14 DAY TRIAL // After a series of Release Candidate builds, opera Software has released the first refresh for Opera 10.50. Opera 10.51 is currently available for download, and the Norwegian browser maker recommends that all users of v10.50 deploy the security and stability upgrade. “Opera 10.51 final is a Windows-only release, but we are working hard on bringing the Mac and Unix versions to product quality,” revealed a member of the Opera Desktop team.
Opera Software published an extensive entry with all the changes introduced by version 10.51. Users should be little hesitant to deploy the update as soon as possible, if not to make sure that two security vulnerabilities which survived into v10.50 have been patched. Opera 10.51 fixes “an issue where the HTTP Content-Length header could be used to execute arbitrary code; [and] an issue where XSLT could be used to retrieve random contents of unrelated documents.”
At the same time, the update brings to the table a variety of fixes, designed to improve the reliability of the browser. Bug fixes span across multiple components of the Opera including user interface, the mail, news and chat clients, the JavaScript engine, and networking features. However, Opera Software has made it rather clear that it considers Opera 10.51 a security release ahead of anything else.
In this regard, users that won’t manually download and deploy the refresh will have it automatically delivered to them. “As this is a security release, it will be available as an automatic update for Opera 10.50 and older versions that support automatic updates,” the Opera Desktop team member added.
Other notable changes introduced with Opera 10.51 involve work done to speed up the browser even more. When it releases v10.50, Opera Software applauded it as the fastest browser available for Windows. It is now pointing to Opera 10.51 as being faster still. “Peacekeeper can be up to 20-30% faster than in Opera 10.50 (in fact, Opera 10.51 is currently listed as being part of the fastest system at Peacekeeper,” the Opera Desktop team representative added.
Opera 10.51 Final for Windows is available for download here.