Opera 9.0 Preview 1 has been available for a little while now, and I briefly mentioned some of new features. Having used it for a few weeks now, I think it's most exciting feature for me is the built in source editor. At this point in its development you would be forgiven for over looking it and continuing to use you preferred text editor since it lacks syntax highlighting and other common features in most text editors. But it's tight integration with the browser opens some exciting potential.

In Opera you could always view the source of a cached page in an external editors, modify the source, save it and refresh the page in Opera to see your change. Now you can view the source in Opera, modify it, save it and the page will automatically reflect the change. It doesn't sound like much of a difference, but because it all happens in the browser it's so much quicker and easier.

But the best part of this integration between the browser and editor is the ability to edit blank pages. I have a folder loaded with individual HTML files that were created for quick tests of CSS and HTML behavior. Now in Opera I can open the address about:blank and edit it's source in Opera to do the same thing. No more saving files, flicking between Opera and my editor, and having to refresh the page. I'm actually using it now to write this blog before I put it onto the site.

Add in syntax highlighting, autoclosing of HTML tags, and HTML / CSS code completion and Opera has a serious web development tool on it's hands.