Opera Software released the first beta of Opera 10.60. As the version number increase suggests, it's a minor update. As an Opera release suggests, minor in Norwegian terms means more than the average release.

The focus on this release has been performance and core updates. First is Carakan, which was already impressive to start with. Opera Software seems reluctant to let Google Chrome win the race, so Carakan performs even better in this release, with up to 75% improvement. HTML5 support has been increased to allow features like WebM codec support for video (from Google I/O), geolocation, web workers, offline web applications, cross-document messaging and more. Other noticeable features are search suggestions (for selected search engines), polished visual effects (such as tab thumbnails and Speed Dial), Opera "Menu" button (instead of just the "O"), iconic representations of features (history, downloads), and much more.

You can download the release from Opera's official site and includes the English language version for Windows, Linux and Mac. As always, you can leave your feedback behind on the Opera Desktop Team's blog. Enjoy your ride!