Opera’s fastest browser ever

To mike, the third commenter - believe it or not, Opera does in fact speed up your internet connection (Yes I am serious). You can read more about that here if you're interested: http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/13/

LUNASCAPE-6 IS FASTER THAN ALL EVEN IN SLOW CONNECTIONS-----------OPERA SUCKS IF U R USING DSL OR OTHER CONNECTION OF SPEED LESS THAN 250kb/s---------so better try LUNASCAPE-6 with GECKO engine----LUNASCAPE ROCKS!!!!!!!

That means: this isn't their finished release. It means: don't use this software for important work. Don't even count on new features not being dropped in the finished release. Test it as a platform for your applications, but don't even commit to using the finished version until it comes out.

For those asking for noscript,
see
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/02/02/opera-noscript-alternative-blockit/

www.admuncher.com

the only tool you need when browsing and it not only works with Opera but every other program as well.

it replaces noscript and adblock plus for your entire windows system.

i ditched abp awhile ago and never looked back.

Rare as hen's teeth to see news of Opera landing here. For the guy with bandwidth complaints, Opera has had Turbo for slow connections for some time now; sweetening the deal, 10.50 is bringing improvements to Turbo's quality and overall behavior.

And the newest build continues to have fixes for Win98 and WinNT, so anyone with any PC can access most of the web.

Because I am using Opera with Javascript switched off on nearly all web sites, so it takes no time at all. Unfortnately some sites need Javascript and I can enable it selectively, and some just don't work, often because they depend on Javascript or something like that changing the web page itself after loading and Opera hasn't been doing it. But maybe this time?

I agree that Javascript is used more and more but I've just written an AJAX based system for someone with a lot of AJAX calls. While I'm sure Opera is fast it didn't make any noticeable difference to the customer, even when they used IE7.

This echoes my experience generally, I really don't see this as a big differentiating factor between Opera and, let us say, Firefox.

@jason: You can use Fanboy's AdBlock list for Opera (the same which is also used by AdBlock Plus) from: http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/

@bishboria: Here's an article with extensive comparative benchmark result:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Opera-105-leaps-to-beta-holds-on-to-unexpected-performance-lead/1265934703

Speed is an issue more than ever before.

In the past, the speed of a browser meant the difference between clicking 'Go' and the page starting to appear by the time you looked back up at the screen, or having to wait 5 seconds before anything appeared at all. Given it was the dialup age and computers were generally slow, it was no massive deal to have to wait 5 seconds for a web page to start appearing. Opera's rendering did give you a taste of what the web should be however.

But now we're moving into the Web 2.0 age where many websites are a sea of Javascript and Ajax and (soon) HTML with things like offline storage. The web is being used as a virtual operating system to run full blown applications on, including anything from mail clients to WYSIWYG word processors to spreadsheets to 3D gaming. Speed is absolutely vital in giving people the snappy response they're used to on a native app. It's already annoying to have to click on a link to change your email view and see a 'Please wait...' message.

The sooner the browser can run that Javascript and render the page (including vector graphics and transparencies) the better because it means the online applications will be more responsive.

Are there any SunSpider benchmark results available? Can't download at work :(

There has always been NoScript and it is built right in. Just open the Site prefernces and you can do things like globally deactivating stuff like (java, sound, animated gifs, Java Script ..) and activate it only for the pages you want. And you can do a lot more like using your own style sheet that displays only die divs you are interested in.
I have to agree with obarthelemy Opera was always fast enough. But shut down, cold start and browsing speed still is better. What I like most about it is that thumbnail preview works on the side now. Before it was only on the top and bottom which is useless as that is where I don't have enough space as it is.

Opera keeps geeting better - now it has got back it's speed. Try it on a ebay-page, for instance, and you'll see what I mean.

I'm using Opera 10.10 as my main browser, on a very run of the mill PC ( Athlon II x2 @ around 3Ghz + AMD 780G, 1920 26" screen), and I can't think of a time I've found it slow.

I'm more irked by some compatibility issues, it seems some websites don't spend much time testing with Opera (Hotmail, Yahoo mail...).

But still a faithful user thanks to the creature comforts:
- mouse gestures and all the tricks that make surfing with just the mouse possible
- no need for addons and the headaches they bring
- opera synch: not only bookmarks, but also homepage, custom searches...

...because I don't feel like my browser is the bottleneck.

NoScript and ABP? If it did I would actually use it!

Great news! I always liked Opera, just wish they would release it as open-source for linux, that would make it even better!