Opera Wednesday: Opera 10.51 Available for Download

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 24 Mar 2010

Today is Opera Wednesday here at FindMySoft, the day when all news articles are focused on Opera Software and their innovative web browser. Speaking of which, the Norwegian software company has released a new version of its web browser, mainly Opera 10.51. This release follows in the footsteps of Opera 10.5.

The interesting thing about Opera 10.5 is that it went through a lightning fast development process. In just two days the browser shot through 5 release candidates; by the 2nd of March, the final version of Opera 10.5 was out there, available for download as a final, stable application. Why the rushed development process? Microsoft and the choice screen are responsible for it.

Getting back to Opera 10.51, this new version has all the good things Opera 10.5 had to offer: a slick interface, private browsing mode, smarter address field, Windows 7 support, the option to run widgets outside the browser, improved performance. As a matter of fact, Opera 10.51’s performance is a lot better than the previous versions’.

Here are some figures, to put things in perspective:
  • Futuremark's Peacekeeper benchmark – 27% faster than Opera 10.5 and faster than Chrome 4.0, Firefox 3.6 and Internet Explorer 8.
  • Sunspider JavaScript benchmark – time reduced to 412.2 seconds, lower than 439.6 seconds for Opera 10.5. Considerably better than competing browsers.
  • Google's V8 benchmark – 10% performance increase. Not better than Chrome 4.0, but better than Opera 10.5, Firefox 3.6 and IE8.

Perhaps pictures will better put things in perspective:

Futuremark's Peacekeeper benchmark



Sunspider JavaScript benchmark




Google's V8 benchmark


And now all tests side by side




Opera 10.51 is safer than previous versions as it fixes two security issues. This new version fixes an issue where the HTTP Content-Length header could be used to execute arbitrary code (see Opera’s advisory here). It also fixes an issue where XSLT could be used to retrieve random contents of unrelated documents (see Opera’s advisory here).


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

Other articles from Opera Wednesday:
Browser Downloads in Europe Have Doubled this Month
Opera Widgets On all Mobile Phones
Opera Mini for iPhone Submitted to App Store


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