Administrator DKT27 Posted March 2, 2010 Administrator Share Posted March 2, 2010 <img align='right' src="http://i48.tinypic.com/b3uzyw.jpg" /> Goodbye Futhark, hello Carakan. With Tuesday's release of Opera 10.5 for Windows, it's time for a new JavaScript engine. Opera's new Carakan engine is much faster than Futhark, an important consideration given the increasing demands Web applications put on the Web-based programming language. My earlier tests on a dual-core Windows XP machine showed Google's V8 JavaScript engine still ahead of the Opera 10.5 beta, but Opera won out in several others' testing. Other rivals in JavaScript are Safari's Nitro, nee Squirrel Extreme, and Firefox's new JaegerMonkey, which combines Nitro with its earlier TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine. Internet Explorer has long been the slowest of the five browsers at JavaScript, but Microsoft has pledged to improve scripting speed in Internet Explorer 9. So far, I've been unable to discover any amusing code names for its work. JavaScript is just one attribute of a browser, of course. Other performance characteristics are how fast a browser can arrange all the elements of a Web page and handle the increasingly important CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) technology used in page design. Also new in Opera 10.5 is a graphics system called Vega that should improve performance, Opera said. And of course there are features. One important one is HTML5 video. Opera supports the Ogg Theora technology favored by Mozilla in Firefox but not by Apple in Safari; Chrome supports both Ogg Theora and the format Apple prefers, H.264. My personal favorite Opera feature is Turbo mode, which uses the company's servers to deliver lightweight versions of Web pages to those suffering slow Net connections. Generally I find Opera fairly snappy to use, including my tests today with the final version of 10.5. Others include visual previews of tabs, which I switch off since it find it harder to keep my place when shuffling between tabs; Opera Link to synchronize data such as bookmarks and history among different computers; mouse gestures to control the browser navigation with swipes and sweeps rather than clicks and button presses; Speed Dial to populate otherwise empty new-tab pages with useful material such as favorite Web pages; built-in BitTorrent support; private browsing to keep traces of where you've been off your computer; and the newer Unite service to share video, audio, or other information directly from your computer. The Windows beta preceded the Mac OS X and Linux versions, and it appears Opera is using the same timing for the final release of 10.5 Opera accounted for about 2.4 percent of the browser usage in February, fifth among browsers, according to data from Net Applications. Opera touts a variety of features in 10.5 that it says are unique.Source - CNET----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You can get it from frontpage. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toyo Posted March 2, 2010 Share Posted March 2, 2010 I can tell you this is one helluva browser. It achieves so much speed without having to be a stripped to the bare bones variant, in the contrary, it is full-featured, with mail, torrents and so on. The betas, alphas and the snapshots had many bugs, some of them show-stoppers. I found none of them in this Final. Although I am sure there are still problems (what software does not have it's bugs?), I feel it's ready for primetime. Note: This post is not meant to start a discussion on what browser is better. It is only a personal opinion on this particular application. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted March 2, 2010 Share Posted March 2, 2010 Yes, this is a pretty nice browser. The Windows 7 integration is excellent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marshall39 Posted March 3, 2010 Share Posted March 3, 2010 It is fast,very fast.Faster than Chrome I doubt it but Opera is really full of usefull stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted March 3, 2010 Author Administrator Share Posted March 3, 2010 I'm sure that it's faster than Chrome. ;)The fastest I've used so far. But still I don't feel to stop using Firefox. :unsure: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marshall39 Posted March 3, 2010 Share Posted March 3, 2010 Yes same for me.While I think Opera is really good,Firefox remains still easier and to be honest more functionnal.You can get almost everything you need on the main screen,no need to click again and again or go to folders and subfolders... :sneaky: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted March 3, 2010 Share Posted March 3, 2010 Yes, Opera 10.50 is nice, but it's a little quirky. I seem to be using mostly Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 5.0.335.1 Dev and sometimes SRWare Iron 4.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toyo Posted March 5, 2010 Share Posted March 5, 2010 Here are some benchies I made on my system (C2D 2,53 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Win7 x64 Ultimate). I don't have any reasons yet to install Chrome or other browsers, I have Firefox and IE only because I have to test HTML on them, to be sure it looks OK not only on Opera. Another reason for Firefox was their excellent Firebug extension, but this is now obsolete compared to the new Dragonfly in Opera 10.50. I just need my feeds, mail and browsing in one place. The increased speed in 10.50 is a nice bonus... and makes me feel just good about myself not giving up on Opera guys when their browser was becoming old compared to others.Check the benchmarks for yourself here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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