Opera 12.10 ships with Windows 8 touch support and SPDY

Opera Software has released version 12.10 of its Opera browser, adding touch support for Windows 8 and enhanced support for the latest version of Mac OS X, among other features.

Available to download now from Opera's website, Opera 12.10 is a cross-platform browser available for Windows and Linux PCs, as well as Macs running OS X.

Among the features in this release are better OS integration, improved standards support, new extensions APIs and compatibility tweaks, according to Andreas Bovens, group leader for developer relations at Opera.

For Windows users, this version adds inertial scrolling and pinch-to-zoom for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 in its desktop mode, where the user has a touch-capable system.

On the Mac, Opera now integrates with the Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion and supports the Retina display on newer MacBooks.

Opera 12.10 also now supports the SPDY protocol, developed by Google to speed web page load times by cutting the latency of HTTP data transfers.

Other enhancements include support for the International Color Consortium (ICC) profile v4, which is claimed to make photographic images look more vibrant and colourful on screen.

For developers, the new version extends support for HTML5 and web standards, adding partial support for the Fullscreen API that allows web pages to use the entire screen to display content.

Also partially supported is the Page Visibility API that allows a web page to discover if it its browser tab is not visible, allowing it to suspend CPU-intensive content, such as animated graphics.

API support for high definition screens also enables developers to take advantage of systems that support these, such as Apple's Retina Display products, in their projects.