Opera once again has claimed the title of the fastest browser on earth.
Two weeks ago, the Opera software team released a public beta of the latest and greatest version of their Opera browser. This morning, the final version of Opera 10.50 has been released for Windows users with a Mac and Linux version coming very soon.
Opera 10.50 uses its new Carakan Javascript engine which is 7 times faster than the previous engine, Futhark. In today’s web, there is a ever growing demand for dynamic web applications making heavy use of Javascript.
Opera 10.50 with 3 tabs open with thumbnails dragged down, Dragonfly web development tool open and the panels sidebar on the Opera Unite tab.
Just how fast is Opera 10.50? I ran 3 trials each of the Sunspider benchmark on my dual core Windows 7 Ultimate machine. Remember that for this test, lower is better.
Sunspider Benchmark Results for the 5 most popular browsers. Lower is better.
Browser speed is always an important factor and the ongoing battle for the crown continues. Chrome previously held the title but it seems like Opera 10.50 has stolen the title of being the fastest browser on earth. Notice that according to these benchmark results, Opera 10.50 is 14 times than Internet Explorer 8.
Opera 10.50 supports elements of HTML 5 such as <video> and <audio> and CSS 3 such as border-radius: 3px;.
Opera 10.50 features tight integration with Windows 7 features including Jump Lists, thumbnail tab previews, and download progress on the taskbar icon.
Opera Windows 7 Jumplist
Besides bug fixes, the final version remains largely unchanged from the beta versions.
One of my favorite features of Opera is Opera Turbo (introduced in Opera 10.0), which can be set to turn on when a slow network is detected. It significantly speeds up page loads by reducing the quality of images to greatly reduce the size. This is done server side.
Opera Turbo is turned on. Notice the image distortion.
As always, Opera includes unique and innovative features including an integrated IRC Chat client, email client, browser widgets, browser skins/themes, Opera Unite, Opera Link, and much more.
Unlike most browsers, Opera does not and will not support third party browser extensions.
Don’t be fooled by its relatively low and stable market share. Opera is a serious competitor in the browser market packing in unique features and is currently crowned the fastest browser on earth.
Opera 10.50 Rating:
Performance: 5
Features: 5
Ease of Use: 4.5
Value for Money: 5
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 4.875
Have you tried Opera 10.50? What do you think of it? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
