Opera to get a 2.5x faster JavaScript engine

Opera's main business is browsers for mobile phones, and its current JavaScript engine is optimized for minimum memory demands, but now performance is the priority, Bolstad said.

"The Web is a changing environment however, and tomorrow's advanced web applications will require faster ECMAScript execution, so we have now taken on the challenge to once again develop the fastest ECMAScript engine on the market," he said. ECMAScript is a standard group's official name for JavaScript.

JavaScript isn't the only way to build Web applications, but it's increasingly widely used. It's the foundation for Google Docs and Gmail, for example, and enables Yahoo Mail users to drag-and-drop messages into folders.