I used to use Opera almost exclusively until Mozilla really got their stuff together – yes, Mozilla, not Firefox. I’ve watched Opera continue to grow, add features that people would usually copy but I didn’t really go back to it – it’s on my Nintendo Wii already and I occasionally test sites with it on the laptop. But Google Chrome had essentially what Opera was… the faster, sometimes better, yet quirky browser in my assortment of apps that could view content on the web.

Well, Opera 10.5 might just change all of that. Sporting an even newer look, functionality of the 10.x builds have been sorted out for better usability and there’s a speed increase due to a new JavaScript engine and an optimized rendering engine. Definitely worth checking out, but remember one thing… it’s still considered a pre-alpha software so it might do some wonky things.

[ Links: Opera 10.5 Windows Pre-Alpha Download, Opera 10.5 Mac OS X Pre-Alpha Download ]