Opera 10.5 Claims to Be Fastest Windows Browser

March 2, 2010 By Geoff Duncan

Opera 10.5 has a new JavaScript engine...and claims to be the fastest browser available for Windows.

Norway’s Opera Software has released version 10.5 of its Opera Web browser, rolling in a new JavaScript engine and making a rather daring claim: that Opera 10.5 is the fastest browser available for Windows. The new version is launching just as Microsoft is activating a new browser ballot to more than 200 million Internet users in Europe, offering them an option to set up a browser other than Internet Explorer as their default Windows Web browser.

“Opera 10.50 is the fastest browser in almost all speed tests,” said Opera CEO Lars Boilesen, in a statement. “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.”

Opera 10.5 features a further refined interface, building on the serious revamp the browser got with its 10.0 release. The menu bar has been replaced with a single Opera button, and tabs and windows have an almost Chrome-like quality to them. Opera 10.5 also introduces a new Safari-like private browsing mode that can be activated on a tab-by-tab basis. The browser integrates with Windows 7′s Jump lists and Aero Peek features, features improved support for developing HTML 5 and CSS3 standards, and includes a new JavaScript engine and a new graphics library (Vega) which contribute to the application’s performance gains.

Opera 10.5 is available now for Windows as a free download; Mac OS X and Linux versions of Opera 10.5 are “coming soon.”

Showing 26 comments

Which Browser – whichbrowser.org « Which Browser? at 10:04pm 24th November 2010 [...] Opera. While Google released a add-on with Chrome, Opera seems to have a head in a right place. Its announced support of extensions should serve assistance make Opera 11 a viable aspirant in a [...]
Migrato at 12:36pm 25th March 2010 I have been using Opera since it had ads.That was times where eaven the most Chrome users in here weren't eaven born yet :p. I'm not saying that Chrome is bad, it is a good browser, but the Opera team have been doing good job for long time. THey were the first by adopting the tabbed browsing, site preview and a lot of good things like the embeded mail client, It has always suffered of its unpopularity but unlke Netscape, it has kept the head out of the water and is still there. I keep using it and as i see, i ll be doing it for long time ...
Sklyne at 4:11pm 19th March 2010 Innovations? Well, Opera invented the tabbed-browsing
Sklyne at 4:10pm 19th March 2010 Oh, and by the way, it is one of the few that get 100/100 acid3 test
Sklyne at 4:08pm 19th March 2010 What ads are you talking about, people?! Opera 10.5 is a perfect browser one could ever imagine. It is well built, fast and excellently focused on its main purpose - comfortable web surfing.
Most people say it is bad just because they like what they use and have never tried Opera. Please, be quiet!
Hector Macias Ayala at 11:01am 7th March 2010 This is stupid, there are only two ways to download Opera, one is from their website and the other from the desktop team blog.

Have never heard such a stupid statement.

The others consult you somehow whether you want ads or not?
thing at 1:27am 7th March 2010 Check out the campaign of the new browser!

http://jela.hu/?p=762

:-)
engineerangelo at 4:38pm 5th March 2010 I have been using Opera since it was 8.5 and I can see the improvements on every new version released. I only use IE to those sites that cannot be viewed properly by Opera, but this rarely happens. And one thing I like about Opera is that you can report those sites to them so that they can fix it with the next release.
Hugo Contreras at 1:51pm 5th March 2010 well, check this http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2360989,00... but still opera comes with many features more than just a browser, if u just like to check websites, mail, keep chrome, but anyway, is really good and i only have a couple of bugs using dragonfly
GA at 9:17am 5th March 2010 Wow. Interesting :) I am happy with the user profile of opera. It feels like being VIP . Lol :D
Geoff at 10:20am 4th March 2010 Let me get this straight...Opera crashes almost every time you use it, yet you have continued to use it for 2 years? Sure....

I particularly liked this gem of a comment you made..."The IE is a poor UI design"
Sam B at 10:19am 4th March 2010 Maybe Opera needs to do a better marketing job, because a lot of the people I talk to still remember having ads in there.

How does Opera make money by the way?
Geoff at 10:17am 4th March 2010 That changed YEARS ago...Wow
tony at 12:23pm 3rd March 2010 Opera sucks! I have been using it for almost 2 years and it crashes almost every time I use it.
The IE is a poor UI design....Firefox and Chrome are the way to go.

