Aug 31, 2011 08:23 GMT  ·  By

The first update for Opera 11.50 is now available for download from Opera Software, and the company just announced the release of Opera 11.51 officially. Opera 11.51 is not a new iteration of the browser, but rather a refresh designed to resolve some issues which survived past 11.50.

The Norway-based browser vendor made available two Release Candidate (RC) Builds of Opera 11.51 last week, and apparently the two snapshots were all it took to wrap up the update.

Undoubtedly, Opera 11.51 will make its way to users automatically soon enough, most likely by the end of today, although probably starting in the next few hours.

Build 1087 is ready for end users to deploy into production in contrast to the two releases from last week, which were only designed for early adopters to test.

For all intended purposes, Opera Software is delivering Opera 11.51 as a maintenance update. In this regard, users should not expect any new features, or additional capabilities, because they won’t find any.

“Our dear Desktop Team has been really busy these days. Today they released a security and stability update. There are also some minor tweaks and fixes for all platforms,” revealed Opera Software’s Aleksander Aas.

Deploying security patches are always a very good reason to install updates as soon as they come out, and Opera 11.51 makes no exception to this rule.

"This security update comes right after the Diginotar certificate breach, but Opera does not require a fix for this issue. Opera always verifies that certificates are not revoked, and unlike other browsers Opera does not display sites as secure if access to revocation servers has been blocked by an attacker," added a member of the Opera Desktop team.

But in addition to patches for security vulnerabilities, Opera 11.51 also brings to the table additional bug fixes.

According to Opera Software, users should see an increase in reliability when running Opera 11.51, especially because the browser vendor fixed a few problems which impacted browser stability.

Opera Software also continues the work on Opera 12, the next major version of the browser, which is being developed under the codename Wahoo. Codename Swordfish was used for Opera 11.50.

Opera 11.51 Final for Windows is available for download here.