Opera Version 10.50 Is Released, Claimed To Be World's Fastest Browser
Those feisty Norwegians. You'd think that copping the third highest medal count (23) in the 2010 Winter Olympics would be enough for them.
But noooooooooo. Now they've announced the release of what they claim is the world's fastest browser: Opera 10.50.
Opera 10.50 has introduced a new JavaScript engine, Carakan, and a new graphics library, Vega, that help the new version perform better than ever in browser benchmark tests.
In addition, Opera has freshened the interface, making its screen footprint leaner and leaving more space for content, improved support for HTML 5.0 and CSS3, and added Aero Glass, Aero Peek and Jump Lists support in Windows 7, which is pretty damn sweet.
Privacy features are excellent as well: it's easy to remove specific sites (as opposed to your entire history) from your browsing history, so no worries about your boss finding out you have a cake fetish. Plus, private browsing can be enabled by tab, as opposed to the entire window, making it extremely flexible.
Popular features like Speed Dial,Opera Turbo (which the company claims speeds up content when your bandwidth is slow), Opera Unite (content sharing) and Opera Link (synchronization between computers) are still part of the package.
A quick installation and test by yours truly shows that it certainly feels pretty damn fast, and the new features are definitely cool. I expect to play with it extensively (uh, the BROWSER) over the next few days, but it may well become a regular part of my browsing day. If you aren't dependent on Firefox extensions it's definitely worth a look, and even if you are, it's always nice to switch it up a bit.
Version 10.50 is available for download for Windows only now, though versions for Mac and Linux should be released shortly.
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