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Updated: Twelve under-the-hood improvements in Opera 12, and 11.65

By Huib Kleinhouthuibk. Thursday, June 14, 2012 6:05:38 AM

Opera 12 has been released today! bigsmile With Opera's new theming support it's easier than ever to dress Opera the way you like. But behind Opera's visual changes there are numerous of technical enhancements in Opera 12. Here are 12 of our favorite under-the-hood improvements in this release.

  1. Faster startup with many tabs
    Previously it could take a while to start Opera if you had many tabs open. In Opera 12 tabs are loaded smarter; fewer at the time with those that are visible or recently accessed loading first. Opera now always starts up equally fast no matter how many tabs you have open.
  2. Out-of-Process Plug-ins
    Plug-ins are notorious for causing stability issues. In fact almost one third of all crashes in Opera are caused by plug-ins. In Opera 12 plug-ins are isolated in a separate process, when they crash all you need to do is reload the page.
  3. Experimental Hardware Acceleration and WebGL
    Opera 12 contains experimental support for full hardware acceleration and WebGL. While the stability and performance depends on the OS, drivers and graphics card, it is already available for testing. Enabling opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWebGL allows you to test WebGL content and enabling opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableHardwareAcceleration makes not only the web page but the whole user interface being render via the graphics card. By accessing opera:gpu you can check the current status of Hardware Acceleration and WebGL. Using opera:config#UserPrefs|Preferredrenderer you can switch between OpenGL (0) and DirectX (1).
  4. opera:cpu
    Is something slowing down Opera or your computer? You can now easily check with opera:cpu.
  5. Improved loading performance
    In Opera 12 the loading of pages has been optimized to ensure that resources like scripts, style sheets and images are loaded more efficiently. The result: Faster loading of pages!
  6. Improved performance on secure connections
    When loading a secure page (https) the browser goes through a complex process to establish a secure connection. This exact steps in this process vary from web server to web server, depending on the certificates, version and implementation of TLS they support. For Opera 12 we've analyzed and optimized many of the different steps in this process. Overall many secure pages are now loading faster than before!
  7. RTL
    In each release Opera learns a new language. New in Opera 12 is the capability to support Right-To-Left languages which makes it possible to support Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Urdu. With Kazakh in addition, Opera is now translated into 55 languages.
  8. Improved HTML5 support
    HTML5 is the heart and soul of the web. Opera 12 adds support for drag and drop, camera access (getUserMedia), css animations and more.
  9. Improved extensions support
    The windows/tabs extensions api has been revamped to include support for access to tab stacks. Check out dev.opera for more upcoming extension features.
  10. 64 bit Windows and Mac
    Opera 12 is now available in 64 bit for all platforms. Note that because 64 bit applications use more memory than their 32 bit equivalent, the default version of Opera for Windows will continue to be 32 bit.
  11. Do Not Track
    Opera 12 enhances your privacy by supporting the "Do Not Track" feature. You can enabled it in Opera's Preferences dialog (Preferences > Advanced > Security > Ask websites not to track me).
  12. Improved address field suggestions
    Based on feedback from you we've implemented numerous of tweaks to the address field making the suggested results cleaner, more accurate and more relevant.


Try out Opera 12 and stay tuned for new Opera Next builds!

Update: Mac App Store edition

Opera 12 was released earlier today through all our distribution channels but one. We now also announce the released of Opera 11.65, a security and stability update for the version of Opera that is distributed exclusively through the Mac App Store (MAS).

As of June 1st, it has been a requirement for all applications in the MAS to be using Mac OS’ sandboxing security technology. Although Opera itself has completed all the work needed and is running fine in a sandboxed environment, we have chosen to delay the MAS release of Opera 12 with sandboxing enabled. To ensure that our users get the best experience, we need third party plug-ins such as Flash Player from Adobe and Java from Apple/Oracle working in a sandboxed environment. These key third-parties still need more time to update their products.

Opera 12 for Mac without sandboxing is available from http://www.opera.com/browser/ today, and Opera 11.65 will be made available in the Mac App Store shortly.

Opera 12 Release Candidate 6Bugfixes as we prepare for 12.01

Comments

Geocitiesgeocities Tuesday, July 10, 2012 6:29:24 AM

Crashlog send...
OPERA-CRASHLOG V1 desktop 12.00 1467 unix Linux-x86_64
/usr/lib/opera/opera got signal SIGSEGV at address 0000004FB136

devloop Wednesday, July 11, 2012 2:30:43 PM

Bad display of text in this webpage : http://www.syhunt.com/?n=Sandcat.Browser
platform : Mac OSX Lion
Opera 12

Also Opera become slow on OSX after several hours even without activity

"That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band..."bluezzbastardzz Saturday, July 14, 2012 6:42:06 AM

I forgot: is this the first Opera version which needs CPUs with SSE2 features, or is this the last one that should still run on SSE CPUs, i.e. Pentium III and earlier? I'm asking, because the stable v12 seems to have more problems on this PIII 1 GHz PC with 512 MB RAM than IE8 and/or Opera 11.64, e.g. not using the Flash plugin on sites which worked before or reporting a Flash crash on pages which do not even use Flash. I don't have hardware acceleration enabled, by the way.

Leslie D. MartinLDMartin1959 Sunday, July 15, 2012 2:44:33 PM

Hopefully Opera will no longer register itself as a BotTorrent client with this update.

Akarshan Biswasakarshanopera Thursday, July 19, 2012 3:12:59 AM

The site http://www.animaxindia.com is broken on opera 12.
On some encrypted sites, i found this "unencrypted connection; the site attempted to apply security measures, but failed!".. Is it a bug???



Windows 7 32-bit , hwa:off, webgl:off

kivDevinePredecessor Thursday, July 19, 2012 8:56:03 AM

still waiting for update in mac app store! press release was a month ago. why so long? cool

mictrik Friday, August 3, 2012 9:54:15 PM

Well I installed the 12.01 update and I think that it is performing better. Memory management seems to be better actually much better but I have only used it a short time. Shockwave plugin seems to scale it's resources better too. LINKED in messages has not been addressed however!! I still see a page with "Connection closed by remote server" when attempting to navigate to "INBOX" or "SENT" Messages. I would love to know the reason for this occurrence as I would not doubt that LINKEDIN does something strange absent of good reason. LINKEDIN is very slow to rectify even serious glitches that do not have a direct tie to their revenue.

Originally posted by DevinePredecessor:

still waiting for update in mac app store! press release was a month ago. why so long? cool



If MAC falters as a computing platform it will be centered around the "MAC APP Store", ICloud and OS/x's overly zealous morph into IOS. Those of you who are going to readily rely on cloud based Storage & applications will inevitably run into security & perhaps performance issues. Very few ever read the TOS or any SLA's attached to these services & I am sure that they do not favor the consumer.

Usage of OS/x's Applications like the KEYCHAIN provides tremendous Utility for password management and security. Why Opera continues to ignore integration with this wonderful component of OS/x is beyond me..?????????? Hopefully since you are abandoning some of the "extended" features of Opera you will now focus on tighter integration with OS features like KEYCHAIN!

Cainxxxx Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:19:16 PM

Credential Proxy confirmations every time SUCKS!!!

mictrik Wednesday, August 22, 2012 9:04:24 AM

Well when i have open 8 to 10 tabs and play a Youtube video Opera 12.01 will eventually grab too much memory and the system just malfunctions. Killing the flash process or quitting Opera will fix issues. 12.01 is certainly better than 12 (everything is) but it still has what i would assume are resource handling issues considering the symptoms. I do hope that Opera will address these issues. the browser should not grab so much memory that the system stalls, freezes or otherwise runs sluggish. I really think the problem lies with the way Opera 12.01 interacts with Flash. Of course my comments would not be complete with asking: Please provide Keychain support so that I can once again use Opera as my main browser.

mictrik Wednesday, August 22, 2012 9:04:27 AM

Well when i have open 8 to 10 tabs and play a Youtube video Opera 12.01 will eventually grab too much memory and the system just malfunctions. Killing the flash process or quitting Opera will fix issues. 12.01 is certainly better than 12 (everything is) but it still has what i would assume are resource handling issues considering the symptoms. I do hope that Opera will address these issues. the browser should not grab so much memory that the system stalls, freezes or otherwise runs sluggish. I really think the problem lies with the way Opera 12.01 interacts with Flash. Of course my comments would not be complete with asking: Please provide Keychain support so that I can once again use Opera as my main browser.

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