A new development snapshot of Opera is now available for download, just ten days after the latest major version of the browser was released to the general public. Opera 10.51 Build 3309 was offered yesterday, March 11th, 2010, but only to Windows users. Opera Software introduced version 10.50 of its browser at the start of this month, having prioritized the release for customers running Microsoft’s operating system. With Build 3309 of version 10.51, the Norwegian browser maker continues to focus on Windows, although it is also developing flavors of the browser in parallel for both the open source Linux and Apple’s Mac OS X platforms.

“This Opera 10.51 build brings a few important fixes to the e-mail client. We have also been working on stability, and some tweaking of performance related to JavaScript timers, which should lead to smoother animations in some cases. Some bugs related to customization have been addressed as well, along with fixes to Opera Link and bookmarks handling,” a member of the Opera Desktop team revealed.

With Opera 10.51, users should expect to come across some issues. While the release is designed to deliver a multitude of fixes resolving issues affecting the graphical user interface, the rendering engine and the email client, there are also unresolved problems. According to Opera Software, users of version 10.51 will come across browser crashes on a few websites. The browser maker only indicated Yahoo.com among the online destinations that could crash Opera 10.51.

“It's difficult to summarize and highlight specific fixes, as most of them could be important to different groups of people. Just take a look at the changelog, and let us know if you spot any regressions,” the Opera Desktop team representative added. “Unix users can check out a better looking Opera in a separate snapshot and Mac users should look for further updates in a few days or so.”

Opera 10.51 Build 3309 and Opera 10.50 Build 3296 Final are available for download here.