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

And then there was Merlin, AKA Opera 9.0 Preview 1 released!

A month ago, I introduced you to Merlin. Now, it's time to spend some quality time together. That's right, Opera 9.0 Preview 1, code-named Merlin, is now available for Windows, Macintosh (PPC and Intel!), Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. As with most previews, it's still pretty rough around the edges. But don't fret, we're already well on the way to making Merlin the best Opera release yet!

Remember, this is just a preview release and it may cause problems. The new IMAP back-end should only be used with test accounts, as there are still ways to lose mail.

In my previous post, I told you about many of the new features in Merlin, but I also left quite a few out. Here are the new specifications implemented in the core browser engine:

Of course, the core browser engine isn't the only part of Opera that received new features:

  • M2 now sports support for Atom 1.0 and the new IMAP back-end previously previewed in 8.0 Preview 5.1 (more details to come).
  • We've added quick access to most preferences via opera:config.
  • We added site-specific preferences (currently only accessible via opera.ini; more details to come)
  • You can now choose to reparse invalid XML documents as HTML
  • There's a new internal source viewer and editor (if you save your changes, the page is automatically reloaded with your changes included).
  • Tabs can now be locked via the tab context menu so they can't be accidentally closed.
  • Finding text on Web pages will highlight all matches.
  • There's a new message console used for everything from JavaScript to Opera Mail errors.
  • The default user agent is set back to Opera.
  • The Macintosh version is now packaged as a universal binary, allowing Opera to run on Intel-based Macintosh systems without emulation.

We're not just in the business of adding new features; we also fixed a huge number of bugs, including:

  • Acid2 is just one bug fix away from completion (more details to come).
  • OBJECT and IFRAME elements respect z-index
  • Fixed problems with width inheritance for positioned elements
  • Improved our margin-collapsing code
  • Key presses won't be lost after Alt+Tab
  • Full-screen will fallback to screen media stylesheets if no projection stylesheets are found
  • Many, many more!

We're proud of the work we're doing and we want you to enjoy it too. Happy browsing!

October 20, 2005

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Congratulations

Posted by Martin Strand (marstr2) on October 20, 2005 at 10:44am GMT

Great! I don't really have anything important to say, I just wanted to share my joy with someone.

Have a really nice day! (Because, I will -- testing the new features in Merlin!)

Posted by Tim on October 20, 2005 at 11:25am GMT

:)

UA

Posted by Jarek Piórkowski on October 20, 2005 at 10:48am GMT

"The default user agent is set back to Opera."

Finally! Congratulations.

It won't necessarily stay

Posted by Tim on October 20, 2005 at 11:24am GMT

It won't necessarily stay that way. It's depends on how testing turns out.

BUt how to DL it?

Posted by Janek on October 20, 2005 at 11:25am GMT

But how to DL it?

From the changelog, of

Posted by Tim on October 20, 2005 at 11:26am GMT

From the changelog, of course. :)

Opera 9 && (Win64 | Java 64 bit) ?

Posted by dawciobiel on October 20, 2005 at 2:37pm GMT

When opera will be compatibile with windows64 or JVM_64 ?

I don't know.

Posted by Tim on October 20, 2005 at 5:16pm GMT

I don't know.

firefox extention

Posted by makeurchoice on October 20, 2005 at 3:24pm GMT

i already want to switch to opera but could nt due to some extention i use n firefox .... will it support the firefox extention n the final version

No, we have no plans to

Posted by Tim on October 20, 2005 at 5:15pm GMT

No, we have no plans to support Firefox extensions, nor do I think it would be possible to do so. What extension are you referring to?

their r a lot like no

Posted by makeurchoice on October 21, 2005 at 8:00pm GMT

their r a lot like no script,stumble upon,but the one specific i m concerned is scrapbook..it make firefox the best offline browser(i dont want to use other offline browsers)i dont have time to read long article online so it provide me with easy saving,retrieving,finding, n managing my saved content to view offline..could this concept be interegreted into opera ??

Opera's caching already

Posted by Tim on October 22, 2005 at 5:16am GMT

Opera's caching already makes it a great offline browser. Head on over to our newsgroups (news.opera.com) and I'm sure some of our users can help you get everything setup.

tnx for the suggestion ...

