If Facebook do buy Opera it'll be purely for Mini and it's tempting mobile ad channel.
New Opera 12 hooks web apps to 3D graphics acceleration
A new version of Opera's desktop browser rolls out today, six weeks after the public beta. The list of new features hasn't changed much - and the new version also deprecates older features such as Opera Unite and widgets. HTML apps can now take advantage of experimental hardware acceleration and also access to the computer's …
-
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 12:35 GMT CheesyTheClown
Uhhh....
Or it could be that it's installed in cars, on Nintendo and on pretty much every other device which has a browser and isn't a PC or phone? Take however many copies of Opera you think are out there and multiply it by between a hundred and a thousand and you'll be close. It's even running the front end for Coke Machines. It's the GUI on TV set top boxes... etc...
Owning Opera would put Facebook absolutely everywhere.
-
-
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 14:25 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: "and also access to the computer's webcam"
I presume that the new feature here is that HTML-based apps can access your web-cam. Plug-ins like Flash have been able to do it for years, so I imagine that a bit of googling would show that the disaster you refer to has happened hundreds of times already.
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 19:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "and also access to the computer's webcam"
@ "the disaster you refer to has happened hundreds of times already"
A fair point. So effectively Opera is running head first into an already existent pileup allowing other technologies to enjoy the same disaster. Rejoice.
Funny, now I come to think on it, I have yet to own or use my first web cam. I don't wish to see peoples genitals being waved at me, or to see the faces of supervisors or clients when its their words I am interested in. Nor do I wish them to see I'm working in my underwear and haven't shaved for several days now; All of these scenarios thus involve dickheads. How wonderful the uses to which humans put their technology. Sex and/or surveillance, and/or exploitation. </cynicism>
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 19:51 GMT Steve Knox
Re: "and also access to the computer's webcam"
...I imagine that a bit of googling would show that the disaster you refer to has happened hundreds of times already...
Heresy! The faithful do not leave this site for tech news!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/20/acobe_flash_webcam_spying/
Pay no attention to the
typodeliberate misspelling in the article path! El Reg's Staff Are Infallible!
-
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 11:50 GMT Ralph B
Memory Leaks?
I gave up on Opera a couple of months ago after getting frustrated at it eating all my system memory within a couple of hours. It seemed to be related to handling javascript from Google Groups pages, so I suppose it might have been deliberate breakage requested by the Chrome team, but still no excuse for Opera to ignore the problem for so long.
Guess I might have to give 12 a try to see if they've finally fixed it.
-
-
Friday 15th June 2012 12:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Memory Leaks?
Clearly you don't understand a memory leak....
What you are referring to is the working set....
Opera doesn't leak much memory (no worse than other browsers), however "bedroom experts" might easily get memory leak and the ability to use installed memory efficiently confused....
-
-
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 11:50 GMT Irongut
all the stability of Ashley Young racing into the penalty box with a defender on his shoulder
I gather this gentleman is some kind of footballer but since I don't know who he is the metaphor is lost on me. What makes him unstable? Does he get a blue face of death (BFOD) when he has a defender on his shoulder?
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 11:53 GMT Greg J Preece
Excellent, another browser getting hardware acceleration. It's one of the things that really impressed me when IE9 got it, and with other browsers rapidly following suit, its absence from Opera was starting to become more and more noticeable. When they say "experimental", how stable is that? The experimental support in VirtualBox is surprisingly solid, for example.
-
Thursday 14th June 2012 14:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hardware acceleration is rather good, as the WHOLE APP is hardware accelerated, not just the canvas. However unless you have a decent GPU, it may currently run slower, which is why they disabled it by default.
Their software rendering is blisteringly quick, but older hardware, the GPU accelerated one is slower.
-
-
-
Friday 15th June 2012 08:32 GMT borkbork
Re: I love you but...
I checked 2 sites I previously had to open in chrome (google docs (spreadsheet selection box didn't line up with cell borders) and codecademy (cursor position in editor box didn't keep up with actual character spacing)), and they both work properly under opera now. So the tally is at minus 2 pages for me so far.
-