Opera 10.5 for Windows announced with speed boost, private browsing, and more
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted March 2nd 2010 1:14PM
posted March 2nd 2010 1:14PM
A quick note for Opera fans (and we ain't talkin' The Marriage of Figaro here). Looks like the self-styled "world's fastest" browser (with about 2% of the market share, last time we checked) has a new version! 10.5 for Windows features a swank new look, a new JavaScript engine, private browsing, Opera Unite (which is sure to re-invent the web any moment now) and much more. Want to take a look for yourself? Hit that source link.
No, thank you.
I only want Opera Mini 5 "Official release" and Opera Mobil 10 with Flash 10.1.
Give me that.
I already use Firefox for desktop.
Thank you.
@ewlung
x2! Waiting for official release for BB.
I honestly feel Opera is superior to FF. Never understood why it's market share is so low.
@espentan
i know right
opera invented tabbed browsing btw =D
@espentan
I love Opera. But in the past they had major troubles with flash integration (i.e. Youtube wouldn't play) and sometimes it would shut down on me. I wonder if my habit to have 100-200 open tabs was the reason.. Anyways, I switched to FF. It's a nice browser too. I love AdBlock addon in FF. I miss Opera's superfast speed and cache handling (when you press 'back' in Opera it opens cached page without reloading it which is sometimes useful).
@espentan Because for years they insisted in placing ad at the sidebar of their browser...
Meanwhile firefox gained the geek audience exactly because (with addons) it could remove them :D
I am even using Opera (ditching Chrome since the thing tracks even my thuoghts) as secondary browser... No one beats a fully customized firefox.
@espentan Some stuff is good, but for ages it's just been butt-ugly and had some of the weirdest behaviour quirks of any browser. Preview of a tab in a tooltip is nice, but why make that feature *and then* make the tab-bar expandable? Why would I want *even less* space on my screen to view the web-page?
The desktop widgets thing never made sense to me either. Not as good as add-ons, in that add-ons often at least feel like they're integrated into the browser. The widgets *never* feel integrated with the desktop, even though they probably should.
Finally, with the arrival of Personas in Firefox, it's easy to skin and theme the UI without having to know XUL, and it even removes a potential attack vector for potential malware. Not that I ever had Firefox compromised, mind...
So when's the Wii's Opera browser gonna get Flash support, for crying out loud?
@Smart People Play Tuba
When the Wii gets enough memory to load an entire Youtube video without crashing.
@Smart People Play Tuba
Doesn't it already have flash? It can play almost all the flash video sites,
it even has its own flash based game site Wiicade.com
@commenter7
All I know is-- every time I try to watch a video, it "beeps" at me and doesn't load. Complete waste of time.
@Smart People Play Tuba
The Wii's browser does have flash. The older version of the browser uses Flash 7, and the more recent update uses Flash lite 3.something-rather, which is a stripped down version of flash 9 from what I understand. I never use my Wii for web browsing, though, since it's connected to the same monitor as my PC.
Opera kind of died to me after Chrome came out. I use Chrome beta mainly due to Xmarks bookmarks syncing, and Firefox for Xmarks and AdBlock Plus on ad heavy sites.
@Metayoshi
So, it's just a conflict with the *version* of Flash the site uses? I don't know much about Opera; the only time I've ever used it is on the Wii.
@Metayoshi
wait, you stopped using Opera because of a lack of Xmarks? Bookmark syncing is built into Opera. Just about every popular plugin for Firefox is built into Opera.
@Lord Vader
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to private browsing.
I'm sure Opera fans saw this coming.
Been using it all morning and it's pretty good. Everything I liked about the fifteen-hundred beta releases without all the crashing.
Wewt,
@fischju RE:Javascript
With the latest Firefox and Opera 10.50 I ran the SunSpider Javascript Benchmark.
Results: 3.19x as fast - 888.8ms +/- 5.6% - 278.6ms +/- 2.5% significant
The first numbers are FF, second are Opera. It's 'significant'ly faster.
It's actually version 10.5 that's available at this moment.
@beatsmelody
Doh. Fail.
Why did they change the...browser bar? Is that what it's called? Heck if I know. The one with back, forward, home, etc. Opera just has to change something every release.
@Sarig
... You mean the default layout of the buttons?
Cause you can change that. I don't even have any; mouse gestures ftw,
@IGLAW Fantastic news! Updating I am, then.
@Sarig
Shift+F12. Click the buttons tab. Drag new buttons in; right-click remove buttons to get rid of them.
