Article by George Norman

On 03 Mar 2010

If you were on vacation for example for the past week you will be surprised to find out that not only is Opera 10.5 out of Beta, it shot trough a total of 5 Release Candidates (that’s right, five in the span of two days) and is now available for download as a final, stable version. The entire development process of Opera 10.5 took little over two months – this is from pre-Alpha to the final, stable version. If you are an Opera fan now is the time to upgrade. Opera 10.5 is leaps and bounds better than the previous version, Opera 10.10.

Here are just a few Opera 10.5 highlights to raise your interest:
- A sleek, minimalist user interface
- Private browsing mode that lets you surf the web safe in the knowledge that Opera 10.5 will not store any info about your session.
- Smarter address field that displays matching results from history, bookmarks and “even actual content on the pages you have visited.”
- The new Search field lets you use different search engines and Web-site searches.
- Windows 7 support
- Run Opera widgets as a separate process, out of the browser.
- Improved standards support for HTML5 and CSS3
- Improved JavaScript performance


Speaking of improved JavaScript performance, Opera 10.5 replaced the Futhark JavaScript engine with the new Carakan engine which is about 8 times faster. "Opera 10.50 is the fastest browser in almost all speed tests," said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera. "But, more important than any speed test is the real-world speed during use. We designed Opera 10.50 to be easy to use, while making our unique features stand out, so you can get more out of the Web."

One question comes to mind: why did Opera Software speed though the development process of Opera 10.5? The answer to this one is quite simple: Microsoft’s choice screen. Starting this March Microsoft will present Windows users in the EU (European Union) with a browser ballot screen, called “choice screen”. The ballot screen which presents some of the most popular browsers out there, including Opera, will be presented only to Windows users that have Internet Explorer set as the default. There are an estimated 200 million European users that will get to see the choice screen – and Opera would like them to get the best browser they can.

"200 million Europeans now have a chance to find a new browser. We are convinced that people who try Opera will see that our product is better, because it is fast, powerful, easy to use and has the best security record in the industry," said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera.

If you would like to get Opera 10.5, you can download the software here.



Tags: Opera Software, Opera 10.5, Microsoft, Choice Screen

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