Opera 10.5 for Windows Goes RC (Release Candidate)
The development process of version 10.5 of the Opera web browser is moving along at quite a rapid pace. Why at the start of the month Opera Software released the first Beta version of Opera 10.5. And just a few days ago they released the second Beta of Opera 10.5 for Windows (and Beta 1 for Mac). Now the browser has moved out of Beta, it graduated to RC (Release Candidate) status.
“You might have noticed that the 10.50 snapshots contain a lot more changes and fixes than usual. This is the result of our increased focus and has sped up the development process significantly. Thanks to the hard work of the Opera engineers Opera 10.50 for Windows has now reached RC status. We hope you like the new speed of development because we plan to work as hard to finalize 10.50 for Unix and Mac,” announced Opera Desktop Team manager, Huib Kleinhout.
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If you haven’t been keeping an eye on the development of Opera 10.5, here is a quick recap. Opera 10.5 Beta for Windows came with the following highlights:
- The user interface has been overhauled to offer a minimalist, sleek design with maximum browsing space.
- Thanks to private browsing you can surf the web safe in the knowledge that Opera 10.5 will not store any info about your session.
- Smarter address field that displays matching results from history, bookmarks and “even actual content on the pages you have visited.”
- The new Search field lets you use different search engines and Web-site searches.
- Windows 7 support
- Run Opera widgets as a separate process, out of the browser.
- Improved JavaScript performance – 8 times faster than the JavaScript engine in Opera 10.10
Opera 10.5 Beta 2 for Windows came with the following highlights:
- Styling of internal pages has been tweaked
- More skin work has been done
- Improved opera:config and overlay authentication dialogs
- Context menu bugs have been fixed
- Widgets bugs have been fixed
- Basic Web Storage user interface
And now, here are the highlights for Opera 10.5 RC:
- More stable than previous versions
- New feature: seek through videos that are not completely downloaded.
UPDATE 2 March: After rolling out a total of 5 RCs in the span of 2 days, Opera has announced the release of the final, stable version of Opera 10.5 today, the 2nd of March. Download it here.