Opera 12 uses hardware for everything its Vega display engine handles--font display, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) effects, Canvas 2D graphics, and WebGL 3D graphics.

WebGL, also helpful with 2D graphics acceleration, is good for games and potentially other graphics-intense tasks. Google offers WebGL as an option for Google Maps, for example.

WebGL graphics is a highlight of the new alpha build of Opera, but the browser also can accelerate 2D graphics, text, and CSS effects--often on Windows XP.

Also discover how WebGL is bringing OpenGL based graphics to browsers on any platform supporting the OpenGL or OpenGL ES standards, without the need for any plug-in. Additionally, Khronos is ...