Today marks the second preview release of Merlin[1], the culmination of three and a half months of hard work. We did a lot of stuff in Opera 9.0 Preview 1 already, but we weren't finished. While Preview 1 focused on features in the rendering engine, Preview 2 includes several big user interface improvements, as well as new rendering engine functionality. And these changes aren't just fancy eye-candy (well, not all are), they address long-standing user requests, too. Read on for more details.
Feature highlights
The following is a list of the major new features/improvements in this preview:
- Widgets
- Widgets are small applications, often web applications, that run outside the regular Opera browser user interface.
- Thumbnails
- Small representations of a web page, thumbnails, will show when hovering over the tab bar. They can also be enabled for the Ctrl+Tab/Option+Tab menu[2], but won't show there by default.
- Search shortcut editor
- Search shortcuts (like 'g' for Google) can now be configured in preferences via Tools > Search, rather than via search.ini. Additionally, you can easily create new searches by right-clicking on a search field in a web page.
- Content blocking
- Tired of those pesky images of half-naked women on corporate web sites? Get rid of them with content blocking! Right-click on the page to open the content blocking editor for direct access to the filter.ini capabilities directly through the user interface.
- Site-specific preferences
- Many site-specific preferences, available in Preview 1 via opera.ini, can now be configured directly in the preferences via Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Sites. Settings that can be set site-specific are now grouped with site-specific preferences. Site-specific preferences are also available on the web page context menu or at the bottom of the Quick preferences menu (F12 on Windows and UNIX, Option+F12 on Mac).
- BitTorrent
- BitTorrent is back with a vengeance. First demoed in Opera 8.02 Preview 1, it's here to stay for Opera 9.0.
- Improved history navigation
- The history of pages you've visited can now be grouped by date and by site in the history panel[3] via a setting in the View menu, greatly improving your ability to find pages you've visited recently.
Featurelets
But let's not lose sight of some of the every day changes that on their own might not make a big impact, but put together improve Opera immeasurably. Here's a list of what I feel are the most important featurelets in this preview:
- By popular request, we removed the bookmark indicatior (star icon) from the address bar that was added in Preview 1. Update: It turns out that some users miss the star. For you, there's a solution in our forums.
- The built-in source viewer now contains basic syntax highlighting.
- CSS and SVG errors are shown in the Error console (renamed from the JavaScript console).
- The "Load image" context menu item for images will now reload images, even if they are only partially downloaded.
- Typing a domain name (sans "www." and ".com") in the address bar and pressing Ctrl+Enter/Cmd+Enter will now auto-complete the address, as in other browsers.
- Paste & Go has been moved to Ctrl+B/Cmd+B, after being moved to Ctrl+Shift+V/Cmd+Shift+V in Preview 1. The change in Preview 1 had the unfortunate side-effect of opening a new tab in the background, which often wasn't desired.
- Individual sections and preferences in opera:config can be linked to using the format "opera:config#section|preference", i.e. opera:config#UserPrefs to access the "User Prefs" section and opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableGesture to access the "Enable Gesture" setting.
- Improved stylesheets for virtually all Opera-generated pages, such as opera:config, opera:about, opera:cache, etc. Kudos to Moose for a job well done.
- Added configurable stylesheets for the image display and error pages, also by Moose. They are available in the Opera\Styles\ directory and called image.css and error.css, respectively.
- Improvements when navigating pages in history on pages with certain JavaScript event handlers. See our knowledge base for more details.
- Experimental NTLM support (Windows-only).
- New message count in Dock (Mac-only).
Bug fixes
And what's a preview release without bug fixes? Here are my favorite bug fixes:
- Lots, and lots of bugs in our SVG, XPath, XSLT, canvas, and Web Forms 2 implementations have been fixed. We have lots more to tackle, but the worst should be gone.
- The background of printed pages will be derived from the print stylesheets instead of the screen stylesheets.
- HREF attributes aren't converted to absolute URLs in DOM and CSS anymore. This fixes problems seen with external link indicators in MediaWiki wikis in Preview 1, as well as many other issues.
- Fixed problem with extra blank lines being copied from web pages and mail.
- Fixed problem handling spaces and punctuation when searching for text in web pages.
- Fixed GDI leak caused by favicons.
- Multiple fixes for the FTP back-end, specifically related to the PWD and EPSV commands.
New preferences
For our tweakers, several new preferences have been added or enhanced, which extend the customizability of Opera. Here's some of my favorites:
- Added "-1" to the list of allowed values for the User Prefs|Rendering mode setting, which changes the default rendering mode to Fit to window width, AKA ERA. Other possible values are 0 = normal (default), 1 = SSR, 2 = CSSR, 3 = AMSR, and 4 = MSR.
- Added Adv User Prefs|Permitted Ports, a comma-separated list of ports that can bypass the security restrictions on accessing certain ports.
- Added a setting to disable the HTML5 canvas element: User Prefs|Enable Canvas. This setting is not yet working, but will work in a future release.
