14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like it has been an extremely busy Christmas season over at Opera Software, as just a little after a week since the release of the first development milestone of Opera 10.50, a second testing build was made available for download. Opera 10.50 Pre-Alpha Build 3186 went live on December 31st, 2009, and is offered with support for Windows, Mac OS X, and unlike the initial release, also for UNIX/Linux. In addition to the introduction of the Opera 10.50 Pre-Alpha Build for Linux users, the latest testing version also brings to the table a few enhancements designed to improve the browser’s stability. However, the biggest addition by far to the new testing build is support for the video element.
“The desktop team released a new years’ pre-alpha of Opera 10.50 which includes the first public preview of our new HTML5 <video> implementation. It was Opera that first proposed <video> and made the first proof-of-concept build way back in 2007. In this post I will talk about what we've done since then, the decisions we've made and where we hope to go next,” revealed Philip Jägenstedt, core developer at Opera Software.
Jägenstedt underlined that although Opera 10.50 did come with support for the HTML5 <video> element, the implementation had yet to be completed. Most importantly, debates continue even at this point in time on the audio and video formats which should be adopted for HTML5. While a consensus within the web standards community is yet to be achieved, Opera Software indicated strong support for pen standards such as the Ogg formats: the Vorbis audio codec and the Theora video codec. Opera 10.50 will use both Vorbis and Theora along with WAVE PCM audio, as the "core codecs" on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
“As this is a pre-alpha, there are also some parts that are not finished. Most importantly, we don't support seeking at all yet. As a side effect we don't have the duration of files until we have played through to the end, so the seekbar isn't very useful right now. This is at the top of our list of things to fix before a final release. We are also working on improving bandwidth management so that we will be able to honor (the absence of) the autobuffer attribute,” Jägenstedt added.
Opera 10.5 pre-Alpha for Windows is available for download here.
Opera 10.5 pre-Alpha for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Opera 10.5 pre-Alpha for Linux is available for download here.