Posted by makeurchoice on October 22, 2005 at 11:15pm GMT

tnx for the suggestion ... but i wanted proper managment like backup my offline content n search with n only my offline content ... n wat to do if i needed content of some page after 6 or seven months (the actual page might have been updated )any way i think i will try the 9 final version..n yeah ur wand feature s really cool

Ahh, yes, those caching

Posted by Tim on October 23, 2005 at 6:22am GMT

Ahh, yes, those caching functions would not be that easy to do in Opera. Anyway, I hope you like 9.0 final. :)

Awesome! I'm impressed with

Posted by burnout426 on October 20, 2005 at 6:00pm GMT

Awesome! I'm impressed with some of the additions!

Opera:config was really needed.

I like the xml external entities and xml validating, document.desingMode and the changelog. (I like details.)

Got to slip in a tiny suggestion though. (Forgive me) :)

We need some way to get the *actual* value of the href attribute and other uri-based attributes like usemap. In Firefox for example, atag.href = resolved and atag.getAttribute("href") = the actual value.

This problem affects css selectors too.

test

View that in Opera and then view that in Firefox. That should be clear enough. :) :jawdrop:

This is a very, very old

Posted by Tim on November 2, 2005 at 11:22am GMT

This is a very, very old problem in Opera. I don't know when we'll be able to fix it, though. FWIW, it's also the reason that MediaWiki sites (like wikipedia) style all links as external.

Thanks.

Posted by burnout426 on November 9, 2005 at 4:34pm GMT

Thanks.

Yah!

Posted by revil on October 21, 2005 at 5:11am GMT

Yah! Finally a Merlin preview :D

Works very well for standard browsing stuff so far...

Only problem i got was with www.opel.de, but that is also solved with deactivating JavaScript ( thanks F12 ;) )

Thanks for this neat browser, which is still on rank one on my personal list of best software!

Compose hebrew mail in M2

Posted by Lior Rubin on October 21, 2005 at 5:00pm GMT

Great improve viewing hebrew sites.

But when we could compose hebrew mail in M2 as we should to (from right to left) ?

GO ON it's a great browser !!

I'm glad some of the

Posted by Tim on October 22, 2005 at 5:17am GMT

I'm glad some of the improvements we've been working on have helped hebrew users, too. I don't know about using M2 with bidirectional text, but I'll ask around if it's possible.

Problems with alternate stylesheets…

Posted by Laurens Holst on October 22, 2005 at 8:39am GMT

The 9.0 preview has problems with alternate stylesheets which use <?xml-stylesheet> (or maybe alternate stylesheets in general)…

See: http://www.grauw.nl/

Pretty nasty.

~Grauw

Oy. Yeah, that's no good.

Posted by Tim on October 22, 2005 at 8:51am GMT

Oy. Yeah, that's no good. I'll file a bug report. Thanks for bringing that to our attention!

Filed as bug 184504 using

Posted by Tim on October 22, 2005 at 9:10am GMT

Filed as bug 184504 using this test case.

Another test case

Posted by Sébastien Guillon on October 27, 2005 at 10:01am GMT

I have another test case for the alternate XML stylesheets bug.

http://sebastienguillon.com/test/Opera9/preview1/alternate-xml-stylesheets.xhtml

I come to the conclusion that Opera 9 preview 1 treats all XML stylesheets as non-alternate. All the styles contained in all the stylesheets will be computed as if they were part of one stylesheet.

Can anyone confirm or refute?

Yes, that's correct. The

Posted by Tim on October 28, 2005 at 12:55pm GMT

Yes, that's correct. The alternate attribute for XML stylesheets isn't supported in 9.0P1, so all XML stylesheets are treated as non-alternate. This will be fixed before 9.0 final.

Thanks

Posted by Sébastien Guillon on October 29, 2005 at 4:25am GMT

Thanks Tim!

What happened to M2

Posted by Jerry R on October 22, 2005 at 6:00pm GMT

Can't see *jpg's attached in mail window anymore:( Will it be a permanent change?
In rss newsfeeds can't see any headlines when set to display plain text... I need to switch to html preferred to see them...
these two things are dissapointment for me comparing to previous versions.
the rest is GREAT:)

Both are bugs.