- Added "2" to the list of allowed values for the User Prefs|Color List Row Mode setting, which completely disables alternating row backgrounds in user interface lists, such as the Opera Mail message list. Other possible values are 0 = allow alternating row backgrounds (default) and 1 = improved coloring with dark backgrounds and light foregrounds.
Download it
All this and I haven't even listed all changes! See the changelog for more details and try the release for yourself!
Read more
Below are links to other information about this preview from my colleagues:
- Search engine customization from Petter
- Thumbnails from Petter
- Content blocking from Petter
- Pictorial walkthrough from Arve
- Internal stylesheets, new CSS property, and tricks from Moose
Enjoy!
Footnotes
[1] Our code-name for Opera 9.0.
[2] Toggle User Prefs|Use Thumbnails in Window Cycle in opera:config
[3] The view setting isn't saved on exit yet. That'll come in a future release.
Note: Comments with a light blue background were made by the site owner.
The new features is more
The new features is more than good, but I hope it support my favorites web sites :
http://www.rasid.net & http://www.fikrah.net
Because when I visited by Opera it doesn't look like what it must. I think I will give the new Opera 9r2 a try.
NTLM is broken
it just doesn't work.
From your blog post i realized that my proxy problems are may be due to the "experimental ntlm support".
But I don't want it !!!
I want my old stably working manually giving user/pass way.
Pls! Do you know something more about the problem?
NTLM....
Sorry for flooding :)
Info about NTLM and ISA proxy in the Opera forums: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=122978&t=1139329696
Yes, we're aware of the
Yes, we're aware of the problem.
Hello Tim, you should fix
Whoops. That's due to
Whoops. That's due to Drupal using BASE. I'll see if I can come up with a work-around. Sorry about that.
rich text editor
does opera still lacks of a rich text editor or am i clueless?
Opera 9.0 Preview 1 was the
Opera 9.0 Preview 1 was the first release with the rich text editing capability. However, most of the rich text editing JavaScript libraries don't do correct object detection, but browser sniffing. We're working with the library authors to make sure Opera is compatible. By the time Opera 9.0 is released, I hope that most rich text editors have been updated to recognize Opera 9.0.
If you want to try out rich text editing, it currently is working at Gmail.
-o-text-overflow: ellipsis
I tried -o-text-overflow: ellipsis (see here)…
Four periods?
Why doesn’t it just use the font’s ellipsis character, U+2026? Then the spacing will also be better.
Also, strange things happen when I select the ellipsis.
~Grauw
-o-text-overflow: ellipsis revisited
Argh, so I mistook the period that came before the ellipsis for an ellipsis. So there are three after all :).
That also shows that you really should use the ellipsis character, it just looks different :).
If you have concerns about availability in fonts; all fonts have it, really.
~Grauw
I'll pass on your request.
I'll pass on your request. :)
I talked to the developer
I talked to the developer that implemented
text-overflow: ellipsis. On UNIX, we actually use an ellipsis. On Windows and Mac, we don't due to our font switching code. This will eventually be changed, but not necessarily for Merlin.opera 9.0 TP2 hangs accessing gmail
please fix this
1) install clear opera 9.0 TP2
2) run opera: gmail.com doesn't work
3) delete direcory "profile" (and even "mail" and "opcache")
4) run opera: directories automatically recreated and gmail.com works !!!
also gmail.com works if 9.0 TP2 installed over 8.x
see: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=123051
We've seen scattered reports
We've seen scattered reports about this, but have not been able to reproduce it. I've replied to the forum thread.
Paste&Go in the background
Too bad! I am one of those who never ever reuses an existing tab. They are not too costly - I like to open a new one. ;)
Is there a way of accomplishing Paste&Go in the background with TP2? Ctrl+Shift+B is functionless, could it be standardly assigned to this shortcut? (I know I can tweak the keyboard.ini, but I might not be the only one longing for that function - or at least for the choice, where to open an url.)
Other than that: Great work! and thanks for the new toy... :D
Nothing by default, but you
Nothing by default, but you can edit keyboard.ini, as you mentioned. I'll see if we can get Ctrl+Shift+B added.
Thank you for your answer -
Thank you for your answer - and especially for your efforts in order to implement Ctrl+Shift+B! I appreciate this a lot.
Opera
Very good advice
Good news on the GDI leak
Good news on the GDI leak fix, however, it continues to exist in the current shipping version, and has since early last summer.
Given that betas aren't the version you're recommending for the general public (and noting v9 final won't ship until early this summer), and given the fact that the GDI leak didn't exist in versions previous to 8.0 (i.e. v9 shouldn't be the only way to fix the problem), can we expect the fix to be introduced into 8.5x, perhaps as a hotfix or with the next maintenance release?
A year is a terribly long time for such a crashing-bug to exist in currently shipping versions. This isn't something trivial.
We're aware that this is a
We're aware that this is a bad problem for our users and are looking into solutions. I can't comment beyond that.