It is only a week since Opera 12 was graced with the addition of support for cameras, and since then two new builds have been released that push the development of the browser even further. Performance is of utmost importance for every computer user, and the latest builds of Opera Next have been improved with the implementation of hardware acceleration. Interestingly, hardware acceleration has been made an opt-in feature.

A new DirectX backend is available instead of OpenGL and the hardware acceleration is used to not only improve the rendering time for page, but also boost the speed of the user interface. In addition to the performance gains that come from the implementation of this new feature, overall performance of the browser has also been tweaked and stability problems arising from the use of plugins have been addressed.

Opera Next 12.00 build 1385

Opera has supported right-to-left (RTL) web pages for quite some time now, and the latest snapshot bring the same support to the program interface. If you have your language set to Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew or Urdu the RTL UI will be loaded for you automatically, effectively creating a mirror image of what is usual displayed, with the order of menus and buttons reversed.

A somewhat more minor change to the browser is the new icon. The change is nothing major – amounting to little more than a bit of spit and polish – but it is another step along the road to completion.

You can find out more and download a copy of the latest version of the browser by paying a visit to the Opera Next 12.00 build 1385 review page. There’s also a 64-bit version of the browser available.