Opera 10.5 pre-alpha released

Posted on Wednesday, December 23 2009 @ 21:59 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Opera Software has released a pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5, this release features the new Presto 2.5 engine with new features like CSS transformations, HTML5 local storage (and soon video), and the new Carakan JavaScript engine. Other new features include a new caching system, faster graphics rendering with VEGA, a Private Mode, dialog usability improvements, and better integration with Mac OS. The full features list can be read at the Opera Blog.
Presto 2.5 includes several new features like CSS transformations, HTML5 local storage (and soon video). But most important of all, support for Carakan. Carakan is the new JavaScript engine that is completely written from scratch. Using a JIT compiler it is many times faster than Futhark, the javascript engine in 10.10.

Operas caching system has also undergone a major rewrite. A nice feature in the new cache system is opera:cache, which allows you to browse through everything that Opera has stored on memory or disk. But the new cache system is most importantly much faster. You should definitely notice shorter startup and shutdown times. M2 users with a lot of mail will in addition benefit from the mail database reading optimizations that have been done to speed up startup.

Another big technological change is happening in graphics rendering. In Opera 10.10, VEGA (Opera's vector graphics library) is only used for rendering SVG. In Opera 10.5 VEGA is used for rendering all graphics in Opera, including content on webpages and the user interface. Currently VEGA is a pure software rendering engine, with the possibility to add hardware accelerated back-ends in future releases. But the software rendering is incredibly optimized, which means that Opera 10.5 has very fast painting performance even without using hardware acceleration.
People brave enough to test pre-alpha software can download the latest version of Opera over here.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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