Opera 9.5 beat both Firefox 3.0 and certainly Internet Explorer 8 to the market, as it was launched officially on June 12, 2008. Then at the start of July hot on the heels of the final release of version 9.5, Opera 9.51 was released. On top of the security issues it was designed to resolve, v9.51 was focused on the stability problems that had survived into the gold code of Opera 9.5. Now the browser is evolving yet again, with the Release Candidate 2 build of Opera 9.52 available for download. RC2 points to the proximity of the final version of Opera 9.52, although the Norwegian-based browser maker has so far failed to reveal when it plans to drop the update.

"We're closing in on 9.52 final now," a member of the Opera team stated at the start of August, and produced the following changelog: "Readded the Windows shell menu to the Transfer context menu; fixed an issue with lists not displaying correctly when text rendering is RTL; fixed opening of files in external applications when disk cache is off; fixed issue with low quality on YouTube video previews; fixed mail appearance when Opera is installed in a folder with a "#" character in its name; fixed RealPlayer on BBC; added work-arounds for problems with various POP servers; fixed problem updating signature when switching accounts and [introduced] quite a few stability fixes."

Following the August 2008 snapshot of Opera 9.52, the browser continued to evolve, with the company softening additional rough edges, in terms of the graphical user interface as well as the skin of the product, IRC commands, content blocker, but also for embedded YouTube videos. On August 14, the first Release Candidate of Opera 9.52 was offered to testers. Joachim Blaabjerg, Opera Mac Test Manager, indicated that a variety of additional issues have been dealt with including glitches related to POP accounts, the BitTorrent code, bookmarks, and even icon and skin problems.

Opera 9.52 RC2 for Windows is available for download here.
Opera 9.52 RC2 for Linux is available for download here.
Opera 9.52 RC2 for Mac OS X is available for download here.