The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera web browser

Now that Opera 8.0 Beta 2 is out, I can finally talk about my favorite changes. I'm very happy with this release, overall. We made excellent progress on bug fixes and solved some usability issues here and there. Anyway, here we go:

1. The Security information dialog. Now, when you click on the padlock in the address bar (or press Alt+Enter with focus on the document), you'll get a dialog with information about the level of security and certificates used on the site. The address bar now also shows the name of the certificate.
2. Typed URLs for redirects are remembered. If the URL you enter in the address bar or F2 dialog automatically redirects to another page, only the destination URL would show in the address bar and F2 history. Now, it shows both! This is a nice usability improvement, as Opera finally remembers the address I use to access my bank account.
3. EXIF data for JPEGs. In the image properties dialog, some simple EXIF data is now displayed, when available. Try it out!
4. Support for document.selection, document.getSelection, and friends. One of the most frequent DOM support requests has been for the document.selection family. Now, many forum and web logging software will work better with Opera. Hooray!

Oops, time to leave for the day. I'll see if I can fill out this list a bit on Monday so it can be a Top 10 list. Oh, and what are your favorite changes?

Opera 8.0 Beta 2 for Windows is expected to be released later today. However, the Unix release will not happen this week. It takes way too long to make all those Unix builds. Also, there will not be a Opera 8.0 Beta for Mac yet. We're aren't satisifed with the quality on Mac yet. We don't want to keep y'all waiting too long, so stay tuned.

Kudos to Google for allowing Opera access to Google Maps and not saying Opera is unsupported at Google Mail today. And that it happened the same day as we released Opera 8.0 Beta 2 makes it even cooler. :)

The IMAP testing is going very well. We haven't identified any major problems, but the new back-end isn't quite feature complete. The main remaining code work is in error-handling (i.e. the server says it can't do something and we have to respond accordingly). The code is improving steadily and that's what really counts.

We've run into a couple server-compatibility problems (as expected). Right now, we haven't enabled synching of the Deleted flag because some servers will automatically expunge when they shouldn't, thus messages will be deleted by the server before the user manually issues the expunge command (read: empty trash). If we can find a way to detect these servers, we can probably enable Deleted synching on standard-compliant servers and do something else on the other servers.

I just want to throw in a reminder that the current work is on the back-end and not the UI. That means the most common feature requests have not been addressed. But now, at least we'll be able to do something about most of them. The new back-end probably addresses bug reports more than anything. And since I prefer to see bugs fixed than features added, I'm pretty happy. :)

I have a feeling that our first release with the new IMAP back-end will be somewhat like Forté's Agent 2.0 release: there will be no clear changes to the end-user, but it will set the stage for future updates. Well, except the fact that there will be some clear improvements in the way Opera reacts to changes on the server or error situations.

And y'all *might* even get to test before I thought....

I receive a fair amount of e-mail quizzes, particularly from Helen, the poor girl devoid of the motivation to log in to this site when she leaves comments. The questions are sometimes interesting enough to share with others. So, I've added a new FAQ page. I'll try to update it with new quiz questions as I get them, too. I hope it answers all the questions about me that have just been tugging at your very being. If not, just ask.

I have got to get more consistent about capitalization in post titles. Oy.

Rebekah and I have added two new albums in our image gallery: Weekend in the Woods and honeymoon pictures. Enjoy!

While working on these pictures, I was struck by how much of a hassle it is to use different software for my image gallery and weblog. I'm going to reinvestigate the possibility of using Drupal for my image gallery in addition to my weblog. I mean, it is a content management framework. Images are content. It seems like a no-brainer.

I know there's an image module for Drupal, but I think I tried it out and found it lacking features I wanted. I'll have to have another look. Of course, if I end up deciding that a Drupal-based solution can work, I'll have to import all my pictures. And there's probably no Gallery import script, so necessity will again force me to write one. Oh well, at least I'm bringing something unique to the Drupal community.

Speaking of importers, I've been working on a Blogger importer. I'm almost finished, save for an issue with importing comments. I've had to hack my way to access the Drupal functions for adding nodes, comments, paths, and users, since no formal method to do so exists. I may work on that (again) once I'm finished with this importer work. Ideally, there would be an API to access these things.

There are so many more things I want to write, yet I feel bad for hijacking my own post. And I don't seem to have the courage to sit down and get the words through my finger tips. I miss staying up until two or three in the morning, posting about whatever came to mind. I don't feel like I have that freedom anymore (and said freedom-deficiency has very little to do with being married, thankyouverymuch).

Sometimes, I'll be experiencing life and think to myself, Self, this would be a fantastic topic to write about! I'll begin to think through the opening sentences in my head, working on the wording, etc. Then, I either get caught up in the reality of my full-time job or computer-less apartment and lose track of the whole thing. Part of the reason it's taken so long to upload the honeymoon pictures is that I wanted them to accompany a story I was going to write about our trip. That story never materialized, so neither did the pictures. I finally gave in and just posted the pictures, hoping that I'll get to the story sometime. We shall see.

A lot of Things seem to be building together to try to sour my life. Well, it ain't working, Things. You're going to have to try harder. Or, better yet, give up your futile attempts to give me a nervous breakdown! I will not succumb! Muhahaha!

Anyway, I hope more will be coming your way from Oslo soon. 7:30 comes pretty early, so I must be on my way. And yes, I was a bit exclamation happy this evening. Toodles.