The Latest Beta Updates for Desktop

A few weeks ago, we released Opera 12.10 beta for testing on desktop. Since that time, our developers have been hard at work to fix problems, refine functions and generally make the features in this release work as well as possible.

If you're an advanced user of Opera, you may have already seen some of the latest updates come through Opera Next on your computer. But for the rest of us, these changes are also interesting as a preview of the full and final release of Opera 12.10.

Here's our top-5 list of what's to come:

1. Hover to load links faster

When you just move the mouse over a link, Opera will grab the information needed to serve the page up fast if you decide to actually click on it. (In technical terms, this is known as prefetching DNS.)

2. Retina support for extensions

In the beta release, we introduced support for the new Retina Display screens on Apple products such as MacBook. Since the beta, we have now added support for this super-smooth display format in our browser extensions as well. Now developers can update their extensions with clearer, brighter icons.

3. SPDY support for Turbo

SPDY is a new web technology designed to make browsing faster, so it was logical to put it together with Opera Turbo for an extra boost of speed. It's disabled by default for now, but if you want to kick the tires on this race car you can enable the SPDY for Turbo setting.

4. Make the quick choice

With the recent introduction of IPv6 addresses, many sites now have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This can result in some delay when loading web pages, so now Opera tries both addresses and takes whichever one responds faster.

5. Support for flexible design

Designers will be glad to know that Opera will now play nicely with Flexbox, making their lives easier when it comes to laying out documents and changing styling technology.

Since we're in the home stretch of developing for this release, if you are actively testing these features, you'll have to speak up soon about any serious bugs you find (serious being things like windows not restoring or Google not working).

Otherwise, to keep up with the very latest updates on specific work being done on this release, make sure to bookmark our desktop developers' blog!