14 DAY TRIAL // The first update to Opera 11 is now available for download. Users can now grab Opera 11.01 and install it immediately, since Opera Software has wrapped up the release and is offering the final bits to customers. The Norway-based browser vendor has yet to officially announce the release of Opera 11.01, but Build 1190 is already live on the company’s FTP servers.
The users that want to wait for the official launch from Opera Software can do so, and fact is that with the final versions already offered through FTP, the browser vendor is right on track to making the announcement later today.
Opera 11.01 has been in the making for quite some time now, with the first development snapshot offered to testers in early January 2011.
Even at that time, the Norwegian browser maker emphasized that Opera 11.01 was intended as nothing more than a minor update to Opera 11, set up mainly to resolve bugs that survived into the final version of the browser.
The number of issues with any software projects never really manages to get down to zero ahead of release.
Case in point: the first development snapshot of Opera 11.01 was designed to fix the top crashes identified in Opera 11.
Since early January 2011, Opera Software has produced a number of testing releases, culminating with the two Release Candidate (RC) Builds that the company made available yesterday, January 26th, 2011.
The couple of RC builds shipped recently were a clear indication that Opera Software was extremely close to wrapping up and making available for download the final version of Opera 11.01.
The focus with Opera 11.01 was to fix problems that impacted Opera 11 users and not much more beyond that. Opera Software indicated that more consistent steps forward in terms of the evolution of the browser will be saved for the successor of Opera 11.
UPDATE: Adam Minchinton from Opera confirms the launch of v. 11.01: "We have just released Opera 11.01. This new release adds security fixes and stability improvements, along with some mouse gesture tweaking."
Opera 11.01 for Windows is available for download here.