Browsers archive
Opera 9.5
2008-06-12 12:00
Ok, I’m crazy busy these days, but I still have to write a few words, now that Opera 9.5 is out. During the last couple of years, Opera has grown several shadows of awesome:
Dragonfly
For developers, one of the most signifcant new features is Dragonfly - the open source developer tool for Opera 9.5. Currently, Dragonfly is officially in alpha, and its release schedule is somewhat independent from the rest of the browser. If you want to know what is happening to it, and to get access to the weeklies of it, head over to the Dragonfly blog
Standards support
The list here is too long to go through, it would be worthy of multiple blog posts on its own (I might make some on some aspects of standards, though). Suffice it to say that the internal core release tied the race for Acid 3 with Webkit. Note that some of the improvements that went in by passing Acid3 are not available in the desktop release at this stage, so Opera 9.5 for desktop is currently at 83/100.
The awesomest of all awesome bars
The address bar in Opera 9.5 is the true awesomebar, not that other one you’ve heard of. When you visit a page in Opera 9.5, Opera creates a full-text index of the web page. When you’ve browsed, and forgotten where or what the web page title was, the quick-find feature searches this full-text index, giving you a complete set of results.. Should you prefer to view the results in a different way than as a drop-down, there is opera:historysearch which you can use more or less like a normal search engine.
Opera Link
It’s strange how much I have come to depend on this feature. So much, in fact, that I had to look up whether it actually was new to 9.5 or not. It is, it synchronizes your bookmarks and your speed dial, and makes sure you always have your bookmarks everywhere. For me as a heavy user of Opera Mini this is a killer feature.
Widgets
Ah. Widgets. Unfortunately, the File I/O stuff is not yet to be seen in the regular builds, but there are other improvements in:
- Showing/hiding of widgets using
widget.show()andwidget.hide() - Widgets can now request attention using
widget.getAttention() - Another means of requesting (more intrusive) attention, is through
widget.showNotification()which will display a message, and can take a callback for when the notification is acknowledged.
Needless to say, these are all going in to the Widget API specification — I just need to be a bit less crazy busy, so I can push towards a public working draft.
Changelogs
Download
That’s it for today, now go Download!
File I/O in widgets and the browser
2008-05-07 20:28
Ok, so I had a somewhat mystically titled presentation at XTech, titled Going full circle: Giving Web Applications and Widgets access to device and user data. The slides are here (Should work reasonably well in Firefox, WebKit and Opera — does not work in IE. Navigate with PageUp/PageDown or the mouse wheel)
What the presentation was actually about was File I/O in the context of the browser, or more specifically, in widgets. We produced an input paper to be picked up for standardization.
Further, we will release builds on labs.opera.com shortly, so you can get to play with it shortly, and hopefully also with some example code, so you can get your heads wrapped around this.
Edit: There are now public builds for you to play with here — have fun
ACID3: Strike ninety-eight. Make that 100
2008-03-26 21:20
Below is a screenshot of the Acid3, taken straight from one of our developer's machines. It's a screenshot of the builds we use to test core functionality in Opera (cue the weird, minimalistic user interface).
Yes, it says 100/100. I'm not going to say too much about it right now, other than send some Kudos in the general direction of the developers responsible (whom for some reason always seem to keep a low profile), and point to what Anne said earlier when we reached 98.
Note that there is a small rendering glitch left, but we will fix that too in due time. If you want to follow what happens in the future, visit the desktop team blog
5 things you'll love about Opera
2008-01-02 22:24
Computerworld recently posted a piece about 5 things you’ll love about Firefox 3 — it’s at this stage I feel compelled to correct their title to “5 things you’ll love about Opera”. Take any and all bias into account, as I’m an Opera employee (even if I only ever speak for myself on this blog), but just to set the record straight, I’ll go through their main points, and some minor ones:
1. Easier downloads.
Opera’s download manager includes everything the Firefox manager has, and in 9.5 also allows you to select which application to open something with. The only thing Firefox adds is when you downloaded something.
2. An enhanced address bar.
Opera 9.5 also searches all of your history, and provides excerpts of pages where the text you are typing occurs. There is also a dedicated historysearch.
3. A workable bookmark organizer.
Opera has had this for ages, and from 9.5 has built-in synchronization.
