After a flurry of releases, Opera 11.50 "Swordfish" is finally out, made available for download to the millions of Opera fans. The latest release comes a little over a month after Opera 11.10, so the changes are not revolutionary.
"Today we released Opera 11.50 aka Swordfish. With its new streamlined body and highly powerful interior it becomes the most dangerous predator on the internet waters," Opera announced.
Revamped, lighter interface
Despite the short development time, there's plenty to like about the latest Opera release, the most noticeable change is the new interface, the result of the recently announced Featherweight project.
The new Opera 11.50 UI is lighter and cleaner, the toolbar icons have been updated and the status bar has been completely revamped. The changes are mostly cosmetic, though some affect usability as well.
Overall, Opera 11.50 looks better and 'feels' lighter than its predecessors, which is what the Featherweight project intended. But Opera says that this is just the first step, so expect more changes to the interface and the user experience in future releases.
Speed Dial extensions
Another new feature in Opera 11.50 is support for Speed Dial extensions. The functionality enables developers to create widgets of sorts that replace regular speed dials and can provide additional information, from the latest weather report, to the number of unread emails or tweets.
Password sync support in Opera Link
Those using Opera on more devices will appreciate that Opera Link, the cloud sync service, now supports passwords as well, making the built-in manager significantly more useful and a replacement of sorts for third-party, dedicated password managers.
Under the hood
"Opera 11.50 is equipped with our newest rendering engine: Presto 2.9.168 featuring up to 20% faster rendering of CSS and SVG, support for HTML5 tag <time>, Session History and Navigation," Opera explained.
With Opera 11.50 under wraps, work is underway on the next version and, if you've been running Opera Next, a dev channel build introduced with Opera 11.50, you should get an update as soon as the next experimental release is available.