Opera Crashes: Opening other apps on my comp, could not use Opera on Olympics site,
clicking on the edge of browser to make it wider, and sometimes just sitting there and it crashes!

I am using Windows 7
Ian Bell at 8:21am 3rd March 2010 The older Opera had ads for non-paying customers. Has that changes?

People can "not intentionally" install Opera when it is bundled with another software app they do want installed. Not saying Opera does that, just that it could happen.
hi at 2:09am 3rd March 2010 You have to intentionally download Opera. Opera is not bundled with any PCs.

Opera also does not have ads.

How can people not intentionally download Opera, exactly?
hi at 2:08am 3rd March 2010 Opera Software is profitable for 2009 as a whole. Desktop revenue is also increasing rapidly. Not exactly "on their last legs".
9hellspork6 at 3:32pm 2nd March 2010 Such as? Have you ever tried Opera? Is this at all similar to Google's data-mining and subversive advertising? Perhaps the way that Google analytics tracks every page you view in an iPhone?
9hellspork6 at 3:26pm 2nd March 2010 Good children should be quiet. I don't think anybody pays for Opera on the desktop. Same as Mozilla/Firefox, Opera's money from Google comes from 1) offering Google in that search on the upper-right and 2) each time anyone types a search into that box. Opera has roughly the same contract as Firefox.

The rest of Opera's money comes from special non-PC contracts. For example, the browsers on Nintendo game systems and many cellphones. The data savings for the cellular providers is so much, your phone company is paying Opera a portion of that savings.
Sam B at 3:22pm 2nd March 2010 Dude please, no one actually intentionally download Opera, I am sure people are tricked into it and then have ads shown against their will.
Sam B at 3:16pm 2nd March 2010 And yet most people do not care because they don't use it. Who the hell pays for Opera? I assume they are tricking people into downloading and using it, then running ads against the traffic.
9hellspork6 at 1:33pm 2nd March 2010 Alright, what the hell is wrong with your comment system? My reply to rusty_shackleford_33 showed up as a general comment!

Anyways, I value your calling attention to the new release. It is likely that there will be a 10.51 in the near future, of course. 10.50 has not been announced in the automatic updater, so clean installs should function better than upgrading. On stability and compatibility, I have had no more issues with 10.50 development builds than I have had with any other browser. IE8 crashes less often than Chrome and Firefox these days, especially once you start using extensions for those other browsers.

Site compatibility is generally better than in Chrome at the moment, and the browser runs fine on PCs where Chrome won't even install. Enjoy your quad-core, even the ten-year-old PC in my basement is running 10.50 now.
9hellspork6 at 1:22pm 2nd March 2010 You win: 1 Extra-Large FAIL!!

Check the audited finances for Opera and Mozilla. Google is 1/3 Opera's income and 9/10 Mozilla's income. Opera has been purchasing a large number of new servers, and acquired an advertising company. Revenues also were not favored by a rise in the value of the Norwegian Kroner (NOK). The company intends to deliver a rapid increase in revenues in the second half of this year, as new data-sharing and manufacturing contracts come online. Please bear in mind also, that Opera has more cash than income, and more than half of Opera's assets are in cash. The company could operate for a full year with ZERO income.
rusty_shackleford_33 at 1:14pm 2nd March 2010 I might end up trying Opera 10.5 out of curiosity, but Lliam makes a good point - even if it outpaces Chrome by a millisecond on every page, will I adopt it? Probably not. Chrome's clean interface and relatively good compatibility with the sites I visit means more to me than immeasurable fractions of a second.
Sam at 11:27am 2nd March 2010 Agreed, Chrome is the best browser out there. I do not know a single person that uses Opera. I also just read that the company had a huge reported loss last quarter. They have to be on their last legs.
Lliam at 11:23am 2nd March 2010 This Opera 10.5 release is buggy as heck! It feels like a beta rather than a final. I expect to see many .1 / .2 revisions soon. I think they shot this out half-baked to get onto the Microsoft browser ballot and also get "noticed" more by blogs and such.

As for me, well, Chrome is still faster than Opera 10.5 but I will still use Chrome. There is more to browsing the internet than just speed.... stability is one... any others you care to add???