Opera Turbo hits first alpha

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 17 Mar 2009 at 10:37

Opera has released the first Alpha of its Opera Turbo software, designed to speed up browsing on slower connections.

Opera Turbo is a server-side technology that compresses a website's text and images, but otherwise leaves the page's layout intact.

This means that web applications such as Ajax and Flash are supported, though most plugin content will only load after the empty page element has been selected by the user.

The company is aiming Opera Turbo at people struggling with connections of around 100Kbit/sec or slower, and plans to build the software into the next desktop release of Opera.

According to the company, this compression can shrink the data by up to 80%.

Opera's also hoping to have some joy on internet-connected mobile phones and has built a small meter into the software that will show the amount of bandwidth saved, which could prove useful for those on strict data packages.