The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera Web browser

I'd like to apologize in advance to those readers that like the non-technical posts that sometimes appear here for the large number of posts about Opera likely to appear this week. I have a lot about Opera I want to say. We'll be back to intermittent Opera posts shortly. We appreciate your patience.

As you may have read, Opera 9.0 Preview 2 will be released tomorrow (assuming no showstoppers are found) after three and a half months of development. In addition to the return of (improved) BitTorrent support, Opera 9.0 Preview 2 will sport Widgets.

Widgets are small (web) applications that run outside of the browser user interface, allowing you quick access to things like a calendar, the current weather, and recent news at the touch of a button (F6). We've made a handful of Widgets already, which will be available tomorrow. We'll continue to crank out new ones. And, since Widgets are basically just Web pages, you'll be able to make them and share them, too. More details will be available tomorrow.

Of course, that's not all that's new in this preview. Many, many, many, many, many bugs have been squished. This release is more stable than the first preview and many of the new technologies are more fully developed. We've also implemented several other new features, though you'll have to wait until tomorrow for full details. We have a feeling you'll like what you see.