Posted by Tim on October 23, 2005 at 6:21am GMT

Both are bugs.

About M2....

Posted by Pincopallino on October 23, 2005 at 9:09am GMT

Coming from me, you probably already guess what's the question...
Do we have any hope to see server-side rules implemented in 9.0? And delete attachments from messages? And empty trash on exit? These are now pretty standard features in mail clients, and their lack in M2 is what keeps me from using Opera as mail client.

There are unlikely to be

Posted by Tim on October 23, 2005 at 10:26am GMT

There are unlikely to be more functional improvements in Opera Mail before 9.0 is released.

So, nothing before at least

Posted by pincopallino on October 23, 2005 at 11:56am GMT

So, nothing before at least O10? Tb1.5 is coming out soon with all these features. I think you're missing the train on the mail side. Really a pity...

It's quite possible that

Posted by Tim on October 23, 2005 at 1:13pm GMT

It's quite possible that these features will be available in 9.1. It's also possible that they'll never appear. I'm just saying they most likely won't be in 9.0.

designMode - shortcuts

Posted by burnout426 on October 24, 2005 at 4:56am GMT

In messing with designMode , I noticed that in Opera, you can highlight something and make something bold, italics or underline with ctrl+b, ctrl+i and ctrl+u respectively without actually even coding for those functions. Firefox doesn't appear to have that AFAIK.

That's pretty cool!

Any more shortcuts?

No, those are the only

Posted by Tim on October 24, 2005 at 8:57am GMT

No, those are the only three.

Thanks.

Posted by burnout426 on October 24, 2005 at 4:26pm GMT

Thanks.

Couple of comments

Posted by John on October 29, 2005 at 6:57am GMT

1. It would be great to be able to set a default XSL stylesheet for XML files.

2. Windows authentication support would also be really useful. These two combined would make a huge difference.

And one other that's always slightly bugged me. I would really like to be able to give my Notes a name. (I have some notes that are variations on my address and can't tell them apart.) Also in this new build, for some reason subsequent lines in my notes have an extra space in front of each one. :-(

Otherwise, loving Opera 9 preview. It's not crashed on me yet!

I agree, a default XSLT

Posted by Tim on October 29, 2005 at 11:00am GMT

I agree, a default XSLT stylesheet would be nice. I'm not a big fan of Windows authentication, but we may have to implement it anyway. Time will tell.

There are some problems with text wrapping in 9.0P1, which may be what you're seeing in Notes. I'm guessing you use the Paste from Notes functionality. Otherwise, you could just put the name for the Note as the first line. Notes in general could use a couple enhancements and naming probably wouldn't hurt.

I have found something that

Posted by Anonymous on November 13, 2005 at 7:12pm GMT

I have found something that will crash Opera 9 now (and it does the same for Opera 8.5). If you go to www.football365.com on a Saturday about 3pm GMT when all the football kicks off you can view live scores. It's impossible to get through the entire 90 minutes without Opera crashing. :-(

Bug report

Posted by Tim on November 14, 2005 at 2:01am GMT

File a bug report, please.

I've filed a bug now, Tim. I

Posted by John on November 20, 2005 at 11:31am GMT

I've filed a bug now, Tim.

I had a quick play with the Web Forms thing in Opera and they are brilliant. I think we've all been waiting this kind of thing for a long time!

What would be great is to have a series of demos showing off these new features (e.g. the different web forms, CSS3 selectors, the canvas element etc. etc.) I presume that development must have requires some demos to be made?

Thanks! We hope to have

Posted by Tim on November 21, 2005 at 9:01am GMT

Thanks! We hope to have some demos ready by the time 9.0 is released.

Source viewer

Posted by John on November 20, 2005 at 11:33am GMT

Sorry, one more thing I forgot - is it possible to change the font used in the source viewer? (And a pretty print option would be blinding, but I think that's maybe an optimistic request!) :)

No, you can't change the

Posted by Tim on November 21, 2005 at 9:04am GMT

No, you can't change the font. I don't work much with the UI team, but I'm sure they'll cook up something more before 9.0.

download problem

Posted by slavar1 on December 10, 2005 at 5:28pm GMT

I can't download anything with opera 9.0 p1.
It says's "internal error". But I can open these files to view them.