4. Easier bookmarking.
Ok, I’ll give them this one, it’s a nice improvement if you’re mouse-centric. (Personally, I can still live with my Ctrl-D shortcut)
5. Better memory management.
While Firefox may have improved, I’ll wager that Opera does way better. I started a fresh Opera install. It uses 18.6MB on my Ubuntu system, according to System Monitor (The actual usage is a more complicated matter: X memory, shared memory etc.), but the usage is still lower.
Either way, the acid test of memory consumption is what happens when you have an active history and a few hundred open tabs. My SO usually keeps over 100 tabs open on a machine with 512MB.
Another thing mentioned:
For example, Firefox 3 Beta 2 adds the ability to save your existing tabs when you close the app down
Has “always” been available in Opera (Session saving has been there since 2.12, I believe, but automatic saving came sometime later).
And another:
it has enhanced the browser’s ability to magnify Web pages from just affecting text to taking in the entire page
Full-page zoom has always been a feature in Opera.
Congratulating innovations is fine, but it would be nice if journalists stopped acting like something doesn’t exist until it’s part of Firefox.
(This is a somewhat edited repost of a similar comment I’ve placed on reddit)
Opera 9.5 alpha, Kestrel, released
2007-09-04 14:44
Ok, I never got around to blog the release of Opera Mini 4 beta 2 — apologies for that. Let me instead introduce you to Opera 9.5 Alpha - a.k.a. Kestrel.
A quick overview is available on a separate product page
So, what’s new? In a nutshell:
- History search
- Bookmark synchronization
- Dramatic performance improvements
- Web site compatibility improvements
- Improved standards support
- Huge improvements to M2
The Changelog
I wish I could get through all of the changelog here, but I’m afraid it’s way too long, and I could blog until 2011 about it, in which case Kestrel would already be severely out of date. Instead, I’ll just give you the links.
So, let’s go through some of the changes
History search
I’ve lost count of the times in the past, when I’ve visited some page, somewhere, and have been totally unable to remember where it was, on what domain, or even what the document title was. In other words, finding what I have already visited has been a very hard task, bordering on impossible. Enter history search.
With history search, Opera creates a full-text index of each and every page you visit, and when you go to the address bar, you can simply start entering words you know have been on pages you’ve visited before, and items matching your search show up. It’s a kind of magic, really. At least compared to what browsers have done in the past.
Not only can you do this, but there is also an internal web page, named opera:historysearch that gives you a more traditional web search interface that allows you to bookmark your searches. Speaking of which …
Bookmark synchronization
Bookmarks have changed in Kestrel. In the past, the only way to get your bookmarks from machine to machine was to export the bookmarks, copy the opera6.adr file, or use external software to transport them. In Kestrel, you simply log in with your My Opera account, and sync your bookmarks, speed dial items and personal bar with the server (The synchronization is using https, fwiw, so you don’t need to fear that your data are being compromised).
So, you may say “I never use two computers, why should I sync?”. Real men don’t do external backup. They just cry a lot - when their offices catch on fire!. That’s why.
M2
I have been absolutely dependent on M2 as my mail client for years, but it has had a number of annoying issues, related both to IMAP, and to indexing, where I’ve seen mail go into the wrong access point for no reason. I’m happy to report that I haven’t seen any such issues with mail with Kestrel for a long time.
Keyboard shortcuts
Now, this change is probably somewhat controversial for old-time Opera users, since they probably have single-key shortcuts as part of their muscle memory. For newcomers, though, Opera is going to feel a lot less alien, as all single-key shortcuts have been removed in the default setup. This prevents these newcomers from performing accidental navigation, or from changing their browser’s settings without knowing how.
Those oldtimers who want the old setup back, can do so, though, by checking the box in opera:config#UserPrefs|EnabledExtendedKeyboardShortcuts (Alternatively, by going to Preferences->Advanced->Shortcuts and and check “Enable single key shortcuts”.)
Now, on to more developer-related stuff
Selectors
Kestrel has top-notch support for CSS3 selectors, as shown in this demo.
Backgrounds
Kestrel has also added support for SVG in background-images, plus support for the background-size property. David Storey has created an extremely nice demo, also including a showoff of Opera’s extended selector support (mirrored with permission, as the My Opera file store doesn’t allow external referers).
Overflows
Opera now support both the overflow-x and overflow-y from the CSS3 box model specification. This both improves web site compatibility, since there are a few sites out there that use this, and it allows you, as an author improved control over those scrollbars.
getElementsByClassName
Library vendors, take note. Opera supports getElementsByClassName natively. This should allow for even faster selectors.
