Opera

The bottom line: Extensions, competitive page-load times, solid features, and good support for "future Web" technologies make Opera 12 an excellent browser, but it's treading water where it used to lead.

Review: The second-oldest browser currently in use, Opera debuted way back in 1994 and continues to attract attention. Its feature-phone version claims more than 160 million users worldwide. While desktop Opera isn't quite as heavily used, it has developed a reputation as a leader on feature development, and can hold its own against the big four.

Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, … Read more

The bottom line: Extensions, competitive page-load times, solid features, and good support for "future Web" technologies make Opera 12 an excellent browser, but it's treading water where it used to lead.

Review: The second-oldest browser currently in use, Opera debuted way back in 1994 and continues to attract attention. Its feature-phone version claims more than 160 million users worldwide. While desktop Opera isn't quite as heavily used, it has developed a reputation as a leader on feature development, and can hold its own against the big four.

Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, … Read more

The bottom line: Extensions, competitive page-load times, solid features, and good support for "future Web" technologies make Opera 12 an excellent browser, but it's treading water where it used to lead.

Review: The second-oldest browser currently in use, Opera debuted way back in 1994 and continues to attract attention. Its feature-phone version claims more than 160 million users worldwide. While desktop Opera isn't quite as heavily used, it has developed a reputation as a leader on feature development, and can hold its own against the big four.

Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, … Read more

Let the conspiracy theories begin.

Facebook has apparently booted Google's Chrome browser off its supported recommended browser list, instead highlighting Opera, according to Favbrowser, which managed to cache a page with the note.

It's uncertain how official the page is, as it no longer accessible. Under Facebook's support page, all four major browsers are listed.

The switch is particularly noteworthy because of speculation that Facebook is interested in acquiring Opera. Facebook, meanwhile, has long considered Google a competitor in the social arena.

Sitting alongside Opera in the cached supported browser page is Microsoft's Internet Explorer and … Read more

If Facebook wants to buy Opera Software, the Norwegian browser maker's price tag just went up.

After last week's rumors that Facebook was considering acquiring Opera, Opera's stock price leaped 20 percent, or 6.70 Norwegian kroner, to a price of about 41 kroner ($6.83) in trading today.

That gives the company a market cap of $811 million, or as Internet wags would have it with today's exchange rate, about 0.8 Instagrams.

That's a lot of money, even before any premium. And Opera founder Jon S. von Tetzchner, who controls 10.1 percent of its stock through Dvorzak Invest, … Read more

Is Facebook planning to jump on the browser bandwagon?

Tech blog Pocket-lint says one of its "trusted sources" revealed that Facebook is trying to buy Opera Software, the company behind the Opera Web browser, a sign that the social-networking company might be looking to launch its own browser.

The move would put Facebook in competition with other tech companies in the browser game -- including Yahoo, which recently launched Axis, and Google, which has already released extensions to integrate its social-networking component, Google +, into its browser.

Pocket-lint speculates that a Facebook browser "would allow you keep up … Read more

Google has joined Mozilla in its attempt to push Microsoft to permit full-fledged browsers other than Internet Explorer on Windows RT, its operating system geared for devices running ARM processors.

Mozilla objects to Microsoft decisions that, it says, prevent it from bringing a competitive version of Firefox to Windows RT. Other browsers don't get access to the same operating system abilities that IE10 gets, recalling browser battles from earlier years that ultimately triggered government antitrust actions in the United States and Europe.

Now Google, maker of the Chrome browser, has weighed in:

We share the concerns Mozilla has raised … Read more

The reversal of Internet Explorer's ill fortunes appears less likely to be a fluke with the release of April statistics for Web browser usage.

Net Applications' global browser statistics, updated today, showed the top browser reclaiming a sliver of usage from its rivals, growing from 53.8 percent in March to 54.1 percent of usage in April on personal computers.

The top rivals kept their rankings overall. No. 2. Firefox held dropped from 20.6 percent to 20.2 percent; Chrome rose from 18.6 percent to 18.9 percent; Safari dropped from 5.1 percent to 4.… Read more

Opera has released the first beta of its next-generation browser, code-named Wahoo. Opera 12 beta 1 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, contains many improvements that modernize the browser. It also abandons several quirky features that die-hard fans are likely to miss.

Much of the browser simply brings it in line with its competition, but there is one stand-out new feature. Formerly known as Opera Reader, it takes a few lines of CSS code to allow you to lay out a Web page like a book. It also allows for page resizing without losing the formatting. Opera has decided to open … Read more