Private browsing? Does this include a proxy?
@(Unverified) I was wondering that same thing. I heard their iPhone browser was said to send info to their server for compression. Living outside the US, I would be tempted to use anything with a proxy for Hulu and the like if that could get me around IP address problems. Answers? Anyone?
Private browsing, or in other words: "watching-pornography-feature"
please test it out for yourself and then remove the quotes around "worlds fastest"
It is.
@Alexicov
I love a skeptic as much as the next guy, but this claim is actually verifiable, so no need to laden it with sarcasm
@Alexicov Not sure it's really verifiable. For instance I'm sure there are text-only browsers (with no rendering to do, no JavaScript, no anything) which are much faster than Opera. So you'd at very least need to clarify that it's the world's fastest graphical browser which supports JavaScript, etc. I suspect their verifiable claim is in terms of certain browser benchmarks (SunSpider JS benchmark, etc) compared to other popular browsers.
personally I have a problem with my computer being slow (not this one, at work) but not with the browser (Firefox 3.6). The browser loads pages perfectly fine. If I want to get annoyed by the actual browser being slow, I need to load IE7 and visit a JavaScript-based site... If I have a problem with Firefox it's memory consumption, and even that doesn't seem to be too bad at the moment (however I'm sure Opera is also much better on that front).
If I had a *really* slow computer (inherently slow not just a crappy hard disk like my work pc), such as a netbook, I'd certainly be more inclined to give Opera another try. I last tried it years back, but hated the interface.
what does private browsing mean?
@ahchar Read the source link...What you do on the Web is up to you, no one else. Make sure it stays that way by using private browsing to remove specific sites from your browsing history. Unlike other browsers, Opera 10.50 allows you to browse privately in a tab or in an entirely separate window.
@juanvaldez
Actually I'm pretty sure Chrome and IE8 both support that and there's probably an addon for Firefox.
@ahchar
It doens't save any personal history of the tab/window in question.
@IGLAW
As somebody who uses all 4 of those browsers - while all of the browser support private browsing, Opera is the only one that allows you to privately open a tab without opening a new window.
IE/Chrome = new window
FF = hides regular window, opens private window
@Brother Unit No 4
i don't get it... what so special about this Fn?
im happy with chrome and FF........ but i use chrome 99% of the time
@IGLAW Firefox has private browsing built in. Mozilla should do like"There's an addon for that"
I just downloaded it. It's SO fast. Way faster than the current Firefox....
I just wished it was compatible with wachovia.com.
Also I wish that when I went to Google that it would remember my previous searches....
Aside from that though it's freaking amazing!
@TheRogueFFAngel : Wachovia hates it when you disable referrer tracking, so make sure it's on for wachovia.com. You can also set Opera to Mask as Firefox for those sites that think that if it's not IE/FF/Safari/Chrome then it doesn't exist or it's a mobile browser. TD Ameritrade defaults to its mobile version when it detects Opera, but there's no incompatibility!
@TheRogueFFAngel I suggest using the search hotkeys. It works out so much better (eg "g how to use opera")
it remembers last typed addresses and that includes the searches.
Yeah the only problem with Opera is the incompatibility with some sites.
I love the Wand though.
@GTYellowJacket9 Often these "incompatible" sites are not W3C compliant. Opera is standards compliant. 100 on ACID 3 is something that only a small handful of browsers can achieve.
Opera has been the best browser out for ages.
If theres one thing from Opera I wish other browsers had, its Turbo Mode. Its actually fantastic for bandwidth constrained places.
@Nitesh That's because, in order to do that, Opera first downloads the website to their server, compresses it, then sends that to your desktop. If any of the bigger browsers started doing that, there would be complaints of privacy violation everywhere - AND they'd need MASSIVE servers.
@Smart People Play Tuba
I lol'd
with about 2% of the market share, last time we checked
How exactly did u check?? Cause I want some of that stuff...
Hey now play nice Engadget. Unite is innovative. It may not revolutionize the web, but, it shows that Opera is creative and determined to stand out amongst the many other browsers. I rank Opera 2nd behind firefox.
@Edobe LOL? How can they play nice if they don't know what they are posting about in first place ? New java engine ?...
@Edobe and it's 2% in US only. In Europe Opera's share is usually around 5%-15%, in Russia reaches 25%!
Opera's share is similar to Nokias – it's very good everywhere except US, and gets ridiculed by US-centric news outlets.