Opera 10.50 Description:
Opera 10.50 browser somehow remains behind the scenes in the so-called battle of the web browsers. But with the newly released version Opera 10.50 has the chance to jump on stage as it proves an excellent alternative to other more widely-used browsers.

If you've downloaded previous beta and RC releases, you won't notice that much difference. However Opera 10.50 does show nice improvements when compared to previous versions. Perhaps the most outstanding one is the Opera Turbo feature, a state-of-the-art compression and rendering engine that is said to load pages up to 8 times faster.

Besides its impressive speed, Opera 10.50 includes other interesting enhancements. One of them is Speed Dial, a customizable page that shows up every time you open a new tab and displays your most frequently visited websites. Another one is the so-called widgets, small programs that run on your desktop and let you play games, check the weather or follow your friends' activities on several social networks. Opera 10.50 features a handy panel on the left side of the interface from where you can manage your widgets, and notes, bookmarks and history as well.

Other minor improvements include an inline built-in spell checker with support for 51 languages and an auto-update tool with which you can keep your browser up to date in an easier way. The tab bar has been improved as well, and now displays thumbnails to help you keep track of all opened tabs – just hover your mouse on any tab or double click the three-dot small bar under the tabs to check it. Also, Opera 10.50 is fully compatible with Web standards, according to the Acid test in which this version scores an impressive 100%.

Oddly enough, there's one thing that Opera 10.50 is missing, and that is the Unite service. The file sharing utility that turned your web browser into a web server didn't seem to pass the test and has been finally dropped off the final version.