Opera has taken the fight to its rivals with the alpha of Opera 10, the first browser to fully comply with the Acid3 test, according to the Norweigan company.

Opera claims the latest version of its desktop browser scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 test, which was created to assess whether browsers comply with a range of web standards around features such as rendering and Javascript.

In comparison Chrome 0.4 manages 79 out of 100, trailed by Firefox 3.0.4 with 71 and Internet Explorer 7, which hits a meagre 14, though IE8 is expected to improve things significantly when it launches.

Ultimately, the test hopes to encourage the creation of websites that don’t need to be rejigged to accomodate an individual browser’s foibles.

The other big announcement for Opera 10 is the introduction of the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which will be the heart of all future Opera products, from desktop to mobile.

According to the company, Presto 2.2 is 30% faster than Presto 2.1 - the engine introduced in Opera 9.5.

Sun released JavaFX 1.0, in a bid to take on Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight technologies. It is Sun’s first Java release to include standardized, cross-platform audio and video playback code (in the form of On2 licensed codecs). The lack of a Linux or Solaris release is a notable absence. The development kit currently consists of the base run-time, a NetBeans/Eclipse plug-in and a set of artifact exporters for Adobe CS 3&4.”

If a solar-powered car can drive 32,000 miles 52,000 kilometers around the globe without using a drop of oil, perhaps it can be forgiven for not having a coffee cup holder.

Or maybe that makes Swiss adventurer Louis Palmer s journey even more remarkable.

Palmer rolled into the U.N. climate conference in his solar car Thursday, a man with a mission: To prove that the world can continue its love affair with the car without burning any polluting fossil fuels and still enjoy a smooth ride.

While some 11,000 delegates sought an ambitious new climate change deal to slash emissions of heat-trapping gases, Palmer was convinced that whatever they agreed upon won t be enough to avert environmental disaster.

Here at the conference, we are talking about reducing emissions by 10 or 20 percent, Palmer said. I want to show that we can reduce emissions by 100 percent — and that s what we need for the future.

Palmer, a teacher on leave from his job, spent 17 months driving his own creation — a fully solar-powered car built with the help of Swiss scientists — through 38 countries. The two-seater travels up to 55 mph 90 kph and covers 185 miles 300 kilometers on a fully charged battery.

This is the first time in history that a solar-powered car has traveled all the way around the world without using a single drop of petrol, he said, adding that he lost only two days to breakdowns.