Opera GX is a special version of the Opera browser which, on top of Opera’s great features for privacy, security and efficiency, includes special features designed to complement gaming. Opera GX is available in early access for Windows and Mac. Linux development is in progress. Opera Description. Opera is a cross platform web browser and Internet suite. It includes a variety of programs to accomplish common Internet tasks such as web browsing, IRC, email.
We have just released Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for Labs. This pre-alpha is based on the Evenes branch and includes Windows, Mac, and UNIX builds (see below for download link).
Tweet Share Post Opera Software today released the Mac version of Opera 10.5.It’s a release I’ve been waiting for ever since the launch of Opera 10.5 for Windows — itself an extremely impressive browser. Opera 10.5 takes full advantage of Windows 7’s Superbar. By default, the jump list displays your Speed Dial pages. What’s more is that you can pin pages as well, though right now it only works with Speed Dial items — so pinning isn’t all that useful just yet. Per-tab thumbnails, on the other hand, work beautifully.
As you may know, we don’t typically open new versions to user-testing this early in the development cycle. However, we are really excited about what the Desktop team is cooking up and want your feedback.
Many of you have been asking for a glimpse of Carakan, our new ECMAScript/JavaScript engine, and an update to our HTML <video> support. With this release you’ll be able to play with them and a few other new technologies that will hopefully be part of our next major release.
Some disclaimers: What you’re downloading today is a feature-incomplete and likely unstable development build. Please handle with care, backup your data before you install and do not run in hydroelectric power plants.
What’s new: Inside
Carakan
Carakan is our new JavaScript engine. It’s fast, more than 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10 with Futhark on Windows (Mac optimization is not as far along). You can read more gritty details regarding register-based bytecode, automatic object classification and native code generation in the Opera Core blog.
SunSpider Javascript Benchmark (runs per minute)
<video>
This build features a long-awaited update to our support for the HTML5 <video> element, allowing native playback and control of video inside the browser. It has been much improved since our first proof of concept was released in 2007. Check out Philip Jägenstedt’s (re-)Introducing <video> article for all the details.
Presto 2.5
We are now using Presto 2.5, which contains a huge numbers of improvements. It also includes support for CSS3 transitions and transforms, and more HTML5 features like persistent storage.
Vega
Opera Mac 10.5.8
Vega is our new graphics library. It’s currently software-based and displays everything you see on-screen. Vega can be hardware accelerated, but as you can see from the complex graphics benchmark in Peacekeeper, we don’t seem to need it yet. (Note that Futuremarks’ Peacekeeper test does no include the results of their complex graphics tests in the overall score. We believe this is wrong in 2009 and will simply be silly if not changed in 2010.)
Peacekeeper Complex Graphic Benchmarks
What’s new: Outside
Platform integration
- On Windows 7/Vista, you will notice a lot of visual changes and use of APIs, which allow the UI to display the Aero Glass effect. For Windows 7, we also added Aero Peek and Jump List support to help you easily access your Speed Dials, Tabs, etc. from the Taskbar.
- For Mac, a complete rewrite in Cocoa brings a Unified Toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multi-touch gestures (try 3-Finger Swipe Left/Right or Pinch to zoom) and a bunch of other small details. We also added Growl notification support.
“Private tab” and “Private window”
You can open a new Private tab or Private window that forgets everything that happened on it once closed.
Non-modal dialogs
Dialog boxes (JavaScript alerts, HTTP authentication, etc.) are now non-modal and are displayed as a page overlay. This allows you to switch tabs or windows while the dialog is still displayed. Similarly, the Password Manager dialog is now anchored at the top of the page won’t block any content as it loads a new page.
Address field and Search field improvements
Both fields have been upgraded in looks and functionality. They can now remember searches, support removing items from history and show results in a better layout.
Opera Mac 10.4
Download
Update: Opera 10.50 is now part of normal release cycle. Please visit the Opera Desktop Team blog to download the latest version.
To try it out, you can download the latest Labs build here:
Again, please remember that this is an unstable development build. There are known bugs, unimplemented UI elements and surprise crashes.
Opera Mac 10.7.5
Some specific known issues:
- High memory usage
- No JIT (slow performance) on old processors without SSE2
- No printing for Mac build
What’s next
We are very excited with this release, and we hope that with this sneak peek, you are too. From all of us at Opera we wish you a happy holiday and a great new year. We’ll be back soon with more exciting news.
Feel free to join the discussion at the My Opera community or visit the Desktop Team Blog for news and to leave a comment.
Resources
- Opera 10.5 pre-alpha, What’s new — Opera’s Developer Relations Team blog
- Carakan Revisited — Opera Core Concerns blog
- Carakan — Opera Core Concerns blog
- Carakan F.A.Q. — Opera’s Developer Relations Team blog
- Vega, Opera’s vector graphics library — Opera Core Concerns
Opera just released the 10.5 beta version of its web browser for Mac computers — the fifth most popular browser on the market. We previously covered the Pre-Alpha version of 10.5, but this beta release is likely far more stable.
There's a complete change log online if you want to get into the nitty gritty of what's included, but the biggest additions include multi-touch gestures, Growl notifications, support for Apple's Cocoa application programming interface, and restored support for Macs running the old Mac OS 10.4 Tiger operating system.
Opera Browser Mac 10.5.8
There are still many older Macs out there running Tiger, so it's good to have that back; just be warned that you'll still need an Intel processor to run Opera. The older PowerPC processors aren't supported no matter what operating system you're running.
Opera 12 Mac 10.5.8
Now that Opera uses the extremely popular Growl notifications software, it can show quick, transparent updates on your screen when something important happens. Gestures for multi-touch screens sound like a sweet idea, but we haven't had the chance to try them out to see if they're actually useful — let us know what you think in the comments if you give them a spin.
Remember that this is the beta release, so it's bound to have a few bugs to deal with. For example, there are some performance issues with Tiger that aren't present in 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Java support is 'minimal.' You can download the 10.5 Beta at the Opera website right now, but the 10.1 stable version is still available if you want a smoother experience.