14 DAY TRIAL // On its official website, Opera describes the latest version of its browser as "beautifully engineered". However, it looks like Opera 9.50 was made available to end users before the cooking process was ready. After the release of the gold version of Opera 9.50 on June 12, 2008, the feedback starting pouring in, and it was not a pretty sight. As a direct consequence of the user input, Opera is now scrambling to make available version 9.51, designed to resolve all the issues introduced with Opera 9.50.
"Discover the new standard in Web browsing. Download Opera today to get the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time online," is a message on the official Opera welcoming page. And while the evolution of version 9.5 over its predecessor is indisputable, the fact is that so are the many problems plaguing the browser. June 25, 2008 saw the offering of Opera 9.51 Build 10074 Release Candidate 1, and as of June 30 users can also grab Opera 9.51 RC2 Build 10080.
"More fixes in the pipeline for 9.51! As always, we appreciate constructive feedback. Main focus was on stability and the installer - some issues that users have encountered when upgrading from 9.27 should now be finally solved," stated Claudio Santambrogio, QA Desktop Test Manager.
One thing is clear following the launch of Opera 9.50, namely that Opera needs to tweak its testing program and catch potential issues ahead of the code going gold. It is unacceptable that a browser which is advertised as superior to Internet Explorer ships with this level of bugs in the final bits.
Santambrogio indicated some of the resolves provided by Opera 9.51 RC2: "Security status should be now always correctly set when navigating from HTTP to HTTPS. Fixed an issue related to OCSP and CRLs that would lower security level. Fixed an issue in the content blocker that might cause no page to be loaded anymore. Fixed a crash on Yahoo! Mail (now really!). Fixed a crash with userjs. Fixed a crash related to Dragonfly. Fixed a crash on Print Preview. Fixed an issue that caused unwanted line breaks in rich text editors. Fixed loading of stylesheets when navigating in history. UNIX specific: fixed an issue that would prevent pages from closing on Qt4 builds. Fixed saving of changes to plugin configuration".
Opera 9.51 RC2 is available for download here.