For the past couple of days, the focus has been on Opera Mini for iPhone, the browser that Opera Software plans to unveil at the 2010 Mobile World Congress (MWC) the year’s biggest mobile event. The browser that Opera Software feels confident Apple will welcome into the App Store, since Apple would “not deny their users a choice in Web browser experience”.
The focus should fall on Opera Software for one additional reason. The company has just released Opera 10.5 for Windows as a Beta. The Beta tag means there is still a lot of work to be done on the browser. But with this release we get to see what the upcoming Opera 10.5 has to offer.
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Here are some of the bits you can expect to get from Opera 10.5 Beta:
The user interface has been overhauled to offer a minimalist, sleek design with maximum browsing space.
Thanks to private browsing you can surf the web safe in the knowledge that Opera 10.5 will not store any info about your session.
Smarter address field that displays matching results from history, bookmarks and “even actual content on the pages you have visited.”
The new Search field lets you use different search engines and Web-site searches.
Windows 7 support
Run Opera widgets as a separate process, out of the browser.
Improved JavaScript performance.
About the last Opera 10.5 Beta highlight, the improved JavaScript performance bit. Opera Software says the Carakan JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5 Beta makes it “the fastest browser on Earth.” It is 8 times faster than the JavaScript engine in Opera 10.10. Combine the new JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5 with Opera Turbo and you’ll get lightning fast browsing speeds.
“Our previous JavaScript engine, Futhark, was the fastest when it was first introduced a few years ago, and the challenge for our engineers was to once again to make Opera the fastest browser on earth,” says Christen Krogh, Chief Development Officer, Opera Software. “We are proud today to show the results of the amazing work the team has done, and we are looking forward with great anticipation to the final release of Opera 10.50.”
For the past couple of days, the focus has been on 