Opera 10.5 Shoots Through 5 Release Candidates

The other day we were announcing that Opera Software, the company behind the similarly named web browser, tolled out the first Release Candidate (RC1) of Opera 10.5 for Windows-powered computers. Since then the Opera Desktop team has been feverishly working on the browser and has released an additional four Release Candidates – the toll the last time I checked was Opera 10.5 RC5 for Windows.

Here’s a brief look at when the Release Candidates were rolled out:
Sunday, February 28th – Opera 10.5 RC1 and RC2
Monday, March 1st – Opera 10.5 RC3, RC4 and RC5
UPDATE: March 2nd - Opera 10.5 FINAL

There have been so many RCs that the Opera Desktop team jokingly said they’re losing track of them all. “We're starting to lose count of the number of release candidates we have had. Well, with the amount of snapshots we have had lately and the helpful testing aid we have gotten from you guys and girls we have been able to kill many severe bugs,” said a member of the Opera Desktop Team.

These RCs make the Opera 10.5 browser a more stable platform. As far as features go, they offer the same bits and pieces we’ve known about since the browser was in Beta. Here are some 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
- Improved opera:config and overlay authentication dialogs
- Basic Web Storage user interface
- New feature: seek through videos that are not completely downloaded.