ReadWriteWeb

The browser wars are back with a vengeance. In no small part thanks to the efforts of Google Chrome, we have seen a resurgence in browser inovation and a new emphasis on speed over the last year and a half. Today, Opera is launching its newest weapon against Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Billed as the "world's fastest browser," Opera 10.50 for Windows - which also sports a new user interface - might just be Opera's best browser to date. The question, though, is if this new release will be enough to help Opera gain new users and market share.

Opera just released the first pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. While most users generally only think about Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome as the major players in the current browser wars, there can be no doubt that Opera is working hard to push browser development forward as well. This latest alpha version shows that Opera has worked hard to speed up the browser. Carakan, the new JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5, is up to seven times faster than Opera's current engine. The new version of Opera also adds a number of new features like an enhanced private browsing mode and a new graphics engine that can be hardware accelerated.

Opera just announced the release of Opera 10.10. This latest version of Opera's desktop browser now includes Opera Unite, the company's browser-based web server. With Unite, users can share photos, music, notes, websites, forums and calendars - but unlike standard web apps, these apps are hosted on the user's computer. When Opera first talked about Unite, it claimed that this service would "reinvent the web." This resulted in a lot of hype before the announcement and the inevitable backlash right afterward. When we tested the first alpha version of Opera with the built-in Unite feature, however, we came away quite impressed.

Back in June of this year, Opera revealed their ambitious plan to "reinvent the web" with the release of Opera Unite, a new feature of their desktop web browser that effectively turns your computer into a server. With tools like a chat application, a photo sharing app, a file sharing app, a media player, and more, the idea behind Unite was to forgo the "cloud" and share your files with others directly from your PC instead. Using peer-to-peer technology that operates through the browser interface, Opera Unite seemed to be going against the current trend that is cloud computing and that didn't win them much love from the tech community.

Despite its ho-hum reception, the company is moving forward with its plans to make Unite a full-fledged feature of the Opera browser. Today, the Opera Unite beta is launching and will be made available in Opera 10.10. Given the recent cloud outages, one has to wonder if Unite will be given a second look by the crowd of naysayers who so recently belittled it.

Opera today announced that the latest version of its browser, Opera 10, was downloaded 10 million times during the first week after its release. On its first day of release, Opera registered around 2 million downloads, up from 580,000 when the company released Opera 9 in 2006. Opera 10 launched to generally positive reviews and the company is already working on the next iteration of Opera 10, which will include Opera Unite, a web server and a number of web services that users will host on their own desktops.

Today, just a few days after the release of version 10 of its desktop browser, Opera has already released a new beta alpha version of the next iteration of its flagship product. This version includes a few bug fixes, but most importantly, it also enables Opera Unite, the hyped and then quickly forgotten browser-based web server that Opera announced in June. Given that Unite will soon be part of the default install of Opera, we thought that now would be a good time to have another look at Unite and see if it lives up to its promise to "reinvent the web."

After numerous betas and two release candidates, Opera today released the final version of Opera 10, the company's flagship desktop Internet browser. Users who skipped all the pre-release versions of Opera 10 will be pleasantly surprised with the updates that Opera has brought to its browser. These include Opera Turbo, the company's compression technology that makes surfing on slower connections more bearable, visual tabs, a smarter spell checker, and a faster rendering engine. Opera also still features a built-in email client and RSS reader.