Opera 12 enters 'Next' channel as pre-alpha build

Opera has updated its Opera Next browser, which contains the latest developmental (and unstable) build of Opera to version 12.00. This is a pre-alpha release, and contains only a series of minor bug fixes and stability improvements, with "juicy and fresh stuff" promised for future releases.

Opera Next 12, codenamed "Wahoo" after the fish, is designed to be installed alongside the latest stable version of Opera, currently version 11.50. Opera 11.50 was released eight days ago, and has been downloaded more than 32 million times according to Opera.

While there's no word on any new features due for implementation in Opera 12, the pre-alpha release does contain a number of bug fixes. These fix problems including being unable to manually resize the Speed Dial if a custom number of columns has been set, Opera crashing when dragging a button from the Appearance tab to the Tab bar, and the mis-sorting of incoming news, feeds and mail.

In addition to these desktop fixes, there are also a number of platform-specific fixes. The Windows installer can now survive "non-fatal" errors, for example, while cancelling an installation in Vista doesn't trigger the Application Compatibility dialog.

There are also some platform improvements, described as "polishing" by the Opera desktop team. Mac users will find that links opened from external applications now appear in background tabs, as do files opened from within Finder. Linux users will notice the status bar now disappears if you opt to view the menu bar, while selecting all the text on a page copies it to the clipboard.

Opera Next 12.00 is available now as a freeware download for Windows (2000 or later), Mac OS X and Linux/FreeBSD. It installs alongside existing stable builds of Opera 11.50.