May 23, 2011 14:24 GMT  ·  By

The second Alpha development snapshot of the next major version of Opera is now available for download and testing.

Early adopters can grab Opera 11.50 codenamed Swordfish Build 1015 and take it out for a spin, to see the improvements introduced since the first Alpha was released.

Obviously, the Alpha label should be sufficient to inform users that this release is an early development Build of Opera 11.50, as such coming with a range of issues, as all pre-release software does.

According to Ruarí Ødegaard, from the Opera Desktop team, codenamed Swordfish Build 1015 brings to the table a range of enhancements including to Opera Next, Password Sync and the Plugin installation.

“The latest Swordfish snapshot [comes] with a nice collection of bug fixes, plus improvements to some of our new features,” he stated.

“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.”

For those not familiar with the evolution of the browser, Opera Next is a new development channel designed specifically to serve testing releases. In this particular case: Opera 11.50 Alpha Codenamed Swordfish Build 1015 is offered through Opera Next.

Testers will be able to tell the difference immediately when compared to the stable version of Opera 11.11 for example, from small details including the icon, but also additional visual elements such as the menu.

Password synchronization is a new feature introduced in the first Alpha development snapshot of codenamed Swordfish.

Now Opera Software has also provided testers with a few fixes designed to improve their user experience. As the label of the feature implies, password synchronization is an Opera Link enhancements set up to allow users to sync passwords via Opera Link.

Opera 11.50 Alpha Codenamed Swordfish Build 1015 is available for download here.