Tag Archives: Opera and Google Chrome
Could Opera be a Challenger that Could Approach Chrome?
Posted on 11. Aug, 2011 by Nicholas Greene. 
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Opera isn’t anything new- it’s been around since 1996. Just the same, it’s always been something of an underdog in the browser market. For much of its life, it’s lacked the stuff necessary to challenge IE. Chrome, or Firefox Maybe Opera simply isn’t powerful enough. Perhaps it just didn’t catch on in the way the other three did- what is there to differentiate Opera from Chrome, or Firefox?Whatever the reason, Opera’s been puttering along at less than 5% of the global market share for web browsers.
That might just change, though.
Opera’s latest update to Opera 12 sees a rather considerable boost to the browser’s speed. You’ll notice how I said speed, and not power- that’s because the browser’s performance on Benchmark tests hasn’t changed anywhere near as much as the speed boost would indicate- though Opera 12 is no slouch in benchmark performance, either. According to Lee Matthews of Geek.com, Opera bested Chrome 12 in benchmark tests, and scored mere points behind Chrome 14. Not bad, Opera- not bad at all.
Opera 12 improves speed in a manner similar to Chrome- that is, it doesn’t actually reduce load times by being beefier, but rather contains a number of tweaks and tricks to make browsing faster. Specifically, Opera’s latest release is packaged with a number of network tweaks that are custom tailored to reduce latency. The Opera team has also made some pretty hefty improvements to the browser’s Presto rendering engine and its Carankan Javascript Engine, to boot. End result? Opera 12 feels obscenely fast.
So How Fast Is It?
I decided I’d give the browser a run myself. And I’m actually…very impressed. For all intents and purposes, it feels just as fast as Chrome(I’m using the most recent Developer build). Granted, I’m still sticking with Chrome for the time being, but…I think that Opera could actually end up being a contender in the race for web dominance, if they play their cards right. That’s a big if, though- speed isn’t everything.
The tweaks aren’t the only thing Opera 12 has going for it, either. Opera also features something known as “Turbo Mode;” which debuted in Opera 10. Basically, pages are compressed and cached via Opera’s servers. Kind of a simplistic explanation, but long story short; it makes Opera load pages faster-since there’s generally less data to load. Opera 12 doesn’t really play nice with Turbo quite yet, but that’ll likely be fixed in the final release.
Could Opera Challenge Chrome?
I actually rather like Opera. It’s aesthetically pleasing, fast, and reasonably powerful. If how well it performs is the only thing we’re taking into consideration…then yeah, it could most definitely challenge Chrome. The browser game, though…it’s changed. Though it’s certainly one of the most important elements of any web browser, it’s not the only thing to consider any more.Web applications, integration with other products and websites, instant pages…these are all advantages of Chrome’s that are rather lacking in Opera.
Just the same, Opera’s definitely got the potential to be a lot more than it is now. I’ll be keeping a close eye on it- and you should, as well.
via Geek.com
