About time...

Hardware acceleration offers a range of benefits to Web browsers--faster performance, lower battery consumption, and new features that would be otherwise impractical. So it's no surprise that browser makers--catalyzed in part by Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9--have been rebuilding their engines to support the idea.

But Opera, while not the first with hardware acceleration, thinks it's got a competitive approach. It uses hardware for everything its Vega display engine handles--font display, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) effects, Canvas 2D graphics, and WebGL 3D graphics.

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Yea, I have to say... I checked it out yesterday and it is pretty damn fast.

Norway-based Opera has released the newest version of its Web browser today, promising faster speeds, a streamlined and lightweight user interface and several new extensions.

Opera has reconfigured its "Speed Dial" extension. Instead of static thumbnails of frequently-visited sites, now, when you open a new tab, you can embed websites that will update automatically, such as for weather or stock quotes. Opera has also partnered with several startup applications that give the browser a unique flavor in comparison to the competition.

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Opera 11.50, codenamed "Swordfish," wraps up a fast two-month public development cycle worthy of its codename with a new release today. The new version of the desktop browser is now available for Windows, Mac OS X, and various flavours of Linux.

The most visible change is an update to the default browser skin. The new skin, which is part of Project "Featherweight," is a brighter and less cluttered alternative to the browser's default skin that has remained intact since 10.50, with minor UI tweaks for the past 3 major revisions. The "Featherweight" skin sports a newly styled toolbar with borderless buttons, a new icon set, four default navigation buttons (Back, Forward, Reload/Stop, Wand) in the default toolbar, and a more accessible zoom slider. This new initiative to improve the UI of the browser is not complete yet, with further phases to be realized in upcoming releases.

The next major addition is Speed Dial extensions. Speed Dial extensions allow users to insert dynamic content into their Speed Dials. These can include an RSS reader, a weather gadget, a stock ticker, a photo slideshow, or a simple clock. These extensions are accessible through the improved "Add Speed Dial" dialog.

Other noteworthy changes include:

Opera founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has resigned from the company.

In an email to Opera employees, von Tetzchner said that “It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me.” You can read the full email below.

Von Tetzchner co-founded Opera Software in 1995, and led the company up to 2010, when he resigned as CEO. He then became a full-time strategic advisor to the company.