Hardware acceleration allows Opera to offload graphics rendering from the processor (CPU) to the graphics card (GPU), making graphics intensive operations such as animations faster. Numerous improvements to the address bar have been made: Install or change themes at the click of a button, without restarting the browser.
New, lightweight themes make it easier to customize the browser. The 64-bit version of Opera will offer performance improvements for some functions and allow Opera more freedom in allocating memory.
This feature will enhance security and stability. Opera now runs plug-ins as a separate process, allowing for more control when a plug-in misbehaves. Moving forward all newer versions of Opera rely on the Blink web browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project and thus, the same rendering engine used by Google's Chrome. Opera 12 is the latest version of the browser available that used the Presto layout engine.
