14 DAY TRIAL // The latest development snapshot of Opera 11.10 codenamed Barracuda brings to the table further enhancements to the trademark Speed Dial feature of the browser. According to Wojciech Dzierżanowski, from the Opera Desktop team, the Norway-based browser maker is putting the finishing touches on Barracuda, getting ready for the final release of Opera 11.10.
However, at least for the time being, Opera 11.10 Build 2064 continues to be in Beta stage, and such it should only be deployed in testing environments.
Users that want to run Opera in production should stick with Opera 11.01, the last Stable release.
“The final pieces are starting to fall into place,” Dzierżanowski stated. “The new flow layout of the Speed Dial is now enhanced with auto-zooming so that it fills up your window nicely. A beefed-up Speed Dial configuration dialog reacts to changes you make instantly.
“Oh, and for those of you who want to save every precious piece of your window, it has an option to hide the plus button, too.”
At the same time, there are additional changes, some more subtle than others.
“Just in case you are led to believe the Speed Dial is the only thing that's been keeping us busy, I'm here to tell you it's... not,” Dzierżanowski added.
“We tweaked the skin to look cleaner and smoother, ensured that reordered Speed Dial cells are now synchronized correctly, and made other general improvements and fixes to Opera Link as well.”
There are also a number of issues with Opera 11.10 Build 2064 which testers might stumble upon. But of course, this is understandable, especially considering that Build 2064 is still a Beta release.
For example, early adopters upgrading from earlier versions of codenamed Barracuda to Opera 11.10 Build 2064 might have some issues with the layout of Speed Dial.
Opera 11.10 codenamed Barracuda Beta for Windows is available for download here.