ha you just beat me to it.

its quicker then 11, AND it starts up MUCH faster. 11 was kind of annoying *click*click* ........zzzzzzzzz..........zzzzzzz..... ok here we go.

everything else on my machine pops up instantly.


can you run 32 and 64 side by side like you can with IE?

Yes, I've been testing both 32 and 64 bit builds side by side. In fact Opera is the easiest browser to test multiple versions of simultaneously. Then Firefox though you have to really understand how profiles work with Firefox. Safari and IE require emulators, I haven't bothered with Chrome because the number of releases are just ridiculous. I regularly visit the Opera Desktop Team's blog and test builds. There are a few bugs such as the full file menu not working with the theme correctly though they are rather minor at least for me. Opera 12 halves the time to run on my site's benchmark. I haven't bothered to benchmark anything else though it is much faster. I'm running a 2.8 GHz AMD quad, 8GB of RAM (no wimpy pagefile) a Radeon 5770 and everything in Opera is responsive. I also blogged about Opera 12 yesterday and linked to a bunch of WebGL demos. Opera set up this site themselves...

http://www.shinydemos.com/ [shinydemos.com]

My favorite demo is Emberwind. :)

- John

Opera is a really cool browser I often wonder why its use is not bigger. This new release is welcome addition to the browser wars

nobody big gets behind opera, goog used to beat the drum for FF back in the day.

opera mini seems to have good usage in the mobile market though.

opera mini seems to have good usage in the mobile market though.

It defaults to Google search on android though..

yuck

My only complaint so far about Opera 12 is that the 32 bit & 64 bit versions use the same icon and have identical looking entries in the Programs and Features control panel (win7).
(Which makes it a guessing game if you want to remove 1 of them. Something that many of us do a lot when testing various versions of browsers with our sites.)

People still use Opera?

Guess it's not over till the fat lady clicks.

Maybe I'll go download it, haven't played with Opera in years.

FWIW, they must be racing Firefox for the highest version # because FF just jumped to 13 the other night so the race is on! ;)

Bill, Opera's changes to the Presto rendering engine have been more incremental and the version numbers more meaningful.

Opera 9.0, 9.2, 10.0, 10.5, 11.0, 11.1, 11.5 and 12.0 are examples of versions the past few years in which Opera has done more collectively each version than Mozilla has with any three versions of Firefox after Firefox 4.

- John

@Bill-

Chrome will always win the version race, they are at 19 now.

And if you haven't played with Opera in "years", be prepared for a drastic change from what you remember it being. It's been my primary browser since 2005, so I'm a little biased when I say it's the overall best browser available. But honestly, I might not be far off.

Regarding why Opera has a terrible market share, don't blame the browser... blame the marketing department! :)

Regarding why Opera has a terrible market share, don't blame the browser... blame the marketing department!

Back when I tried to use it I was having issues with certain sites that used 100% SSL, like banking sites, so I blamed the browser at the time because no amount of marketing can get past the browser failing to work on your bank's website.

I think I've given it a pretty good chance as I've tried it about 5-6 times in the past and each time found at least one show stopper that caused me to not continue it's use.

I'm not terribly biased one way or the other, if it works, it works, and if it's better than the others it could become my default browser quite easily.

Will see how it goes this time around.

Ah yes, I think I remember when SSL problems existed with Opera... been a long time though.

Actually Bill where the blame is in that regard are lazy [expletive] programmers who don't comprehend cross-browser testing such as the fools who want all browsers to use WebKit (Chrome/Safari) because no competition would be in everyone's best interests right? *cough* IE6 *cough* There are too many incompetent programmers producing exceptionally poor code and Opera's image has suffered because of it. Open source isn't always the answer (Linux is still way too hobby-oriented for me to ditch 64 Bit XP) and Opera is made by a smaller company without the excessive resources of open-source, Microsoft or Apple. The only problems I've noticed going backwards is that Opera 8.x releases don't play well with AJAX at all. People like Håkon Wium Lie (who invented CSS) work at Opera and I have a lot of respect for them and the Opera browser and exceptionally much more so than all the other browsers of late.

- John

There are too many incompetent programmers producing exceptionally poor code and Opera's image has suffered because of it.

Speaking of incompetent programmers, I had it installed about 5 seconds before finding a really big bug [webmasterworld.com] but it's probably a WebKit problem since Chrome and Safari have the same exact bug which is why I don't use them much either.

Blaming OpenSource is no excuse either because Opera can not only fix the bug but contribute the fix to the OpenSoure repository and fix Chrome and Safari as well.

I have no faith this bug will be fixed because Google has known about it for quite some time and told people to use the compatibility properties workaround instead of doing it right.

Bill, that is a PERFECT example of why most companies do NOT get software period: they never bother to test how their software works when in the hands of those who are not technically savvy. In regards to Opera I think it's more of a reason than an excuse: resources. Opera 12 final shipped with the full file menu not working with themes because the developers never bothered to change the toolbars in spite of the fact that Opera's GUI is almost entirely superior to Firefox's ability to customize (with two glaring inabilities remaining). However like a lot of bugs I've mentioned it'll get fixed within a reasonable amount of time because the Opera developers do seem to genuinely care and as I am trying to point out every other browser vendor has a lot more resources at their disposal.

You will on occasion hear someone boast that their parents have no problem with something (and in reality they are more technically savvy than their loudmouth child who thinks they know more than you) though it comes down to this: designers. You see Balmar jumping up and down on stage screaming "developers!" but developers don't understand people, they understand code and most developers are not designers. I was unable to change the DPI on a computer infected with Windows 7 for a neighbor because Microsoft is so far off course from any concept of good design that if they find anything not yet broken they jump to break it (e.g. the Windows 8 hostility towards the start menu). Not sure if you thought I was blaming open source in any way as it seems implied for your reply, I was not; only inferring that open source is capable of gathering more resources than Opera can (even though Mozilla has a stranglehold and has been actively destroying Firefox for years now).

- John

I use all of them on a regular basis and this is what I find

FASTEST browsers at rendering stuff
1) Chrome
2) Opera
3) Firefox
4) IE

The best is still Firefox, followed by Opera and then Chrome. Chrome gets a bad rating because there's too many privacy issues.

Opera's certainly worth taking out for a spin, and it's very fast. But it seems a loner insofar as some of its CSS interpretations are concerned, and Opera Mini has a few notable rendering bugs, yet unfixed. Not a great "package", for me.