Alleluiah! The Opera software company has quite silently released an update to their latest Opera 12 using Presto engine. This actually happened back on February 16th but I myself discovered this only recently. The new Opera 12.18 removes some obsolete security protocols and finally adds the elliptic curve cipher suite. This is the one security feature which many websites started implementing from the beginning of 2015 and which rendered the old Opera 12.17 useless with them. With this, the reborn Opera 12.18 should be able to last for many more years. Also some security flaws in the Opera Mail have been corrected. (UPDATE 2017-05-10 by LongRunner: The original download link no longer works. Fortunately, the installers themselves are still available on Opera’s FTP server: 32-bit English, 64-bit English, 32-bit International, 64-bit International, Portable International. I have also saved copies to my own HDD, in case Opera’s site fails in the future.)
It seems that even after so many years, vast numbers of users still use the old Presto core over the Chrome skin. Chrome Opera (this is especially nice in Czech as what would in English be “crippled Opera” in Czech means “zchromlá Opera”) does not seem that interesting, which has been pretty much expected actually. I personally think this was the biggest mistake they ever made, to me it seems like Netburst era of Intel. However, the developers have to continue wearing their masks, no matter how “convulsively” it looks. So you may notice a mention about the users of Windows XP SP1 for whom they supposedly do it in that release note.
Well, I myself use Opera 12 on XP SP3/POS Ready 2009, Vista SP2 and Win 7 SP1. Many more use this browser on Win 8 to 10. So no, it is not connected with “obsolete” OS in any way. It is also good to mention I see nothing obsolete in Windows XP. The end of support for XP does not mean anything for the end user, despite massive PR campaigning (including so called “experts”) to pressure you into buying new system and HW. I run this system on many systems and will run on even more in future. There is no point in throwing away still useful hardware (and I am not talking about Pentium III here, but things like dual-core K8 systems or even some better Pentium 4). However, there is also no point in forcing Windows 7 on such systems (especially when many drivers for that HW were never created for 7).
This “new” browser, unlike the old Opera 12 with Presto, does not really bring anything else above other Chrome skins. And while their market share may have risen since it launched, the fact is that using the same core as many others brings great security risk by itself. Being in the minority means much less people are interested in finding security issues in such product which means better security for you. I would dare to say the new Opera is less secure in 2016 than Opera 12 just because of this fact alone!
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