A new version of the Opera web browser was released earlier today. Version 32.0.1948.25 improves synchronization and security, and adds animated backgrounds. The bookmark tab now has a tree view, which makes it much more useful, in my opinion.

When Opera first switched from their proprietary browser engine software to the generic WebKit engine, I was concerned that Opera would become just another Chrome clone. It’s taken a while, but Opera is now well ahead of Chrome, in that it has several options for displaying a list of bookmarks in a sidebar. The included bookmark tab doesn’t appear on every page, but even if that’s a deal breaker, you can always enable the extensions sidebar and install a bookmark extension like Bookmarks by the Side.

After using the new Opera for a while this morning, I’m impressed by its speed. I’ll try using it as my main browser, and if I like it, it’ll be goodbye to Firefox, which has become bloated and unstable recently.

Update: I apparently missed the release of Opera 31 on August 4.