Dynamic media queries
In Kestrel, CSS3 Media queries support has improved, making them dynamic. For you, as a developer, you can now count on Opera actually applying the correct style when the user resizes his window, instead of re-rendering on a resize event. You can view this yourself here - note how the content changes in the max-width & min-width tests when you resize the window.
Getters and setters
Opera now supports Getters and setters from JavaScript 1.5.
Offline support
While Opera doesn’t yet implement a peristent storage, the Navigator.onLine is now supported, with window.online and window.offline events for when the value changes.
Spatial navigation
Controlling keyboard navigation can be a major pain in web applications, in particular if your application is on a device with “keyboard” as the only input device, which is the reality if you want to make web applications tailored to mobile devices, or you want to accomodate those unable to use a mouse. Opera support for these scenarios have improved in two ways.
First, Kestrel supports a custom CSS pseudo class -o-prefocus that applies to form elements that have been reached via spatial navigation, allowing for better styling. Further, Opera also now support four methods on the document object, document.moveFocusLeft(),document.moveFocusUp(),document.moveFocusRight() and document.moveFocusDown(), allowing you to initiate spatnav on regular keyboard events. I have put up a very simple demo that demonstrates a use of this property. When you navigate of the right end of a table, the code in the example moves the spatial navigation focus to the far left of the table row below. The code is not commented, but should be fairly simple to understand.
Text-shadow
Kestrel also adds (full) support for the CSS3 text-shadow property. Unlike WebKit’s support, Opera supports multiple text-shadows, comma-separated (More precisely: You can have 12 of them).
There’s more?
Yes. There’s lots more, and like I said, I could continue posting stuff from the aforementioned changelog until 2011, now go download a build for unix, Mac or Windows
Have fun.
Opera Mini 4 beta out
2007-06-19 10:16 – Seven comments
The beta of Opera Mini 4 is out. I highly suggest you check it out, because it'll turn your world upside down. Or add another dimension to it.
I see a shitstorm coming
2007-03-15 10:17 – Four comments
Apple has asserted intellectual property rights on the bitmap canvas found in the WhatWG spec.
Editor love, baby
2007-03-08 15:48 – Seven comments
Editor Love, or "How I learned to love Komodo Edit" after having been nudged in that direction a couple of days ago.
Chat with Håkon Wium Lie
2007-02-06 09:59 – Leave a comment
Join an IRC chat session with Håkon Wium Lie
dojo.query: A CSS Query Engine For Dojo
2007-02-05 08:19 – Leave a comment
Being compatible with the dark matter of the web
2006-11-17 10:29 – Leave a comment
Chat with me (and Anne) about the Widgets 1.0 Working Draft
2006-11-15 20:24 – Leave a comment
Anne van Kesteren and I will be participating in an Opera-hosted IRC chat session about the Widgets 1.0 specification.
Opera Graph Library
2006-11-06 15:17 – Leave a comment
The Digg effect is overrated
2006-07-03 12:55 – 14 comments
One of my old stories got dugg. Here are some numbers and thoughts: How many visits do you really get from being dugg? Which browsers do diggers use? Does Alexa rankings have any root in reality?
Opera 9
2006-06-20 10:26 – Seven comments
Opera 9 is out. Go get it: Widgets, BitTorrent, improved standards support
Opera 9 beta
2006-04-20 14:40 – Three comments
Today, Opera Software released the first Opera 9 beta. After two technical previews and numerous weekly releases, we are allowing
Debitel chooses Opera to drive Mobile Web in Europe
2006-03-14 13:40 – Leave a comment
Opera passes Acid2
2006-03-12 20:06 – Five comments
Opera 9 now passes the Acid2 test, as the second browser to do so, behind Safari.
Why Yahoo!'s Event Utility rocks
2006-03-03 09:21 – One comment
Opera Mini mind tricks
2006-01-24 19:25 – One comment
This is how I use Opera Mini.
Opera Mini goes Worldwide
2006-01-24 12:07 – Seven comments
Opera Mini is now available worldwide. Download it. Use it. Love it.
Hixie's Natural Log: People who don't realise that they're wrong
2006-01-22 12:50 – Leave a comment
Conspiracy theorists, unite
2006-01-16 14:29 – Six comments
A bit about the Opera splash page discovered by Asa.
