14 DAY TRIAL // Well, after three releases in two days, perhaps it's not that much of a surprise, but, well, Opera has announced Opera 11.50 Release Candidate 2. Understandably, since this comes less than a day after the previous RC, there aren't that many new things, the team discovered and fixed a crash noticed by users upgrading from Opera 11.11.
Presumably, if you used the Opera Next build, this wouldn't have been a problem, since you'd be updating from previous Opera 11.50 testing builds.
"Several users complained about crash on upgrade from 11.11 so we have a fix for that. Please let us know if it still crashes or not," was all that Opera said in the announcement.
If you've been experiencing issues, or you haven't gotten around to installing the new release candidate, then this new update should ensure a much smoother experience.
Opera 11.50 comes with several new features, Opera Link, the bookmarks and preferences sync service, adds support for passwords. The upcoming release also adds support for Speed Dial extensions, possibly enabling developers to come up with fun things to drop into the dials.
The Speed Dial feature also got a tweak in more recent builds, the way speed dials are reordered has changed and now a moved dial slots in where you're dropped it rather than swapping places with the one you drag it over to.
The biggest, certainly the most noticeable update though, was the revamped interface that landed a couple of days ago. Part of the broader Featherweight project, the new user interface is lighter and cleaner giving the browser a nicer feel.
It's the first step in a broader project aimed at revamping the UI and the experience, to make the browser look and feel as fast as it is under the hood.
Opera 11.50 final should be landing any time now, but it's probably safe to grab the release candidate build as well. If you don't want to take any chance you could grab the Opera Next builds which can be installed alongside your regular Opera install.
Opera 11.50 RC2 for Windows is available for download here. Opera 11.50 RC2 for Mac is available for download here. Opera 11.50 RC2 for Linux is available for download here.