With Mozilla scheduled to release Firefox 3 early next week and Apple providing a preview of Safari 4 to developers just a couple of days ago, the folks at Opera decided to make some noise of their own today with a brand new browser. Opera 9.5, which had been in beta since October, went live today with significant improvements and several new features included. Thanks to a new engine the browser renders both JavaScript and HTML at more than twice the speed of its predecessor, Opera 9.2. Also in the acceleration department, it starts up much quicker than before and handles third party plug-ins noticeably faster.

Version 9.5 includes the highly anticipated Opera Link feature, which lets you synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial entries between multiple computers as well as your mobile device. Another new feature is Quick Find, which gives you the ability to rapidly search through titles, URLs, and most impressively, the actual content of Web pages within your browsing history.

Web developers should be more than satisfied with Opera 9.5. It not only passed the Acid1 and Acid2 tests, but scored 83% on the newer Acid3 test. This is due in part to impressive Web standards support which includes the somewhat cutting edge HTML 5 and CSS 3. In addition to all of this positive development news, Opera has released a great debugging tool called Dragonfly which lets you debug JavaScript, inspect CSS and the DOM, and view any errors from right within the browser.

Well, what about security? In what seems to be the most important aspect of a browser these days (aside from possibly speed), Opera 9.5 sports some very respectable ways to keep you safe. The new Fraud Protection feature utilizes a combination of phishing information from both Netcraft and PhishTank to warn users when they visit a fraudulent site. Couple that with built-in Malware protection from Haute Secure as well as the browser's support for Extended Validation Certificates and you have yourself a fairly safe environment in which to surf. Only time will tell how well these security methods hold up against the constantly evolving dangers that lurk throughout the Web. However, I really like what Opera has done here.

Opera 9.5 is available as a free download for the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms.