Opera has released version 9 of its browser. I’ve been using the latest version for a few hours and I’m starting to really like it. Browsing web pages with Opera 9 feels faster but this may be because I use a lot of extensions for my Firefox installation.

What’s great about Opera 9 is that it now has similar keyboard shortcuts to Firefox when opening a new tab or closing the current one. I used to get crazy switching from Firefox to Opera because I use keyboard shortcuts to open and close tabs.

There’s a slight difference in using the mouse to open links as inactive tabs: in Firefox it’s ctrl + click, in Opera it’s ctrl + shift + click. All in all, I found myself comfortable using Opera in the few hours that I’ve been testing the new version. In fact, Opera seemed quicker to respond than my extension-laden Firefox.

Another cool feature in Opera is that when you open multiple tabs, you can get a thumbnail preview of a tab by placing the mouse cursor over it. (click on photo to view larger image) This is a really great feature for someone like me who opens a lot of tabs in the browser window. You can also have this feature in Firefox by using the Tab Preview extension.

Here’s a list of Opera 9′s features.