Opera was the first major browser to include BitTorrent support. Way in advance of the announcement of a partnership with BitTorrent Inc, Opera released a TP (technology preview) version which included support for the BitTorrent protocol. Already supporting HTTP and FTP, the inclusion was deemed a success and was later embedded into version 9.0 of the browser, enabling users to both search for and download .torrent files without the need for a separate search engine or torrent client.
“Implementing BitTorrent is a natural choice, considering its efficient use of bandwidth and worldwide popularity” said Christen Krogh of Opera Software, “For users this means that they can browse and download content in an application they’re familiar with.”
Many features were added or modified in later releases of the browser, but BitTorrent related changes were minimal, with just a small change to torrent functionality in v9.10 (relating to the cancellation of torrent downloads) and the addition of support for the optional “key” in BitTorrent tracker requests in v9.20.
Revelations that Opera was vulnerable to an attack against its BitTorrent engine led to a fix being made in v9.21 along with a fix for some torrent stability issues.
Now the Opera Desktop Team have announced that they are in ‘BitTorrent bug fix mode’ with new build 8800 on the v9.22 branch, offering greater stability and faster speeds.
Toman, an Opera ‘software nurse’ is inviting users to ‘break’ this new build and as Opera is available multi-platform, everyone has the chance to try.
