14 DAY TRIAL // A new Opera 11 Beta build (1128) is now available for download featuring platform specific enhancements, such as improved tab handling for top tabs & tab groups on Mac OS X, as well as changes common across all implementations of the browser (Mac, Windows, Linux), like the improvements to HTML5 support.
“I heard on Twitter the other day that is was time from another build, so here's one for you,” Ruarí Ødegaard, of the Opera Desktop Team, writes.
The tester proceeds to inform in a December 6 post that Opera’s desktop team has made “some nice improvements to HTML5 forms and have also been working on SVG Performance.”
As far as HTML5 forms support is concerned, the development team has been able to clean up its old Webforms implementation from 2005 to bring the implementation to feature parity with the current HTML5 specification.
“This means we now have support for the items added to the spec since then: the attributes 'placeholder' and 'autofocus', the input types 'color' (pops up a color picker), 'search' and 'tel' (no visual effects there),” Ruarí explains.
According to the blogger, the Opera team has fixed a great deal of cross platform bugs and some platform specific issues for each OS.
On the Mac side only, Opera’s Desktop Team has made the following changes:
Mac
- DSK-317390 (Associate the Opera document icon with Web archive files) - DSK-319754 (Extender button in Mac is flipped): Left / right arrows are no longer confused - Support for attention states for top tabs and top tab thumbnails on OS X - Improved OS X tab handling for top tabs & tab groups - Fixed jumping behavior on OS X, improved tab grouping backgrounds
“We have also been looking at ways to make tab stacking even more awesome,” Ruarí adds.
He outlines that, in Opera 11 Build 1128 Beta, links opened in foreground or background from the current tab now open in the same group as the parent tab.
Alternately, these links will open in a new group if one doesn't exist while using the "Open new tab next to active" preference when deciding the position in the group, Ruarí says.
Download Opera for Mac OS X (Free)
Opera 11 Build 1128 Beta is labeled as unstable, therefore should be employed for testing purposes only. For those relying on Opera for their day-to-day browsing, this release is not recommended.