Opera’s latest browser version loads pages before you hit enter

Opera claims the new version brings 13 per cent faster startup time compared to the last version, while the browser engine has also got a performance boost.

Coming weeks after its announcement of the new Neon browser, Opera on Tuesday released a new version of its original browser with instant page loading and Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) on board. The company claimed the new features were aimed at just making the browser “super-fast” as web content is getting heavier and heavier while users want the pages to load faster and faster.
“Web browsers need to evolve faster in order to keep up with people’s expectations,” says Krystian Kolondra, Head of Opera for computers. “Last year, we sped up the Opera browser with features like native ad-blocking, page-load speed optimization, and faster start-up. Now, with instant page loading, we are giving it another boost that will squeeze loading time almost to zero.”
Among the new features is instant page loading, a mechanism wherein the Opera browser predicts which website you are typing the address for and begins loading it in the background before you hit enter. This new feature, Opera claimed, becomes smarter over time by learning which URL inputs led to a specific website.
“For example, if you type nyt.com on multiple occasions, it will learn from this and begin loading the New York Times in the background. In addition, when you search for something in the address bar, it will load the results likely to be clicked in the background,” a release said.
Opera claims the new version brings 13 per cent faster startup time compared to the last version, while the browser engine has also got a performance boost. The company claimed this is now possible with Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), a Visual Studio compiler feature able to make software running on Windows significantly faster. This helps Opera run compiled data faster by selecting a number of important scenarios and teaches the compiler which code is important.