Opera 12 to receive major graphics-hardware boost

Excited for the upcoming version of Opera? Well, if you’re an Opera user you should be. At the Up North Web press event today, Opera made known the features that will be part of its upcoming release. Opera 12 is said to receive a major graphics-hardware boost – hardware acceleration for CSS transitions and animations, for Canvas 2D drawing, for text, and for WebGL 3D graphics technology.

One interesting point to note is that while most companies like Microsoft are leaving support for older versions of Windows behind (i.e. XP) with IE9, Opera isn’t going to go in that direction. This should help them capture the browser market share for folks who haven’t upgraded from Windows XP yet (yes, they’re still around). Other improvements to Opera 12 include a new HTML5 parser that lets websites look the same on Opera and other browsers. The browser will also get a revamped JavaScript engine for running the software that powers Web apps. The alpha version of Opera 12 is set to be released this Thursday, October 13^th.