Opera 12 is finally here, you can grab it now and enjoy the goodness. Opera's been working on this release for about a year and it's been going slow, it had to put out the interim and unplanned Opera 11.60 just to get some of the features that were already out there while the team focused on the bigger issues, namely hardware acceleration.

But it seems to have been for nothing, hardware acceleration is disabled by default since the software backend is still faster in most cases and is certainly more stable.

It's just a matter of optimization and bug fixing now, the hardware accelerated backend will become the default eventually.

In an effort to find out what's next for Opera and whether some of the big trends in the browser market are affecting Opera as well, we shot out a few questions to Opera's VP of desktop products, Jan Standal.

Softpedia: Opera 12 took quite a long time to finish, will things go faster now that the big work on hardware acceleration is done? When can we expect the next minor/major update?

Jan Standal: At Opera Software our goal is to create innovative new features to help give users the best web browsing experience on any device, and to make sure that those features are at top-notch quality for our users.

J.S.: We do not aim to launch new versions of our products simply for the sake of it, but want to make sure it actually contains features and updates our users will enjoy and find helpful. We aren't able to give information about future releases, but of course stay tuned for future surprises.

Softpedia: Are there plans to switch to a faster release schedule, like Chrome or Firefox? What about silent/background updates?

J.S.: Our current release cycle includes major browser version changes, with beta releases and stability updates in between. This schedule allows us to bring substantial innovations and improvements in every major release, and gives us the opportunity to work with the community to test the product and ensure the high quality we strive for.

Softpedia: Hardware acceleration won't be enabled by default in Opera 12, but what about future releases? It should eventually be faster and at least stable as the software backend, is there an estimate on when the feature might come enabled by default?

J.S.: In Opera 12, hardware acceleration and WebGL can be turned on at the user's discretion. We're doing this for an important reason. We want to bring the first true hardware accelerated browser to market, where everything from page drawing to the user interface is accelerated. But in some cases, our hardware accelerated speeds do not yet beat our incredibly optimized software backend, Vega. J.S.: Shipping a feature that could actually be less effective at boosting speed is a big no-no, especially if it's a final release that many people will use for day-to-day browsing. For now, interested Opera users can experiment with WebGL and hardware acceleration by turning the features on in opera:config. We will make these features available by default when they meet our rigorous speed and stability requirements.

Softpedia: Are there plans to enable hardware acceleration for some features/components only, like HTML5 Canvas or WebGL, which seems to be using the software backend even when it's enabled in Opera 12, or is this a limitation of Opera's hardware acceleration implementation, i.e. it's all or nothing? J.S.: It's correct that if you enable WebGL support and not hardware acceleration support in Opera 12, the actual drawing is still using the software back-end. We don't have a plan to only support a hardware-accelerated WebGL back-end at this point. Softpedia: Is Opera thinking about supporting SPDY any time soon? Are there plans to get involved in the evolution of SPDY or the upcoming HTTP 2.0, which will likely be based on SPDY? Does Opera have its own suggestions or ideas for SPDY/HTTP 2.0?

J.S.: We work closely with standardization efforts to contribute as much as possible, but we do not comment on support for new features until it ships in a public accessible version.