Opera Labs Lets Loose Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha

Posted 12/23/2009 at 6:07am | by Paul Lilly

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Microsoft's uber-long hiatus between IE6 and IE7 notwithstanding, browser makers can ill afford to stand idle, and on Tuesday Opera Labs served up Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for public consumption. The release comes less than a month after Opera Software released version 10.10 of its popular alternative browser, which recorded 12 million downloads in 7 days.

In a blog post, Roberto Mateu, Product Analyst at Opera Software, said the latest pre-alpha build is based on the Evenes branch and includes Windows and Mac builds, with an UNIX/Linux version slated for a later release. And while the company rarely opens up its software to user testing this early in development, Mateu said they made an exception this time because "we are really excited about what the Desktop team is cooking up and want your feedback."

Some of the new features include the Carakan JavaScript engine, which Mateu clams is 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10 with Futhark on Windows; Presto 2.5, which adds support for CSS3 transitions and transforms, and more HTML5 features; Vega, which is Opera's new graphics library; a Private tab feature; and better platform integration, among other goodies.

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Image Credit: Opera Software