14 DAY TRIAL // UPDATE: Opera Software has just made available Opera 11 RC2. Download link at the bottom of this article.
Opera 11 has managed to reach the Release Candidate (RC) development milestone ahead of Internet Explorer 9, which is expected to graduate from Beta in early 2011.
Early adopters can now download the Opera 11 RC1 Build 1149 bits and start testing immediately. Make no mistake about it, Opera Software has made a decisive step forward toward the finalization of the next major version of Opera.
This also means that the current release of Opera 11 shipped to testers is pretty much the same as the final Build of the browser which will be released to end users, most probably sometime next year.
Essentially, the RC milestone signals that Opera 11 is nearly completed, with no major new features planned for introduction ahead of release.
“We have now reached a stage where Opera 11.0 is mature enough to be prepared for a final release,” a member of the Opera Desktop Team stated.
“Our improved development process the past year or so has allowed us to work on more things simultaneously, while at the same time keeping a stable main branch.”
It appears that the Norway-based browser maker has been experimenting quite a lot with baking in new features or fixes into Opera 11 in accordance with the new development approach.
“So when public builds have seemed crashy, that has usually been the result of unstable/experimental feature and/or bug fix branches being added separately to form a snapshot (informally referred to as Frankenstein Builds or Frankenbuilds in the team), rather than making the main release branch unstable,” the Opera Desktop Team representative added.
“After proper testing, features and fixes are added back to the main branch. This is the reason why one cannot judge the quality of a final release based on previous snapshots.”
The hunt is on now for major bugs affecting Opera 11. Testers should keep an eye out for issues that could qualify as blockers, and that could impact the yet-to-be-announced delivery deadline.
Users should be aware that Opera 11 RC is still pre-release software designed for testing environments.
Those running the previous version of Opera into production need to know that Opera 11 RC will install to the latest stable installation folder.
“At this point, less severe bugs will have to wait for a future version, but we definitely want to make sure there isn't anything major preventing the release. We are particularly interested in bigger problems affecting tab stacking, extensions, and the new mail panel or Windows installer,” the Opera Desktop Team member explained.
“And although our improved development process helps to prevent regressions on the main release branch, we still want to know about any regressions you may find, and particularly ones that could potentially block a release.”
Opera 11 Beta for Windows is available for download here.