Opera lands its Swordfish browser

PLUCKY WEB BROWSER FIRM Opera has released version 11.50 of its software, and warned the opposition that it is about to make a big splash on the web.

Eleven point five-oh is not a name that conjours up much excitement though, so Opera has dubbed the release Swordfish and rather obscurely promised that it has a hardened body and powerful interior - yeah, we are losing the analogy here too - and as such, "becomes the most dangerous predator on the internet waters". Take that, sharks with laser eyes.

If you are familiar with Opera then you will know that it uses speed dial as a way of making bookmarks more exciting. It has improved this, but the Opera blog post seems a bit too excited.

"Opera Swordfish, with its innovatory Speed Dial extensions, makes your Speed Dial more alive than ever before. Now you can get all the information you need straight from your Speed Dial, without necessity to go to the page," said project leader Remigiusz Bondarowicz.

"Beside that, Opera 11.50 allows you to synchronize your passwords between computers easily. This way you can access your favorite services, without typing your passwords in again and again on the different computers."

Swordfish also includes the Presto 2.9.168 rendering engine, which Bondarowicz said offers up to 20 per cent faster rendering of CSS and SVG. µ