Flashmute 2
2005-12-10 18:39 – Six comments
Flashmute 2 has just been released. Go get your new copy, Flash version independent and the ability to mute all sound from any browser!
Pandora's Box (Model) of CSS Hacks And Other Good Intentions
2005-11-27 16:15 – Two comments
A Truce in the Browser Wars: Toronto Ideas Create Common Ground
2005-11-24 17:16 – Leave a comment
Doctype switching for SGML comments
2005-11-07 09:44 – Leave a comment
IE7 CSS Updates
2005-07-29 10:27 – Leave a comment
Memoirs From the Browser Wars
2005-07-17 16:06 – Leave a comment
Opera 8 released for Mac OS X
2005-06-16 19:13 – Leave a comment
Opera 8.01 released for Windows and Linux
2005-06-16 19:08 – Leave a comment
Early Browser History
2005-06-13 12:58 – Leave a comment
Can we please stop this statistics nonsense?
2005-05-04 13:22 – 15 comments
Recently, a lot of time and effort has been wasted by people both in the Mozilla and Opera communities, arguing over usage and browser statistics. Could everyone please stop wasting this energy? Browser stats are ultimately uninteresting.
Wikipedia: Comparison of web browsers
2005-04-27 22:08 – Leave a comment
IE 7 Beta 1
2005-04-23 11:26 – Leave a comment
User Javascript changing moronic attitude ;-)
2005-04-01 13:47 – Leave a comment
11 Web browsers compared
2005-03-16 11:23 – Leave a comment
Use full GMail with Opera
2005-03-05 18:32 – Leave a comment
Browser stats
2005-02-28 03:33 – Leave a comment
Changelog for Opera Beta 2 for Windows
2005-02-26 18:09 – Leave a comment
Avalanche
2005-02-16 14:04 – Two comments
So. Bill Gates has announced that Internet Explorer 7 is coming, according to the IEBlog announcement as an update available...
Browser speed comparisons
2005-02-10 17:37 – Leave a comment
Opera's rendering modes
2005-02-08 23:27 – Leave a comment
Opera Chat: Disabling annoying colors
2005-02-01 22:32 – Leave a comment
Colors on IRC can be annoying. This is a tiny howto on how you can disable them in Opera.
Opera equivalents to Firefox extensions
2005-01-18 16:39 – 24 comments
Comparing some Firefox extensions with the equivalent features in Opera.
Opera everywhere!
2005-01-13 02:37 – Leave a comment
Better branding for Opera
2005-01-11 07:30 – Leave a comment
Stop using Internet Explorer! Now!
2005-01-09 17:42 – One comment
Internet Explorer is defective and insecure by design. This is why you should stop using it
Internet Explorer: The Girlfriend from Hell
2004-12-15 17:20 – Seven comments
Internet Explorer is the girlfriend from Hell, infecting you with STDs, constantly dropping the spawn of hell on your living room floor. She also lets strangers into your house.
Why are people switching from Internet Explorer?
2004-12-13 18:41 – 16 comments
Why do people switch from Internet Explorer? Why did you switch from Internet Explorer?
IE and styles
2004-12-09 22:58 – Four comments
What Internet Explorer users are seeing because their browser doesn't support the current web standards.
Why I prefer Opera over Firefox
2004-11-29 03:01 – 20 comments
My reasons for prefering Opera over Firefox.
Using Opera to read text/plain
2004-09-21 03:15 – Six comments
This story describes how you can set up Opera to provide media-dependent styling of plain text. This makes Opera ideally suited for reading longer passages of plaintext in full-screen mode..
Sweet. Opera 7.50 for OS X
2004-03-17 00:57 – Five comments
A preview of Opera 7.50 has been released for OS X
Opera 7.50: News aggregation done right
2004-03-11 02:06 – Two comments
Opera 7.50 makes newsfeed subscription real easy: When you click on a newsfeed, Opera 7.50 will add that feed to your subscription list.
Opera 7.50 Preview 3
2004-03-09 16:41 – Leave a comment
Opera 7.50 has been released as a technical preview for Windows, with improvements to chat and mail
Internet Explorer is the problem
2004-02-20 19:26 – Six comments
Why Internet Explorer poses both a security threat and an economic threat to webhosts in particular, and everyone on the Internet in general.
