14 DAY TRIAL // The sixth development snapshot of the next version of Opera released since the start of this month is currently available for download. Opera Software is obviously making headway toward producing the first fully-fledged Beta development milestone of Opera 10.50. And while the Norwegian browser maker is not quite there, it is indeed getting extremely close. Case in point, Opera 10.50 Build 3241 is no longer pre-Beta, but labeled Beta Release Candidate instead.
Just as it the case for Firefox 3.7 Alpha 1 Candidate/Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 1, Opera 10.50 Build 3241 is the candidate which, provided no blockers are identified, will be graduated as the first Beta for the browser. “Opera 10.5 beta for Windows is right around the corner. This build is the release candidate and contains many stability improvements,” revealed Huib Kleinhout, from the Opera Desktop team.
Kleinhout also provided a list with the changes in Opera 10.50 Beta RC Build 3241, including: for the “Core: stability fixes in Carakan,” and the “user interface: Geolocation crash in Windows XP and 2000 when sharing location, Toggling menu while using specific skin crashes opera, crash when customizing the UI, changing skin or toggling full screen, blocked popup notification is not displayed, serious GDI leak in Evenes, nNew Tab and New Private Tab not working from Windows 7 Jump List, crash when switching between skins, bookmarks show up as history in addressfield dropdown, thumbnail on tab hover has broken skin, use image for Speed Dial' missing from image context menu and skin fixes in back/forward buttons.”
On February 1st, 2010, Opera Software made available for download Build 3218 of Opera 10.50, a release which was pretty much still in pre-Alpha stage. However, since the start of the month, Opera 10.50 was graduated not only into fully fledged Alpha, although the Norway-based browser maker kept this detail as quiet as possible, but also to pre-Beat stage. With the release of Build 3222 Opera Software announced that the next iteration of its browser was approaching Beta stage.
At the same time, the company started making a distinction between the Opera 10.50 builds for Windows and for Mac OS X and Linux. Following the advent of Build 3222, all other pre-Beta Opera 10.50 releases were focused on Windows. Monday, February 8th, no less than two development snapshots of Opera 10.50 pre-Beta made their way to testers.
Opera 10.50 Beta RC Build 3241 for Windows is available for download here