you can keep up with your contacts without opening a separate web page. Previous versions of Flock already supported Twitter.

Finally, the latest beta adds support for AOL Mail notifications. This isn't so much a social feature as an essential feature if you happen to use AOL as your primary web mail account. Flock already supported Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. We're not sure why AOL wasn't already in there, or why Windows Live Hotmail still isn't supported.

Like Firefox, Flock is cross-platform. There are versions of Flock 1.2 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

[via CyberNet]

A little over a month after releasing a public beta of Opera Mini 4.1, the Opera team has pushed out the final version of its latest cellphone browser. The newest build is reportedly 50% faster than opera mini 4.0. It also has a handful of new features including the ability to save web paes fr offline viewing, the ability to upload and download images from within the browser, and improved page and web search features.

The final build looks a lot like the public beta, but the developers have fixed a bunch of bugs and made some changes to the page saving and address auto-complete features.

Opera Mini 4.1 is available as a free download for dozens of different cellphone models.

K-Meleon is a light weight web browser for folks who don't need a ton of plugins, options, or much of anything except for a good utility for viewing web sites. The browser uses the same rendering engine as Firefox, so pretty much any page that you can access in Firefox can also be opened in K-Meleon. But don't expect your Firefox add-ons or Greasemonkey scripts to play nice with K-Meleon.

Because K-Meleon lacks some of the bells and whistles you'd find in Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera, the browser is fast. Like really fast. It also doesn't use as much RAM as Firefox, which is known to be something of a memory hog.

That's not to say that K-Meleon is a one-trick pony. The browser is customizable, and you can choose from a variety of skins and themes. And K-Meleon supports tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop up blocking, and macros.

K-Meleon is Windows only. But if you're looking for light weight Mac or Linux web browsers that use the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox, check out Camino or Galeon.

The Opera team has released the second public beta of Opera 9.5. The web browser packs all the features we've seen in earlier test builds like an improved tab manager, plus a bunch of new features and fixes. Here are just a few:

• Full text history search from the address field
• Spatial navigation highlighting similar to that used in Opera Mini 4 and Opera for the Nintendo Wii
• Opera can now be set as the default mail application from the Windows Control Panel
• Improved IMAP performance in email client
• Improved Acid3 test performance (although like all browsers, Opera 9.5 beta 2 still fails the test)
• Improved compatibility with Gmail 2
• Improved fraud protection
• Support for Extended Validation certificates

In other words, most of the changes won't be that noticeable to the average user. But the latest browser is more secure and should do a better job of rendering some web sites. Opera 9.5 beta 2 is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

[via Opera Desktop Team Blog]

The first real, official, and honest to-goodness beta release of Firefox 3 is out. You know, not like that little false alarm pre-beta version we told you about a few weeks ago.

Still, the main differences between this beta and that pre-release copy are that the Firefox team has spent a few more weeks hammering out bugs. The feature set is pretty much what we knew it would be.

• Updates to the Gecko rendering engine which should improve stability.
• New Places feature makes it easier to find the sites you've visited most recently, most often, or starred for coming back to later.
• New security features alert you when you're visiting insecure web sites and let you auto-scan downloads with your antivirus software

We're still not quite ready to replace Firefox 2 with an admittedly still buggy beta. But it's pretty exciting to see where Mozilla is going with its flagship web browser.

While it might not be quite as exciting as Firefox for mobile phones, MobileRead forum member Adam B has enabled web browsing on the iLiad eBook reader.

It turns out the iLiad ships with a stripped down version of the Minimo web browser for reading HTML files. Out of the box, you can't browse the web with this version of Minimo. But Adam B has released an update that effectively unlocks Minimo on the black and white device.

Minimo is not an official Mozilla project, but the mobile web browser is based on Mozilla code and hosted on Mozilla.org. Now that Mozilla has announced plans to develop a mobile version of Firefox, we suspect there won't be much more development in the Minimo space.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Oh experimental applications, they grow up so quickly. It seems like just last week we were telling you about Mozilla WebRunner, a stripped down version of Firefox with no tabs or URL bar. And now WebRunner's all grown up and has a new name: Prism.

OK, all grown up might be an overstatement. But Mozilla has outlined their goals for the simple web browser: to let you access web applications without firing up Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, or whatever it is you're using to read this site.

Here's how it works. You download and install Prism. The first time you run it, a window will pop up asking you for a URL, name, and where you'd like to "install" the application. Installation basically means creating a shortcut on your desktop, Start Menu, or Quick Launch Bar. To "uninstall" a web app, just delete the shortcut.

