Opera 11.5 Beta Comes with Password Sync and Speed Dial Extensions

The Opera team is pushing ahead with the latest update to the venerable but not particularly popular browser. Opera 11.5 Swordfish will be an incremental update bringing a couple of new features and plenty of bug fixes.

With the release of the Opera 11.5 Beta, the most nagging bugs have been cleaned up and it should be safe to test the upcoming version, though it's probably not ready to become your default browser just yet, if you value stability.

However, Opera 11.5 introduces the Opera Next channel which enables users to install testing versions alongside their regular browser.

"With this beta, Swordfish will be brought to an even wider audience. We will get an even better idea about issues that need to be ironed out before the final version is released," Opera announced.

"There are several new things in the beta, and there should be something for everyone to enjoy," it added before listing some of the big new features.

For developers and users alike, support for Speed Dial extensions should prove interesting. Developers can now create widgets and other extensions that will live inside a normal Speed Dial tile.

This way, you can have more than just shortcuts to your favorite sites, you can add a ever-useful weather widget or an extension that shows how many unread Twitter messages, or emails you have.

Opera Link, the companies preferences sync service, which enables you to switch from one install or computer to another and have everything set up as you're used to, has added support for password sync.

Syncing passwords with the cloud is a bit more tricky than regular data, both technically, but mostly because of the privacy issues. But with dedicated cloud password managers being rather popular, LastPass for example, most people are ready to hand over their encrypted passwords in exchange for the convenience.

Under the hood, Opera 11.5 Beta comes with an updated layout/rendering engine with more HTML5 features, better SVG performance and other improvements.

Opera 11.50 Swordfish Beta is available for download here.