14 DAY TRIAL // This alpha release for Opera (build 1105) has been announced at Up North Web conference earlier this week as a technological milestone in the development of the browser, because it introduces hardware acceleration.
It's true that hardware acceleration is in alpha stage and only uses OpenGL backend, but the progress is still a notable one. The rendering of the entire user interface, which also includes parts of the webpage such as canvas element, will be offloaded from the CPU to the graphics card.
Put in plain terms, all this is designed to push the envelope in terms of performance: higher quality graphics rendered at little CPU cost.
The developer has prepared a set of three games to demonstrate the new technologies available in the browser. Be warned that this version of Opera is still experimental and the new technologies could lead to issues ranging from graphics card problems to BSODs.
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