14 DAY TRIAL // A new development release of Opera 10.50 is available for download and testing, launched today, February 1st, 2010. The latest build of Opera 10.50 comes just a couple of days after the release which the Norwegian browser maker made available for download at the end of last week. Despite the rapid pace of delivery when it comes down to development snapshots of the next major version of Opera, v10.50 continues to be in pre-Alpha stage. At this point in time, Opera Software did not deliver any sort of indication as to when it would graduate Opera 10.50 from pre-Alpha to fully-fledged Alpha.
In Opera 10.50 pre-Alpha Build 3218 “Facebook is working again,” a member of the Opera Desktop team said. “A new view button to the right on the status bar adds a zoom slider (Windows-only for now). Work on tab management (MDI). Skin fixes, such as a glow on the personal bar to make the text readable (Windows 7/Vista).” Opera 10.50 pre-Alpha Build 3218 also brings to the table an array of stability fixes designed to improve user experience.
Build 3218 is a very early testing release made available for early adopters and users that understand the risks associated with running pre-release software. “This is a development snapshot: it contains the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, it may not work at all,” revealed the Opera Desktop team representative.
On January 30, Opera’s Huib Kleinhout revealed that the company was moving faster than ever when it came down to building Opera 10.50. According to Kleinhout, Opera Software is making most progress on the Windows version of the browser, compared to the variants for Mac OS X and Linux. As such, the company will focus on delivering the Windows version of 10.50 first.
“The current estimates for the remaining work for Opera 10.50, however, indicates that we will reach final product quality earlier on Windows than on the other platforms. As such, we have decided to not let Windows users wait for the other platforms to catch up, and rather push it out earlier than the rest. You will notice this in the near future as we will reach the beta milestone for Windows, while Mac and Linux will reach beta around the time Opera 10.50 reaches final on Windows. When the Windows version hits final we will focus our attention on bringing the other platforms to the same quality as soon as possible. We also expect this to be an exception from how we work, meaning we will once again ship final versions for all platforms at the same time in the future,” Kleinhout explained.
The Opera 10.50 release offered the past weekend contains an upgraded Carakan engine, search box improvements, bookmark fixes, enhanced stability, a restructured Opera menu. In addition, the Build also offered a core update resolving a large number of regressions issues.
“As you have noticed we are fixing tons of bugs [in Opera 10.50 pre-Alpha Build 3218], so now a new build for you guys to test. One new thing to notice is the new zoom control (only on win yet, but will come on other platforms soon). Don't forget to report bugs in the bug wizard. Look out for regressions since 10.1 those are highest priority,” the Opera Desktop team member added.
The latest release of Opera 10.50 is available for download here.