Opera Software today released the beta of Opera 11.60, the next update of its flagship desktop browser.

The beta introduces Ragnarök, Opera's implementation of the new HTML5 parsing algorithm. Because HTML5 specifies how browsers should handle incorrect code, browsers will soon handle coding missteps the same way - a big win for web-application compatibility across browsers.

"HTML5 actually specifies how browsers should handle code errors," explains Bruce Lawson, Web Evangelist, Opera Software. "Before, browsers had to guess, and they all guessed differently. That led to a lot of site incompatibilities and meant more work for developers. Now that we have the ever-so-sexy unified error parsing as part of Ragnarök, I spend less time helping developers tweak their sites to work in all browsers and more time on my true passion - making double rainbows in CSS."

Opera 11.60 adds CSS3 radial gradients, so front-end designers can create hypnotic ellipses or awesome double rainbows.

In other news, Opera 11.60 supports ECMAScript 5.1, the newest version of the JavaScript standard. You can also use JavaScript (and a little bit of Canvas) to make a double rainbow, if you so desire.

And, this just in: Opera 11.60 is the first browser to support HTML5 microdata. This is the basis for the markup patterns that Bing, Yahoo and Google use to enhance their search results.

Get Opera 11.60 beta here: http://opera.com/browser/beta/.