Opera 21 has been released today for both Mac and Windows users. The Windows version utilises Aura technology which provides hardware-accelerated rendering allowing a smoother and more responsive feel to Opera’s interface. For Mac users, Opera does not use Aura technology as it uses Apple Core Animation technology which achieves the same affects.

In a blog post Opera states:

So far, we have only scratched the surface of this technology, and Opera 21’s primary intention was to get Aura working and stable. In the future, you will see further benefits as it allows us to give everything that little extra bit of polish!

Further updates in this release are:
1. The option to make Opera persistently show a page’s complete URL in the address bar. For users who may wish to see this URL information, they can go to Settings and check the Advanced Settings option, this will display extra options under the user interface section so a user can then select; Show full URL in combined search and address bar.

2. Updated Chromium to 1847.76 for even better site compatibility.
3. Opera will now scale with screens that use 200% DPI setting in Windows.
4. An improvement for Mac users is the rework of Mac keyboard handling allowing better support of web apps such as Google Docs and GitHub.

Published by Matilda Cowling