Opera 9.5 Release Candidate

Finally. That was my first thought when I read the announcement over at the Opera Desktop Team blog that they released a release candidate of Opera 9.5 which can be downloaded for all supported operating systems including Windows, Linux and Macintosh. Windows users should take note that this release candidate will replace the default installation of Opera.

Opera has a very dedicated userbase for a very long time and I personally think that the browser deserves a larger market share so that it would at least be on pair with Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you have not updated Opera for a while you will notice that it comes with a shiny new skin.

The following changes have been made in this version of Opera:

Copied the latest Dragonfly to the live servers - Check out their blog for the latest info
Various stability fixes
Opera no longer wants to update a nonexistent mail store when upgrading from 9.2 to 9.5
‘Download message bodies’ is now enabled on all POP accounts
Fixed a loss of filter rules on upgrade from 9.2
Fixed an issue with a missing Panel button
Fixed an issue where the ‘New tab’ toolbar was hidden behind the panel toggle button when no tabs were open
Added sharper panel selector icons
Fixed dragging of multiple items in the bookmark manager
Fixed Russian and German dictionary search
Improvements in backwards compatibility with skins
Fixed login with cookie on the 31st of all months bug

Mac specific changes

The disk image should work on Mac OS X 10.2 again
Some improvements to the Mac Native skin

Definitely worth a look and the announcement (coming soon) of the final version is already visible on the main Opera website.