Opera 11.50, codenamed "Swordfish," wraps up a fast two-month public development cycle worthy of its codename with a new release today. The new version of the desktop browser is now available for Windows, Mac OS X, and various flavours of Linux.
The most visible change is an update to the default browser skin. The new skin, which is part of Project "Featherweight," is a brighter and less cluttered alternative to the browser"s default skin that has remained intact since 10.50, with minor UI tweaks for the past 3 major revisions. The "Featherweight" skin sports a newly styled toolbar with borderless buttons, a new icon set, four default navigation buttons (Back, Forward, Reload/Stop, Wand) in the default toolbar, and a more accessible zoom slider. This new initiative to improve the UI of the browser is not complete yet, with further phases to be realized in upcoming releases.
The next major addition is Speed Dial extensions. Speed Dial extensions allow users to insert dynamic content into their Speed Dials. These can include an RSS reader, a weather gadget, a stock ticker, a photo slideshow, or a simple clock. These extensions are accessible through the improved "Add Speed Dial" dialog.
Other noteworthy changes include:
- Opera Link now synchronizes Wand passwords.
- Moving dials around in Speed Dial inserts dials between two adjacent dials, instead of swapping them
- Improved IMAP support with Gmail in Opera"s built-in mail client.
- Uses a new update to the Presto engine (2.9), with further HTML5 standards support.
- A few security fixes, including a fix for cross site scripting
To celebrate the release, which comes roughly a year after version 10.60 was finalized, Opera"s front page dons a counter with the number of browser downloads. It"s only a matter of time before the browser has just as much downloads as dislikes (3,099,876) for this popular hit (original link).
You may download the browser here. Changelogs are available here.