14 DAY TRIAL // Opera is getting ready to release a brand new version of its browser, but still needs a bit more testing before it's ready to push it to all users. Opera 11.60 release candidate is now out and, with a bit of luck, this will be the version that is made available to all users soon.
There may still be lingering bugs though, so one or more other release candidate builds may be issued.
"A Release Candidate could potentially be released as the final version if there are no issues that are serious enough to block the release. If there are any issues that are not critical, please wait for the next Wahoo (Opera 12) snapshot, and discuss it there instead," Opera announced.
For those that have already been using Opera 11.60, which has been in the beta phase lately, the big change is the removal of the native skin on Windows.
Opera doesn't want to go through the trouble of maintaining two skins for Windows and would rather focus on the standard, cross-platform one. That said, there may be a lot of users that like the native team and may not exactly be pleased with the change.
Opera 11.60 came about as a stopgap release, while work on the upcoming Opera 12 was still being carried out. Opera 12 boasts full hardware acceleration as well as support for WebGL and poses bigger technical challenges than regular releases.
But some features were already completed, so Opera decided to pack them together and put out Opera 11.60.
Among the big new features in Opera 11.60 are the Ragnarök HTML5 parser and support full support for the ECMAScript (JavaScript) 5.1 standard.
Speaking of JavaScript, the Carakan engine is getting an upgrade in Opera 11.60 as well. Finally, the Featherweight skin, introduced in Opera 11.50 is also getting some improvements in Opera 11.60.