14 DAY TRIAL // Opera has made a couple of interesting announcements. The first alpha build of Opera 11.5, codenamed Swordfish, is now available but the big news is that you can now run it alongside a regular Opera install which will remain intact.
Opera 11.5 Alpha already comes with a couple of new features, sync support has been expanded to passwords as well and developers can now create Speed Dial extensions.
Google Chrome's approach to development and releases has spurred the other browser makers to also release more often and speed up their development cycle to keep up.
Mozilla has just switched to a faster release schedule and will have four different versions of Firefox developed in parallel.
Opera is now taking a somewhat similar approach and is introducing Opera Next which it calls "dev channel for snapshots." However, it's more similar to Google Chrome's Canary Builds rather than the Chrome dev channel releases.
"Opera Next allows you to run the upcoming release of Opera alongside with your stable installation of Opera. It will always be automatically updated to the latest snapshot build. Opera Next is easily distinguishable by the Opera menu and the white icon," Opera explained.
Since you can use Opera Next without disturbing your regular install, it's easier to start testing releases early and get a glimpse of what upcoming versions of the browser have in store.
For now, Opera 11.5, the first "Next" release, comes with password sync, one of the most requested features for Link, Opera's bookmarks and preferences synchronization service.
First time users can enable password sync support when they set up the feature, but users can access the Synchronization Options to enable it as well.
The other big new feature in Opera 11.5 Alpha is the ability to create Speed Dial extensions. This enables developers to add more functionality and customize the Speed Dial page.
"Speed Dial extensions are like small web pages embedded in your Speed Dial, powered by Opera's extension framework. They allow developers to make live previews of web pages or other nice decorations for your Speed Dial," Opera said.
Opera 11.5 Swordfish Alpha is available for download here.