I wasn’t kidding when I said that today was a big day for browser news. Flock, Netscape, Opera, and now more Opera news. 
Opera Software just published the first preview release for Opera 9.0, also known by the codename “Merlin”. No, not the cat. 
The changelog has a long list of changes since Opera 8.5. A few highlights are:
- ‘Find’ feature now highlights all matches when searching for text on the page.
- Addition of a new internal source viewer
- Updated search.ini
- Changed keyboard shortcuts for closer cross-browser compatibility:
- Enabled new IMAP code
- Added support for WebForms 2
- Changed default UserAgent string to identify as Opera
- Added support for XSLT 1.0 and the XSLTProcessor constructor
- Acid2 fixes
- SVG support increased to partial SVG 1.1 basic
- and a lot more.
Opera 9.0 Preview 1 can be downloaded here. Just remember that this is a preview release, which Opera considers pre-beta. Opera 9.0 should not be installed over an existing Opera profile.
Update: Opera Watch has also posted some stuff about Opera 9.0. – Link 1 | Link 2