Opera 7.50 TP2
2004-02-17 23:29 – One comment
Some highlights from the Opera 7.50 TP2 release: Chat, panel, mail and security fixes
Search this site directly from Opera
2004-02-09 11:10 – Leave a comment
Search engines that can be added directly to Opera: Web developers searches, Switchboard, Merriam-Webster and others.
Opera 7.50 preview and my Opera Journal
2003-12-22 00:40 – Six comments
Opera 7.50 tp1. Highlights include a cleaned up UI, massive improvements to the mail client, support for RSS and IRC.
Opera as an MP3 player
2003-07-20 07:43 – Eight comments
Description of the MP3 player available in Opera for Windows, with downloadable menu and keyboard setups.
Sex, statistics and videotape
2003-07-09 23:20 – Three comments
Internet Explorer is, on average overcounted by 14.4% in server logs
Fun with :target
2003-07-09 16:44 – 13 comments
A prototype GUI, using CSS :target to minimize complicated Javascript. Draggable, semi-transparent windows.
Opera 7.20 Betas
2003-07-04 12:58 – Leave a comment
Opera 7.20 is available in beta versions for both Windows and Linux
Safari
2003-06-23 23:45 – Leave a comment
Safari 1.0 released
W3-Dev
2003-05-31 19:00 – One comment
Opera menu.ini file for web developers
The fat lady shut up: Opera 6.02/Mac
2003-05-22 11:18 – One comment
Opera releases Opera 6.02 for Mac and announces Opera 7 series for OSX
Javascript performance
2003-05-15 12:00 – Leave a comment
Two different javascript performance tests using a real-world script that adds syntax highlightning and code collapsing to code fragments in HTML pages.
MSIE|!MSIE Revisited
2003-04-30 20:28 – Three comments
Revisit of earlier story regarding MSIE's inflated market share.
Opera 7.10
2003-04-11 11:45 – Leave a comment
Release announcement for Opera 7.10 final. Opera employees again working at the speed of light
CSS Media queries test
2003-04-10 13:07 – Leave a comment
Simple, collected test to determine support for various aspects of CSS3 Media Queries
Opera at it again, Opera 7.10 Beta 3
2003-04-07 23:51 – Leave a comment
Opera releases Opera 7.10 beta 3, the third beta version in four days. If only every software company could be this efficient.
Opera 7.10 beta 2
2003-04-05 22:36 – Leave a comment
Opera fixes bugs in beta versions at breakneck speed.
Opera 7.10 beta 1
2003-04-05 16:21 – Leave a comment
Changes and news in Opera 7.10 beta 1. Rendering bugs fixed and interface improved.
Opera 6/7 vulnerability
2003-03-12 15:12 – Leave a comment
Opera, versions 6, and 7.02 suffer from a buffer owerflow vulnerability
When is MSIE not MSIE?
2003-02-25 17:06 – Four comments
How to use use Conditional Comments to help measure real market share for Internet Explorer.
Opera on MS Smartphone? Never!
2003-02-25 11:24 – Leave a comment
Opera for mobile platforms, but not for Windows CE
Bleeding edge?
2003-02-24 07:52 – Three comments
Most of the early feedback on the redesign of this blog, and my other, Norwegian blog is in. And, amazingly, for the most part stuff just works. There does seem to be a couple of problem children, though. Konqueror is one, and since that is one, I presume sibling Safari is the other.
Tables without tables
2003-02-23 01:39 – Leave a comment
On using CSS to create table-like effects and still keeping semantic markup.
Opera 7/Linux
2003-02-16 05:34 – One comment
Opera releases beta version of Opera 7 for Linux
Opera releases Bork edition
2003-02-14 12:35 – Leave a comment
Opera releases Bork edition in response to MSN stylesheet silliness.
Opera vs. MSN
2003-02-06 21:30 – Four comments
MSN is deliberately sending broken stylesheets to Opera.
Opera vulnerabilities fixed
2003-02-05 00:56 – Leave a comment
Opera fixes security issues discovered by GreyMagic at lightspeed.
Opera vulnerabilities
2003-02-05 00:19 – Leave a comment
Five security holes discovered in Opera. 19 unpatched holes in Internet Explorer
Opera 7 release today?
2003-01-28 00:42 – Leave a comment
On the release of Opera 7.0 final
The browser wars are here (again)
2003-01-20 20:29 – Leave a comment
On measuring current browser popularity by counting browser downloads instead of looking at access logs