14 DAY TRIAL // An early development snapshot of the next version of Opera is now available for download. Opera Software has just launched the first Alpha Build for Opera 10.60, the successor of Opera 10.50, which was finalized and released to testers earlier this year. The promise from the Norway-based browser vendor is that users will be able to take advantage of better performance and an evolved graphical user interface with the advent of Opera 10.60.
“We are now preparing for a 10.60 release, which we aim to synchronize across all desktop platforms. This alpha will give you noticeable gains in performance, an improved user interface (UI), and lots of bug fixes,” a member of the Opera Desktop team revealed.
Opera Software has tweaked the core of the browser, and promised that it would manage to offer even more horsepower with Opera 10.60. The browser’s performance has been optimized, and early adopters will be able to see speed improvements in terms of the JavaScript engine, but also related to DOM and CSS.
“In addition to the visual tweaks you have seen already, such as the Speed Dial facelift, we have also been making further UI enhancements. You will notice that the O menu button now says ‘Menu’ for easy discovery, and instead of hard to read thumbnails for internal tabs, we have replaced them with icons. The tab hover previews have also received a facelift,” the Opera Desktop team representative added.
One important change to the Opera 10.60 UI will impact users of Windows 7. Opera Software disabled the taskbar previews in Windows 7 by default with Opera 10.60. According to the browser maker, end users have been complaining about the difficulty to navigate taskbar previews in Windows when a large number of tabs are opened in the browser. However, the feature has only been disabled and not killed off. Users can easily enable Windows 7 Taskbar Previews for Opera 10.60 from the Tabs sections of the Preferences dialog.
Opera 10.60 Alpha 1 for Windows is available for download here.