Although the Opera Web browser has always been one of the most feature-packed, it is lagging behind Firefox, Safari, and Chrome in key areas like JavaScript performance and support for emerging standards. A new pre-alpha developer build of Opera 10.5 sheds some light on Opera's strategy to regain a position of prominence among modern browsers.
Opera 10.5 delivers a new highly competitive JavaScript engine, improved graphics performance, much broader CSS3 support, and a handful of new features. It's an impressive step forward for Opera and it demonstrates that the browser's relevance hasn't evaporated on the desktop despite its marginal presence in that market.
Browser vendors are racing to achieve near-native performance with their next-generation JavaScript engines. JavaScript speed is going to become increasingly important as modern Web applications like Google Wave push the limits of what can be done within a Web browser. Google, Mozilla, and Apple are all using a variation on the principle of just-in-time compilation to boost JavaScript execution speed in their Web browsers. Opera is now doing the same with its new Carackan engine which has a native code generator.
More: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/12/opera-will-get-back-on-track-with-105.ars