After months of public inactivity, Opera has been racing to release the latest version of its desktop browser. No guesses why. For the first time since 2003, Mozilla's FireFox looks like a modern browser, and not a skinnable memory heap testing tool.

Opera 9.50 is out today, and we've been on the case of Kestrel since the first public preview last autumn.

Long time users will clock that speed and compatibility have been addressed in the new version. Not that you could ever call Opera slow, but JavaScript execution is noticeably faster in 9.50. I found the speed-up to be most noticeable on the Mac, where Opera now reigns supreme: easily beating Apple's own Safari for speed and usability.

The new version also sees the first significant upgrade to the built-in email client M2 since it first appeared five years ago. M2 baffles people as much as if a strange piece of alien metal fell to earth - but I suspect the confusion is lower amongst Pick or BeOS users. The mail client is built around a very fast database, so queries are returned almost instantly.

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