While you could argue Prism is just a glorified way of making desktop shortcuts to web pages, something we've been able to do for years, it's a bit more than that. Because Prism doesn't feature all the bells, whistles, toolbars, and add-ons of Firefox, it's a very light weight browser. And if you just want to access Google Reader, Gmail, or Zoho, that might be enough.

Eventually, Mozilla may integrate Prism with Firefox. In other words, there would be a toolbar menu that says "make this a desktop app." Any time you visit a website that you want to open with Prism in the future, you could click a button to activate the Prism settings menu.

Opera's desktop web browser isn't the only browser getting an update today. Opera Mini 4 beta 3 is also out, and there are a ton of new features since beta 2.

• Support for Opera Link (synchronize your bookmarks and speed dial settings across multiple instances of Opera)
• Added Speed Dials
• Added RSS feed support
• Added shortcuts
• Images fit to screen better
• Page position and scaling preserved after page reloads
• Changed some options and descriptions

Opera is a pretty good desktop browser with a few innovative features you won't find in any other browser (without add-ons). But some pages still don't render properly, particularly Google services.

Opera Mini is hands down one of the best, if not the best browser for mobile phones. It renders pages quickly, and has the iPhone-like ability to view a full page or zoom in on particular areas. So while it's nice to see Opera continuing to build new features into the desktop browser, we're most excited when Opera focuses on what it does well: mobile browsing.
[via Opera Mini Blog]

The folks behind the Opera web browser have launched a public beta of Opera 9.5 today. We kind of knew that was coming, but it's still nice to get a slightly more stable release of the updated web browser. Probably our favorite new feature is the full history search that lets you do a full text search covering every web site you've visited recently from the URL bar.

Opera is has also launched Opera Link, which lets you synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial preferences. Have Opera on your home and work machines, and Opera Mini 4 beta on your cellphone? Opera Link will let you keep the same preferences on each.

There's no synchronization love for Opera Mobile, the Windows Mobile version of the web browser. That's kind of sad, considering Opera Mobile is the only browser of the bunch that you have to pay for. It costs $24 while Opera Mini and the desktop browser are free.

Development keeps marching along on the Opera web browser. Today the Opera team released Opera 9.24, which is basically a security update to Opera 9.24. And next week the team will launch the public beta of Opera 9.5.

Opera 9.24 fixes several vulnerabilities that could leave your computer open to attack. Updates are available for the Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix versions of Opera.

Opera is throwing a party in San Francisco next Thursday for the official launch of Opera 9.5. We took a look at an alpha version of the browser, and we were pretty impressed. It's still not quite a Firefox replacement (for example, some Google web services don't render properly), but Opera 9.5 definitely has some attractive features like the ability to search your complete web history from the URL bar.

If you can't wait 8 more days, there's a new snapshot build available for download today. It has plenty of bug fixes and updates, but there's also a huge list of known issues, so download at your own risk.

While Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera, AOL, and others keep pushing out new web browsers with all the latest and greatest features, sometimes you need something a bit simpler. You know, like a web browser that can only open one page at a time, has no tabs, no sidebars, bookmarks, add-ons, or even a URL box.

No, seriously. That's exactly what WebRunner is: the simplest web browser you've seen since... well, ever. (Well, unless you count text-based browsers like Lynx). This Mozilla project can render pretty much any page or content that you can access in Firefox. But it comes without any bells and whistles. At all.

In fact, it's probably best not to think of WebRunner as a browser at all. Rather, it's a lightweight tool for accessing web-based applications. Like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but wish you didn't have to leave it open in a browser tab all the time? No problem, just fire it up in WebRunner and think of it as a standalone application that only works when your computer's connected to the internet.

You load websites by clicking on WebRunner "bundles," which are basically zipped archive files holding configuration data, icons, and scripts. You can create your own bundles or download existing bundles for most Google services (Reader, Mail, Docs, Analytics) and a few other sites like Twitter and Facebook.

[via CyberNet]

Remember Netscape? No, not the social news/bookmark site. That's called Propeller now. We're talking about the web browser. We'll forgive you if you didn't realize the Netscape browser still existed. We forget sometimes ourselves, and we work for AOL, the company that owns Netscape.

AOL has released the latest version of the Netscape browser. And while it's built on top of Firefox, it offers a few added features you won't find in Firefox (you know, unless you install a bunch of add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts):

• Auto-correction of URLs
• Easily resize text boxes in web applications like Gmail
• Link Pad sidebar that lets you drab and drop links without mixing them up with your bookmarks
• Sidebar minibrowser that lets you have two web sites open side by side at the same time

There's been a beta version of Netscape 9 floating around for a few months, but now's the time to download the stable release. Netscape 9 runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux.